Las Cruces, pt. 3: Welcome to the jungle (literally)

By Friday (1/28), I was beginning to feel more settled into the daily routine at Las Cruces. Every day we wake up around 5:45 am (even if my watch alarm doesn't go off, which is happens surprisingly frequently, I've been wide awake without fail), and begin breakfast at 6:30. A typical breakfast here is rice and beans, scrambled eggs, some sort of bread or baked good, and fresh fruit. Most everyone also drinks coffee in the morning (and throughout the rest of the day) because a) the coffee here is excellent and b) it helps us stay awake during all of our activities. Our first class is either at 7:30 or 8 am, so if we finish breakfast quickly we have time to go back to Wilson House, where we're living, and do things like review readings for class, check email, finish getting dressed, etc.

On Friday, we started the day out with a hike into the forest. We usually do our outdoor activities in the morning, because it is more likely to rain in the afternoon (and, in my opinion, because we are all more likely to fall asleep in class if we are sitting around in a classroom so early). Believe it or not, that hike was everyone's first time being in the actual forest, since all of our previous field activities had been centered around the botanic gardens, which is obviously managed and landscaped in a way that the actual rainforest is not.

We hiked out on a trail and crossed a small river (our rubber boots got a muddy christening), after which we split up and went off to find a place to sit alone. Since it was our first experience in the rainforest, our only assignment was to remain in one place for about 45 minutes, observe our surroundings, and write down what saw/smelled/heard/felt/thought. I really appreciated this assignment, since it gave us a chance to really get a feel for the amazing place that we're lucky enough to be living without being distracted by trying to learn yet.

A strangler fig on the trail towards where we made our observations.

Flowers near the river. If you look closely, you can see Tessa's head in the background. Haha.

I would say the most amazing and unexpected thing about the rainforest is the sound. You don't realize it so much when you're hiking around, but as soon as I sat down the only thing I could focus on were the layers and layers of constant sounds permeating the forest. Because of the dense foliage, you can actually experience more by listening, since you can hear things you can't see. The cicadas and other insects make a loud baseline hum that pulses through the air, getting louder and softer in constant cycles. On top of that you can hear birdcalls in the distance at all times, even if you can't make them out specifically. On top of that are the birdcalls that are close enough to really hear. Then there are the sounds of falling leaves (and, once, a falling branch) and other rustling things (small animals passing by) that are surprisingly loud and almost startling to hear while sitting in the relative "silence". At one point I heard a loud buzzing sound and thought there was a large wasp coming to sting me, but it was actually a tiny hummingbird that flew right up to me and checked out the red bandanna that was sitting on top of my backpack! That was very cool.

Once I got over the sounds, the second most obvious thing that I sensed was the humidity. After about an hour of hiking, the last bit of which was steeply uphill, I was very hot. I could feel my pulse clearly in my temples. Even though the temperature here is not unbearably hot, it's very humid so your sweat doesn't evaporate quickly at all. Overall, once you begin sweating there is a somewhat constant feeling of warm dampness. I was dripping with sweat, which is why I had my bandanna out to wipe off. Only after processing the sounds and the feelings did I actually begin to notice the appearance of my surroundings. The only way to describe what I saw is overwhelming greenness. In the rainforest, you see every shade of green imaginable. There are trees everywhere and the canopy is so thick that less than 1% of sunlight actually penetrates to the forest floor. Because the light is so diffuse and there are so many plants, it's almost like the forest glows green. It is beautiful. In my opinion, the other most prominent visual feature of the rainforest is the layered-ness of all the living things. Everything, living and nonliving, is covered in some other living thing. The ground is covered in moss and ferns and understory shrubs. The trees that make up the canopy create a green ceiling above. The trees are covered in epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants)--bromeliads, vines, and lianas--that use the trees' height to get closer to the limited sunlight. The leaves of all the plants, trees, shrubs, herbs, and epiphytes alike, then have epiphylls (moss, algae, bacteria, lichens, or other organisms that grow on leaf surfaces) living on them. Many of the plants have close symbiotic relationships with insects, and have entire microhabitats associated with them. For example, bromeliads that grow high up in the canopy on the trunks and branches of trees collect water in between their leaves, making little aerial pools where insects and little frogs can live. The complexity of the adaptations and the extreme interconnectedness of all the living things here is really astounding.

A (blurry) bunch of fellow students near the river after we returned from observing.

A cool partially decomposed leaf we found on the hike.

After getting to soak in all these observations of my new home, we regrouped and hiked back to the station. We had a discussion of rainforest structure afterward, using our observations to put the concepts we discussed into context. After lunch we had our first taxonomy class, which was about plant vegetative morphology, a bit of free time, dinner and then another lecture about Costa Rican history. Our day finally ended at about 9 pm, and, since we get up so early, bedtime is reliably between 10 and 11. This was great way to start off our stay at Las Cruces, since up until now most of the activities we did were sort of introduction/orientation-type things. I definitely feel comfortable here and love the fact that I get to spend a good portion of every day filled with awe in my new surroundings!