and some things just dont change.

Today is my last day left at La Selva (well, I will be returning to collect my grear in 3 weeks but it is essentially my last day). After all the time that I have spent here, it seems fitting to end with an email that i sent out after my first 2 weeks of prelim sampling out in the swamps and forest:


"...the entire forest in la selva has a grid system: marked posts every 50m along lines at 100m intervals in axis that is 32 degrees off magnetic north. you might (incorrectly) assume that its practically impossible to get lost. until factoring in tree falls, tree falls on posts, sunken posts, posts that have mysteriously disappeared, the INCREDIBLY dense vegetation. I can stand within 5 meters of a 1.5m high post covered in fluorescent orange tape and NOT find it. I have cleverly desinged my research with 40 0.5 ha plots that have been randomly selected by grid location across the different soils in La Selva. in theory, all i have to do to find my sites is find the grid markers that coincide with trails running through la selva, from these markers walk 32 degrees for a certain number of posts, then 122 degrees for another certian number of posts, and BAM! there i am. right at my desired marker. I have a map, i have a compass, how hard can it be? riiiiight....

so, its 7:30 in the morning and my assistant Mauricio and i are standing on Sendero Holdridge-700 next to the 1300 line marker. we're ready to start our morning of sampling in La Selva's largest swamp, 'el swampo.' i am standing behind the steel marker siting where the next marker SHOULD be out in the swamp (we have 3 to go til we hit our plot). as soon as i point the direction to mau, he is off like a gun into the forest, scrambling over trees, through palms. and i realize: "hmmm.... thats strange, when i move away from the steel post, the direction of magnetic north changes by 10 degrees... hmmm... damn." and mauricio is gone. off in the wrong direction. we're off to a FANTASTIC start. after my miss-directing and a few more miss-communications (mau doesnt think that i am capable of finding the markers even with compass, and also thinks he doesnt really need a compass) we find our site. we now need to set up 2 sides of the plot with string. just a 50 by 100m corner, in straight lines between markers. it takes us 2 hours. dont even ask... but navigational challenges aside, it was a fun 'morning' of sampling in the swamp (morning= over 7 hours). i definitely got to see part of the forest most people dont. and it was fun scambling around and sliding through mud. it was also a learning experience for both mau and i. he learned i CAN navigate in the forest without getting too lost, i dont mind mud, and i have an irrational fear that spiders are going to launch into my hair and down my shirt. i learned that he CAN walk for 50 m in a straight line without a compass, knows a crazy amount of inforamtion on plants and birds, and the distance from the ground to his belly button is exactly one meter. exactly.

and upon returning to the lab, my pants were muddy up past my thighs and i somehow got mud INSIDE my boots. hmmmmm. so first thing i did after emptying out my boots was shower and laundry. apparently i decided to wash my compass as well. and put it through the drier. it still works though, so that is good. you can put a compass through the wash, right? and i must have had fun because i have spiny palm stratches, tons of bruises--i thought they were mud in my dimly lit shower "damn mud is awful hard to wash off..and it hurts too...hmmm..."-- AND some bug got into my pants and shirt and bit me. i have a sneaking suspicion its the chiggers. i'll be spending the next 2 weeks trying not to inappropriately scratch myself. but i really really did have fun. besides, you never REALLY have fun unless you end up hurt (at least a little).
besos,
erin"



surprisingly, after 7 months things havent changed much. i did manage to do almost a whole 60 sites in oldgrowth forest. and have been down just about every gridline in la selva. have IDed all the cylanth species in La Selva. am about 80% on the aroids. but i still occasionally get lost. i still get mud inside my boots, and still have no idea how. mauricio still likes to throw sticks at the snakes. especially the very large and very venemous ones. and mauricio still takes care of me in the forest, or tries to because i wont let anyone take care of me.

its been quite an experience. i am wondering how my next trip down in 3 1/2 months will compare. i'm returning to do 2 additional studies to round out my dataset. we'll be adding surveys in secondary forest and a comparison of growth forms across environmental gradients. it is great having my professor back down because his enthusiasm is quite infectious. we have a huge amount of data to analyze before then, but it ought to be really fun to look at.

