Ay, ¡¡que linda está la vida!!
I promised some people a blog… so here goes! I don’t know how often I’ll be able to update
it, as at my house there’s only internet in my little sister’s room if you sit
next to the window and put your laptop on a chair. But I’ll do my best. It’s also hard to want to sit still and type
on the computer when there is a new town to explore, new friends to play with, a
new family to get to know, a farmer’s market (la feria) to visit, and an entire
reserve to explore behind the Monteverde Institute!
I’ll start with an abridged(ish) description of what we’ve
done so far. Today, the 13th,
marks a week that I’ve been here, so
there’s a lot to say!
My first night was spent in a hotel in the capital, San
José. Monday morning we boarded a bus
and drove up to the Irazú Volacno. Hiked
around the national park there and looked down into vast, beautiful craters
created by the flow of lava. Pati, our
environmental sustainability professor, had her first opportunity here to talk
to us about the extensive biodiversity of Costa Rica. That night we slept at CATIE, a graduate
studies university that does outreach with the Costa Rican and Central American
agricultural community, promoting poverty reduction and human wellbeing through
the sustainable management of agriculture.
On Tuesday we traveled to various types of plantations—cacao (owned by
CATIE), sugar cane (caña, owned by a local family), and a huge caña production
plant. Wednesday morning we said goodbye
to CATIE and headed to Guayabo, a national monument of the ruins of an ancient
society. Very cool! From Guayabo we traveled to Tirimbina, an
ecological field station where we would spend the next couple of days. That night we went on a night hike and had
the opportunity to see firsthand the biodiversity that Pati had been talking
about: we saw a red-eyed tree frog, a cane toad (and 4 other types of frogs!),
a sleeping female Manakin (a little puffy green bird), a turnip-tail gecko (the
largest gecko in Costa Rica), and manzana de agua, a beautiful pink-flowering
tree.
If the night hike didn’t awaken my latent dorkism about
exploring the rainforest and seeing an incredible amount of different animals
and plants, the next day’s activities certainly did. On Thursday I woke up at 5
am to go birdwatching with Sofie, the tropical ecology professor. Just that morning we saw 10 different types
of birds, some of which I got to identify by memorizing their features and
looking them up in the “Birds of Costa Rica” guide book (if you’re looking for
a birthday present for me…). As if that
wasn’t exciting enough, after breakfast we left to go on a three hour long hike through Tirimbina’s rainforest reserve!! Led by two of Tirimbina’s staff members who
were very knowledgeable about the area and its flora and fauna and Pati and
Sofie, there was something new to discover every second. We saw pierella, a glass-winged butterfly
that feeds on rotten fruit in the understory of the forest; a wavy vine called
monkey ladder; a puffbird, a bullet ant (somewhere there’s a picture of me
holding a stick with the ant crawling on it!); a walking stick that I spotted
that was as long as my hand; a blue jean frog; Ectophila alba, a tiny white bat who makes its home underneath
Heliconia leaves; two types of toucans (chestnut-mandibled and keel-billed); a
blue-grey tanager (called “bulita” or “little widow” in Spanish); and a
long-billed hermit hummingbird (incredible!!), among many others! About halfway through the hike it started
raining, real rainforest raining, and it was wonderful. It hadn’t occurred to most of us to bring our
rain gear (we learned our lesson), but the downpour was incredibly
rejuvenating.
That day we also visited a pineapple (piña) plantation and
had a presentation on bats that night, with some nice birdwatching from our
front yard in between (spotted: Passerini’s tanager, golden-hooded tanager,
blue dacnis, rufous-tailed hummingbird, and a green honeycreeper!) Friday morning I got up early again to
birdwatch (black-crested coquette hummingbird, olive-backed Euphonia, and
black-faced grosbeak) and then we boarded the bus to come to Monteverde!
After a long winding beautiful
bus ride we arrived at the Institute for lunch!
It was nice to finally be in one place that we knew would be our home
for a while. We met the staff (among
them was my host mom, although I didn’t know it at the time), had a tour, and
headed up a mountain to a lodge where we would stay for our last night before
moving in with our families! The lodge
was amazing—we hiked up to the top of the mountain it was on and there was a
giant rope swing that you stood in and could look out over the entire town of
Santa Elena and see all the way to the Nicoya Peninsula. ¡Increíble!
The next morning we had the chance to explore Santa Elena
and then we met our families at the farmer’s market and went home with
them! My host mom is very nice and
accommodating, and my sisters (16 and 11) are fun and giggly. It feels good to live in a home, and the
differences are going to take some getting used to, but I get along great with
my family and feel very lucky to speak as much Spanish as I do!
Of course I’ve been missing people from home… Lenore would
have loved everything we’ve done so
far, and last time I came to Costa Rica I was with her, so she’s been close to
my heart this last week. I’m able to
keep in touch with family and friends through limited access to facebook and
even less access to Skype. All in all,
I’m having a WONDERFUL time here, learning new ways of life, learning about
biodiversity and environmental effects of different styles of agriculture, learning
more Spanish, learning to navigate a new culture, town, and family. I’ll do my best to keep y’all posted!
Love, abrazos, y besos,
emma
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