SPRING BREAK!

We packed up our things and headed to Santa Rosa National Park in the very hot and dry province of Guanacaste. We spent the first two nights camping in the park which is made up entirely of dry forest. It's a completely different ecosystem (and climate) than we're used to at the top of the mountain. There are lots of monkeys and iguanas lounging about. I saw spider monkeys and capuchins throughout the days, and in the mornings we woke to the sound of howler monkeys at dawn. Given the amount of noise they make, I couldn't believe it when I saw how small they are. I also saw an anteater sleeping in a tree. I didn't realized they slept in trees or that they were so cute. Camping was great fun, except that many of us didn't really have sleeping bags, and I got a cold from the drastic change in temperature and weather conditions.

The sleeping anteater:



A posing spider monkey:



The following two nights were spent camping on the soft sands of Junquillal Beach in the fishing town of Cuajiniquil. It was BEAUTIFUL and much more comfortable. Nobody else was camping there, so our group had our own private outlet to Pacific ocean.



Lunch visitor:




We spent the first day setting up camp and lounging on the beach. When we woke up the next day, we went snorkeling. Yes, I went snorkeling. In the water. Of the ocean. Where the water was over my head. I still have to get the pictures from my professor's underwater camera, but BELIEVE IT. It was great fun until I scraped my knee on coral, panicked thinking I would attract sharks, started kicking frantically, and was impaled by a sea urchin. I didn't realize that like car mirrors, the goggles had an Objects are Closer (and hurt a lot more) Than They Appear-effect, and I had made my way to a pretty shallow area. I quickly got back into the boat, and hid my bleeding legs under my towel. I was with some pretty serious ocean-hugging coral lovers, so I really convinced myself that I should keep quiet rather than potentially get scolded for the damage I'd caused during my panic-induced coral kickfest.


OH AND WE SAW A HUMPBACK WHALE ABOUT 100 METERS AWAY. I know I'm a huge baby about being in the water, but it was a very humbling experience to think I was swimming in the same pool as a humpback whale.


The next morning, we woke up bright and early, packed up our tents, and got ready for our trip to Nicaragua. The trip to Nicaragua was mostly just to get us out of Costa Rica because we're here as tourists and none of us have visas, so by leaving the country and re-entering, we can stay for another 90 days, but we were all excited to have a couple days without impromptu ecology lessons. The city of Granada is beautiful. I loved loved loved the colonial architecture and markets and bright colors. It reminded me a lot of Antigua, Guatemala.
Wandering around the market:



The first night we went out to a club, and somehow I was convinced that karaoke would be a good idea. Cally and I sang "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," and later, "I Will Survive." Both were crowd favorites.


The next night was Allison's birthday, so we went out to dinner where I proceeded to get VERY sick. (I really have to remember to quit my ice-eating habit while I'm in developing countries.) The group went out dancing and I spent the night curled up at the hotel. The following morning was Friday the 11th, and while we were eating breakfast and getting ready to think about packing for the beach, we received the devastating news about Japan, and found out that the entire Pacific coast was under a tsunami warning. Not the best time to head for the Pacific coast. It was a nice two days in Nicaragua, but it was time for me to return. One scary ocean experience was enough for one trip for me. It was sad to go, and even though the tsunami didn't amount to much here, I still think coming home was the right decision. Nicaragua was insanely cheap in comparison to Monteverde, and I came home loaded with souvenirs.

Quite silly:

Activities leading up to Spring Break

To briefly get us through the events leading up to Spring Break:
We toured a hydroelectric plant as well as a wind farm. You may notice in our wind farm photo that our group has grown. A group of 6 students in the Living Roots program, have come to the Institute, and while we take separate classes, they travel and take field trips with us. One of the girls is from UW-Madison! GO BADGERS! <3


In the week before we left, Ahdi and I tried starting on our final project for our ecology class. We were interested in studying the bee pollination of coffee plants, but the week we went to monitor pollination, it rained every day. The dry season is such a scam. We had to change our project topic, because we were running out of time, so we studied stream quality of a nearby stream. More on that later.
On one of our failed study days, I found a cane toad. Biggest toad I've ever seen, and far bigger than any toad I'd ever like to see again.


