Peacing out again for a while...

Hola amigos y amigas! ¿Qué hay de nuevo con ustedes? Um...so I thought I would post real quick before we head off for 2.5 weeks on our next field trip. Tomorrow morning, we're backpacking up the mountain, through cloud forest, over the continental divide, and then down the Atlantic-side slope to a place called Peñas Blancas (en "el bosque eterno de los niños" reserve), which is the wettest rainforest in Costa Rica (real hardcore jungle). Then, we make our way towards the coast to south of Tortuguero where we're going to search for nesting sea turtles. Then we go down to Panama (we have to leave Costa Rica to renew our tourist visas, which is a great excuse) to Bocas del Toro to snorkel and chill on beaches. Um...yeah it's an okay life, I guess... Pahahaha! Let's see...today we finished some pretty brutal midterm exams (it's ridiculously hard to concentrate on lecture notes in a place like this)...then I had to talk for 30 mins in spanish about U.S. influence on Latin American cultures--gaaah! Um...oh and then this afternoon a crapload of army ants attacked the station, destroying all the wasp nests, which really pissed them off and they were flying around everywhere, obviously pretty distraught that their larvae were being devoured by hordes of ants whose life strategy is basically to go around with a ginormous army eating everything that moves. So freaking cool! Anyway--I'm probably going to have no internet access until early April (all the supplies for the first place gets there on horses...if they avoid the snakes...muahahaha...we actually still haven't seen a poisonous snake...although they tell us this will be the place...sweet!). I hope all is well and happy spring soon!

P.S. FELIZ CUMPLEANOS, TOUSSAINT!!!

El Bosque Nuboso y mas...

Hola y’all! Yeah—turns out I’m a pretty crappy blogger, um-yeah. …The internet here at the station is really slow, and most days it’s not even worth trying. Anyway—so we’ve been at the Monteverde cloud forest for a little over a week…it’s pretty amazing. The porch overlooks mountains of cloud forest, and in the distance we can see the Golfo Nicoya and the Península Nicoya and the Pacific Ocean. Today we had our first lab practical, walking around outside identifying plants and animals and stuff like that…but then I went on a hike (the trails are 10 feet away) up to the ridge (which is the Continental Divide in the Cordillera Tilarán) and it was a real cloud forest day—the trees up there are covered in mosses and epiphytes to the point where you can’t see the trunk, and today there was a good bit of mist/cloud blowing through making the bigger trees bend and creek. I took a nap at a little overlook that pointed down the Eastern slope toward the wettest rainforest in the country (where we’re going to be backpacking in less than two weeks). Let’s see—what else…we started 3.5 hr/day Spanish classes Monday (4-people per instructor), and I had the buena suerte to be in the group being taught by an incredibly attractive half-Tica/half-Belgian woman…needless to say, I’m working very hard on my Spanish (which has gotten pretty good, I think—had a pleasant conversation with our van driver Gilberto the other day on the way to a shade-grown coffee plantation. P.S. It turns out shade-grown coffee, while better than nothing, is often pretty exaggerated as far as its ‘amazing’ environmental-friendliness…or at least the plantation we visited was somewhat underwhelming…supposedly it’s pretty good coffee though, and most coffee here is harvested through Costa Rican-run coops, which is pretty awesome). A couple days ago we went on the all-famous rainforest zip lines—they were unfreakingbelievable! We had harnesses with caribeners that hooked onto metal cords strung between platforms dotted throughout the rainforest and the guides shoved us off each platform. To break, we had to grab and pull down on the steel cords with reinforced work gloves—pahahaa! There were 15 separate ziplines, some of which were more than 400 feet long and >250ft high!!! Crazy…and then there was a big tarzan swing thing where they pushed you of a 50ft platform and you swung out over a long drop a couple times. So that was freaking awesome…Been waking up to howler monkeys each morning, and I’ve developed a pretty darn howler call myself. Short lesson: do the breathing-in-style pteridactyl call but as low-pitched as you can and kind of barking-ish—I’ve gotten them to call back to me a couple time (although, I’m hesitant to do it too much, as they throw fruit and some times excrement when they get mad). Tonight we’re going to a bar called “Moon Shiva” for an open mic (our TA is going to play a little I think)—last time we went there a Colombian named Andrés was playing a pretty mean latin guitar. I realize that there’s a whole 2 weeks that I haven’t talked about where all kinds of awesome schtuff happened, so when I get a chance (…um…not sure when…) I’ll give you guys a few highlights. Happy…um…March? Hope all’s well! Ciao!

