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