A new leaf

So, as the title of this post implies, I am in the process of turning over a new leaf. I know, I know, the plant biologist makes a lame plant pun... bear with me.

At the end of the week, I will start my new job at Harvard Forest, where I'll be studying the effects of climate change on plant populations- particularly ragweed, which causes allergies in humans. I'm excited to start a new project, and I was fortunate enough to meet my new P.I., Kristina Stinson, at the Ecological Society of America's annual meetings last week, which were conveniently held in Portland. She's awesome! I think she's going to be a great mentor, and it will be exciting to get involved with a project that has a lot of momentum going already. Apparently, I will be the 27th person to contribute to this project... how crazy is that? I also met a few of my soon-to-be fellow researchers at the conference, and they seem like great people to be working alongside of for the next few months. The whole job-finding process was  challenging (as other recent grads likely know well) and filled with lots of courteous rejection letters and, even in seemingly promising options, lots of bureaucracy and delays. In the end, I got extremely lucky to be able to find a spot on Kristina's research team, since the status of her projects, her current funding availability, and my plans to return to Costa Rica in January left her seeking assistance for almost exactly the amount of time I am available in between my current job ending and heading back to the tropics to work on my own research next year.

As exciting as this is, my new job also marks the official end of my time at Reed. While for many college students graduation is "the end," I've spent my summer working on an additional experiment related to the research I did for my thesis; save for the dramatically decreased stress levels, conspicuously absent student body on campus, and regular doses of sunshine in Portland, my daily life has really not been terribly different than it was during my senior year at Reed. Now, when I leave work tomorrow, I am leaving the Reed biology department for good! It's pretty weird to acknowledge how final this is: I will no longer be contributing to my adviser's research, and, essentially, whatever I have for him by the end of the week is all I will ever be able to say about my current project. Since I got involved in the project that became my thesis so early on in my time at Reed, this will be a huge change for me. Granted, I haven't been working on it constantly for the past 2.5 years, but every time I left in the past I've had the promise of continuing to work whenever I returned. Leaving the lab for good will be weird. Also, obviously, starting to work at Harvard Forest will mean moving to Massachusetts, i.e., leaving Portland indefinitely. I have loved living here so much that I am slightly apprehensive about moving back to the East Coast, and while many of my friends have already left Portland for the summer and/or beyond, leaving this time feels like saying goodbye for real.

So, understandably, I am feeling kind of down about leaving. However, the past week of packing, finishing up lab work, cleaning out my office and house, and saying goodbyes has given me a lot of time to think about how lucky I was during my time at Reed. After all, the only reason it's hard to go is because I have had some amazing experiences here! Sure, I've had my stressful moments (read: years), but I feel like I've grown a lot from being pushed to my personal academic limits. And, despite demanding classes, jam-packed scheduling of school and several jobs, and seemingly impossible-to-please professors, one of the greatest privileges that I've gotten as a Reedie is freedom. Underneath all of the structure, at the end of the day, the faculty here give us so much freedom to pursue our  interests, work independently, and learn from our own mistakes. Having worked elsewhere, too, I can say that this flexibility is not something that every undergraduate student is privy to... nor is the trust and respect that are necessary in order for professors to feel comfortable giving us such freedom. Reedies routinely accomplish amazing things both in the classroom and beyond, and I truly believe that a big part of that starts here, either during thesis or prior independent projects where we are given the incredible license to do something important, something that we care about. And, because we are told that we can, we do. I am so grateful to have been able to spend four years with a faculty and staff that both encourages us to develop our passions and gives us the guidance, resources, and freedom necessary to pursue them... not to mention a student body of amazing people who rise to and exceed the expectations that come with these privileges. 

OK, so I guess that will suffice as my final love letter to Reed.  I'll be honest and say that there were days when I hated it and days when I wished I went to another school, but in the end I truly feel that Reed is an amazing school in an amazing city filled with amazing people. I am also practical enough to realize that the confidence and joy that I feel while here is a good sign that it's time to try something new and push myself outside of my comfort zone. But now, as I leave, I just feel the need to acknowledge how much the past four years have meant to me. I will carry so much of what I've learned here with me for the rest of my life... to Harvard Forest, to Costa Rica, and beyond!

Exciting news!

So, I think I am going to pick up blogging again! Now that I have survived my senior year at Reed, I (a) have sufficient time to do so, and (b) have more things going on in my life to talk about than just my thesis (which I may eventually post about later). For now, I have something more exciting to share...

