PDS in Costa Rica

From the very beginning, Providence Day has been dedicated to helping the community and giving back when you receive. Today at Las Cruces we woke up, had a wonderful breakfast and met up with Rodo at around 7:30. He told us that we would be cutting down and pulling out invasive plants such as fittonia and shampoo ginger off of the edges of the trails. Las Cruces has given us delicious food, warm beds, and a beautiful forest so we were happy to get back on the trail and help. Mr. Willard and I both eagerly grabbed machetes provided by Rodo (for the bigger flowers on the shampoo ginger that you couldn’t just pull out) while others took large bags for the fittonia. We all had high spirits and it turned out to be a great way to spend our morning.Here is a before picture of the fittonia…

…and here is a picture after we worked on it.

After our clean up had ended we had a huge chunk of time before and after lunch to work on our major taxa pages and our endangered species project. We all worked really hard but we also found time to look at our favorite comic again, garfield minus garfield. It was a nice break from our usually tight schedule.

In our time before dinner we all got together in the classroom and watched a documentary called Birdsong and Coffee. It was about agroecology and how coffee grown in the shade creates a polyculture environment. The coffee plant’s natural habitat is under a forest canopy and not in direct sunlight. It also talked about the fair trade market which allows the actual farmers of the product get paid a decent amount. It takes out the middle man an allows you to get coffee directly from the farmer. Their company is called Community Agroecology Network or CAN for short. Here is a link to the website if you are interested.
http://www.canunite.org/
If you are interested in the movie Birdsong and Coffee, here is a link. http://olddogdocumentaries.com/vid_bsc.html
After the movie had ended we had even more down time to work on our projects and journals before dinner. When dinner finally arrived, we had a delicious meal of tuna, cookies, plantains and vegetables. Shortly after finishing dinner we split up and went on a night time frog hunt to help Eric with his taxa project. We only found one frog but a whole lot of spiders. Here is the frog..

…and here are a few spiders.

Overall, it was a very enlightening day but also a day for down time with our projects.

After an early start, our group arrived at the cafeteria for a breakfast of eggs and ham, cornbread, and rice with beans. We then met Rodo (our guide), who led us on our first hike of the day. The idea was to get a idea of the biodiversity (the number of different species) in an area of Las Cruces. We catalogued two things: ants, and epiphytes surrounding different types of trees.

Lindsay collecting ants to catalogue.

A collection of captured ants in a vial.

Alice studies ants, counting the number of species.

Will compares the different species of plants around different types of trees.

After our morning study on biodiversity, we broke for a rather familiar lunch of barbecued chicken wings. After an hour of relaxation, it was back to work to study a plot of land. Providence Day hopes to study a patch of cleared rainforest in order to observe the process of restoration. We divided the eight meter by eight meter patch into two meter by two meter squares, and catalogued the different species present.

The plot of land Providence Day will be monitoring.

Nelson catalogues the plants in a section of Providence Day’s plot
After dinner and a canceled night hike (due to heavy rain), we decided to call it a day and get some sleep.

We awoke to the wonderful call of the alarm bird, known for waking many sleepy teens up. Around 6, we arrived to the dining hall to see many birds flying around. The kitchen people put out chopped fruit onto a table, which attracted many different birds. Among the birds were about a dozen tanagers, a sparrow or two, and the national bird, the Gray-Colored Robin.

After a breakfast of rice and beans, we prepared for a morning tour of the garden. Our guide, Rodo, met us at the steps. A few of us grabbed bamboo walking sticks (not the bug) and we set off through the garden.
The garden is a very diverse collection of plants, from the native bromeliads to the exotic fig tree. Among the critters we saw were a humongous snail, twice the size of an American dollar coin, and several furry agoutis.

We eventually reached a lookout point in the garden where we could see a bunch of mountains on the distance. Mr. Willard experimented with the panoramic setting on his camera while the rest of us admired the view from the clearing. However, one of the most interesting things about the spot was the butterfly that landed on Mr. Willard’s shirt. We nicknamed it “88″ because the design on the wing resembles a “88.”

After a delicious lunch of fried rice with meat, we began our exploration of the forest. Rodo was very knowledgable of the area and Dora the Explorer. There were three species of invasive plants: a banana plant, a ginger plant, and a ground-dwelling plant with white and green leaves. A few of us were allowed to chop up the invasive species with a machete Rodo brought with him.

