Palo Verde, pt. 1: First days in the dry forest

After leaving Cuerici, we stopped back in San Jose for one day to split up the bus travel time into more manageable increments. We arrived at the OTS office at 10 am on Wednesday, 2/16, and had two classes and lunch while we were there. In the class after lunch, we met Mahmood, the director of Palo Verde, and he gave us a history of the park. Like many of the places we've visited, Palo Verde was a cattle ranch before it was conserved. It is a lowland, seasonally dry forest near the mouth of the Tempisque river, and also includes an extensive wetland habitat, which is uncommon. The land was bought by the Costa Rican government in the 70s (I think) and turned it into a national park, which has since had an interesting conservation history. Two invasive species, jaragua (an African grass good for cattle grazing) and typha (cattails) had become prevalent with the cattle ranching. When grazing stopped due to park management, the populations of both species exploded without the cattle to keep them in check. After a few failed attempts to minimize both species, the park decided to allow nearby farmers to graze cattle inside the park boundaries to control the plants, even though cattle are not a natural component of either dry forest or wetland ecosystems. So now the park protects two extremely threatened Central American ecosystems while also employing unconventional management techniques. OTS runs the biological station there, even though the property itself is owned by the government. 

After our brief stay at the OTS office, we returned to Hotel Cacts, where we stayed for the first two nights we were in San Jose. Rather than provide us with dinner, like they did last time we were at the hotel, Mau gave us each 4,000 colones (~$8) to get dinner on our own. Not wanting to overwhelm a restaurant by arriving with a group of more than 20 non-native Spanish speakers, we decided to split up for dinner and meet back afterward. Half of the group went to a Lebanese restaurant, and I went with 12 others to a Chinese restaurant that we had spotted earlier in the day. For Costa Rican Chinese food, it was pretty good, and ended up being a lot less expensive than the Lebanese food. Everyone was satisfied with their meals, and we had a fun dinner out together (one of the only meals we've eaten wearing "normal" clothes!). We met up with the others back at the hotel after dinner, intending to go to a gay bar that has excellent reviews and supposedly great DJs, which we were all craving after hearing the same set of songs every time we went out in San Vito. At the last minute we decided it would be a good idea to have the man at the front desk of our hotel call to make sure it was open, since it was Wednesday. It was a good idea, because no one answered after three tries so we assumed it was closed and didn't waste the cab fare to drive us across town for no reason. Instead we decided to try out one of the bars that was just a few blocks away from our hotel, which had a sign on the outside that said something along the lines of "disco fire explosion." Oddly enough, it turned out to be a gay bar after all, but not a night club/discoteca like the one we had wanted to go to. We hung out there for a while but ended up going to another bar two blocks away that had a bigger dance floor and told us we could choose the music all night since there were no other customers. 

Our long-overdue night of dancing was much needed, and well worth staying up a little later than normal even though we let San Jose at 7:30 the next morning for Palo Verde. We arrived right around lunch time, and after eating we had class in the afternoon. That evening I had to get right to work on a presentation that I had to give on Saturday. Throughout the semester we have four scientific ethics discussions, with one group of students giving presentations and guiding the class for each one. Because we didn't have internet access in Cuerici (which was actually really nice!), we couldn't start researching for our presentation at all until then.

Mau holding a marine toad, which we encountered during our plant walk.

The next day we spent the morning walking around the park with our professors, learning about the plants that we saw. We have another plant test while we're at this site, so this was our first introduction to the new plant families we will be responsible for identifying later on in our stay here. 

This toad peed out (exploded would be a better word) about half of its body volume while I was holding it! Haha

In the afternoon, we had a lecture about ant/plant interactions. Acacia trees are common in Palo Verde, and you can see firsthand the acacia/ant mutualism that biology textbooks often reference when discussing symbioses.

An acacia tree with the ants that live on it. The plant provides a home (the hollow thorns) and food (nectar and protein-rich growths on the tips of leaflets) in return for the protection against herbivores that the ants provide. The ants are aggressive with biting mouthparts, and will attack anything that touches the tree they live on.

The marsh at Palo Verde, which is very close to the station where we're staying.

 After class I did some more research for my ethics presentation, which was about data manipulation and scientific misconduct in general. At 5 a few other students and I hiked up to a lookout point (mirador) behind the field station to watch the sunset, which was awesome! The sky here turns purple-ish around sunset, and from the lookout point you can see really far across the lowlands. We made it to dinner a little late because climbing down the sharp rocks took a lot longer than climbing up them did, but it was worth it. After spending some more time putting together the ethics presentation, I went to bed.