Earlier this week, I found out that I will be receiving a grant to return to Costa Rica this year to do independent research! The lovely people at the Organization for Tropical Studies allowed me to apply for a graduate pilot grant, although I am not entering grad school just yet. After a few months of anxious waiting for the grant to be reviewed (the timing inconveniently overlapped with the transition between the spring and summer OTS courses, when many of the professors and administrative staff are extra busy), I was SO pleasantly surprised to find out that they decided to support my project.

Here is a quick recap of how I got to this point.

Basically, after doing a really cool independent project at Palo Verde station in northwest Costa Rica last spring (described in more detail here), my adviser suggested that, although the project was short-term, my group-mates write up our results and submit them for publication. Over the summer, my we worked hard on putting together our first-ever manuscript... while I think my biology training at Reed was first-rate, I have to say that publishing requires a whole different skill set than research itself. I am so glad that I had the opportunity to learn how to properly write up and submit a paper of sufficient quality for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. We got to learn valuable skills like writing within strict length, style, and formatting requirements, contacting and communicating professionally with journal editors, and selecting reviewers from the wide world of biology people, to name a few. Ultimately, our manuscript was rejected because of the limited nature of the study, BUT we got favorable comments from reviewers, which I was very proud of. As a group of three undergraduates (not to downplay the role of Susan, our adviser, who was SUPREMELY helpful... but, in the end, we did write it ourselves), we were told by experts in the field that our manuscript was well-written and compelling, and that our project was interesting, although not ready to publish just yet.

Me (far right), my classmates Owen and Rukhshana, and our adviser, Susan.
Below: a snapshot of our manuscript, complete with official "For Peer Review Only" watermark.
(Click to enlarge)

So, despite our initial rejection, which came around Christmas-time, I was still pretty hung up on this project. While I agreed with the reviewers and the ultimate decision of the journal editors to not publish our first manuscript, I believed that this project was not only interesting and had potential to get results, but that it was truly something worth studying. Plus, as far as any of us can tell, a study like this is completely novel, which makes it even cooler. For these reasons, I was not ready to drop it just yet, and I started talking to my OTS adviser, Susan, about maybe turning our manuscript into a proposal and using it as a starting point instead of an end product. Ultimately, that's what we did, and I submitted my grant proposal to OTS a few days after turning in my senior thesis. If you can't imagine so already, that was a really exciting and exhausting time. But, with the weight of both major projects off my shoulders, I felt pretty great, and was happy to at least have given it a shot to continue my research with OTS, even if the grant didn't end up coming through. After all, there's always grad school, right?

A little snippet from my proposal

But, as I gave away a long time ago in this post, the grant DID come through, so now sometime in 2013 (I have to wait for the dry season to start in order to do this research, so I won't be heading down until January or February of next year), I will be continuing my biology-based adventures in Costa Rica. I am overjoyed to be returning to the beautiful country where I spent half of my junior year of college, excited to be doing a project that I truly feel ownership of, and intrigued to explore my own independence a little bit more as I travel and do research alone--no advisers, no field assistants, and no 27 classmates to keep me company at the field station this time! It will most certainly be an awesome experience, and I can't wait for it to begin.

In the mean time I'll be blogging about less exotic things... although I am beginning to realize that job hunting, leaving Reed, and experimenting with quasi-adulthood in the post-graduate world are all big adventures in their own ways.

P.S. Mom/Dad, if you are reading this, sorry for not telling you yet! I was going to wait and tell you in person this week when I see you...

La Selva, pt. 1: Going bananas

After successfully hiking out of San Gerardo, we took the bus back to Calandria and stopped for showers and an early lunch before continuing the ride out to La Selva. We arrived at our destination just in time for dinner; La Selva is in the lowlands of northeast Costa Rica, so it was several hours of driving to get out to the final field station we'd inhabit during the semester. After dinner we had time to settle in to our rooms. Since we had switched up the usual roommate situation at Monteverde, and since we would be parting ways in just a few weeks, we made sure to room with our favorite amigos. Tessa, Steph, Chesca, Francesca, Rukhshana and I snagged a room for six with (gasp!) a private bathroom! All of the other rooms in our bunk had shared bathrooms located in between bedrooms, so we were pretty excited to have one to ourselves. 

