A true update

            This will be one of my last posts because sadly, I leave Costa Rica on the 20^th.  Sorry I haven’t been posting regularly, but I haven’t been doing a whole lot that is worth mentioning.  Turns out I won’t get to work with the local children.  They never ended up coming April 25^th because the materials for them weren’t ready.  So instead, I have been following around the guides here.  I go with them on all the tours and observe them to see what they do, and to get a better feel for how the tours are organized.  I have observed the chocolate tour (of course), the night hike, the natural history walk, and the two different bat tours.  They have 5 main guides here, but also some workers who used to be guides who are now doing other things around Tirimbina that they can use if they need to.  I picked a bad time to start observing tours because the rainy season just started and this is the time of the year where the number of tours decline.  Not many people want to go into the middle of the rainforest when it is raining. Go figure.

Here are some pictures from some tours.



Chocolate tour

 

Night Hike

 

Bat program (Cristhian showing how a nose-leaf works)

Bat tour (Wendy letting people touch the wing of the bat)

            In other news, one of the researchers found a baby squirrel on the forest floor somewhere and now we are taking care of it.  If it were up to me, I would have taken some pictures of it, and then let nature take its course.  But no, the others who live here said that they wanted to care for it, so we now have a baby squirrel.  Conveniently, those who said they would take care of it left for 4+ days, and guess who is now taking care of it? Yup. Me.  It has to eat every 4 hours, warm milk from a pipette.  And it will cry if it doesn’t.  AND you have to make it go to the bathroom by massaging that specific area.  As much as sometimes I don’t like the responsibility, (you know, like when it is crying at 3am and won’t shut up) it is a pretty cool experience, and the little critter is pretty adorable.

Jackie (4 weeks??)

Not Jackie, but a REALLY cool insect (Rhinocerous beetle?)

Also not Jackie, but a really pretty emerald basilisk

          Also, in other interesting news, there were parties in La Virgen (the town that Tirimbina is in) the past 2 weekends (not including the weekend we just had) where there was a ton of dancing! And I mean legitimate Salsa, Merengue, Cumbia dancing.  It was a lot of fun to just go out and dance salsa and merengue for hours! (I am completely inept at dancing cumbia).  I am really going to miss dancing like that in the states!  Oh, and on one of these nights I ran into the guide I had here when I was here 3 years ago, Fito.  It was pretty crazy, and he ended up remembering me and my group, so that was pretty cool.  Since then, he has shown me some really cool places nearby that I never knew existed! 

I am going to miss a lot of things when I go.  But, I will probably do one more post before I go back, so stay tuned!

Post that should have been posted a month ago!!!

So this is a post that I should have posted a month ago, but I just now have the pictures! Sorry!

Wow, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how long ago the last post was!  So the kids didn’t end up coming April 5^th.  They are now coming April 25^th, next Monday.  Since I was originally going to only stay until May 3^rd, the fact that I would only get about 5 days with the kids was not good.  I ended up switching my flights and now I don’t leave until May 20^th.  I haven’t been doing much since I last updated, until about last week.  I worked on the Tirimbina newsletter for a couple days, which kept me occupied.  I also went out into the forest with Eugenia (the woman in charge of the education program) to look for bat tents to show the kids when they come.  We found a few, but also made a few artificial ones on the trail that we are going to take the kids on, just so they would have more experience spotting them.  Building bat tents is not as easy as it sounds! It’s pretty tough to be a bat!  Here are some pictures of the tents we made.



Apical



Pinnada



Inverted boat



            I also helped some of the researchers go out and collect bat tents for an experiment they were doing about temperature in bat tents.  The day after that I helped a different researcher change mammal traps that were high up in trees, and he even let me climb one!

Triumphant!!

            It was pretty tiring, but very exciting. 

            And then this Saturday, I visited Alex, the woman who rescued me the first day I got to Costa Rica.  Her boyfriend Felix picked me up at 7:30 am and took me to their farm.  I got to help her and Felix do some field research (because she is a biologist working on reforestation experiments) as well as get some well needed animal time!  In the morning I helped her change seed traps that she had set out, which she then takes the seeds and grows them to see what they become so she can make a seed identification type guide.  Then, in the afternoon, I got to play with her 3 dogs, meet her cows and calves, and go horseback riding through her old growth forest!!!!!!  And to top it off, she made pizza for dinner!  It was a great day, and I only got one tick! (My 5^th one, and no, I haven’t found the best home remedy to get them out).

            Yesterday was pretty low key, just walked around the forest a little and went for a run.  This week is Santa Semana, which is pretty much the same as Holy Week, but they take it to the extreme here and practically everything closes down for the whole week.  I’m about to venture to the grocery store with my new roommate in hopes that they are still open.  So yes, I just got a new roommate, Joyce, from the Netherlands, and she will be here for 6 weeks!  But now I am really outnumbered because out of the volunteers and researchers living here there are 5 Germans, 4 Dutch, and me, from the US.  But everyone here is awesome, so I don’t mind.

I will post an update hopefully later today since this is from a while ago :)