After leaving Cuerici, we stopped back in San Jose for one day to split up the bus travel time into more manageable increments. We arrived at the OTS office at 10 am on Wednesday, 2/16, and had two classes and lunch while we were there. In the class after lunch, we met Mahmood, the director of Palo Verde, and he gave us a history of the park. Like many of the places we've visited, Palo Verde was a cattle ranch before it was conserved. It is a lowland, seasonally dry forest near the mouth of the Tempisque river, and also includes an extensive wetland habitat, which is uncommon. The land was bought by the Costa Rican government in the 70s (I think) and turned it into a national park, which has since had an interesting conservation history. Two invasive species, jaragua (an African grass good for cattle grazing) and typha (cattails) had become prevalent with the cattle ranching. When grazing stopped due to park management, the populations of both species exploded without the cattle to keep them in check. After a few failed attempts to minimize both species, the park decided to allow nearby farmers to graze cattle inside the park boundaries to control the plants, even though cattle are not a natural component of either dry forest or wetland ecosystems. So now the park protects two extremely threatened Central American ecosystems while also employing unconventional management techniques. OTS runs the biological station there, even though the property itself is owned by the government.
After our brief stay at the OTS office, we returned to Hotel Cacts, where we stayed for the first two nights we were in San Jose. Rather than provide us with dinner, like they did last time we were at the hotel, Mau gave us each 4,000 colones (~$8) to get dinner on our own. Not wanting to overwhelm a restaurant by arriving with a group of more than 20 non-native Spanish speakers, we decided to split up for dinner and meet back afterward. Half of the group went to a Lebanese restaurant, and I went with 12 others to a Chinese restaurant that we had spotted earlier in the day. For Costa Rican Chinese food, it was pretty good, and ended up being a lot less expensive than the Lebanese food. Everyone was satisfied with their meals, and we had a fun dinner out together (one of the only meals we've eaten wearing "normal" clothes!). We met up with the others back at the hotel after dinner, intending to go to a gay bar that has excellent reviews and supposedly great DJs, which we were all craving after hearing the same set of songs every time we went out in San Vito. At the last minute we decided it would be a good idea to have the man at the front desk of our hotel call to make sure it was open, since it was Wednesday. It was a good idea, because no one answered after three tries so we assumed it was closed and didn't waste the cab fare to drive us across town for no reason. Instead we decided to try out one of the bars that was just a few blocks away from our hotel, which had a sign on the outside that said something along the lines of "disco fire explosion." Oddly enough, it turned out to be a gay bar after all, but not a night club/discoteca like the one we had wanted to go to. We hung out there for a while but ended up going to another bar two blocks away that had a bigger dance floor and told us we could choose the music all night since there were no other customers.
Our long-overdue night of dancing was much needed, and well worth staying up a little later than normal even though we let San Jose at 7:30 the next morning for Palo Verde. We arrived right around lunch time, and after eating we had class in the afternoon. That evening I had to get right to work on a presentation that I had to give on Saturday. Throughout the semester we have four scientific ethics discussions, with one group of students giving presentations and guiding the class for each one. Because we didn't have internet access in Cuerici (which was actually really nice!), we couldn't start researching for our presentation at all until then.
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Mau holding a marine toad, which we encountered during our plant walk. |
The next day we spent the morning walking around the park with our professors, learning about the plants that we saw. We have another plant test while we're at this site, so this was our first introduction to the new plant families we will be responsible for identifying later on in our stay here.
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This toad peed out (exploded would be a better word) about half of its body volume while I was holding it! Haha |
In the afternoon, we had a lecture about ant/plant interactions. Acacia trees are common in Palo Verde, and you can see firsthand the acacia/ant mutualism that biology textbooks often reference when discussing symbioses.
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An acacia tree with the ants that live on it. The plant provides a home (the hollow thorns) and food (nectar and protein-rich growths on the tips of leaflets) in return for the protection against herbivores that the ants provide. The ants are aggressive with biting mouthparts, and will attack anything that touches the tree they live on. |
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The marsh at Palo Verde, which is very close to the station where we're staying. |
After class I did some more research for my ethics presentation, which was about data manipulation and scientific misconduct in general. At 5 a few other students and I hiked up to a lookout point (
mirador) behind the field station to watch the sunset, which was awesome! The sky here turns purple-ish around sunset, and from the lookout point you can see really far across the lowlands. We made it to dinner a little late because climbing down the sharp rocks took a lot longer than climbing up them did, but it was worth it. After spending some more time putting together the ethics presentation, I went to bed.
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The view from the lookout point |
The next morning, we drove to an agricultural region just outside of the park. While the dry forest is not normally a good place to grow crops because it's so dry in the dry season (duh), a dam was built about 30 years ago that redirects water from a river on the east side of the mountains down into the western valleys, providing water to the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica. Because the soil is relatively fertile, adding water allowed people to begin growing high-input crops like rice, sugarcane, and melons. We talked to a farmer and got to see a large rice field and a sugarcane field, although the cane had just been harvested and the field burned, so there wasn't much to see there. The rice field was pretty cool to see, though, and I especially appreciated getting the opportunity to talk to the farmer who owned the land and learning a little bit about how and why he became a rice farmer, where he gets his seeds, how he manages his land, and what happens with the rice that he harvests. Interestingly, banks will only give loans to farmers who use them to buy seeds from certain companies, so the banks essentially control the types of rice that gets planted. The types of rice that get planted furthermore determines the type of input needed to grow it. The seed companies that farmers are allowed to buy from are genetically modified to resist the herbicides that the farmers use to kill weeds, and the seeds themselves come with certain agrochemicals that the farmers then need to put into the system in order to obtain maximum yields. I'm not against genetically modified crops or non-organic agriculture in principle, but I do think it's interesting when farmers get more or less financially cornered into growing food a certain way.
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A rice field flooded with water just outside of Palo Verde. |
After our afternoon classes, we put the finishing touches on our ethics presentation, while people who weren't presenting had free time. We gave our presentation and led the discussion after dinner, which went relatively well. We focused on three factors that we believe can cause scientific misconduct: funding, career pressure, and advocacy. It was interesting to hear people's perspectives about how all of this relates to our potential futures, and how you can benefit personal needs (e.g. salary, career advancement, and personal beliefs and values) with scientific ethics.
We had a free day the next day, and didn't need to go to sleep as early as we normally would, so some of us decided to take a walk around the marsh at night. We saw some cool wildlife, including crocodile eyes (you can see them reflecting back at you at night, even when you can't see their bodies!), some amphibians, and a snake!
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One of the frogs we saw |
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A snake! Not venomous, to the best of our knowledge. |
After returning from the marsh, I played a round of poker with a group of classmates before going to bed around midnight. (So late! Haha.) Even though we had a rest day the next day, we have our first independent projects at Palo Verde, so I wanted to have a productive day of exploring the park and beginning to think about project ideas.
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