The Cloud Forest: Monteverde

After leaving Calandria station, our bus took us to the parking lot of a national park at the top of the continental divide. This was as far as we could be driven, and the rest of the trip would be on foot with our packs.

Sign marking the trail head to San Gerardo

Everyone getting ready for the trek in

While the hike takes several hours, the way in to San Gerardo makes the hike into the station seem deceptively easy, since it's downhill the entire way. Don't get me wrong: walking on steep slopes is difficult, whether you're going up or down. It's just more difficult going up. While the weather held up for our hike, it had rained recently and the path was muddy and slippery. We managed to make it all the way down without anyone falling, though! About half-way in to the station, we were turning a corner in the trail when it suddenly opened up to a truly majestic view of Volcan Arenal. We stopped here to take pictures. Despite the "inconvenience" of the trek to the station (I didn't really mind, but others would have rather not have hiked it), it was pretty clear that this was going to be a great stay at Monteverde.

Looking out at Arenal and the lake below

This was pretty surreal!

After a bit more hiking, we finally made our way to San Gerardo station, took off our packs, and split up into rooms. For the first time, the roommate situation was significantly switched up, and I stayed with Miguel, Justin, and Ashley in a room on the first floor next to the professors. Everyone else was staying above us, but we were closest to the bathroom, which was a plus, I guess. The second floor of the station has a beautiful, wide balcony with hammocks and a view down the mountainside. On our floor was the main room where we would have class, as well as a dining room with picnic tables and the kitchen. There was a nicely sized lawn area for relaxing, playing soccer, and admiring the stellar view of the volcano. The station was simple, but beautiful.

San Gerardo station in Monteverde

After getting settled in for a bit, we regrouped and took a hike around the station to get acquainted. In addition to some cattle (because the area is so remote, the people that live at the station are allowed to keep livestock even though it is a reserve, since going out to town for groceries is inconvenient), we were lucky enough to see a bellbird! Since we had just learned the day before about these fascinating and very rare birds, we were pretty excited to see and hear one in the wild. We didn't get a close-up view, but we did get to hear its amazing call.

Bellbird spotting through the mist (it's on the top of the branch to the left)

For our first few days at San Gerardo, we didn't have a particularly specific academic focus. Since we were only staying for a week, we would not be doing any independent research or participating in a faculty-led project. We had some lectures about pollination syndromes and seed dispersal, and spent a lot of time out in the field exploring the local flora and fauna.

These plants produce white spots that look like insect eggs to deter insects from laying actual eggs there, which will then hatch into larvae and eat the leaves!

A large stick bug

A wind-dispersed seed, along with some notes

Small domatia for mutualist mites on the underside of a leaf (along the midvein)

Never did figure out what these were...

One of the things that Mau spent a lot of time focusing on at Monteverde was the role of light availability in determining successional patterns in forests. After having some in-field lectures on the topic, he even had us lie down on the forest floor to think about "what it's like to be a seedling" and how hard it is to catch tiny sunflecks when starting out under a dense, multi-layer canopy. It was a little unconventional, and lying on the ground was an invitation for lots of insects to attack, but I zipped up my rain shell, put my hood on, and lay down, only my eyes and nose poking out the front of my jacket. As weird as it was, it was an effective exercise, and I really got to appreciate better how scarce light is in the understory of a tropical forest.

A light gap in the canopy caused by a fallen tree

This plant is colloquially called "labia de puta," which means, in Spanish, "bitch lips"

Hanging out at San Gerardo, with our incredible view of Arenal

Mau talking about light gaps and succession

Lying on the ground, looking up at the meager filtered light through a bipinnately compound leaf.

I caught a sunfleck!

Chelsea holding a popsicle-looking inflorescence

Lounging on the San Gerardo porch after a hike

Trying to sort flowers that we collected in the field based on what we would predict their pollination syndrome to be

Later in the week, the focus of our academics at San Gerardo switched to amphibian diversity and ecology. We had the pleasure of hosting Mark Wainwright, a naturalist who wrote the relatively famous book on Costa Rican mammals. While he started out studying the furry critters, he is also an avid herpetologist, and presented to us for hours on end about frogs, both of the Monteverde region and beyond. From the energetics and costs/benefits of frog calls to behavioral traits to census of different frog genera to the recent, widespread amphibian decline in the region, he really covered it all. Some of the students seemed to be annoyed with how he would drag on beyond the allocated time for a lecture, but as a secret herp-lover (I do think that, if I had to give up plant biology, amphibians would be next in line in how cool I think they are) I was thrilled to talk frogs all day and night.

Speaking of night, one of the features of Mark's stay with us was a night hike. There are many amphibian species that are easier to find after dark, as the environment becomes cooler and damper.
He led us all around the trails we had been hiking during the day, turning over rocks and splashing around stream beds in search of cool frogs. We found a few, but because it was actually unusually dry during our stay (even at night!) we did not encounter the vast diversity of species that he had hoped. Still, it was great fun to hang out with such a cool guy who is as keen on frogs as Bob Kaplan (one of my professors at Reed), and learning about the amphibian decline in the very place where the research on it began was truly a special experience (although, undoubtedly, the topic is a sad one).

A scorpion we found on our night hike. Did you know that they glow under UV light? Well, now you do!

Mark holding a rufus-eyed stream frog

I definitely learned a lot during our stay at Monteverde, and was pretty jazzed about the variety of topics we covered there. However, out time at San Gerardo was also special for non-academic reasons. At this point in the semester, we were no longer "getting used to" living in large groups under less-than-luxurious conditions; it was a fact of life. We didn't loathe sharing rooms with 3-5 roommates; we expected it. We didn't dread waking up at 6 in the morning (usually); we looked forward to starting our days together. By now, we were really melding as a group, and (in my opinion) some of the best bonding time we had as a group took place at Monteverde. We spent all of our free time sitting on porches telling stories and weaving countless friendship bracelets. We took icy-cold showers and braided each other's hair and scratched backs and played games. We shared meals with each other and talked to our wonderful hosts and cooks at the station. We even took care of each other during mysterious illnesses (Rukhshana's eye swelled up inexplicably for three days, for example, and our professor got a flu-like cold). There were lots of good vibes down in San Gerardo, and by the end of our week there we were dreading the hike out not just because it was going to be tough, but because we had had such a lovely time there.

Watching the sunrise over Arenal on one of our last days in Monteverde