Costa Rica Study Abroad: March 2011

After a restful but short night at the hotel we were back on the bus to see another type of forest. It was a transition forest between the wet forest and the dry forest. The weather was SO much less humid and the forest was beautiful! I had a very special lunch date in this forest. It wasn’t a pygmy it was an iguana! He really wanted my salad so I decided to share a little. It was about 4 feet long and I was pretty satisfied with him being the biggest reptile I would see that day. Little did I know we were headed to a river full of massive crocodiles! There were over a dozen in this little area under a bridge! Gram would have been scared but not as scared as mom would have been once we arrived at our destination! We got to Santa Rosa National park after dark. The first thing they told us before we got off the bus was “ watch out for fire ants, they will attack you and it will hurt. Try not to set your tent up on a nest of fire ants” Well since I had never seen fire ants before I was more than cautious about where I was going and where I was going to set up my tent. While setting up my tent I noticed about a dozen little sparkles in the leaves on the ground. Being curious I walked over to them with my flash light meanwhile noticing that these little sparkles were everywhere! As it turns out every single one of those pretty little sparkles were none other than the eyes of a tarantula. And by tarantula I mean at least two inches big AT LEAST!! They were everywhere! I had to fight one off with my tent pole because it wouldn’t get out of my way. Oh and also I was wearing flip-flops. I was really hoping that one of those spiders wouldn’t crawl all over my feet. I got my tent set up, put on my close-toed hiking shoes and headed off to hear the lecture for the night. I was informed that none of the species of spiders or scorpions were poisonous. We were also told that there were probably frogs in the toilets and not to freak out. Obviously, I head straight to the bathroom to check for frogs and sure enough there were 5 tree frogs under the lid of the toilet. They weren’t in the toilet bowl which was awesome because it meant that we didn’t have to pee on them. They were also all over in the showers. On the way back from the bathroom exploration I caught the biggest toad I have ever seen in my life! It took two hands to hold on to him!

The next day we were told that there weren’t any fire ants around and we have nothing to worry about. Our morning lecture was interrupted by some white faced capuchin monkeys. They were drinking from the water bucket right in our camp. They tried to steal our food and my clothes, but we were successful at chasing them off. The rest of the day consisted of hiking around and climbing trees. One of my friends fell out of a tree and it was the highlight of everyone’s day! We were also given some wine during class because it was made from the species of palm that we were learning about! We were unaware that they were giving us alcohol to try and butter us up for what was to come… a 16 mile hike! We started hiking at 8 am and it took us about two hours to hike 8 of the 16 miles and our destination was a really beautiful beach. We were all feeling pretty great and no one was tired. While we were at the beach I noticed a random sea turtle crawling up the sand. Well as it turns out that was a mommy turtle heading to lay her eggs! I got to watch as she laid about 100 eggs! After she had returned to the water we noticed that there were baby sea turtles all over! The walk back was agonizing! No one noticed that the walk to the beach was slightly downhill which meant the 8 miles back to camp was entirely up hill and I was dead from running around on the beach for 2 hours! We finally got back to camp after about 3 hours of hiking. Everyone went to sleep really early that night.

The following day was our last day on the trails in Santa Rosa. That afternoon we went on mammal search and my group saw absolutely no mammals. But, we saw a troop of army ants crossing our path. It looked like the entire ground was moving! Also, there were tons of critters running away trying to escape the army ants. It was really cool but it kinda made your skin crawl. That night we set up a bat net and learned about them. We also caught a really cool snake called a blunt head snake.

The next day we got on a bus and drove to a volcano to hike at. The hike was really amazing and at the end of the trail there was a really amazing waterfall that we swam it! It was so cold but the water was SUPER blue and really pretty. That evening our professors took us to a very pretty beach that was full of jelly fish. They provided drinks while we watched the sunset. That night we had dinner at a sea food place (gross) but more drinks were provided! When we finally got back to camp our entire group (including the professors) had a sing along. It was interesting to drink with my teachers but we had a great time! The following we took down camp and loaded up the bus. We drove to a cat zoo that had all of the native species of big cats in Costa Rica. The highlight of the cat zoo was when the jaguar peed on someone in our group. We took the bus up into the mountains on this really twisted road. I thought the bus was going to fall off the side of the cliff most of the drive up. The bus then stopped in the middle of the street and we had to hike up to where we are staying. The hike was only 1 km (about .6 of a mile) but it is entirely uphill! We finally reached the station and everyone picked their rooms. Since then we’ve been going to classes and on hikes! That’s all for the second part of the first field trip!