So far, no snakes...

Hola amigos! Hope all is well with everyone--I can´t write much because I´m ducking out of lunch really quick...but I thought I would say hello and assure you that I have not yet been bitten by a snake. In fact, the only snake that any of the 31 of us has seen was about 12 cm by 1cm and flattened on the streeet. WTF! I wanted to at least have a distant encounter with one. But other than that, Costa Rican wildlife is as good as everyone says it is... Once we got to Corcovado National Park, my first "homework assignment" was to spend a day catching Norops spp. lizards (my group caught 48) and then present our results about what proportion of males/females/juveniles had had to replace their tails. So yeah, tromping around the dense rainforest and camping on a Pacific black-sand beach was a pretty good first week of "classes." I´ll write a bunch more about everything we´ve done when we get to Monteverde in a few days. The most recent wildlife encounter: got attacked by spider monkeys hurling big hard fruits from the canopy 40m up. They litereally drove me out of the jungle...gaaah!
Hasta luego!

Acabamos de llegar...

¡Hola amigos! So here I am making a blog post...cool. Been here 2 days but it seems like a couple weeks. we all flew in on Sunday, got picked up at the San José airport by Kathy (a Costa Rican born Quaker from Monteverde) and Moncho (tall, long/dark-haired tico) and went to Hotel Balmoral in the center of San José. Tico drivers are insane--today there was an old woman in front of me crossing the street and she almost got owned--she had to kind of hop/jump to avoid the fender of a typical tico driver. So that's been fun so far--we've been doing a good deal of human frogger. Anyway--so we all got here and went out to dinner and began what has so far been a pretty ridiculous frenzy of meeting people (30 students from all over the place--mostly public universities). The director (Alan) is a middle-aged American with a longish ponytail who is very relaxed and down to earth and a pretty hardcore biologist/ecologist (as are all the program people)--he seems to have a pretty solid lifestyle--living in the cloud forest teaching people like me about the badass-ness of tropical nature. Alan then introduced his wife, Karen, the tropical diversity professor, who said while laughing, "I usually don't drink before meeting my students." Good show. Turns out she's really funny and wicked smart--told us a whole bunch of schtuff about the evolution of butterfly toxicity and coloration whil we were in a butterfly garden today. Then there's Pablo, bilingual Costa Rican who's real fun (soccer player and former b-pong champion) and Tegan, a Bates graduate who's been on the program before. They're the resident assistant type people who also help teach. Anyway--I kind of have to hurry but I'll try to tell you a little more. Today, we had our first "humans in the tropics" lecture which was pretty long--about urbanization and the green revolution and population growth and such. Then an urban planner came and talked about how there's a whole bunch of urban development plans but none have ever been implemented...so the Central Valley is hellah sprawled and the government is kind of inept at that. After lunch, we went out into the city to survey 3 ticos to find out their ecological footprints, which were all way better than any of ours. It was fun talking to them a little bit and using spanish and all that jazz. Um...so yeah--we've been exploring the city a little bit in pretty comfortable 75ish partly cloudy w/ a breeze weather. tough life. Observation: costa rican females (ticas) anywhere near our age tend to be attractive. ... Anyway--by tonight, many of us are itching (not yet literally) to actually get to the rainforest, having come for that rather than the urbanness. Tomorrow we head out on a 2+ week camping trip along the west coast of the country. Tomorrow night, we will spend the first of a few nights camping on the beach on the southern Osa peninsula and touring mangrove swamps and lowland wet rainforests. Word. Probably won't be able to post again until the end of february...just so ya know. By then, I will have seen too much to write about...but I'll do my best...keeping my fingers crossed for the elusive jaguar. Ciao.

2 weeks!

Howdy folks!  So...I've never "blogged" before, but um...here's my blog.  If you're curious to know how I'm doing down in (on?) the Rich Coast, this is the place to look, although the chances of me having posted recently will probably decrease as the semester goes on...  I will do my best to put at least a little snippet up occasionally, but no promises.  Um...two weeks from right now I'll be chilling in San José...but that's two weeks from now.  Not exactly to the not-sleeping-at-night-from-excitement phase, where my dear friend Anna Santo probably is (P.S. she has a "blog" too).  Instead, I'm chilling (literally) in my little farmhouse in rural(ish) Maine, where I've been for almost a month now.  Nothing wrong with a little quantity time with the parental units...alrighty--peace (or 'paz', since I should probably start practicing ethpañol).