Ok, I’ll be the first to admit it: I’ve definitely been slacking on the blog front. My last post was about a month ago! Oops. Well, I’ll give you the quick version. The DR part of my program was pretty cool. The week in the jungle with the birds taught me more than I ever wanted to know about tropical bird species. Along with my professor, 6 kids from my program, and 2 awesome graduate students from the University of Costa Rica, we basically counted birds in two areas: one close from the road and one far from the road, to asses the effect of roads on birds. We attempted to prove a negative impact from the noise, but the noise data we collected in those 2 areas basically sucked, so it didn’t amount to much. But counting birds was cool. We used two methods, one of which was standing at certain points along the trail and writing down all the birds we saw and heard for 10 minutes. The other was way cooler, and involved giant mesh walls that we set up in the forest and birds ran into it and got caught. Then we walked over every 30 minutes to check the nets and take out any birds…which meant handling them, getting pooped on, and having photo shoots with the cool ones! Probably the only time I’ll get to do that in my life.
After the research came the paper. We headed back from our jungle research station to the center, where we all spent the next week cooped up writing our papers. Ok, so we did other fun stuff, like frequent trips to the bar and lots of relaxing at the pool, but I ended up with a pretty good paper about greater species diversity further from the road—the only paper out of my group that had statistically significant results! That was nice to not be writing another pointless paper. After that was all done with, we all said goodbye.
For me though, I said hello to my mom and set out for 2 weeks of vacation with her and Sander. You may think I’ve been on vacation all semester, but this was REAL vacation. We rented a car and crisscrossed Costa Rica. We first hit the beaches of Dominical and Manuel Antonio. Dominical was pretty quiet, as Costa Rica has entered it’s rainy, low-tourist season. Manuel Antonio probably has more tourists than biodiversity, which is saying a lot. In between though, we got the experience we were hoping to get at Manuel Antonio, at a much less frequented nature reserve called Hacienda Baru. We saw tons of monkeys, birds, crabs, coatis, and beautiful views on our hike. The point of the hike was to get to the beach, which was huge and almost entirely deserted. We only saw about 5 other people, and they were so far down the beach they looked like specks.
To break up the beach time we went to Arenal and Monteverde. In Arenal we stayed at a hotel owned by a Swiss-Tico couple who had created a Swiss chalet in the middle of the Costa Rican countryside, complete with Swiss cows, a chapel, muesli, and a train that led to a rotating restaurant! Also while in Arenal we spent the evening at a secret VIP (seriously) hot springs and watched lava flow down the volcano. The next morning we hiked around the base of the volcano and watched and listened to car-sized rocks get catapulted out of the crater and down the side of the mountain. I think this might have been my favorite part.
Next we went to Monteverde, where we paid $7 a night at a sweet hostel that we all loved. We hiked, and the next day Mom ziplined! And went off the tarzan swing! I was very proud. After our brief break from the beach, we headed to the Nicoya peninsula. To get there you have to take a ferry, and ours was apparently the party ferry. As we sailed across the gulf, we were serenaded by Latin karaoke as we watched the sky being lit up first by the sunset, and then by lightening. In Montezuma we did some more hiking at the Cabo Blanco reserve, where we were treated to a tropical storm that lasted the whole 2 hour hike back from the beach. We also spent a day on Tortuga Island, where we didn’t get attached by Johnny Depp pirates but snorkeled and lay on the prettiest beach I’ve been to.
From there we dropped of Sander (sad) but distracted ourselves by splurging on a spa and then driving to Turrialba to go river rafting. I’m a little ashamed to say the strategy mostly worked. River rafting was amazing, and Mom is very proud of herself for that one (she only fell out once).
Oh, I skipped the part where I almost got a speeding ticket from a cop who pulled us over, but thankfully I was charming enough to get out of that one. Ok, I just lied that I had only been in Costa Rica for a week and had never gotten a ticket in my life.
Mom and I are leaving for the airport now, so this will just barely make it as my last post from Costa Rica! By sheer luck and my astute sense of direction, we’ve made it through San Jose 3 times, and we’re off to try again!
Thanks for reading all semester, I hope it was slightly interesting to you all. I’ll add pictures when I get home.