The view from the lookout point

The next morning, we drove to an agricultural region just outside of the park. While the dry forest is not normally a good place to grow crops because it's so dry in the dry season (duh), a dam was built about 30 years ago that redirects water from a river on the east side of the mountains down into the western valleys, providing water to the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. Because the soil is relatively fertile, adding water allowed people to begin growing high-input crops like rice, sugarcane, and melons. We talked to a farmer and got to see a large rice field and a sugarcane field, although the cane had just been harvested and the field burned, so there wasn't much to see there. The rice field was pretty cool to see, though, and I especially appreciated getting the opportunity to talk to the farmer who owned the land and learning a little bit about how and why he became a rice farmer, where he gets his seeds, how he manages his land, and what happens with the rice that he harvests. Interestingly, banks will only give loans to farmers who use them to buy seeds from certain companies, so the banks essentially control the types of rice that gets planted. The types of rice that get planted furthermore determines the type of input needed to grow it. The seed companies that farmers are allowed to buy from are genetically modified to resist the herbicides that the farmers use to kill weeds, and the seeds themselves come with certain agrochemicals that the farmers then need to put into the system in order to obtain maximum yields. I'm not against genetically modified crops or non-organic agriculture in principle, but I do think it's interesting when farmers get more or less financially cornered into growing food a certain way.

A rice field flooded with water just outside of Palo Verde.

After our afternoon classes, we put the finishing touches on our ethics presentation, while people who weren't presenting had free time. We gave our presentation and led the discussion after dinner, which went relatively well. We focused on three factors that we believe can cause scientific misconduct: funding, career pressure, and advocacy. It was interesting to hear people's perspectives about how all of this relates to our potential futures, and how you can benefit personal needs (e.g. salary, career advancement, and personal beliefs and values) with scientific ethics.

We had a free day the next day, and didn't need to go to sleep as early as we normally would, so some of us decided to take a walk around the marsh at night. We saw some cool wildlife, including crocodile eyes (you can see them reflecting back at you at night, even when you can't see their bodies!), some amphibians, and a snake!

One of the frogs we saw

A snake! Not venomous, to the best of our knowledge.

After returning from the marsh, I played a round of poker with a group of classmates before going to bed around midnight. (So late! Haha.) Even though we had a rest day the next day, we have our first independent projects at Palo Verde, so I wanted to have a productive day of exploring the park and beginning to think about project ideas.

Cuerici, pt. 3: Valentine's Day, Tico Style

After we got back from the paramo, we had an evening "fireside chat" with Don Carlos about his life experiences. We got to hear some amazing insight about how he founded the Cuerici reserve, and about how he feels about conservation, both in Costa Rica and in general. Since Valentine's Day was the next day, we spent the rest of the night writing nice messages to each other on Valentine's cards that Anna, Lee, and Ellen had made for everyone in the group, including our professors and Don Carlos! It was a really sweet idea, and the next morning when we were eating breakfast we got to read our cards, which had messages from all 27 of our classmates. We had the morning free, which most people spent working on their statistics homework, and all afternoon we had an additional statistics workshop. Before dinner I went out and did my field notebook assignment (30 minutes of observations, required at every site we go to) on the back end of the oak forest trail. 

After dinner we had a discussion about the pros and cons of private vs. publicly-funded conservation, and then a group of us decided to hike back up to the mountain to look at the stars from the lookout point we'd seen during our hike with Don Carlos. About half of us decided to sleep out in an old lean-to a few minutes down the trail from the lookout, so we packed up our sleeping bags, some blankets, and snacks and headed out. 

The shack that we slept in, as seen during the day when we first found it.

It took us about an hour to hike up in the dark, with only our head lamps for light. Those of us who were sleeping out were layered up thickly since, at that elevation, it gets REALLY cold at night. I had a blanket, extra socks, water, and some random supplies in my backpack and my sleeping bag strapped to the bottom, leaving no room to pack any of my extra layers. I just decided to wear them on the way up that way I'd have them when it got cold that night. Unfortunately that was not the best decision, and everyone who was dressed to sleep out got really sweaty on the way up the steep trail, and we had to take layers off before we went to sleep because they were damp. I did the hike wearing three pairs of pants, a tank top, two t-shirts, a long-sleeve shirt, a fleece, a button-up field shirt, and a flannel.

The night hike crew getting ready to leave. I am literally wearing the maximum number of layers that I could put on my body.

