Las Cruces, pt. 1

Exiting San Jose, as seen from a bus window.

 Wednesday morning at 7:45 we left the Hotel Cacts in San Jose and began our 7-hour journey to Las Cruces Biological Field Station, the first real stop on our trip. Las Cruces is southeast of San Jose, right near the Panamanian border.

Map of the places I will be traveling with OTS this semester.

A few hours into the drive, we stopped at a restaurant to use the bathroom. The building had hummingbird feeders hanging outside of the windows, and a nice garden in the back. It was definitely a good place to stop, and we had a little time to wander around and explore before we headed out on the road.

One of many hummingbirds feeding outside the rest stop.

Plants in the garden behind the restaurant.

After another few hours, we stopped for lunch, which, unsurprisingly, consisted of rice, beans, and fruit, among a few other things. The break was only about 45 minutes, and then we were driving again, in the final stretch to the station. I felt slightly bus-sick most of the way there, so I slept as much as I could. When I was looking out the window, though, I got to see some gorgeous views going up through the mountains.

Then, finally, we got to Las Cruces. After a brief orientation we had some free time before dinner so some of my roommates and I walked around and explored the grounds.

Tessa standing next to a large palm tree. So tall!

Fruits of Pinanga kuhlii, a palm tree from SE Asia.

Me standing next to a giant palm!

Stephanie, Tessa and I standing in a patch of bamboo.

Miguel, Ashur, and Tom enjoying the view from a lookout point.

As it started to get dark, we returned from our walk so we would be back for dinner by 6. A bunch of other students had gone out running, and we ended up being the first ones at dinner, so Tom got to ring the giant bell that means our meal has been served. This seemed like quite an accomplishment at the time. Dinner was surprisingly excellent... While I was expecting somewhat minimal camp-type foods, we had a complete meal of chicken, white rice, black beans, mixed vegetables, and salad, with spice cake for dessert. Everyone seemed pleasantly surprised at the quality of the food, as well as the overall quality of the field station.

The station itself is quite large (325 hectares), but all of the buildings are in one central area. We're staying in a large, clean building with shared bedrooms. My room has three bunkbeds, so I have five roommates for the extent of the time we're at Las Cruces. We got a relatively large room with a closet and big shelves; this means that, unlike in some of the other rooms, there's space for all our stuff so the room can stay somewhat organized. The water here is clean and (obviously) we have internet access that seems pretty reliable. We even have hot water... sort of. There are no water heaters, but the shower heads have coils inside of them that you can turn on, so if the water isn't running too fast it heats up a bit before it comes out. I was a little worried at first since I'm not a fan of cold showers, but it ended up being comfortable since it's warm here. Other than that, the only weird thing is that we have to throw our toilet paper in the garbage instead of flushing it so we don't overwhelm the septic system. That took a little getting used to. On the bright side, they do our laundry for us, for free! So apparently there are perks to being a scientist after all.

After dinner on Wednesday we had our first class, which was a lecture given by the director of Las Cruces. He told us a lot of background information about the station. Here are some fun facts:

• 10 hectares of the total 325 are the Wilson Botanical Gardens
• The station has 410 known bird species living here, with more than 250 in the gardens alone
• Over half of all hummingbird species in CR can be found here
• There are over 100 species of mammals, 3 of which are endangered
• Three species of monkeys are present
• There are over 2,000 species of native plants and about 3,000 collected from around the world
• The Wilson Botanical Gardens contains the second largest collection of palm trees in the world

At night we all did homework and then played Mafia in the common room. Even though most of our day was spent sedentary on a bus, most everyone was really tired and we went to bed pretty early. This is not surprising, since our schedule every day from here on out starts with breakfast (gallo pinto, duh) at 6:30.

Today (Thursday) we had our first activity at 8. We split up into two groups, and my group went into San Vito, the nearest town, to get some stuff for our time here. With thirteen people piled into a car, we drove about 15 minutes to the town. We stopped first at the bank so people could withdraw cash if they needed to. Then we went to a store where we purchased rubber boots, which we have to wear sometimes during the semester both to keep our feet dry and to protect us from snake bites. We also stopped at a grocery store so those who wanted to could buy snacks. I bought a large bag of GORP: good ol' raisins and peanuts.

We returned to Las Cruces by 10 and set out on an informative stroll around the gardens with Rodolpho, a professor at the station. Some of the things we saw and learned:

Bromilina is the compound in pineapple fruit that makes your mouth hurt when you eat too much of it.

This plant is called petrea, because its leaves are "rock-hard;" they actually feel like the texture and toughness of a nail file!

Petrea flowers

A large cycad.

A heliconia flower, often confused with the bird of paradise plant.

A prayer leaf showing beetle herbivory that took place when the leaf was coiled up, making the pattern. These plants don't like to get too much sun and the leaves move and coil relatively quickly.

This is a tiny epiphytic bromiliad growing on a tree leaf!

Another heliconia flower.

Nate standing next to a 150-year old fig tree, the oldest tree in the reserve. When the land was originally bought in the 60s, much of it had previously been cleared for farming, and few trees were left behind.

Rodolpho holding an unripe torch banana.

The inside of the banana. This kind has large seeds, and, since it's unripe, is exceptionally sticky and acidic.

Torch bananas on the banana tree.

My group learning about palm trees from Rodolpho.

A large pine nut. After dispersal, they take 11 years to germinate!

Bromiliad roots hanging from the tree they live in.

An orchid

After the walk, we had lunch and then two classes in the afternoon. The first was a lecture by Mauricio ("Mau") titled "Dangerous and Annoying Creatures," which covered all of the less than fun things that we may potentially encounter in Costa Rica. Some of the more interesting concerns:

• Hippomane mancinella, a plant that is poisonous in basically every way possible... even the smoke from burning it can blind you!
• 34 species of tarantulas, 17 species of scorpions
• Bot flies, mosquitoes, biting midges (aka "no-see-ums"), ticks, and chiggers
• killer bees
• bullet ants
• sting rays
• mangy dogs
• jaguars and mountain lions
• crocodiles and caimans 

and, last but certainly not least,

• 137 species of snakes, 20 of which are lethally venomous to humans

Luckily most of these things are not seriously dangerous and can easily be avoided by being cautious and not doing stupid things! Our second class was taught by Erika, and was the quick version of Costa Rican history from the 1500s to the 1990s. The lecture was really fast-paced considering how much information we had to cover, but very interesting. One of the cooler things learned is that Costa Rica's relatively stable political situation is the result of having reliable exports (coffee and bananas are the biggest ones) that can be produced by lower classes, which results in less tension between the rich and the poor. As a result, Costa Rica has only had one civil war, which lasted just over a month. In contrast, other Central American countries have many more revolutions and wars.

We had dinner after class, and then one more "class" that turned out to just require us to act out scenarios of what to do in sticky situations that have occurred in the past. It was pretty funny and everyone did a good job with it.

We are at Las Cruces until February 11, so I will definitely be posting again at least once or twice before we leave! I'm sure there will be lots more pictures of plants to come. Haha.