We then went to the bird tower, about 15 meters up. It was a very scenic view, although the feeling of being above the canopy was quite unsettling.

We eventually reached a point where Rodo had to return to help another group that was coming in. We walked a few hundred meters and saw a humongous strangler fig. The tree it was attached to was long dead, but the strangler fig itself looked like it could be a tree.

We then spent about ten minutes swinging around on a vine. Eric and Will were quite the swingers, though Mr. Willard’s technique left something to be desired. Eventually, we reluctantly left the vine to see…. this:

A snake! It was either a false fer-de-lance, or a real one. The real one is very poisonous, so a few of us started panicking. The more levelheaded ones took pictures and waited for the snake to leave. We left the snake and came to a small stream. I decided, as an extremely reckless adventurer, to cross the river to get to the mossy rocks. Of course, as soon as I got on the mossy rocks… I fell into the river. Luckily, only my pants were wet, but the humor in the situation made up for the potential rash.
We returned to the cabins and got ready for dinner. Dinner was noodles, garlic bread, and cooked zucchini. We then had a lesson on ecological restoration. One interesting attempt at restoring forests was the Orange Project. A juice company called Del Oro made an agreement with an industrial company so that the orange peels and pulp would be dumped in a field to attract birds to help fertilize the area. It was a success, before it had to come to a close due to legal issues.

More of our favorite comic:

Today consisted of traveling, bathroom break, traveling, quick leg stretch, traveling, lunch time, and you guessed it…more traveling. In total, we spent about seven to eight hours on the road. But it sure didn’t seem like it.

Our bus driver, Fernando, actually made our bus ride quite interesting by taking us to a little outdoor store where you can walk along a bridge and find crocodiles. The store was west of La Selva and a few miles away from the Pacific Ocean. My favorite part of the trip was when we drove by a great cove for surfers along the Pacific Ocean and surprisingly, we stopped to watch a surfing contest. Many surfers were out on the waves and I was wishing I could join in with them. I did get a few action shots though!

We scurried onto the bus again and I managed to fall asleep between the bumpy roads and the many breaks. I woke up to Tyler yelling at me and poking me and saying “Lindsay, get off the bus!!! Go!” and so I grabbed my camera and ran off the bus (may I add with no shoes, thanks Tyler) and I saw a man with a big stick. And guess what was on the stick…a three-toed sloth! The man was helping it cross the road! We snapped a bunch of pictures while it tries to climb through the bushes and some even got this video:

A few hours after that, we arrived to Las Cruces safe and sound. We got some history on where we are staying, Las Cruces Biological Station, and our guide, Rodo, told us that there is a house called the Wilson house where students stay. Something interesting about this house is that the Wilson family used to live there. They even died there, and rumor has it that ghosts of the Wilson family like to appear around the dining hall. Workers here say that Mrs. Wilson is always wearing a white gown and she has blonde hair. Now that’s a little creepy…
Only after being here a couple hours, we have spotted agoutis, which are a kind of rodent, and squirrels. When we capture photos of these little creatures I will be sure to add them on here! Rodo also says that those two mammals are the most commonly found mammals on site, but occasionally you can find Kinkajou, which is a type of raccoon. We already found one of those in La Selva and it is posted on the mammals page in our Major Taxa Projects.
The Biological Station tries to conserve energy so they use solar panels to heat the water in the kitchen since they use a lot of water. Rodo also says that there are a few earthquakes a day here! But fortunately, you can’t feel most of them so you don’t even know they are happening.

After dinner tonight, we had the station director, Zak Zahawi, talk to us and tell us about the history of the Botanical Gardens/Biological Station. In 1958, the Wilson family purchased about 25 acres of land and immediately began planting palms and other plants to create the botanical garden. They kept expanding and had about thirty years of research until the entire science station burned down from a short circuit. So unfortunately, they lost all the research that they had collected and some may never be restored like weather data. The only building that was left was the Wilson house which still remains. Later, the Wilson family sold all of their land to OTS. When Mrs. Wilson passed away and Mr. Wilson became too old to take care of the land, a man named Luis took over and managed all of the land. OTS is still looking to purchase additional land to expand in order to protect tropical rainforests.