We may have been sweaty when we got to the top, but we were happy! The view was amazing at night. We hung out on the lookout platform singing songs and talking for a few hours. After the people who weren't sleeping out began to hike back down, we sat in silence just watching the fog lap up against the mountains like an ocean breaking on the shore. As the clouds moved through the valley the little town would come in and out of our view, sometimes disappearing entirely under the mist so that the only light we could see was from the moon. It was incredible! After about an hour of just soaking in the mountains at night and reminding ourselves how lucky we were to be where we were, we started to get ready for bed. We walked over to the hut and arranged ourselves on the floor, avoiding the places where tree branches were coming in between the floorboards.

Up on the mountain, ready for bed! I didn't bring a winter hat to Costa Rica, so I was wearing a scarf to sleep. Haha.

We attempted to strike a balance between having a comfortable amount of personal space and sharing body heat so we'd be warm enough to fall asleep, which proved to be challenging. Around 2 or 3 am I could hear someone else still moving around, clearly awake like I was, so I sat up and saw Tessa also sitting up in her sleeping bag. We were sleeping in opposite directions and both immediately decided to rearrange so that we could sleep closer together. We did the best we could to "cuddle" while both fully zipped up in mummy-style sleeping bags, which meant I more or less slept halfway on top of her. After we moved we were both finally able to fall asleep! 

We all woke up around 5:20 the next morning because it was beginning to get light out. We walked back over to the lookout point to watch the sun rise over the mountains, which was amazing. My camera could not even come close to capturing it, by I took some photos anyway.

After admiring the sunrise for a bit, we decided to do some yoga on the lookout point. Hilary led us in some sun salutations, which served the dual purpose of being awesome and helping us stretch out after a cramped and chilly night on the mountain.

When we finished our yoga, we packed up our stuff and hiked back down the mountain to the field station, just in time for breakfast! It was really a delicious breakfast, too, after so much activity and so little sleep the night before. We got changed quickly and then left at 7:30 with the rest of the group for a day trip to El Sitio, another more remote field station that Don Carlos manages. It was our last full day in Cuerici, and instead of having regular classes or an informational hike, we had a relatively non-academic trip planned just to enjoy ourselves and our surroundings.

El Sitio station

From the road, it took just over an hour to hike to the station. We only stopped for a minute for a few people to use the bathroom, and then kept hiking. We were on a quest to see some amazing sights, including a large waterfall and a really old tree. While we didn't know in advance where we were going, the tree turned out to be our first destination. 

Arriving at the huge oak tree

There are buttresses at the bottom, even at the narrower parts above them the tree is still about 6 m in circumference. At the very base, it took 7 students' arm spans to reach around the tree. It's hard to tell tree ages in the tropics because the year-round growing season doesn't result in the formation of the rings that are so common in the temperate zone. Also, due to physiological limitations, most trees are incapable of growing much taller than a maximum height, so that also couldn't give reliable clues to the tree's age. However, because of its enormous girth and its size relative to other trees growing nearby, Don Carlos and our professors estimate that it is between 1,000 and 2,000 years old. I spent a good deal of time just thinking about how much the forest around this tree must have changed throughout its lifetime, and all of the world events that it's lived through. It's just mind-boggling!

The 1,000+ year-old oak tree, with me for scale

I'm kind of a sucker for trees, so I was pretty excited that we got to see one so incredible. After giving us a sufficient amount of time to be amazed, our professors led us to the waterfall, which was our second destination on the hike. It was a pretty cool waterfall, and was really beautiful. It looks like what you expect the tropics to look like, in a good way. In my opinion, it wasn't quite as breath-taking as the oak tree, but it was definitely worth hiking to.

Hanging out at the waterfall. Unintentionally in the foreground: Ashur.

The view from about half way up

After frolicking in the waterfall for a bit, we hiked back to El Sitio station and ate the lunches that we'd packed with us after breakfast. It started to rain and I was feeling kind of chilly (probably in large part due to the little sleep I got the night before), so I was glad when we started the hike back to the road because I could generate some body heat. When we got back to Cuerici I took an AMAZING hot shower (the water there was even better than the water at Las Cruces!) and really felt warmed up for the first time in many hours. We had one class in the afternoon, which was a science writing workshop, getting us ready for the projects we'd be doing at our next station. 

For our last night in Cuerici, we had a special dinner courtesy of Don Carlos and his trout farm. The afternoon before he let us help him catch fish from his canals, and then kill and gut them ourselves. I didn't kill or clean any of the fish, but almost everyone else did. In total I think we harvested 16 trout for our dinner Tuesday night. The kitchen staff there cooked them for us, and the trout ended up being one of the best meals I've had in Costa Rica. You could definitely taste how fresh the fish were, and how much care Don Carlos takes while raising them. After a day (and night, for many of us) full of hiking, bellies full of fresh trout made for a happy bunch of students. 