On another field trip, we went to a women's co-op that makes delicious jam, and we stopped by the house of another woman that makes paper. We got to make paper out of a mixture of scrap paper and orange leaves. It smelled wonderful, and I was sad that we couldn't wait for it to dry and bring them home.


Following this weekend, we had to get ready to leave for 4 nights of camping and our trip to Nicaragua!

San Gerardo and Carnavales de Puntarenas

Well, I'm behind as always, but I have a day off, so I'm going to try to get caught up again:
Since my last post in February, the group has been fairly busy.
Toward the end of the month, we went to spend a night at the San Gerardo Biological Station. The station is located on the Atlantic side of the Tilarán mountain range, and offers a magnificent view of the Arenal Volcano and Lake Arenal. Getting down to the station took a 3hr hike down a VERY steep muddy slope. For those without boots it was more of a 3 hour slide. It probably would have only taken an hour, but we got a very detailed tour on the way down. The hike was well worth it when we got to lounge on the porch and take in the view.


We took a night hike, which I was feeling a little nervous about. (The photos haven't yet surfaced of my hiking attire, which included pants tucked into socks, hood pulled tightly enough for only my eyes to be exposed, and my coat sleeves tucked into the socks over my hands.) It turned out not to be so bad. We saw snakes, frogs, spiders, and bioluminescent fungi!


When we woke up the next morning, we went on a morning hike. We saw an...army of army ants, and proceeded to stand and talk about them for 20 min while they were milling about our feet. (As an aside: my squeamishness has decreased exponentially since being here, but I HATE army ants.) I was also keeping my eye on my watch during this hike, because a group of us had arranged a trip to Puntarenas (the Pacific beach town about a 3hr drive down the mountain from Monteverde) for Carnavales. It's a huge 11-day party along the beach. The director had told us we could make the hike back up in roughly 45 min. I don't know why anyone believed that 3 hours down a mountain could take less than an hour up, but we took his word for it. Following the hike, the 9 of us going on the trip scrambled up the mountain. One even got sick on the way up. :( We decided not to walk together, and each go at our own pace. I made it up with 3 other girls in an hour and a half. We were the first ones up so we had the benefit of being able to wash up in the sinks at the top. It's a good thing our cab driver was Ahdi's father, because I doubt anyone else would have waited an extra hour for everyone else to make it. He was incredibly patient, because the trip did NOT run as smoothly as planned. The plan was to leave at 1 and drive straight down, but once we got in the car (at 2,) all sweating profusely, half decided they HAD to shower, while others remembered we had to go to the bank. He patiently drove us all over town to the bank and individual houses while we all got ready. (No extra charge. The man is a saint.)
We got down to the beach around 5, and enjoyed walking along the beach, dancing, and checking out the local vendors and street performers. It was like a standard street carnival on steroids. We wanted to go just to experience a true Costa Rican cultural event, because despite it's size, it's not geared toured tourists like all of Monteverde is. The food was also delicious. Whoever invented churros filled with caramel is probably my soulmate.





We got back to Monteverde around 1:30am, and I can guaranty everyone went STRAIGHT to bed. Weekend=success.

Assorted images from events I didn't have time to write about

While walking around the reserve, we spotted a quetzal! It's not uncommon to spot monkeys and toucans hiding in the trees, but we waited almost an hour to see this quetzal.




Last Thursday (2/10) Maria had her very first day of kindergarten. Here the public schools have uniforms while the private schools don't.



We've taken several trips to local farms. This farm was great. It reminded me of the room from Willy Wonka, in which everything is edible. This man pretty much had an edible forest of herbs and grasses and fruits and coffee. We spent an hour or so hand-picking coffee.


This is the group (minus Debbie) sitting outside the institute on our first day of class.

