CRARC!!!

            Time to update again! Monday in the afternoon I helped Catherine and Gato bait mammal traps, even though it started to downpour shortly after we started.  Tuesday I didn’t do much because it was pouring the whole day.  Wednesday is where all the adventure was! 

            On Wednesday I traveled with the four German researchers, Vito, Eva, Simone and Max to Guayacan to the Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center!  We had to take four different buses to get there, and it took about 4 hours.  We arrived there around 4pm on Wednesday and stayed in the guest house that could fit 7 people.  Around 6pm we started off on a guided hike by the owner, Brian Kubicki, who studies the phenology of the herps (amphibians and reptiles) in Costa Rica.  This was one of the best hikes I have ever been on because we saw sooooo many things!  In the end we counted about 25 frog species alone, plus one bolitoglossid (a CR salamander), a few snakes, many spiders, and even some scorpions!  I was able to see some frog species that are endangered and only occur in certain spots of Costa Rica that not many people have seen!  After about 6 hours of hiking, we finally made it back to our guest house around midnight, but the guys kept searching around the hillside and found even more species while Eva and I went inside and got some food.  I kind of wish I had gone with them even though I was incredibly footsore from rubber boots, because they found Anotheca spinosa which I think is called the spiny headed tree frog, and it looks soooo cool.  Of course I didn’t have my camera with me because I haven’t received it yet, but I will get pictures from the researchers and post some (if I figure out how to post picts).  We returned yesterday evening, after staying only one night.

            The next adventure starts tomorrow!  It is spring break for the Ball State students, so I’m meeting some of them in San Jose tomorrow so we can leave for Tamarindo on Sunday morning.  Tamarindo is a place in CR that has a ton of beaches! I can’t wait because I haven’t been to a beach yet!  I’m only staying with them until Thursday, at which point I am leaving and going back to San Jose to meet my friend Meagan at the airport that night.  We are going to spend Friday in San Jose and then return to Tirimbina on Saturday.  She is going to stay the week with me (she had to reserve her own room though) and then she will return to the US March 3^rd, and I will return March 4^th!  Busy, busy, busy! I will post pictures as soon as I get them!

Blue Morpho!

        Well, a lot has happened since Wednesday when I updated last.  Thursday I went out into the forest with Laura again, helping her set up more traps, and in the afternoon I translated stuff for Eugenia while Laura patched up some more traps.  Friday morning I went out with Laura again, to help her bait the traps with the banana stuff that I helped her mush the other day.  I got to see howler monkeys (we set up a trap right under where they were hanging out actually), a ton of blue morphos (a BEAUTIFUL big blue butterfly), a red morph of the pit viper, and again, more cool butterflies and bugs.  Friday afternoon I went on the chocolate tour (again) with Matt, Claire and Julia (3 Ball State Students) and we saw an agouti and a beautiful hog-nosed pit viper!  Then later that night we all went on a night hike, but didn’t see much because it hadn’t rained in a while.

            Saturday I slept in and had a relaxing day.  I went out into the forest with Matt to help him collect ants.  He wanted a bullet ant, but instead we found some ants that mimic wasps with their coloring, so he got those instead.  Then I went to lunch and came back to my room to find that I had a new roommate!  Her name is Lisi (and I have no idea if I am spelling that right) and she is from Spain and she is a photographer.  She seems pretty cool.  In the afternoon I went into town with Claire, Julia, and Annie (another researcher) and we got some supplies and ice cream, because ice cream here is ridiculously cheap and tasty.  Then Saturday night, Matt, Julia and I watched the Chronicles of Narnia in Spanish (with English subtitles) which was pretty cool.

            Sunday it was raining in the morning so I didn’t do much, but in the afternoon I went to the hot springs with some of the researchers and some of the Tirimbina workers.  We had a whole bunch of beer and food, intending to make a day of it, and when we got there they told us we couldn’t bring in food or drinks (not knowing if we had any or not) but we brought them in anyway.  Nobody ever said anything! It was a lot of fun, and we didn’t get back until around 10pm. I was surprised that Lisi wasn’t in the room, but she had talked about going to Tortuguero for the day, so I thought she might be back later, but she didn’t come back at all.

            This morning I got up nice and early to go help Catherine, one of the Tirimbina researchers, but it was pouring buckets outside, so she said to see if I could help Christian, another Tirimbina researcher, collect caterpillars.  When he came by, he said that it was raining too hard to find larva, so we would do it later.  So I came back and went to bed for a bit, and now I’m updating!  I’m not sure what I will be doing today, if anything, but I will keep posting!

Stuff to do!

Howdy all, thankfully a lot has been happening lately! Sunday I didn’t do much, just did some drawings of local flora and fauna.  Monday, again, I didn’t do too much, but I did see an iguana going to the bathroom in a tree, all of which landed on the cabin next to mine.  Also, I saw a lineated woodpecker, which is very similar to our pileated woodpecker.

           

            Tuesday I got woken up at 9am ( I didn’t fall asleep until 3am) by Eugenia, the woman who is in charge of the environmental education program here, saying that they were leaving for a meet with the directors of the schools and she invited me to come.  So I showered real quick and went with her and another person.  The meeting was cool, Eugenia just gave a quick presentation about the results from last year’s program, using my excel graphs, and made dates with the schools for when they are going to come.  The first school doesn’t come to Tirimbina until March 21, so I’m free to do whatever until then.  So Eugenia said that she would talk to the other programs to see if they needed an extra volunteer for a couple of weeks.

