Palo Verde, pt. 2: Rest day

Although we had just arrived in Palo Verde and hadn't been too busy yet, it had been ten days since our last rest day, so we had a day off on 2/20. Even though we could do whatever we wanted, I ended up waking up early out of habit, and decided to do some hiking anyway. I did a nice trail with Patrick and Maggie that started off about 30 minutes from our building. On the way to the trail, you walk through a mango grove where lots of white-faced monkeys always hang out! We saw a whole troop of them on the way out, which was a cool way to start off the day.

Just a few of the white-faced capuchins that we saw.

We chose to do this trail because Mau, our professor, had said that he likes it the best as an example of what the dry forest is really like. Most of Central American dry forests are now gone, but out on our trail we got to see a good diversity of plants (even some with leaves, which is rare in the dry season!), including cuatis, geckos, and iguanas.

An iguana, or ctenosaur, that we saw on our hike. They live all over Palo Verde and could often be heard walking on the tin roof above the classroom during lectures.

We saw deer poop, evidence that they're around although we didn't see them in person. And, most amazingly, we saw two howler monkies! You can hear them all over the place at Palo Verde, but we had never seen one before then. They are much bigger than white-faced monkies, and make loud grunting noises that sound like a cross between dog barking and hog squealing. In the opinion of Lee, one of my classmates, they sound like a human being beaten to death slowly. I disagree, but regardless, they have very loud and distinctive calls, and now we were able to see and hear them up close.

A howler monkey, up close and personal!

We stopped for about 30 minutes to watch the holwers and talk to an old Belgian man who was visiting and also monkey-watching. We then moved on to finish the hike, eventually arriving at a beautiful lookout point with a view of the marshland, the highlands in the distance, and the Tempisque River. It was about 11 am and it was hot (as usual!), but it was great to see the park from a different perspecive. The lookout point was rocky and warm, with lots of cacti around. After relaxing there for about a half hour, we headed back towards our bunks so that we'd be back in time for lunch.

The view from the top of the first trail we hiked. The little bit of reflected light in the background is the Tempisque River.

Patrick and Maggie resting at the top after our hike.

Returning to the dining hall at Palo Verde.

In the afternoon, I relaxed since I had had an active morning. I wrote a bunch of blog posts (the ones about Cuerici and Palo Verde!) and hung out on the porch of our building, chatting and taking my time. Around 4 pm, I left with Tessa, Lee, and Stephanie to look for the watering hole, which our professors had said was a good place to see wildlife at dawn and dusk. It sounded like it was easy to get to, but we weren't sure we had found it because it was a man-made pool, and we were expecting a small natural lake or something of the sort. We did see lots of acacia trees, which I accidentlaly fell against when I slipped off the edge of the pool, so I got lots of pricks on my right leg. I didn't get attacked by the ants that live there, though, so I was lucky. We didn't see any animals other than insects (mostly Africanized killer bees and mosquitoes) at the watering hole, so we left pretty quickly and decided to hike up to another lookout point nearby to watch the sunset. This one was called "La Roca," because the lookout point is just  a rocky outcrop at the top of a hill.

We made it to La Roca! ...Almost. We still needed to climb up the rocks in the background.

The hike is easy most of the way, but when you get to the top you have to climb up the rocks to reach the summit. The rocks were kind of sharp, but when we got to the top the view was well worth the scramble up. Since it was my third Palo Verde lookout point in two days, I could confidently say that it was the best view of the park, and being there at sunset made it even better. When Tessa, Lee, Stephanie and I arrived, Ethan and Matt were aleady there, and all six of us sat up on the top talking and enjoying the view.

After a while, Ethan and Matt left to go for a run, and Carmen and Ashur came up after also finding and leaving the watering hole. We sat there until the sun had set completely, and got to see all of the different beautiful views as day changed to night.

Tessa enjoying the view

Carmen looking sun-shiney

Hanging out at the lookout

Probably the best view of Palo Verde.