My most sincere apologies for failing to post. I'll stop making excuses soon, but my internet here is very poor. I think something is wrong with my computer, because it doesn't pick up the signal at the majority of cafes, nor at much of the institute. I have to position myself right next to the router, while no one else seems to have any difficulties. Oh well.
Anyway, I'm going to try to get caught up on the happenings since my last post, which was....eek January 27th.
Of utmost importance, of course, was my 21st birthday on the 31st. I was excited that I didn't have Tropical Ecology class that day, which meant I wouldn't be out in the field, which meant I could look "cute" at school for my birthday and wear my (in no way appropriate for the terrain) strappy sandals. I was doubly excited that the class schedule read, "Tour of the cheese factory," which the whole group knows is my favorite place to go around here. It's right next to the institute, and they make the BEST ice cream. What I didn't know about the factory was that they pride themselves in their waste management system. The whey that is left from the milk after the cheese is made, is sent through underground pipes to a nearby pig farm to feed the pigs, which meant we would also be touring the pig farm, which meant I was going to have to walk through a pig farm (as well as a giant iodine pool) in my now exponentially more inappropriate footwear. PATI TO THE RESCUE! At the last minute, she found a pair of rubber boots at the institute! Crisis (and orange feet) averted.

As an aside, this wasn't the first time I spent my birthday touring a waste management facility. I spent my 18th birthday touring a municipal waste water treatment facility in high school. Always a party.

After school, we all went home and had dinner and met later at the Tree House restaurant to celebrate my birthday with dessert and drinks. The Tree House is a super touristy restaurant with a tree growing in the middle of it. The food is expensive, and from what I've heard, you're paying for the ambiance, but the drinks were good, and the waitstaff made sure I celebrated the "Pura Vida" way with a double shot of tequila next to a single shot of vodka. Signifying the big 2-1.

Since it was a Monday, it was a pretty quiet night, and a relaxing way to kick off the week. Although, it in no way compared to the relaxing experience of the following weekend. Saturday (Feb. 6th) we went to Las Juntas, which is down the mountain and significantly hotter. We took a tour of an ecomuseum of an old mine. It was an entirely outdoor museum with a pretty intense uphill hike.

Ahdi and I panting our way to the top.

After the hike, though, we went to the nearby thermal pools and spent the whole evening there. It was incredible.


Since then we've been pretty busy with school work. It's time to get in proposals for research projects for various classes. I've decided for Tropical Ecology to do a study of coffee pollination at the local coffee farms with Ahdi, and for Environmental Sustainability, my friend Allison and I are making a documentary on the sustainability of the cheese factory/pig farm.

Brief history lesson on the cheese factory: The factory was founded as a cooperative by the Quakers, and while giant milk trucks make deliveries throughout the day from the region's dairy farms, the Quaker farmers can still be seen in the mornings making deliveries of 40L milk cans by horse or oxen. The factory is now a corporation, but it has a very interesting set up. If a dairy farmer wants to sell his or her milk to the factory, he/she needs to buy stock in the company, and if people (other than dairy farmers) want to buy stock in the company, they need to live in Monteverde or have a connection to the Quaker community.

San Luis Waterfall

Yesterday, I only had one class and it got rescheduled, so two of my friends and I decided to go on an adventure. We had seen the San Luis waterfall from a distance a few days ago, but it's a full day's hike to get there, so we had put it off. Yesterday, though, we found a stable that offers horseback rides to the reserve with only an hour of hiking up to the waterfall. The hike was pretty intense, and today my body is feeling the two hours on horseback, but it was all well worth it. It's an incredible view, and there's a swimming hole that was quite refreshing after the hike.