OK, i am off to enjoy my last rainy hour at la selva.

besitos amores

Sunday Breakfasts

Now that i'm wrapping things up at La Selva, its time for some last pics. Phil arrived today to see what 7 months has amounted to. i'd like to come back; i want to get one last chance to research and live in costa rica and have some additional data to collect before moving on to my next adventure, whatever that may be. its been an amazing experience, one that i wont soon forget.

Sunday Breakfasts at Alex's:

snake surgery

Dennis is a phd student here working with terciopelos. he surgically implants radio transmitters into adults which he then releases back into the field to track their movements day and night. here are pictures from the last implantation. the snake was a little slow coming back too (it was under anethesia, dont worry). dennis has to actually give them mouth to mouth to bring them back out from the anethesia. its more mouth to straw to mouth, but still too close to the poisonous end of the snake, if you ask my opinion. and then once they have sufficiently recovered they are released back into the field. so dennis can carefreely crash after them (the transmitter gives him about a 2 meter acuracy radius). hmmm. but what about the terciopelos that ARENT tagged you might ask. yeah, i ask that too. i've come across 3 of them in the field in the past 2 weeks. thats pretty frequent for snakes that arent active during the day. and mauricio threw sticks at the first 2 to piss them off. he claims he was trying to make them leave. i know he just wanted to throw things at them. but i laid my foot down on the last snake. there was no stick throwing, at least none that i saw

some of my la selva buddies

here are some pictures of the last round of long-term la selva researchers. they were a great group of people and a constant source of good company and amusement. for a few months La Selva felt more like summer camp than a research station. Thanks for the good times, everyone. I hope our paths will cross again.

Martina and Kelly
me with Andrew and Susan


Matt, Kelly and Martina

Guanacaste

During the end of August a few of us researchers took off to Guanacaste on the pacific coast to enjoy a little vacation. we had an awesome 3 days on the beach, staying right on the water at Playa del Coco. had amazing food: sushi, cajun. Went snorkeling at Playa Hermosa, where we saw string rays, parrot fish, wrases, puffer fish, dog fish, while swimming through clear, warm water. early afternoon a storm came up and we hit the water to wait it out. torrents of rain, lightning and thunder, it was fantastic. The next day we headed over to Bahia Ocotal for more snorkeling and lounging on the black sand beach. that night we went skinny dipping in the bay after dinner. we watched the moon rise, and as we swam around tiny dinos were bioluminesce-ing, making it look like there were dozens of miniature stars in the water. the next morning we spent out at playa del coco before having to bus back to san jose. there was a waterfall coming down off the cliffs near the beach that you could stand under. we snorkeled and bummed around all morning. that night we made it back to san jose for one last good dinner before returning to La Selva.

Playa del Coco

Playa Hermosa

Playa Ocotal











skinny dipping?
Nuestra dia final en playa del coco:

Arenal

i'm not exactly the hugest fan of large livestock. alright, fine. i may have a totally ungrounded and irrational fear of cows. they arent cute. they arent nice. i dont want to pet them. they are shifty-eyed and unpredictable. you never know what they could do next. one minute it could be happily chewing grass, they next you could be mauled. i've heard of it, cow maulings. when i was in high school our cross country course meandered through these rolling hills where cattle were always grazing. and, OK, so no one got mauled. or even chased. but I was convinced the cows were going to chase me. this paranoia also extends to horses to a lesser degree. i never shared that little girl dream of having my own horse or pony to pet and ride and feed apples and sugar cubes to. shifty-eyed horses. they're almost as bad as cows. its just like how i never wanted to participate in those ballet classes. I was always THAT girl in the class, sitting in the corner because the instructor didnt know what else to do with me. the instructor was also shifty-eyed. and you can never trust ballerinas. Ballerina maulings... you never know when you're going to have 40 pounds of toeshoes and bony eight year old elbows coming at you.

when i was 10 i was forced to participate in a girlscout horse camp over a long weekend. where we had to groom the horses, feed the horses, muck the stalls, sleep next to the barn, ride horses. and learn to vault. with 13 horse crazed, hair braiding, nail painting girls. my own private 10 year old hell. girlscouts are viscous, far worse than ballerinas. and all i got out of it was a lame badge with a horse on it, to supposedly sew on my shash. hmmm. i seem to have gotten off on a tangent... right. horses.

