Cabo Blanco

It took us a full day to get to Cabo Blanco. From San Jose, we bussed all morning to the Gulf of Nicoya, arriving just before lunchtime. We ate lunch on the bus, and then boarded a ferry to take us across the gulf, which saves the travel time it would take to go up and around it to get to the southern part of the Nicoya Peninsula, where Cabo Blanco is. The ferry ride took another two hours, which I spent pleasantly, sleeping on a bench because I had stayed up all night the night before packing to leave San Jose. When we arrived at the other side we got back on our bus (which had taken the ferry with us, down below) and drove until 5 pm, when we finally arrived at Cabo Blanco...sort of. Our bus took us to the town of Malpais, which is on the northern border of the park. We then loaded our luggage onto a pickup truck and walked until the pickup truck could go no further and hiked the rest of the way in with our backpacks. The hike wasn't too long or steep, but we were back in Guanacaste (where Palo Verde is), and it was hot! 

When we finally got into the station, we put down our bags and had a quick meeting with Diane and Milton, a married couple who manage the park. Cabo Blanco is an absolute nature reserve, meaning that for the most part, humans aren't allowed inside at all. The biological station hosts a handful of researchers and student groups a year, and they recently opened up a public sector on the south coast for day use only, but generally speaking the majority of the park is off limits. We were instructed not to do things like make eye contact with monkeys, touch any animals, follow them too long to get pictures, or generally cause "unnecessary stress" to the surroundings. It was interesting to hear the regulations of the park, and it made me very curious to learn more about the history of Cabo Blanco and how it became what it is.

We then moved our bags to our rooms and got ready for dinner. Most of us were staying in one building that was split into three rooms, a five minute hike away from the main building. I roomed there with Tessa, Rukhshana, Chesca, Francesca, and Maggie in a room with no real windows, just screens with holes in them. We asked if the holes would be a problem, and were told that the main purpose is not to keep out bugs but animals. Haha. We were actually a larger group than normally stays at Cabo Blanco, so four people had to sleep on tents on the porch of the building that I was in. Luckily they were given extra mattresses, so they didn't have to sleep on the wood floor for a week. The other few people stayed in the extra rooms attached to the main building, which have a beautiful view of the ocean but are very noisy when the cooks begin preparing breakfast before 5 am every day. Our cabin was also very close to the beach, and Chelsea strung her hammock up in a tree at the end of the path leading to the ocean for everyone to share.

Ashur and Matt in the hammock by our cabin

We all ate dinner, and had our first taste of what we soon realized was the most delicious juice that we would have at any field station. At every single meal we were served icy buckets of mysterious juices that we had to ladle into mugs to drink, but they were surprisingly exceptional. Every meal we would leave the bucket empty because everyone would drink cups upon cups of juice! Haha. The food was good, too. Cabo Blanco was definitely getting off to a good start, eating a nice dinner in a comedor with no walls so you could hear the ocean and watch the sunset. 

After dinner, we had a lecture about the fish of Cabo Blanco with JB, a visiting professor who had just flown in from Cornell to spend a week with us. He gave us an introduction to all of the fish we might see that week, since every day we had scheduled snorkel time at low tide. His lecture consisted of home-made underwater videos of the fish he had encountered in Cabo Blanco, and he just told us stories about them while they swam around on the screen. It definitely piqued my interest for having marine classes, but I was exhausted and went to bed immediately after class, with the sound of ocean waves wafting in through the screened windows.

On Tuesday, we spent the morning exploring tide pools with Diane, one of the directors, whom we had met the night before. We saw lots of cool animals, like sea hares, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, clams, mussels, sponges, corals, and cnidarians. We also saw lots of fish, including a blue-spotted puffer fish. Oh, and a giant conch! It was really cool to see how many living things were everywhere in the tidepools when you stop and look for them, since a lot of them are well camouflaged and hard to spot from a distance.

Diane showing us a sea hare

Me holding a brittle star! They're so cool!

Owen with a tiny anemone

Lookin' for critters

Ashur with a sea cucumber

Tidepooling out on the rocks

A conch! Look at how funny its eyes are!

After tidepooling for a while, we switched with the other group and went snorkeling with JB. As you can see in the pictures above, the sea floor is really rocky, so we're not allowed to go in the water because of the sharp rocks and the dangerous rip tide. The exception is in a deep lagoon protected by a small coral reef and some rocks that stays full at low tide, where all of our snorkeling took place. We had picked out masks and flippers that fit earlier that morning, and headed over to try them out. The previous group had said that they spotted a sea turtle in the lagoon on their way out, and I found it right away when we were swimming across to look at coral! JB let us take a little detour to check it out, AKA spend 15+ minutes diving down to see it up close. Swimming with a 4' long sea turtle was certainly a majestic experience! We also got lucky to be able to spend so much time with it, since JB said that they usually don't like human interaction and swim away quickly when they're discovered.

The sea turtle!

