Las Alturas!

Saturday morning we set out for a weekend excursion to Las Alturas. Las Alturas is a large private farm owned by an American businessman who apparently is interested in conservation and hobby farming. He bought the land from a logging company, which had bought it from a French national who had originally received the land from the Costa Rican government in the early 1900s. When the logging company was in control, they deforested about 1/3 of the property, but upon the most recent purchase of the land, logging stopped entirely. The current owner preserves the remaining 2/3 of primary forest on the northern part of the 10,000-hectare parcel. We set out early Saturday for a long drive, only the first 30 minutes of which was on paved roads.

Carlos, our wonderful driver, while driving through San Vito.

In transit.

Carlos in the rear-view mirror while we stopped to look at a forest edge on the way to Las Alturas.

Daniel, our TA, during the pit stop.

We made it! Yes, their logo really is a yin yang sun rising over green mountains.

When we finally arrived at the station, Zak, the director, realized that he had forgotten one of the keys! Most of us settled into our rooms and made the beds, but twelve people were locked out until someone from Las Cruces finished the journey out to bring the missing key. The station was rustic, with no hot water and no electricity, but everyone was excited to try something new after being spoiled at Las Cruces for so long.

The biological station, where we stayed.

We didn't have anything planned until after lunchtime, so a bunch of us played ultimate frisbee or soccer in our free time. Frisbee was fun, but the yard was uneven, and surrounded by barbed wire to keep out the cattle. This made chasing long passes extra exciting! No one got hurt, which was excellent. Then we ate lunch and got ready to go into the town.

Daniel and Ethan playing soccer.

Compas munchin' on lunch.

We were all excited to be there, except apparently Stephanie.

Cattle grazing behind the station.

When we got into town, we got to learn about how Las Alturas functions. The owner

 hires 49 families to work and live on the farm. They grow enough vegetables, chicken, and cattle to be relatively self-sufficient, and, since the owner is already wealthy, don't even sell their products. They also have a tree farm, where they collect seeds of native species from the primary forest, cultivate them, and then replant parts of the farm that they are attempting to reforest.

The elementary school and a soccer field in the community.

Lots of the houses are painted bright colors!

The river running through the community, which powers the saw mill.

This is the only store in town.

A chicken coop near the tree farm.

Coffee beans drying.

Achote, a red spice that can also be used as a pigment! We tried it in fruit lab.

The tree farmer amongst the seedlings he grew. He's been doing this for over 20 years.

Learning about tree growing from the farmer.

Another resident of Las Alturas, watching us get our lecture at the farm.

Daniel and Carlos playing with one of the many dogs of Las Alturas.

Baby trees!

An ox-powered mill where they extract the juice from sugarcane.

New friends peeking out of their houses.

ADORABLE!

Some of the group, with mountains in the background.

Cine las Alturas, the town movie theater, which plays one film a week.

The town even has a small jail to throw people in for drunkenness.

More colorful houses.

Farm equipment

Little kids playing soccer near the general store

Ashur and Tom admiring the owner's pond.

Tessa, Steph, Ashley, and Carolyn sitting outside of the owner's house.

Manny looking fly in our professor Mau's head scarf.

A bird of paradise flower.

Random caterpillar someone found on a leaf.

Zak, the director of Las Cruces, telling us about the vegetable farm.

Where they grow all of the vegetables for 49 families.

A tiny choyote, which we tried in fruit lab and is one of Chesca's favorite foods.

The vegetable farm, with fruit trees and nitrogen-fixing clover interplanted.

A banana tree.

A bunch of bananas, as seen from the bottom.

Leaving the veggie farm.

Rukhshana in the car on the way back to the station.

The sunset, as seen from my bunk bed in the station.

After an awesome day in the town, we headed back to the station for dinner and a lecture. At 8 pm we had a bonfire, singing songs and telling stories for a few hours until we all got tired. The next morning we woke up early and started a hike at 7:30 am. Arguably the coolest thing about Las Alturas is that it shares a border with La Amistad International Biosphere Reserve, which is 500,000 hectares of completely protected primary forest. We hiked a 2.5 km trail into the forest and gained 600 m in elevation, making it our most intense hike yet. As we hiked into the undisturbed forest, we could hear monkeys calling for a good portion of the hike, and about an hour and a half in we actually saw some! It was really awesome. Unfortunately no one got pictures because they were so high up in the canopy and moving so quickly. 

As we moved up in elevation, we also got to see a cool change in the plant life. We moved from a normal rainforest into a bamboo forest, and, at the highest elevations, an "elfin" forest where all of the trees are stunted. My camera was almost dead and I wanted to save battery for when we got to the top, so I didn't get too many pictures from the hike, but I can assure you that it was really cool. We also met a German researcher studying jaguars there, and he came on the hike with us so I got to know him a little bit throughout the morning, which was cool.

