From Santa Rosa to Monteverde: Hikes, Skype, and Species - June 27th - July 2nd

June 27th

- Departed from Santa Rosa

Adios Santa Rosa! Hola Monteverde!

- Made a stop at the Cat Zoo to see jaguars, margay, parrots, toucans, monkeys, a gray fox, and a river otter.

- Stopped for lunch in a cattle ranching area - lots of people on horses or with saddles in the back of their trucks

- Arrived at Monteverde after taking the bus up a scary, winding, gravel road and then getting out to hike the remainder of it, while a truck took our packs up...everything is uphill here (I soon found out it was even more uphill than I thought).

- Showered after 5 days of not showering...the best shower of my life!
- Here's some pictures of my new home at the station

This is from several days after we moved in...though our stuff did kind of explode all over our room. Rooming with Alex from Indiana and Ellie from Wisconsin.

The station

The dining room

The classroom

The library

Where the laundry gets done and then hung in the green house - so thankful for clean, dry
less-smelly clothes finally!

The lab - pretty basic, huh?

The computer room

View from the balcony - check out those clouds! Hence why it's a "cloud forest." They were moving over the mountain pretty fast.

Spiral staircase

Front porch - aka shoe drying area

June 28th
- Our first full day in Monteverde
- Went into town for some souvenir shopping
- Ate lunch at the Tree House restaurant - a restaurant built around an old fig tree
- Went to Spanish class - written portion of placement exam was fine, but I really screwed up the oral portion! I think I'm in an intermediate class though so that's good.
- Monteverde allows for increased internet access - hence the skype in the title of the blog.

June 29th
- Hike a trail up the mountain to the TV towers - went through the forest near the field station and then up the clay road (aka the most intense hill I've ever seen in my life)

- I am sore. Walking around Monteverde, be it in town or in the forest, is a workout.
- At the top is one of the most amazing views ever! - The top is pretty much the continental divide of the region and you can see down both the Pacific and Atlantic slopes with the Golfo de Nicoya on the Pacific Side and Volcano Arenal on the Atlantic side.

- Hiked back down the mountain through some pretty muddy terrain and dense vegetation.
- Left the station for Spanish class around 2:00...That's right folks! I did all that hiking before 2:00pm!

- Stayed up entirely too late trying to update you all on my adventures here! Hope you appreciate it!

June 30th
- Lecture on climate change in the morning.
- Independent research project brainstorming and workshop - I'm thinking about doing something with water quality testing? We do the project when we're living with our homestays and while I think it would be really fun to live on a farm, most are a two hour walk from the research station...and that means about two hours away from free internet...
- Went to Spanish class that afternoon.
- Had a practice lab exam after dinner...time for more studying!

July 1st
- Humans in the Tropics Day! - lecture and then we went to two organic, fair trade coffee farms. One was part of a local co-op and the other had left the co-op fairly recently. We walked around one of the coffee farms. It was very beautiful and very different from what I would typically call a "farm." It still had many other trees around besides coffee tress - such as mango and lemon trees, palms, and some other fairly large ones. Although these coffee farms were very different from the surrounding forests, it seems like they were still very biologically diverse. The growers really seemed to care about what they were doing and how they could do it more sustainable.

Coffee growers

Coffee beans

Water apple tree - fruit and flower

This is Pablo - our professor who acts like he's 5 years old

I ate a banana...can you believe it?

The co-op

Mom - get dad to build you one of these for in the yard!

- When we stopped on top of a hill on the way to a coffee farm, you could see a huge waterfall way off in the distance. Very cool, but hard to get a good picture of.
- Studied for the upcoming lab exam.

July 2nd
- Two biology lectures in the morning - one about soils and seasonality in the tropics and the other about species interaction - with an hour nap in the middle!
- Went to Spanish class in the afternoon and had my first Spanish quiz. I don't think I've mentioned this yet... We leave for Spanish by foot around 2:00pm to get there before 2:30. Spanish goes until 6:00pm and then we take a van back to the station. It's always a competition to get on the first van back to the station since dinner is served at 6:00.
- Study, study, study!