Stephanie, my snorkeling partner, giving thumbs up for marine life

 JB also showed us what the living corals looked like in the lagoon so that we could be sure not to accidentally sit on them or swim into them. The rest of the hour was spent exploring the lagoon on our own. Stephanie and I saw lots of fish, and got to feel the tide come in over the back of the lagoon while we were out there. It was a cool feeling, but the current was strong and we knew that it was time to come in for lunch.

After lunch we had free time until 4:30. Because our whole schedule was made around the tide and because there aren't very extensive facilities at Cabo Blanco (and maybe just to help with the transition back from spring break?) we had a lot of free time while there. This was weird at first, but allowed us to enjoy the unique station at a deliciously slow pace. I had time all week to nap in hammocks overlooking the ocean (there were many), read books other than assigned readings, do a little yoga, and think a lot. This was a theme throughout the week, which is why I guess there is less to describe about Cabo Blanco than the other stations because we had less scheduled activities.

We did, however, have occasional lectures while we were there. We had an introduction to marine ecosystems with JB, as well as a lecture about the evolution of marine biogeography and why the Pacific coast of Costa Rica has such different fish than the Caribbean (which I could actually compare for myself, since I had gone snorkeling in Cahuita just two days before coming to Cabo Blanco!). Other topics of learning included biodiversity maintenance theories, animal behavior, and the role of people in park creation and management.

Owen made me take this picture because he said the mist made it look very "tropical." I agree. Haha.

 We also worked on a faculty-led project with JB while we were there. We were studying how Acapulco damselfish responded to different potential threats to their territories (i.e. gardens of algae on rocks), which they keep meticulously clean and free from invaders. We had pairs of sea anemones and rocks of equal sizes that we would dive down and place simultaneously into a garden, and then record the time until the damslelfish responded, the object they touched first, and the distance that they removed the object to. It was an interesting project, and pretty straightforward compared to the FLPs at Palo Verde, which seemed a little more hastily assembled. We split up into two groups and worked on the project for three hours one of two days, meaning that we had (more!) free time on the day that we were not in the water collecting data. Fun fact learned: you can take notes with pencil on PVC pipes... underwater! We wore PVC "sleeves" with pencils attached to record all of our data while in the lagoon.

Francesca and Matt (I think? hard to tell with the masks...) doing science! In the ocean!

Stormy clouds over the vast Pacific

Hanging out outside of our cabin at Cabo. With all of our free time, snorkeling, and beach-lying, it felt a little bit like summer camp for big kids. It was a great way to reunite with everyone after being separated from the group during our home stays and spring break.

One of the most memorable features of Cabo Blanco is its abundance of land crabs.

On our last day in Cabo Blanco, we had a rest day... although, as you can probably tell at this point, our stay in this park was not particularly stressful, so we were not particularly in need of rest. Several of us decided to spend the day hiking out to the very corner of the park, where the "absolute reserve" section of Cabo Blanco borders the public sector, where hikers and day visitors are allowed. It was a more ambitious hike than we had done in a while, plus we had the added excitement of having to be a little sneaky about our expedition: if, when you reach the corner of the park, people in the public sector see you, they may be fooled into thinking that they can continue hiking into the part of the reserve that is off-limits. If anyone follows you back, you get in trouble. To spice things up even more, we decided to bring garbage bags with us to do an impromptu beach cleanup, since (sadly) despite being an absolute nature reserve, a good deal of stray trash is carried across the Pacific and washes up on the shores.

Some of the more interesting trash we saw on the beach

We made it all the way out to our destination, and spent an hour or so lounging on a beach that we had completely to ourselves (although at this point, we were pretty spoiled by all of the private beaches...). Peeking around the corner of the peninsula, we could see more hikers in the public sector enjoying a beautiful beach day of their own, unaware that we were so nearby! Although we were technically not allowed to swim because of dangerous rip tides, we found a safe, shallow tide pool to wade in and cool off from our hike, and after some more relaxing and reflecting on our stay in such a pristine and beautiful park, headed back to the station, picking up trash along the way.

Tessa and Chelsea, mid-hike. Clearly, bathing suits and hiking boots are the best outfits for exploring rocky coasts!

Chels being a superwoman and carrying ~40 pounds of trash back to the station

We made it back to the station in time for dinner, and, though we were tired from carrying heavy bags of trash for several hours of hiking (seriously, it is so much more strenuous than carrying a heavy backpack! There's no good way to do it...), we decided to go back out to one of our favorite nearby beaches to watch our last sunset. Although the beach has no official name (to our knowledge), Hilary nicknamed it Paracoya Hideaway. Again, although we weren't supposed to swim, we had fun safely sitting in butt-deep water and letting the waves wash over us one last time, watching the sun sink down below the horizon together.

Sunset over the Pacific on our last evening in Cabo

Lovely ladies in Paracoya Hideaway

Hilary being a badass at our favorite beach spot

We moseyed back to the station at dusk and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with our group at the comedor. We had hoped to have a bonfire, but after it got dark we had another thunderstorm and ended up playing card games and telling stories in the dark under the roof to stay out of the rain. The next day, we woke up early and hiked out of Cabo Blanco, beginning out journey to the could forests of Monteverde

Leaving Cabo. It does feel pretty cool to get to stay in a place that is normally off-limits to all humans!