Mud and Humidity

I just found out that we probably won't have internet for the rest of the trip. We're leaving Palo Verde in a few minutes and heading to Monte Verde and then to the beach at Cabo Blanco. Just in case this is the end I'll leave you with a sunset that I got from Ryoko's camera...

Okay, so let's talk about non-human mammals. I don't really know anything about them, but I imagine that y'all are expecting pictures of some. So I asked around and found a couple photos. The monkeys (like this little white-faced monkey) are all over the place, the other most common type are the howler monkeys who wake you up in the morning but are less likely to be seen. They are not so cute at 5 am. Also, one of our groups did a project where they were interviewing locals for a sociological study and went to a local vet and took the photo of the jaguar. Apparently it's a big problem here (as it is in the States) that people get big cats as pets when they are little and then the cats have to be rescued when they get to be too much for their owners, that's this guy's story. Everyone wanted to touch his big paws, but were able to hold themselves back so as not to disturb him further.

Yesterday we hiked up Rincon de la Vieja, an active volcano. Only 12 of us went, because that's all that could fit in the back of the truck (as it was, it was an extremely long 2.5 hour drive to get there). Also, Pete gave us such a strong warning about how hard the hike would be that even though we now automatically apply our Pete-filter to everything he says, there still were some who thought that it might be too hard. The real dissuader was that Pete said that we would apply the Pirate's Code ("He who falls behind gets left behind" for those of you who aren't up on your pirate regulations). We were promised a fearsome hike across knife-edge ridges, a near-drowning in torrential rains, and that we would all have knee injuries.
...So, we pretty much ditched Pete by about halfway up the volcano. Just before the last of us got out of earshot we heard him say something about how we should wait for him up at timberline, which we did, against our better judgment.
We spent some serious time chucking rocks into the caldera. Actually, Anthony (our other co-coordinator) and I hit the summit first and waited around for everyone, but they had all gone to a different crater lower down. We found them. These photos are taken at the active caldera which was pumping out steam.

These little guys are all over the place. They guard the pathways and get a little bit fiesty if you sneak up and disturb them. They move surprisingly fast, and can even climb trees. They are about 20 cm long, but some of them are really tubby. We are all secretly thinking of ways to work projects around them so we can stay close to the air-conditioned lab.

I hijacked Javier's camera to take a couple photos of Palo Verde. We spent yesterday in the field surveying a couple of transects through a biological corridor. In some places the vegetation was so thick that we could hardly move through it. We were also competing with the ants, chiggers and mosquitoes for control of our skin. We got some good work done, but we were all pretty tired by the end of the day.
I think I mentioned that the station is in a park and located adjacent to a marsh, here's a photo from the station looking out across the futbol field and the marsh. It's pretty spectacular.

Well folks, the images that get posted here going to be a little different from now on. We were climbing across a mangrove swamp using the aerial roots as a walkway and I and my camera went in face first. I'll try to get photos from other people.
We're in the tropical dry forest of Palo Verde now. We went for a tour of the hills and through the marsh yesterday (not along the marsh, through it, up to our waists). Tomorrow we will get to start our field projects. The course is taking a conservation bent at this station, as it's a major focus of several of our resource people. It's strange to me to find myself wishing we could stop shooting the poop about conservation and get back to the field work. We met today with a guy who has been doing research and conservation work in Costa Rica since the early 60's, he had a pretty cynical view of things, as one would expect of someone who has seen the forests here shrink 90% in the last 30 years.
The mosquitos here are pretty amazing. They were horrendous the first day we got here, but yesterday the dragonflies showed up and have been taking good care of us. I always get a bunch of them to come with me on my runs in the morning. It's not exactly like running with Indie, they rarely pull on their leashes.

Last night we rolled into San Jose at about 5pm. We all ran out and did some shopping then went out for pizza. As we were sitting in the pizza place, we could hear some loud dance music coming from next door and decided to check it out. It was a club, and they charged a cover to get in but the price included three drink tickets so we went for it. As we worked our way back into the packed club, we realized that it was a bigger place than we had imagined, but that there was a big, black sheet dividing the room. We sent Tate to investigate (he's the innocent looking one with the glasses in yesterday's photo). He came to report that there were a bunch of women dancing and some men on a balcony. Three of the women, myself included, went to investigate further and found that it was something like the San Jose equivalent of a Chippendale. We couldn't stop laughing. It's apparently a common ploy in clubs here to lure women in and gets them drunk. Eventually the dancing men were replaced by a dancing woman and then everyone got to enjoy the embarrassment. We called it an early night.