so when my friend Heather, that i met in OZ (JCU!), visited with her friend April (they both happen to be horse people) it was decided that we were going to ride horses at Arenal. this was met with a small amount of apprehension on my part. i dont believe i'd ridden a horse since the horse-camp days. and dont know the first thing about even getting on a horse. nonetheless, horseback riding we went. and it wasn't nearly as bad as i had anticipated, it was actually quite fun. we had 2 tico guides who saddled us up then took us off to a small zipline though a fragment of forest near their finca property. (one of the guides kept calling me muneca meaning either 'wrist' or 'doll' in spanish). while we were zipplining, however, a few of the horses decided to wander off, so afterward the guides chased them down and brought them back, and we went on about an hour ride through some forest and past fincas. through some streams. at one point one of the guides got off to open a barbed wire fence and his horse took off. so he hopped on my slow, fat pony with me to try and catch up to his horse. but my fat little pony refused to see any urgency in the situation and Heather eventually rounded up the other horse. my pony did eventually get up to cantering speed (much preferred to the trotting, during which i though i was going to fall off).

It was a great trip in Arenal, despite my being sick from something i caught in Nicaragua, then gave to Jennifer, who was also with us at Arenal. We went on a small hike through Arenal Park. Then relaxed at Bali Hotsprings with tropical drinks. We even had the great luck of seeing the volcano erupting our last night there. It was still drizzling that evening after dusk, but the clouds lifted and we could clearly see the volcano. so we piled into a car and headed off to the other side where you could heard the eruptions and see the lava oozing down the volcano. we stood there in the drizzle for a good hour, just watching. i had never seen an erupting volcano before. beautiful. the clouds eventually drifted back, hiding the volcano. but we could still hear the eruptions.

Nicaragua (segundo installment): tree pigs and death moths

The next morning we headed out to climb to the sumit of Volcan Madera, the older inactive and considerably smaller volcano on Isla Ometepe. We started the hike weaving through a network of dirt roads leading through local maiz y arroz fields. We could see the base of Volcan Maderas, the majority of the mountain was shrouded in clouds. From a little higher up, we got a great view of Volcan Concepcion.

Jennifer had just gotten back from a Sierra backpacking trip and is a big stud. Only, I forgot that it takes a while to adjust to hiking in hot, humid weather. in the tropics. After the first hour of me walking fast and talking a mile a minute about plants, she was ready to kill me. Once we started up the mountain, it cooled down considerably, though. Now all she had to worry about was the steep muddy trail. Sorry Jennifer!

Our muddy hike turned into scrambling over roots and tree trunks, slipping through mud and sinking into the occasional hole filled with muddy water as we got closer to the summit. Then we were litterally climbing up the trail, using tree roots and branches to pull ourselves up. Then we were attempting to hop from root to root, branch to branch after our guide, because the trail was such a tangled mess it was easier to careen from perch to perch a meter or so above the actual trail, rather than try to manouver through the trees.

When we reached the summit, it was cold and misty/rainy: cloud forest weather. the trees were stunted from strong winds. lots of bromelidads. everything obscured by mist. beautiful. from the summit, we dropped down into the crater lake that was an additional hour from the cima. this involved scambling down a gravely slope with minimal vegetation to catch ourselves on when we started to slide. although, i seem to be the only one who had much trouble. at one point, our guide almost had to catch me when i started sliding down. we had lunch at the lake, but it was too chilly to swim and thunder and lightning were threatening, time to try to make it back up and off the summit before the lightning. the rain started up in earnest on our hike back, but the lightning held off. by the time we made it back down to the base of the volcano, jennifer and i were covered in mud. our guide, however, was surprisingly clean. he spent his time walking behind us, watching and laughing as first i, then jen, then i again slipped an fell in the mud.

we got back to the hostel almost 10 hours later, with just enough time to jump in the kayak and paddle around a few little islands at dusk. we went around monkey island, which surprisingly enough had monkeys. who would have thought? we stayed out of poop throwing range, though. jennifer had a run-in with a death moth and heard a few tree pigs. (so i'm not quite as good with my fauna identification and like to lie). then we watched the sun set from the dock with cold beers and hot food. the sunset was amazing, rivaling those in arizona during monsoon season. it was a perfect end to our day. a perfect end to our stay in ometepe.