Passing through the bamboo forest was awesome.

The view from the top. It was definitely worth it.

Not the greatest picture, but proof that I made it!

After we hiked back to the station, we showered, had lunch, and cleaned up the station so that we could  head back to Las Cruces. Most people were on a bus that we had rented for the weekend trip, but I was in the OTS truck with five other people. Daniel was with us instead of the professors, so he let us stop at a field of sugarcane and cut some down for us to snack on with our machete.  

Nate holding some sugarcane.

When we finally got back to Las Cruces, everyone was reluctant to go back to normal classes after having our first experience at a more isolated site. It was an awesome trip, though, and definitely got everyone looking forward to Cuerici, our next destination, since we only had a few more days left at Las Cruces.

Las Cruces, pt. 7: Forest fragment fun

Thursday morning (2/2) we started the day early and drove out as a group to a pasture about 20 minutes from Las Cruces. As in many parts of Costa Rica, the land here had been cleared of trees to graze cattle; however, areas with steep slopes or otherwise difficult features were left untouched because they're more trouble than they're worth to clear. This leaves a bunch of forest fragments behind, which we went to see. 

Susan, our professor (center, back row), teaching us about fragmentation.

 While it's good that some areas of forest are left behind when land is being clear-cut, fragmentation still has lots of negative effects on forest ecosystems. By creating lots of extensive edges that would not exist otherwise, fragmentation alters microclimate, species composition, and species interactions in forests. For example, an "island" of fragmented forest can become sunnier, warmer, drier, and breezier up to 10 m in from the edge on all sides. As a result, animals and plants that rely on shade or canopy cover for food or to avoid predation have even more of a reduced habitat than they already did due to the initial fragmentation. Furthermore, the altered microclimate can be favorable for species of plants and animals (as well as diseases) that normally wouldn't be a part of the forest ecosystem. These invasives can outcompete the existing flora and fauna and exacerbate their local decline. Fragmentation also tends to decrease gene flow between previously contiguous forest patches, generally decreasing the fitness of isolated populations. Basically, fragmentation is not good!

Classmates walking through the pasture after visiting a fragment of secondary forest.

The site of our field trip. You can see how the clear-cut land borders up against a fragment of primary forest (left).

After getting to explore the pasture and remaining forest patches and experience the effects of fragmentation firsthand, we sat down and did another field writing exercise, this time about how fragmentation would effect a species of our choice throughout its life cycle, including growth, food acquisition, predation risks, and reproduction. When we finished our writing, we got ready to head back to Las Cruces.

By the end of the exercise, the fog had begun to creep in! It looked pretty cool blowing around in the valleys.

While we'd taken two OTS trucks out to the pasture, one had just dropped us off and returned to the station. This meant we only had one car on the way back, which was definitely not big enough to fit all 28 students, plus our two professors, TA, and driver. We planned to do shifts, driving some people back each time, dropping them off at Las Cruces, and then returning to pick up more. Because it was a beautiful day, I decided to walk most of the way, and was rewarded with amazing views.

Enjoying the scenery while headed back towards Las Cruces.

After lunch, we had a lecture on forest classification, and learned to identify different forest ecosystems using the Haldridge Life Zone system, which based mainly on latitude, altitude, and precipitation. It finally made sense why our professors kept referring to the forest as a "Tropical Premontane Wet Forest" instead of just a rainforest! Haha.

A chart of the Haldridge life zones. (Click to enlarge.)

Friday was a relatively average day, with a review of statistics in the morning, a tutorial on how to use JMP in the afternoon, and a lecture about beetles and flies in the evening. Since I took statistics at Reed already, am totally comfortable using JMP, and am not particularly into studying insects, I was a bit nonplussed with the combination of three uninteresting things into one day. Plus, we had essentially no physical activity, either, so after our statistics workshop Tessa and I decided to be motivated and go for a run, which turned out to be fun and also (unsurprisingly) very beautiful. So far I've been hard pressed to find a place in Costa Rica that I don't think is beautiful. Haha. Friday may not have been the best day, but we ended it by packing for an overnight trip to a new field station!

Las Cruces, pt. 6: Rio Java/Cafe Mocha

After our first rest day, we were right back into the swing of things, and were busy again with lots of schoolwork. We spent Tuesday morning out in the field with our professor Susan, learning how to identify nineteen plant families. Later that day, we had a lecture from our other professor, Erika, on her research. She studies the mating system of Heliconius butterflies, which is unique because the male butterflies compete so fiercely for mates that they sit on the pupae of developing females so that they can mate as soon as (or sometimes even before) the female emerges as an adult. She told us about several interesting experiments that she's done, which are particularly cool because they seem to demonstrate opposite selection on two traits, body length and wing size, that are correlated with each other, so the selection effectively cancels itself out (although this family of butterflies also seems to have evolved a different body size ratio than other closely related families as a result). 

