Costa Rica International Research Experience 2018

The travels home were very beautiful. I was happy to see the big waters. As the moon becomes fuller they say this is a special time for our first foods. The ocean tides are high. The mid year is here. The sun, the moon, and the stars are our witnesses. Even though the people of this world are out of control, the one thing we have control over is ourselves. We may not all get along and we all come from different parts of this world. It is always mindful to be respectful of indigenous people when you walk upon their land. The creator gave us all our own ecosystems to live within and be a part of... humbled to meet the Ngable Bugle, we found many similar teachings. My prayer for today is that we as indigenous people find the time to slow down and continue to observe, learn, and teach. It is important how we live our every day lives, that we do not become tunnel visionsed with society and the economical train wreck that society is herding us into. Until we meet again... reduce, conserve, a

Costa Rica... where I am a Chica. Where the sun rises and sets, Central America, monkeys, sloths, and iguanas,  where the Rainforest is threatened, where rice and beans are married, bromieliads, pineapples, and tangerlimes, Nissian Frontiers, and big black vultures. San Vito. Mot Mots, Makaws, and hummingbirds. Where the tucannon sits on the tree tops calling out, where palm oil is made, where banana trees thrive, where we try to speak Spanish, the place where coffee beans grow, and chocolate is sacred. Las Cruses Biological Station. Rio Java, 7 miles hikes, lunches to go. 14 mile hike just to find the head waters. Species diversity, and species richness is high everywhere, adventures around every corner, malissa trail, water trail, gamboa trail, ridge trail was the hardest, crazy drivers, and beautiful people, where the ocean reaches out and grabs the coconuts from the trees, plants that race to the top to bless themselves with the sun. Mosquito bites and itching cream. Soccer field

Today was another day of completing our poster. We have done a lot work to get our information on our poster, finalize what we have and also get a glimpse of how it will look on the big screen. It was so relieving to get it all finished. There was a night hike. Kim and I was a little late for. We went trekking off into the forest looking for the groups. We seen an owl fly in front of us and land at eye level. We both were a little startled, an owl in our culture brings a message... soon after that we seen the group and their lights. We hide and scared them a bit, making noises. The Ngobli guode Celistino seen kim and tried to scare us back. We all had a good laugh. Tomorrow is presentations! So we went back to get some rest. To be continued...

This morning we hiked on the only trail we hadn't hiked on, "The Jungle trail". Every day we see new plant species and animal species. The birds and animals we usually only get a glimpse and have to ask for identification from the Ngobla people. The animals here are amazing. They do have deer here, but not on the station. Today was data analysis, we started our poster. Some good progress today. To be continued....

Today is a day of rest. We did get to go to town and explore. Most of the stores in town was closed, but we made the best of it. A taste of San Vito on foot. 😁

Today we successfully drove to town and located a site close to the mouth of the river. We used google maps to get as close as we could to the mouth. It was very interesting driving a little car with no power on gravel road. There was a few times we thought we would have to get out and push. We got to the end of the road and realized it ended on a farm. We almost didn't go any further. We did find the land owner and he pointed us in the direction of a trail that lead to the river. I led the way down the trail. It was obvious that cattle used the trail. About half way down, we ran into mud. I almost lost my boots. I sunk all the way to the top of rubber boots. I luckily pulled myself out. We reached the river and it was obviously very different than any other site. The water was faster, wider, and very much more cloudy. I did notice that the sand and pebbles where only hard rocks, unlike in the upper reach where we found abundant clay rocks that were easily crumbled. We did observe

Today we literally walked all the way to town. We seen so many beautiful plants and trees. We didn't see any animals. The sites we worked on were at the edge of the forest boundary by the road into town. We walked up the road, popped out in town by the hospital and a little store. It was all up hill. We walked through a residential area where the locals had a crazy look on their faces as we walked by. We walked over 7 miles and caught the bus back to the station. On the bus we met the most cutest little girls who really tried to communicate with us. They sang us a song. Really made me miss my babygirls. We came back and needless to say, we needed to shower. Temperatures increased in lower elevations and the humidity is high every day in the rainforest. Dinner gets better ever night. To be continued...

Today we set out to the field right away to collect data in the mid reach area of the Java River. We had one of the Ngobli woman with us. Her name is Victoria. I was glad we brought her. She is very knowledgeable on the plant species. She should us some medicinal plants as well as edible plants. We located our sites of interest and collected our data. We definitely are much faster. We looped back around on the water trail and checked out a beautiful waterfall. We had a fun day. 

Today we got up in the morning to prepare for a very long bus drive. Up at 5:30, breakfast at 6:00 and we left by 7:30. Big Blue Bus with an even crazier driver. It took us a long time to get out of the crazy city. But eventually we made it to the country where we started to see the landscape. We seen sugar cane fields, pineapple fields, coffee fields. These things were all new to me, as you could imagine. You could see how the land was cleared for these mono-culture fields and the negative effects to the land as we drove. Our first stop was a bathroom break and the store was a candy snack shack with a restaurant. Come to find out these are very common along the Pan American Highway. The Pan-American Highway stretches across the Americas, and we was on it in Costa Rica. Our next destination was  Mount Chirripó. The tallest mountain in Costa Rica, at 12,228 ft. A very rare habitat. As we climbed the mountain we could clearly see the habitat changing. The Trees were beginning to shrink a

This morning we have been reassigned mentors, we will now be working with Alex's team. Alex has been my professor at HU for the past 3 years, so I knew we were going to be hiking a lot and pushing our limits to do a very professional project. Alex and Jaden (another young lady) were working on assessing riperian corridors within the watershed. So we decided to combine the two. We decided to focus on the Java River, looking at both the water quality and the riperian corridors. The Java River is the main river that the some creeks drop into. Over the length of the river there are different succesional forest areas that are primary forest, selectively logged, secondary forest, and abandoned pastures. We will be looking at headwaters to the mouth. We are comparing each of these areas along the Java River to identify if anthropogenic (human causes factors) are affecting the watershed. We adventured out into the forest to start to start accessing points within the watershed. We started o

Today we woke up to more rice and beans. My appetite is coming back and the acceptance that I need food to survive has hit. It actually is really delicious. This morning we got a tour of the station. Rodolpho lead the way, he has been at the station for about 30 years. Most of his knowledge is through observation and curiosity. He was very informative about the history of the station. The Wilson's a European couple from Florida owned the station prior to. They operated an ornamental garden with ornaments from around the world. Needless to say there are a lot of non-native plant species around the station. Some of these species have escaped the station and are now invasive. Such as a very beautiful red or orangish in color shampoo ginger. Next, we were introduced to the rainforest and walked down to the Java River. It definitely was a good hike. We was also introduced to a strangler tree that was strangling another strangler tree. The most interesting thing about this tree is that

Our first day in Costa Rica, Monet, Kim and I landed late last night and stayed at the Hampton Hotel. We almost missed breakfast. Kim and I went down to eat breakfast, I really didn't know what to expect. It was a complimentary breakfast, like we have in the "states". As I walked in the room the set up looked familiar. I seen a waffle maker, some hot food and cold cereal. The closer I got to the food I started to see some unfamiliar things that were not breakfast items. Beans and rice, some sliced bananas with some sort of sauce, I looked at Kim, and she said, that this is their main food they eat here. So I dished out, wanting to try something new. I also dished some mush out as a back up plan. We took our food to the room, just in case I had to spit anything out, I didn't want offend the locals. As I tried it out, my stomach and my mind wasn't ready to eat unfamiliar foods. The food didn't taste bad, but my stomach was leery, so I nibbled and went with the m