After the sun had gone down, we walked back to the station with our headlamps and had dinner. After a leisurely night of hanging out on our porch and listening to music, I went to bed relaxed and ready to do some work, since life at Palo Verde was about to get very busy. We had the next morning free to brainstorm ideas for our independent research projects, which we would be starting four days later. I didn't have any strong ideas yet, so it was basically another half of a rest day for me. After lunch we had some more lectures, one on gomphothere-disperesed fruits with Mau and two from the visiting researchers that we would be doing our faculty-led projects with in the next few days.

Las Cruces, pt. 5: Rest day

After fruit lab ended, our "weekend" finally began. Because we move around so much during the semester and are incorporating lectures, lab work, AND field work into everything we learn, our days are jam-packed with activities. To make the absolute most of our time, we don't actually have weekends off. Instead, we have one "rest day" every ten days or so. By the time Sunday night came along, we were all more than ready for a break from school, which keeps us busy virtually all day from 6:30 am to 9:00 pm.

We decided to go into San Vito, since we had only spent about 45 minutes in town earlier in the week to buy our rubber boots, and also since we hadn't really left the field station at all during the prior seven days. Luckily we were well-fed after fruit lab, because we stayed out until after 1 am (this is REALLY late considering our typical daily schedule!) dancing at a bar in town. 27/28 of the group went out (this required 5 taxis, which was pretty funny to organize) and everyone seemed to have a good time. I had a lot of fun just dancing and relaxing and not worrying about having to wake up early the next morning.

Me and two of my roommates at the bar... The dancing had not yet begun, which you can tell by the fact that we aren't super sweaty!

The next day we slept in until 9 am, which comparatively felt like a real luxury! It also meant that we missed breakfast, though. I spent the morning re-organizing my part of the room and getting a load of laundry together to be done. Around 10:30 I set out with three of my roommates on a dual mission: to collect bugs to identify, and to find a waterfall where you can supposedly swim. Neither parts of the mission went exactly as planned, but probably for the better. We found 4 or 5 insects to potentially ID, which was a fair amount but not as many as we had intended to collect. However, I liked the fact that we weren't too focused on the assignment, since we just got to enjoy our hike instead. After a while, we forgot that we were even carrying around our bug net!

A blue morpho butterfly that we ran into on our hike. We were unsuccessful catching it to ID, but we did get to watch it fly around for a bit. It's large (about 5" wings) and the other side of its wings are bright blue!

We also never found the waterfall, which turned out to not be our fault. The professor that we had asked for directions the day before told us the complete wrong way to go, so we hiked an entirely different trail than we should have. Again, this ended up being a good mistake because even though we didn't find the waterfall we found an excellent place to swim. We walked upstream a little bit from the river we crossed earlier in the week and found a pool about four feet deep and ten feet wide, so we actually got to go in the water. Other students who actually made it to the waterfall said that it was a nice looking waterfall but the "pool" at the bottom is actually only about 6" deep so you can't actually swim in it.

We brought bag lunches out to the river and ate by the pool.

Tessa holding her lunch container, saying "Hi, Mr. Cott!"

Stephanie in the pool we found.

 Overall we ended up having a nice hike, lunch, and swim. It started to rain while we were out so we headed back around 1:30. After we got back to Wilson House we all showered and changed, and then hung out until 4 pm, when we took the OTS jeep into San Vito. Since it was our day off, professors generously offered rides into town every two hours throughout the day. I took the last ride in with 9 other students so we could walk around the town a bit more and then go out for dinner. We wandered around the town for a bit, looking in shops and stopping at the grocery store to get things to bring back to the station, and then went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. Although the food at Las Cruces is excellent, it was still really nice to go out for something different for one night. We got three pizzas and three salads and shared them between the ten of us.

Group photo at the pizzeria.

The dinner was a nice opportunity to hang out with each other in a non-academic context and get to know each other a little better. Since we've been spending every waking moment together, I think we all occasionally forget that we've only known each other for a week and that there is still so much to learn about each other. We got back to Las Cruces around 7:30 and, at least in the Armadillo room, were all asleep by 10, exhausted from activities even on our day off. It was really really nice to have a break from classes, though, and get to whatever we wanted to, at our own pace. I definitely feel refreshed and ready to learn more!