Unfortunately we had to spend the rest of the night packing, since we were leaving the next morning! By "rest of the night" I mean "from about 7:30 to 8:30 pm," since as soon as I was done I went to sleep, gloriously exhausted from the past 24 hours of adventures. When I woke up the next morning, I was definitely a little sad to leave Cuerici. The combination of the rustic but beautiful station, the amazing mountains, the unique ecosystems, and the outstandingly kind manager made it my favorite site yet. I was excited to go back to somewhere hot and more "tropical", but something inside me (maybe my inner camper/camp counselor?) was reluctant to leave the fireplaces and mountain air and sing-alongs behind. Regardless, we were on the road at 7:30 am, on our way to San Jose again!

Cuerici, pt. 2: El Paramo

Sunday morning, the groups switched; the rest of the class hiked the oak forest, and my group went out to the paramo. The paramo is unique ecosystem found mostly at high elevations in the Andes of South America, but (luckily for me) the northernmost examples of paramo can be found in Costa Rica. The paramo is defined as the region at high elevations in between the treeline and the snow line, and is inhabited by plants with lots of weird adaptations to survive the extreme climate. Because it's so high up, there is literally less atmosphere above to block out the sun, so it is hot and harsh for much of the day. However, like Cuerici, it is really misty, and when the clouds roll in and block out the sun it gets really cold really quickly. Also, it's windy pretty much all the time. One of our professors described the paramo as "summer at day, winter at night," and after seeing it for myself I would say it's a pretty accurate description.

Some of the cool adaptations we saw:

This plant has white "petals" that bounce light into the black center, allowing the little flowers to heat up. Rather than providing a more typical incentive for pollinators (e.g. nectar), insects are enticed to stop on the flowers to warm up when it's cold outside.

Lots of the plants have really reduced leaves to prevent dessication from the constant wind. The leaves are also arranged differently to help retain heat and moisture. Lots of plants have fuzzy leaves to create more of a "boundary layer" that holds in water and even reflects light, since the sunlight is so direct when it's not cloudy.

We had a guide accompany us for the day, which was cool because she grew up in the paramo and has learned everything she knows about it just by exploring it as a child and studying it as an adult. Her parents were U.S. citizens who moved to Costa Rica (which has no military) before she was born so that she and her older brothers wouldn't get drafted in the Vietnam war. She led us around the paramo all morning and taught us about the plants that we saw, many of which have medicinal uses. Learning about the paramo plants was awesome, but more than anything else I enjoyed the beautiful and often bizarre views. It truly is unlike any place I've ever been before. 

On our way up near Cerro de la Muerte

Early into the hike we found a skink on a rock, and it got a lot of attention from us! Haha. While there are lots of awesome plants up there, it's harder to see animals since not many live there permanently; they just visit and feed during the day and avoid having to tolerate the extreme cold at night. Skinks will bite onto things in self-defense, and our guide demonstrated this by allowing it to hang on her ear for about ten minutes while we all took pictures.

Our paramo guide, with a skink on her ear

Anna holding the skink

We climbed a good deal during the hike, ending up around 3,400 m above sea level. The air really is thinner at that elevation, but my group was not as winded as we expected since we had already hiked the oak forest the day before and gotten used to it a bit. It was clear for a good deal of the time we spent in the paramo, but when we got up to the very highest point it was extremely cloudy! The group that had visited the day before had perfectly clear views and came back with beautiful pictures, but pictures can't really do it justice anyway... Instead, I got to see a "real" paramo view: misty, eerie, and incredible.

Classmates on a hill, with minimal clouds

Misty, eerie, and incredible, right?

We found another skink at the top, and took some more pictures of it.

Chesca, my tica BFF, and I at the highest point that we visited. It's like we're standing in front of a wall of clouds. You couldn't even see over the edge right behind us.

Coming down through the clouds

Miguel and my professor Susan on the way back to the car, though a bunch of grasses and flowering bromeliads

Justin, Chesca and I were the last ones back because we stopped to look at some sphagnum moss and listen to birdcalls.

Sphagnum moss. Where water accumulates in the paramo, little boggy areas appear. Walking on them feels like walking on a memory foam bed.

We made it back down!

I know I said that the oak forest hike the day before was one of my favorite days in Costa Rica yet, but less than 24 hours later I think I exceeded my previous level of amazement already. The paramo is an incredible ecosystem that's totally different from any other place in Costa Rica; it's amazing that we could go from a relatively lowland rain forest to this bizarre, beautiful, almost alien environment in just a few hours!