Even though we didn't have any serious activities planned for the first night, we could immediately tell that La Selva was quite different from Monteverde in many more ways than just climate and ecosystem. First of all, the station was HUGE, and had multiple buildings. It is better described as a campus than a single station, I guess. At Monteverde, everything was self-contained in the one tiny, quaint building. There are always lots of scientists at La Selva, so it's bustling with people, compared to the relative solitude we experienced at Monteverde, Cabo Blanco, Cuerici, and even Palo Verde (although it's also a bigger station, it's one of the less sought-after destinations for many biologists and tourists). In fact, when we arrived at La Selva, the first thing we saw was a large group of younger-looking students, and we soon realized that we would be sharing all of our meals and common spaces, for the first week of our stay, at least, with a high school tour group. That certainly was a switch! Also, this was the first place we stayed with real labs, since researchers stay there for months at a time conducting complex projects. Thousands of papers have been published by scientists who have lived and worked here. I began to think of La Selva as, comparatively, a swanky hotel for field biologists. We assumed that the semester was planned for us with La Selva as the last stop in order to make re-entry into the "real world" a little less harsh.

The next morning, we had an orientation hike around parts of the reserve. To add to the stark contrast to the previous field stations we stayed in, we quickly discovered that the trails at La Selva are all paved with concrete. This seemed pretty weird and "unnatural" at first, but it turns out there are so many visitors to La Selva (and so much RAIN) that paving the pathways helps to keep human-induced erosion minimal and minimize the amount of maintenance required on the trails. Also, there are stakes planted throughout the whole property at 50 m intervals, so you can precisely identify where you are at any time. Every trail has markers at .1 km intervals with both the distance and trail name, so you can easily find your way around (as long as you know the codes for the trails) and estimate how long it will take you to get back from wherever you are. Pretty convenient, but, again, surprisingly "managed" compared to other sites we'd seen.

The class hiking around on a paved trail at La Selva

An eyelash pit viper on a tree

Our walk was brief, only an hour or so, and was more to tell us basic facts about La Selva than to see a significant part of the property, which is HUGE.  We did, however, get acquainted with two or three of the main trails and saw lots of cool plants and animals even in the short time we had. After the general orientation walk, we had a plant walk with Susan to start learning our new group of plant families for the site, which we'd be quizzed on later in our stay. At the end of the plant walk, we were crossing the iconic bridge over the Puerto Viejo river, and we were lucky enough to see tarpin down below! I wasn't able to snap a picture in time, but it was amazing to see these giant, frugivorous fish which are rare because they are so good to eat. Susan was especially excited, because in all of her years coming to La Selva she had only seen them one other time.

The iconic bridge at La Selva

In the afternoon, we had time to start developing IP ideas, which really meant we just had free time to walk around and explore. Later, we had a cool lecture on neotropical mammals. After dinner (which we ate quickly to avoid having to spend too much time around loud, hyper high school students) we decided to walk a few km to the nearest bar to check it out. While we've had to be careful at all of the sites we visited, La Selva is particularly dangerous because of the high frequency of venomous snakes in the region. Particularly, there are lots of fer-de-lances (terciopelos in Spanish), which are exceptionally aggressive snakes, and will strike without even being threatened. As Mau described it to us, if three people walk by a terciopelo, the first one will alert it, the second one will annoy it, and the third one will get bitten. So, on our excursion into "town" (really just a bar on the side of the road leading up to the station), we all wore our thick rubber boots to make sure our feet would be safe from snake bites. We affectionately called our trip "bitches in boots night"because (a) we were mostly ladies, (b) we got dressed up, and (c) we were wearin' our snake boots. It was a fun night, although the bars were pretty empty because, coincidentally, it was Palm Sunday. Oops!

All ready for bitches in boots night!

The next day, we had a free day. Because we had just arrived and still hadn't seen much of the property, we spent it pretty casually. For one of the first times in the semester, I slept through breakfast and spent the day lounging around the bunk with my roommates. Also, I did laundry, which was exciting in prospect but turned out to be pretty ineffective... while our clothes came out objectively "clean" (i.e. no dirt), they still smelled exactly the same way they did when we put them in, which was certainly not very good. Luckily at this point we were all pretty used to being dirty and smelly around each other, so it wasn't a big deal.

On Tuesday, we took a trip to a Dole banana plantation. While we had a reader with lots of articles in it, the only actual book we needed for our OTS course was called Breakfast of Biodiversity, and talked a good deal about the banana industry in Costa Rica and its effects on, well, biodiversity. So, a trip to a commercial banana farm was quite appropriate, and also a nice switch to the usual activities that we did.

A Dole employee describing how bananas grow

Ashur demonstrating how bunches of bananas are harvested. First, foam pads are placed in between the individual rows of bananas (called "hands") to minimize the inter-fruit squishing. then they are bagged up, and one worker uses a machete to chop the whole bunch at the base. Another worker, below the bunch, catches them on his shoulder (also protected with a pad) and hauls them to a conveyer-type that transects the whole plantation and brings the bananas back to the processing plant.

Banana processing!

Since it's a food plant, we had to wear hair nets. We look like lunch ladies.