On Wednesday, we started the day with another hike out on the Rio Java trail, where we went for our first observations, and then accidentally when trying to find the waterfall on our rest day. We hiked out farther than before this time and dispersed ourselves along the trail to do another observational exercise. Instead of just soaking in the incredible surroundings, this time we were assigned to describe as many plants as we could in our field notebooks. We had about 30 minutes, which feels surprisingly short when you are trying to notice and record as many details as you can about a plant you've never seen (or at least paid such close attention to) before.

One of the plants I tried to describe had weird bumps on the leaves, which I think were caused by some sort of insect.

 After finishing up our observations, we began to head back to the station. I was near the back because Tessa and I were trying to practice identifying the plant families we'd learned the day before. With help from our TA, Daniel, we started to get the hang of recognizing the key traits of each family.

A large strangler fig (family Moraceae; above) and some cool vines (below) on the trail.

By hanging towards the back of the group and taking our time, we also got to see some cool and unexpected wildlife. First we saw a tarantula, which we thought was dead because it wasn't moving at all. After we spent a few minutes poking at it, we realized that it was actually alive after all! Then it decided to pose so we could all take pictures.

The tarantula was surprisingly cooperative!

Shortly after encountering the tarantula, we passed a huge strangler fig (similar to the one in the photo above). On the hike in I had noticed that there was an unusual and unpleasant smell near the tree, but I wasn't sure why. Our TA came in handy again and told us that it was the smell of... bat feces! Strangler figs start out their life cycle as vines that climb up the trunks of existing trees, eventually reaching the canopy and putting out leaves. With time the vines can outcompete the host tree for light and nutrients, causing it to die. When the host tree rots, the strangler fig is left like a hollow shell and continues to live independently. The strangler fig we saw was almost entirely hollow, and there were dozens of bats living inside! We pulled out a flashlight, stuck our heads into the tree, and looked up, only to see lots of bats hanging upside-down above our heads. After a few minutes of examination the bats started to wake up and move around, so we left. Unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture because it was too dark. Our last interesting sighting of the day was a lizard, which was pretty well camouflaged but I managed to get a decent picture of anyway!

That afternoon we had a lecture on Costa Rican geology, and how topography dictates the climate and weather patterns that allow for such a diversity of ecosystems in the country. Later we watched a short documentary about coffee production in Central and South America, which had economic and anthropological themes in addition to ecological information. Point of story: most of the time, farmers get screwed because of market fluctuations and the time delay before they can alter their crops in response to changing prices, and buying fair trade coffee is really the only way you can assure that the money you're spending is reaching the hands of the people who deserve it. While the concepts weren't necessarily new, it was interesting to get a more detailed look into the processes of coffee cultivation, processing, and sale.

Our last activity of the day was a lecture about forest fragments, to prepare for a field trip on Thursday morning!

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!

Las Cruces, pt. 4: Bugs, flowers, and FRUIT!

Since Friday, most of our classes have been about taxonomy. Saturday morning we had a class on insect taxonomy in which we learned how to identify characteristics of insects that will help us figure out which insects are which. We also went through a review of lots of orders of insects and discussed their basic features. After the lecture, we had a brief field exercise that basically consisted of us pairing up and wandering the gardens armed with nets and plastic bags, looking for insects. After about an hour of bug-hunting we went back to lab, examined our findings, and tried to identify them using what we had learned earlier in the day. Luckily we had packets with descriptions of each order in them, because it was very difficult to recall all of the extensive information we were presented with off the top of our heads. Some cool insects I have seen so far at Las Cruces

A spider I saw hanging out on a bromeliad in the garden at night.

A beetle that was living in Wilson House for a few days

A caterpillar that we used in our insect ID lab, as seen through the microscope.

Manny, a classmate, holding up a cool insect that we found while putting on boots before a class one afternoon.

During the insect lab, we also received our first real assignment of the semester: we have to find and identify 10 insects to the family level. Insect identification is hard enough to do to the order (since I didn't really know anything about them before this course), and identifying them to the family is even more challenging. Once we think we have identified them correctly, we have to show the insect to our instructor, Mau, and have him check it. We have to repeat this assignment three times throughout the semester, once at each OTS station we stay at (Las Cruces, La Selva, and Palo Verde). For the first two, we have unlimited attempts to correctly identify 10; i.e., even if you get twelve wrong in a row, you can keep trying until you get a total of 10 right. However, at the last station, we only have a total of 10 tries to get them right, and will be marked down if our identifications are incorrect. It takes at least an hour to identify each insect, so far I have only done one, and we are only at Las Cruces for about another week. That means that I have a minimum of 9 hours in lab in addition to my normal classes before I leave!