Cuerici, pt. 1: The oak forest

 

Friday morning, we left Las Cruces and headed out for Cuerici. It was several hours away by car, and the big bus we took couldn't make it the whole way because the last part was on a steep and rocky dirt road. Don Carlos, the owner of Cuerici, and Don Alberto, his assistant, met us at the end of the road with a large truck that we loaded our big luggage onto, which was convenient because we didn't have to carry all of our stuff the last 5 miles to the station. As soon as we got there, it was pretty apparent that Cuerici is awesome. It's at a high elevation (~2,500 m) and in the Talamanca mountains, so the climate is way different from anywhere we'd been so far. It was sunny and breezy during the day, with misty clouds being pushed up the mountainside so that it feels slightly damp and cool all the time, in a good way. While it's still a wet forest, it's totally different than the forests we've seen before. Because of the higher elevation, the primary forest is a mix of oak trees and bamboo, with bromeliads and other epiphytes present but less common. Basically it looks kind of like a temperate forest, but more magical! Haha. 

When we first arrived, we moved our stuff in and had a brief orientation talk. Instead of having separate rooms like Wilson House at Las Cruces, the whole second story of the building was essentially one big room filled with bunk beds. There were thin dividers splitting the room into three rows of beds, giving us some privacy, but they didn't go all the way up to the ceiling so you could hear the people nearby even if you couldn't see them. In other words, there was not much privacy, which really wasn't a problem since we were only there for a week. It was kind of like being at summer camp since all 28 of us were in such close contact, which was fun.

My bed in Cuerici. I definitely needed the sleeping bag... it was COLD! Note: the top shelf is all of the clothes I have for the entire semester.

View from the bedroom window, looking down the mountain

The station, as viewed from the lawn

Patrick in a hammock chair on the front porch

Once we were settled, Don Carlos gave us a tour of the property. We started out going through the agricultural part of the land, where he grows things like vegetables and berries and grazes cattle. We also followed him briefly into the woods and got to see a generator that he built himself to harness some hydroelectric power for his house and the station. Then he showed us his trout farm, which is his main source of income (being the director of the biological station doesn't pay enough to support his family, so he does this on the side). It was really interesting to hear him describe how he manages the fish farm, from extracting eggs, hatching them, and raising them to preparing them to be killed and eaten. It was especially cool to learn about how he made his farm sustainable in various ways, like using old compost worms to feed the trout, and then taking sediment from the trout ponds and canals and using it back in the compost.

Some canals for older fish in the trout farm

That night we had a bit of free time, and a bunch of people wanted to watch a movie. I decided not to since I was already really tired (I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before while getting ready to leave Las Cruces!), and instead worked on a statistics homework assignment with Chesca and Miguel. We actually had a very good time doing our homework together, and it was nice to get the assignment done a week early.

The next morning, we split up into two groups again to be a more manageable size for talks. One group went out to the paramo (there is an accent over the first a, but I can't get it to show up on here), and my group went for a long hike up into the oak forest. We used the same groups that we'd formed for our visit to Don Roberto's farm, splitting based on Spanish proficiency. Don Carlos's talk was, therefore, entirely in Spanish. He is a very kind, thoughtful, and deliberate person, and I found him even easier to understand than Don Roberto. He took us through some secondary fores that he had restored from his grandparents' cattle pasture, which presently consists mostly of magnolia trees and alders. Then we entered the primary forest, which is made up largely of two species of oak and two species of bamboo.

Don Carlos talking about oak trees

The primary forest there serves as a corridor between other preserved areas, meaning that some large animals pass through there. Don Carlos said that peccaries, tapirs, and even pumas travel through the Cuerici reserve. I was surprised to hear that pumas were out there, since the only place we've been so far that is large enough for pumas to have territories was Las Alturas, which was contingent to a HUGE reserve (500,000 hectares). But, we actually saw puma poop while we were on our hike, so Don Carlos was definitely right, which is awesome!

Puma poop, full of peccary fur!

Bamboo forest!

After we had gained about 300 m in elevation, we arrived at a glorious lookout point facing the Talamanca mountain range. You could see a town down in the valley and watch the clouds pass between the mountains. It's hard to describe how beautiful it was, and even the pictures I took don't really do it justice.

The view from the lookout point, mancas

Orchids up on the mountain

After enjoying the view, we began to head back down to the station, stopping to talk along the way whenever Don Carlos saw something interesting. Overall it was an excellent way to spend a morning, and was probably one of my favorite days yet in Costa Rica.

Talking about logging, land management, and balancing human needs with conservation

An oak tree that's several hundreds of years old

Tiny Melastomataceae flowers