           

            In the meantime, on Tuesday, I volunteered to help two butterfly researchers mash up brown bananas with my hands to make bait for butterflies.  I got to talking to them, and ended up offering my services to one of them, Laura, for today.  So I got up at 7 and helped her carry stuff to make butterfly traps out into the rainforest.  All morning, until 1, we were out on trails putting up butterfly traps.  We saw lots of cool butterflies (go figure), a mot mot, a potoo, which is a really cool bird that looks like the extension of a branch, dendrobatis pumillio, and some cool bugs.  We went out again after lunch, but for a shorter time, and just to drop off the rest of the traps.  When I got back, I enjoyed a nice, cold beer in my hammock. I’m going to help her tomorrow too, and we are going to set up the traps we dropped off, and hopefully end up baiting them in the afternoon.  Then, this weekend, I think I am going to Monteverde with some of the Ball State students. 

            Next week I will be working with different people on butterfly stuff, collecting larva and whatnot.  So yay for keeping busy!!

Jessica left me :(

           So Jessica left me this morning to return to Canada!  She told me on Thursday that she had decided to go home early because she was sick and felt like she had seen what she wanted to see already.  She has had a cold with a horrible cough for the past week and a half, the poor thing! She was supposed to stay until the end of February, so I don’t know what I’m going to do now that I don’t have a partner in crime anymore!

            Time to recap the week! (Well since Tuesday at least).  So Tuesday night I ended up playing soccer with some of the Tirimbina staff and the Indiana students in a small soccer field next door.  It was a lot of fun!  Afterwards I went out for beers with some of the Tirimbina staff at a restaurant nearby called El Chante.  Nothing exciting really happened on Wednesday.  Thursday was one of the Indiana student’s birthdays, so they had a bbq at one of their houses and then Jessica and I met some of them at a local bar call Kasa Luna.  It was nice because Jessica and I got there before everyone else and had a little celebratory goodbye drink to her.  We couldn’t go out last night because she had to get up at 5 this morning.  Friday was pretty relaxed, nothing really exciting happened.

            Today is rainy and kind of cold.  It doesn’t really look like it is going to clear up anytime soon, it’s just been drizzling for the past hour.  I hope it does clear up though, because I would like to go to the ATM and then hit up the supermarket.  I might also be going out tonight with some people from Tirimbina, but nothing is set in stone, as usual haha.

            Good news though! My camera made it to Costa Rica, it is now just a matter of when it gets picked up and brought to Tirimbina!  So hopefully I should have it sometime this week!

From my hammock :D

            It’s been over a week, so I guess I’ll update again.  I really haven’t been doing much since I am pretty much waiting for the kids to go back to school.  I finished with all of the paperwork stuff, and now I am just thinking of ways to evaluate the program.  So last week was a lot of relaxation time. 

           

            I think it was on Wednesday that I finally got my hammock!  Simon (pronounced Simone), one of the German researchers, knew somebody who works at Tirimbina who was going to a town that sells hammocks I guess.  So if I gave this guy 20,000 colones, (about 40 bucks), he would buy me a hammock and bring it back with the change and receipt.  So I gave the guy the money last Tuesday and go the hammock last Wednesday! But I couldn’t hang it up just then because I needed cord to tie it to the wood columns. 

           

            Other exciting news for Wednesday (or Thursday, I can’t remember) I may have had a tick on me (which I took out with tweezers) and I saw an armadillo at night!  There were a bunch of kids staying at Tirimbina, and some of the girls saw the armadillo and were screaming about a giant rat.  It was funny, but all their screaming scared it away.

           

            Then one night last week Jessica and I and some of the researchers went over to the house of some of the workers at Tirimbina.  One of the girls who lived there was Eugenia, the woman I volunteer for.  It was fun, there place is beautiful! And they pay less that $100 each a month for it.  If I go over there again, I will definitely take pictures lol.  Speaking of pictures, I don’t have my camera yet, but it’s on its way and should be here soon!

            This weekend was fun, I didn’t do much Friday except get cord for my hammock and hang it up.  Saturday morning I was approached by two of the Indiana students, Matt and Claire, who asked me if I wanted to go to San Jose in a couple hours and stay in a hostel there that night.  I said yes, mainly because I want to know how to get to San Jose and back by bus without a problem.  So we left around 12:30, and actually got a ride from a Tirimbina researcher to the bus station instead of picking up a bus.  We got on the bus and got to San Jose around 3:30ish, and had a taxi drop us off at the mall.  We walked to our hostel from there, which was like a 5 minute walk, and actually met up with a couple of the other Indiana students (and Jessica) who left for San Jose on Friday and ended up staying in the same hostel!  Then Matt, Claire and I went out to dinner, and headed back to the mall to catch movie.  Jessica met us there and we ended up watching “Little Fockers”, which we thought would be in Spanish, but it was in English with Spanish subtitles.   Then we all went back to the hostel and chilled until we went to bed.

            The reason Matt and Claire wanted to go to San Jose was so that Matt could go to church Sunday morning, because he is Mormon and didn’t know of any other Mormon churches closer.  So while Matt was at church, Claire and I walked around San Jose for a bit and then hit up the mall.  Matt met us at the mall when he was done with church and we walked to the post office, but it was closed because it was Sunday.  So then we caught the buses back to Tirimbina and were back here by 4:30. 

            Yesterday was another relaxing day because I just sat in my hammock and read, or watched the toucans play.  I also saw a beautiful green iguana climb up the tree not far from my hammock.  And I got to see a tiny gecko that one of the researchers found and brought over!  I’m not sure what is in store for today or the rest of this week, but I will keep you posted!