Saturday afternoon we had a class specifically about Lepidoptera, the order of insects in which butterflies and moths are classified. Erika, one of our professors, studies Heliconius butterfly mating, so she taught us a lot of cool things about different families of butterflies. After dinner we had a class reviewing the basics of the scientific method and experimental design, since not everyone in the program is a science major. We also got our second assignment of the semester, which is about scientific ethics. There are four topics of discussion that students will give presentations and lead discussions about throughout the semester. My topic is about data manipulation in science, and my group won't be presenting for a few weeks so we haven't started working on it yet.

In our free time before dinner, I unexpectedly ended up playing soccer with some of my classmates. It had rained (hard) the day before, so the field was muddy, which eventually meant that I was muddy. Although I don't normally play soccer, I actually had a lot of fun, and my team won!

After dinner on Saturday we had a lecture about coffee in Costa Rica, since it is such an important crop here. I thought it was very interested because the agricultural, social, economic and political aspects of its cultivation and sale are so tightly intertwined. And, of course, since it's a widely-grown crop, and also a processed product that produces waste, we talked about it from an environmental perspective as well.

Sunday morning we began the day with a talk by Zak, the director of Las Cruces, about tropical restoration ecology in general and the restoration projects here at Las Cruces specifically. We then hiked out to the edge of Las Cruces to Melissa's Meadow, a site that is currently undergoing restoration since, as its name implies, it used to be pastureland before the land was purchased and added to Las Cruces. They are letting parts of it reforest naturally, and also using sections of it to do studies comparing different restoration strategies to see which are most effective.

A frog we ran into on our way out to Melissa's Meadow.

The class on the border of the primary forest (left, dark and shady) and the former pastureland which is now secondary forest (right, more sunny because there are fewer old trees).

All the way out at one of the research sites, where they are comparing methods of restoration. This part was less advanced than other conditions, which you can tell since there are lots of grasses and few trees. A more restored patch is on the right, which is why there are some overhanging branches.

After our trip out in the field we had a lecture about floral morphology. We learned a bunch of vocabulary about flower anatomy, and then had a lab in which we dissected plants and identified their parts.

A cross-section of a flower ovary, as seen through the microscope.

A longitudinal section of a flower (Columnea spp.)

A Passiflora bloom. It was almost too pretty to cut apart... but we did it anyway.

An orchid. This one was actually too pretty to cut apart, so I kept it. Haha.

Another longitudinal section of a flower with a long tube leading down to the nectar. Flowers like this need pollinators like moths or butterflies with long probosces to reach all the way down there.

Another one that was too pretty to cut up!

The aftermath of the floral morphology lab

Later that day we had another plant morphology lecture, but this time about fruit. Like the other taxonomy and morphology lectures, it was chock full of information and difficult to absorb everything at once. However, the fruit lecture was extra fun because instead of having a dissection lab, like we did for flowers, or an ID lab, like we did for insects, we had an only semi-educational but incredibly delicious tasting lab for fruit. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera to that event, but our professors cleared off the tables in lab and arranged them in a rectangle with plates and plates of different kinds of fruit. We made our way around the table stopping at each station to try the fruit, and describe the taste, color, smell, and texture. There were lots of awesome fruits that I had never tried before (guanabana, chayote, tamarind, cas, starfruit, sweet lemon, and others), two that I didn't like (papaya and noni, a disgusting fruit that smells and tastes like vomit, and is jelly-like in texture... only one person in the entire group could even swallow it!), and of course a bunch of familiar favorites (kiwi, pineapple, mango, coconut, sugarcane, lots of berries...). The "lab" was basically a dessert party, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Plus, Monday was our first day off, so it was a really nice way to begin our "weekend."

The leftovers from fruit lab, which we left out for the birds.

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!

Las Cruces, pt. 2: A day in the life

I realize that I haven't posted any pictures of where we're living yet, so here they are if you're curious:

The Wilson House, where all 28 of us are living. The house is on the grounds of the Botanical Gardens, so every time we walk to or from the house we have no choice but to take the meandering paths through rows of exotic plants. Rough, I know.

This is our living room, where we hang out when we have little bits of free time throughout the day, and work on our homework or hang out in the evenings. You can't really tell, but our view out the large windows on the left is of lots and lots of palm trees.

All the bedrooms are named after native flora and fauna; I am a proud resident of the armadillo room!

Inside the armadillo room. My bed is the bottom bunk on the left. (Yes, I make my bed every day. Haha)

We got lucky and got a room with shelves to store all of our stuff. Six girls in one room = lots and lots of belongings everywhere.

Looking into the garden from the front porch, where we lace up our boots (they're generally too muddy to bring them into the house at the end of the day). The lens was foggy because it had just rained!

A typical lunch or dinner at Las Cruces: salad, rice and beans, a protein, and mixed vegetables. Oh, and fresh-made juice! It's always delicious, especially after lots of hiking.