Unas vacaciones tropicales increibles y la vida tica...

Okay, so some people (i.e. my dad) are giving me un pedazicto (little bit) of crap for not writing more, so here you are, padre and others. Um...so I´m not even going to try to do justice to the fieldtrip we got back from a week ago...it was absolutely incredible. First, we backpacked 5 hours into El Bosque Eterno de Los Ninos to this little cabina thing (owned by Eladio, who turns out to be the cousin of my host mom...ha!) in the middle of a regenerated wet rainforest. There, we slept in bunks with mosquito nets, which gave me piece of mind until I noticed a decent-sized scorpion chilling out a few feet from my head. I tried to get it into a plastic bag, but failed and it ended up going over into the other room. Gah! No, but I was so tired from tromping through the jungle, scrambling up rivers to hidden waterfalls, and going on nightwalks looking for herps (frogs, lizards, and snakes) that I slept like a log. After 4 nights there, we backpacked out 5 more hours to the a humble bunch of park buildings/cabins at the edge of the reserve by a small, calm lake. We did a whole bunchload of bird watching, and a friend of mine saw the elusive bare-necked umbrellabird that I've been searching for the whole semester. Another girl saw a jaguar, which many Costa Rica field biologists go their entire lives without seeing!!! How do jaguars kill their prey, you might ask? They slap them across the face with a paw the size of my head!!! Bad-ass. After some sing-alongs and a skinny dip with the huge Cane toads (and probably some caimans), we left for La Selva Biological Reserve, which is this huge, incredibly-well funded research mecca on the Eastern slope. There we saw, among a zillion other things, 3 kinds of toucans, a crapload of oropendola birds (ridiculously loud gurgling calls), tiny wrestling 'blue jean' poison dart frogs, and 2-inch long bullet ants, which I was tempted to let bite me, just to see how bad they hurt, but I´m lame an didn´t end up doing it. Then we went for 3 nights to a nearby, less crowded/developed reserve where we looked at some bats, visited a 'sustainable' forestry operation, and found the coolest frog in the entire world: the red-eyed tree frog. Then we went to the East Coast, just below the famous Tortuguero, where we went on a night walk on the beach and found a 6-foot long gigantic leatherback turtle burying her newly laid eggs. We watched it struggle its way over the sand into the waves and then we made two fake turtle nests to throw off poachers. Next, we went into Panama (across a ridiculously sketchy bridge border crossing, just as I´d imagined it would be), and took a boat out to Isla Colon, in Bocas del Toro. There we slept in semi-luxurious cabinas on the beach, chilled out in hammocks, had a CIEE talent show, snorkeled for 3 days straight (seeing all kinds of stuff, including a bunch of parrotfish, a 6-legged 2-foot big starfish, a few nurse sharks, cuddlefish, rays, lobster, a bunch of other fish and stuff that was really colorful and awesome that Anna Santo and Chris Rice probably know all about), and then danced well into the morning to a live Carribean calypso band. Then we returned, sadly, to San Jose and civilization, but went out to this Jazz Bar and heard this amazing DAve Matthews BAnd-esque group play which was quite fun. Then, we had a week to recover at the station in Monteverde, during which we were writing our research proposals. If everything pans out, I´m going to be conducting interviews with local farmers about what obstacles are preventing them from participating in a government program (Pagos por Servicios Ambientales) that pays them to preserve forest on their land.

Okay, so then on Thursday, we moved into our homestays. I´m living in a little town called Canitas, about a half hour walk from downtown Santa Elena and an hour from the station. My host mom (Dona Marielos Leiton) is 40 yrs old and cleans the local primary school 5 days a week and my dad (Don Enoc Villalobos) is in construction. Last night he just invited me to go shrimp harpoon fishing with him at night when the full moon wanes a little bit. Awesome. I have 5 siblings (4 sisters, 1 brother): Lindsay, 20, works long hours in town six days a week. Tairy, 16, has been lounging around the house for two weeks because her public school teachers are on strike for higher pay. Sebastian, 13, is crazy energetic and mischeivous, and keeps asking me to lend him my watch, flashlight, computer, etc. Yeah, okay, Sebas, sure I´ll just give you my valuables. Dinieth, 10, is really nice and talkative, and we´ve been doing a lot of jumprope. She also showed me the duck pond that Enoc built for our neighbor, Don Juan of Don Juan Coffee Tours, who I think is somehow related to us. Brenda, 5, is absolutely adorable, and the other night she told me I was like a brother to her already...then we went and picked wild raspberries. Don Enoc´s uncle that raised him, Don Moncho, also lives with us. He is a cute little 84-yr old man, but has prostate cancer, is wheelchair bound, and is kind of losing his mind, which is really sad. The family can laugh about it sometimes, and sometimes it really is kind of funny, but mostly I feel bad. But then, we also have a really playful 2-month old puppy with curly white hair (Boni). He can climb up onto the armchairs, but can´t jump down yet, so he just gets up there and then looks around for people. Each day when I get home, I roam around the property (Enocs dad´s old finca--he wants to build a synthetic soccer field and reforest it for tourism), and then we all eat dinner together and talk while watching Free Willy in Spanish, the Hisanic billboard music awards, or a nature/history show about Isla del Coco (the last three nights). Enoc and I made a pact that we would go find the pirate treasure of legend that´s still hidden there somewhere, and split it 50-50. I offered him 60-40, but he said we were companeros and should split it even. So, all is well here--sorry I don´t write more often. I'm generally busy wiling with my family, studying occasionally, or watching the blue-crowned motmot I recently encountered on our driveway.

PURA VIDA