It's our last day in La Selva, we are staying here to watch the World Cup game and then heading to San Jose for the night before going to Palo Verde. We are going to miss our city in the jungle (as Pablo calls it, since it's the biggest research station in Costa Rica), but not miss having to watch our gear like hawks so it doesn't get stolen. The list of stolen stuff is huge, we've even had people's laundry stolen. I haven't had anything stolen, but I'm one of a few.
We finally got Pete back, more or less his old self (the fever turned out to just be the flu). This means that we're not going to get to keep Andy Suarez, our fun resource guy who might have stepped in if we needed another leader.
I like to include photos, and I don't have anything fun of my own so I'll put up a photo of the ant boys throwing ants off a bridge. Apparently many ants (and other insects) exhibit directed aerial descent. If you drop them, they won't fall straight down, but rather will angle themselves to the nearest tree branch--or string of sheets that have been safety-pinned together. So that's what they are doing here. It was a fabulous success.

Our most recent project involves placing a bunch of clay caterpillars on plants in a study plot. The first time we did it, we used wood glue that was apparently water soluble...not so good for a rain forest. Then we placed more caterpillars in a successional plot that was cut a year ago, and did a herbivory estimate (that's one of the photos).
In terms of things that bite you, La Selva is about a 6 out of 10. The insects are pretty prevalent, and if you go sans Deet, you will get munched. There is also a real snake presence. I have seen at least one viper every day for the past several days. The one I saw yesterday was in our path. It was muddy, and thus hard to see the coloration (that's why our resource leader, Tania is giving it a shower in the photo). Two people walked over the top of it before I saw it. Awesome. There are also these little darlings called bullet ants. They are a couple of inches long and bite and sting. As I write this there are two of them in a vial on the desk and they look angry.

Yesterday was a very bad day for Pete, one of our trip leaders. First, he came down with Dengue fever. Then, as he was getting packed to go to San Jose to go to the hospital, he got stung by a scorpion as he reached into his bag.
Poor Pete. We may get him back today, it remains uncertain.

Yesterday I did it. I was so desperate for protein that I ate beef. It was a bit rough on the tummy, but it tasted okay and I tried not to think about the cow who gave its life for it. Not that I want to give a bad impression of the food on the course, in general it's pretty good, if a bit redundant. There are rice and beans (gallo pinto) at just about every meal which, if not terribly exciting, are at least somewhat substantial. By this point in the course, the vegetarians are looking a little grumpy, and my friend Tawny makes it a point not to eat gallo pinto for breakfast just so she has a break from it. There are usually vegetarian options, but they lack substance. Last night's entree was a half a tomato, broiled with a slice of cheese on top. There are some standard condiments that help the gallo pinto go down a little easier. Lazano is a sauce that is kind of onion flavored and is a little bit sweet, but not spicy. It's the favorite.
There was a rumor going around that seconds at meals were only given to men, but we've demonstrated that it's not true. A girl does get funny looks if she asks for lots of food, but I suspect they are not totally shocked that women doing field work need some calories.
One final word: juice. In general, there has been fresh juice at every station. I don't know what happened here at La Selva, but their juice is totally foul. It has no flavor--I exaggerate not--other than a sour bitterness. Most of us now just stick to water and coffee.

We decided to depart from our standard methodology this experiment and substitute a cross-bow for our classic machete. It took very little discussion for the group to agree to this change in protocol.
So the project is a look at how solitary wasps colonize new nests (because Javier is really into bees/wasps, that's him setting up one of our understory traps), and how the community of wasps in the nest change over time. We thought that La Selva would be a good place to do this because we're going to be here a while. The huge size of this station also puts additional resources at our disposal (such as a guy with a cross-bow). We were able to have the wood shop guys build us some traps, which are blocks of soft wood with a bunch of holes drilled in them. We then hired Rigo and his bow to help us mount them 30 meters up into the canopy. We weren't able to get them up as early as we would have liked, being as we were in the middle of a Noachian flood, but we still hope to have good colonization.
Yesterday when the storm let up it began to bake. Walking out to the study site, we were all dripping sweat. We smelled bad and it was really muddy. The undeniable awesomeness of having a cross-bow in our study made up for it.

We are under attack from the rain gods. It has turned our station into an island and we aren't even allowed to go out into the forest to do our projects. We do have access to the lab, and obviously to computers, but not much else. We have to take a boat to leave the station.
So, it let us off the hook to be able to watch Argentina lose to Germany in the World Cup semifinals yesterday. The ticos (I don't remember if I've used this word before, it just means Costa Ricans) used a projector to turn the dinning hall into a sports bar and we all watched. One of the students on the course is Argentinian, as is one of the resource people. Even though the good guys lost, it was still way more fun than going out and doing fieldwork.
I was able to do a little bit of a run this morning. I had been running through the rainforest on the paved paths, but with the flooding it's mostly back-and-forth from one side of the island to the other.
We had a party last night, in part to give us an outlet for the energy we have pent up from sitting around all day. The parties are fun, but all the music is this super-fast latin stuff that no one can dance to (except the handful of latin people). We found out from Pablo that ticos think gringos look like alligators when they dance. I'm not sure I understand what that means. Pablo is a huge trouble maker and generally likes to get us all drunk and dancing. He's the funniest TA I've ever had.
I have been trying to take some photos in the brief spots between downpours, I'll get some up soon.