Well I definitely thought I’d be writing more often than I have, but I haven’t yet figured out how to balance school, field trips, exploring with friends, having limited Internet, and the catholic guilt of my host mother always wishing I would stay home. I’ve been quite busy, so I’ll try my best to give a concise summary of the almost 2 weeks since my arrival.
I arrived on January 8th to the San Jose airport. Customs and immigration were pretty uneventful, because they pretty much roll out a red carpet for anyone with the “tourist” box marked on the customs forms. I landed and found my way out of the airport with my luggage in under 20 min.
After meeting with the rest of the group, we wasted no time starting our week of travel. On our second day in San Jose, we met with our professors. There are five in total, and they traveled with us for the week, which was a great way to get to know them on a personal level. Carol is a professor from Goucher college in Maryland, Jim is an anthropologist living half the year in Costa Rica and the other half in Minnesota, and then Sofia, Christina, and Pati, are all professors from the Monteverde Institute. Sofia (Tropical Ecology) is a Costa Rica native, Crisitina (Spanish) is originally from Madrid, and Pati (Environmental Sustainability) is originally from Ecuador. All three are incredibly beautiful and generally pretty badass women.

Beautiful Sofia. We ran into her at the bar while Cally, Ahdi, and I were taking Merengue lessons.


Pati teaching us about highland plants while we were on a volcano hike.


Cristina's husband is a very well-known local artist, and he designed their beautiful, artsy home. The six of us in our Spanish class went to her house to make dinner one night.
I can’t possibly describe in full detail all of the action packed days in the first week, so here are the highlights:
January 9- Went to the National Museum
January 10-Went to the Irazú volcano in the Cartago province for a hike (very cloudy/cold/rainy,) then drove to downtown Cartago to go to the market and buy a bunch of common fruits of Costa Rica. (My new favorite fruit is guanabana.) While we were downtown we also toured the Basilica, which was beautiful. At the end of the afternoon, we drove to the town of Turrialba to the campus of an institute called CATIE. The acronym is obviously in Spanish, and I can’t remember what it stands for, but it’s a graduate school and tropical agricultural research center. We spent the following three days there:
January 11-We went to a national monument/archaeological site called Guayabo. More rain. Then we went to a small-scale, family dairy farm, which I found incredibly interesting. We had a cow milking race, which I won (see first post,) and we made Turrialba cheese, which is unpasteurized, famous throughout the country, and quite delicious. MORE RAIN.
January 12-We went to two sugar cane plantations and processing plants to contrast conventional and organic production systems.
January 13-We went to a town called Siquierres in Limon province and we toured a pineapple plantation and processing plant. They supply pineapple to DelMonte. I've never eaten so much pineapple in my life. Of course they stuffed us full before we saw how much chlorine they soak the pineapples in. Then we drove to the Veragua rainforest and took a gondola canopy tour and walked through the forest floor. I saw a couple sloths, a few toucans, some poison dart frogs, and an owl. After the rain forest, we packed up our stuff from CATIE and drove to the province of Alajuela where we stayed for the night.

Strawberry poison dart frog.
January 14-We drove well into the mountains of the Puntarenas province, to the town of Monteverde! Finally. It was here that I met my family, and where the real adventure begins.

Here is my home (with our trusty albeit tiny watchdog.)

My room.

Maria, my 4-year-old host sister. (Technically she's my niece because she's the daughter of my host parents' 24-year-old daughter, but sister is easier, and she's certainly what I imagine having a little sister would be like.) She's endlessly interested in everything I do, VERY chatty, and she has an infinite supply of energy. Don't let her innocent smile and Sunday Mass outfit fool you, she's very sassy.
My walk to el Instituto is 50 minutes up and down many hills. It's quite the workout, but 3 of my friends live quite close to me, so it definitely helps to do the hike together. Classes have been fine so far, but I don't think I had mentally prepared myself for starting "school" again. The nightlife isn't much to write home about. There are two real bars in town, neither of which are very populous, and all of the restaurants are pretty touristy and expensive. I didn't realize just how touristy it is here, and sometimes I'm a little embarrassed. While I'm technically a tourist as well, I want people to know that I'm going to be a part of this community for at least the next few months. However, I'm still making classic tourist mistakes. I've already had my phone stolen.
It's going to be an interesting semester.