Checking the bananas to make sure they're healthy

Bananas getting washed and floating across the factory

Employees brush the tips of the fruits with alum to prevent rotting. It's toxic! Yum!

The tour ended with all of us receiving free Dole stickers and a shot of banana liqueur. It sounded good in theory, but was actually disgusting. Sickeningly sweet and very very strongly alcoholic...

After our tour was done we returned to La Selva, had lunch, and then had another lecture about bananas! This time, though, it was from an academic/scientific perspective instead of the commercial one we got at Dole. As it turns out, bananas are very political! (Seriously, search the history behind the term "Banana Replublic.") We also had a group discussion about the book we had read, and then had dinner. While the facilities at La Selva are nicer because of the number of people who visit it (and the revenue they bring in), unfortunately the food was not as good as that at other stations since the cooks were preparing meals for so many people simultaneously.

Following our lackluster meal, we met one of our visiting professors: Cesar Nufio from UC Boulder. He studies grasshoppers and climate change, and is also a curator at a natural history museum there. We also had the last of our ethics discussions, this time on first world/third world interactions in science. Once all of our classes were finally done, we went to sleep, ready to begin our faculty-led research projects the next day!

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

In transit: Finca Lia and Calandria

While our next official destination for the course was San Gerardo station in Monteverde, we made some interesting stops along the way. First, we stopped during the long bus ride from the Nicoya Peninsula back to Monteverde (about half way back to San Jose, but we drove the whole way instead of taking the ferry to cut across to the mainland) at the home of Mau, one of our professors. In addition to teaching with OTS, he owns a teak farm and sells the lumber for additional income. On his farm, he has a tiny house that he built himself, with an open-air kitchen on the first floor and a loft bedroom above. The whole house is just two rooms, and all the openings can be boarded up and secured for when he's away months at a time teaching and doing research. We ate lunch there (bean and cheese sandwiches, yeah!) and hung around, exploring the property. It was a beautiful little home, named Finca Lia after his mother, and it was lovely to see a little bit more into the personal life of a professor who was quickly becoming a friend.

The front of Finca Lia

Lee and Tessa

We also got to take a tour of the farm itself and learn a bit about how and why Mau grows teak. At the end of the tour we hiked down to a creek where we cooled off before heading back for another few hours of bus riding.

The class listening to Mau talk about his trees

Mau lives in a small town on the outskirts of Monteverde proper, so we made it to Monteverde by mid-afternoon. Since the San Gerardo station is quite remote and takes several hours to hike into, we spent the night at another station, called Calandria, that we could drive to and rest at before our big day. Calandria station is a private reserve that was established specifically to promote the conservation and study of three-wattled bellbirds, which are endemic to the region and rapidly declining as the land occupy while migrating is converted to other uses. In the afternoon, we met a prominent bellbird researcher and got to see her very interesting presentation about bellbirds, ranging from their life history and conservation to their complex vocal patterns and mating behaviors. If you don't know what a bellbird is or what its call sounds like (I certainly didn't before this lecture), I encourage you to check out this video, since my descriptions will simply not do them justice. They are amazing and bizarre animals!

After our lecture, we settled into the station, taking advantage of beautiful sunset view looking down the mountain, as well as an unspeakably delicious dinner. We got guacamole, which was a rare and momentous occasion, so we were quite happy. We had a second, brief lecture at the station from an OTS alum who now runs a really cool educational website called Canopy in the Clouds. He talked to us a little bit about his graduate research in the hydrology and physiology of tall canopy trees, but also more broadly about the importance of science literacy and outreach on top of traditional research. It was a bit unconventional compared to our other lectures, but really cool!

Sunset from Clandria station

Looking out from the porch of Calandria

By far the most delightful aspect of the station, however, was the "luxurious" feel of our temporary accommodations. Compared to Reed dorms or my house in the U.S., it was nothing particularly special, but compared to the field stations we had stayed at so far, we may as well have been staying in a five-star resort. We all reveled in hot showers followed by clean, fluffy towels that were lent to us by the station. The beds had real bedding, the windows had glass, and we even had proper mattresses instead of thin foam pads on top of wooden slats, which was the norm elsewhere. Needless to say, we were giddy with comfort, and we spent the remainder of our free time that evening drinking wine and gushing about this little oasis of a field station.

The next morning, we woke up bright and early to re-pack our backpacks, eat breakfast, an press on to San Gerardo station! Calandria was a beautiful respite, but I was ready to get the full Monteverde experience, even if it meant living in a more "rustic" setting.

Leaving Calandria with our packs

Our "luxury" accomodations

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!