Day 25: Holy moly we’ve entered a tropical dreamland

I woke up around 5:30 this morning to finish packing for our next stage. I’ve always wanted to be a morning person, but can never make it work at school. It’s awesome waking with the sun and going to bed (or trying to) pretty much when it sets. Luckily, I had given myself enough time to sit on the porch in one of Don Carlos’ rocking chairs, watch the sun rise and drink coffee. Suffice to say, it was an awesome morning.

After packing the truck with gear, it was time to make the hike back up to the highway where the bus would be waiting. Callum, Sam, Leigh and I were the last group to hike up (no, not because we were slow. We were the last ones helping to load the truck. Sheesh, do you really think I’m always the slow one?). This is where we REALLY appreciated the cold weather at Cuericí. That road was still 5 km long, although this time it was uphill. And still steep. On the way up, we basically quoted Shrek for the entire time and talked about the novel Dune. Okay, Callum and I talked about it while Sam and Leigh listened (it’s an amazing book, you should absolutely read it if you’re at all into sci-fi, science, biology, or space travel). But the Shrek quoting was done by all. Who doesn’t love Shrek?

Once we finally reached the bus, it was time to say goodbye to Don Carlos. That was tough. He had completely opened his home to us, taken us in and guided us, and the departure felt way too abrupt. He is one human I wouldn’t mind seeing again at some point.

We left Cuericí with our sights set on the Osa Peninsula, apparently one of the most “biologically intense” places we would ever visit. I slept for much of the drive, but woke up with probably an hour to go so I could read some of the required material for this section of the trip. This included a paper called, “A Bite to Remember”, which was an account of one man’s story after he was bitten by a terciopelo, or fer de lance. It was gruesome. We were asked to read it so we will always be careful at the Osa, prime habitat for these incredibly venomous snakes. I also read the final versions of my colleagues manuscripts from Palo Verde and was impressed at the level of science conducted by everyone.

We arrived at a town called Sierpe where we would take a boat to the Osa. We stepped off the bus and goodness gracious, it was hot as hell. And humid. Like, really humid. We are definitely in for a fun week ahead. We showed up at a small restaurant that was expecting us and had lunch ready (did I mention how great the food is yet?) and also met with two Dartmouth post-docs, Laurel and Sharon, who would be joining us for our time at Campanario. We met our boat captain, who told us we needed to wait an hour for the tides to be right to get to Campanario. What did this group of studious researchers do with that free time?

Well, we bought alcohol of course. Who could imagine wasting away in the heat without a beer to help you along?

Then things got really interesting. We were supposed to meet with the owner of the station, Nancy, in Sierpe to store the luggage we weren’t taking (we had all packed small bags with clothes for a week because we had been told we couldn’t bring everything to Campanario). Something came up and she couldn’t make it, so we had nowhere to store the luggage. The boat captain offered his house, which was incredibly generous, so we loaded the gear back into the bus and drove to his home. Turns out, he didn’t have a front door nor did he have a lock anywhere in his house. Hannah (wisely) decided that this was not the place to store luggage ~18 people and thousands of dollars worth of field gear.

We ended up just putting everything on the boat. Turns out we could fit everything, even though the captain wasn’t really happy. We left Sierpe on a motorboat and proceeded to embark on one of the coolest 1.5-hour rides I’ve ever been on.

We drove past huge mangrove forests, palm oil plantations, crocodiles, toucans, and along the beautiful Rio Sierpe. Our captain seemed to have an utter disregard for safety (so it seemed to us) and he drove at breakneck speed through a river and ocean with huge rocks and floating obstacles while also constantly talking on his cell phone.

We arrived at Campanario safely, and we were all speechless. Utterly speechless. Pulling into a secluded cove with cliffs and jungle trees reaching down towards the ocean, a big wooden building appeared above the treetops and a sandy beach opened before us. there was no space to dock, so we  beached the boat in the surf and formed a chain to pass everything from the boat to the shore.

We met an intern staying there named Graham, who gave us a tour of the place. Wow, wow, wow this station was (and is)  just crazy. The porch and upstairs balcony overlook the ocean cove, trails behind the station extend throughout the primary forest, and animals of all kinds can be heard constantly. We were given free time till dinner (probably ~3 hours), and we ALL went swimming.

Could it get better? The ocean was warm enough that it was almost not refreshing.

Almost.

It was a swimming pool. We swam for the full three hours and watched spider monkeys swing through the palms on the beach and huge scarlet macaws fly above us.

We had dinner at 6:30 and ate by candlelight (there’s only solar energy at the station so we obviously can’t use lights at night). It’s now 8:45 and I am going to sleep. This is going to feel awesome.

Day 26: Please let me stay here forever (even though it is truly a sauna)

We had breakfast at 6:30 and met with one of the station workers, Frener, at 7 to go on an introductory hike. He has lived around here his whole life so he knows a thing or two about the local ecology. We went on a 5 hour hike through most of the trails behind the station and saw scarlet macaws (huge red parrots, pretty insane birds), blue morpho butterflies (butterflies bigger than my hand that are brown and mottled on the outside of their wings and iridescent blue on the inside), and blue and red-crowned manakins (birds that have starred on Planet Earth for their crazy mating dance, which we saw) . We learned that pumas apparently like the scent Obsession by Calvin Klein (it’s used to attract them to camera traps).

We then climbed into the hollow root of a huge tree (only one at a time, it’s not big enough to fit all of us) and saw what the inside of a tree looks like. While I was in there, the resident bat flew in and landed right next to me and I saw the scariest spider I have ever laid eyes on. It was larger than my hand and, according to Frener, eats bats. Yikes.

We passed a leaf-cutter ant nest and Frener said a paste made from their leavings was a good exfoliant, so a bunch of us had this stuff painted onto our face.

Of course I was included. When am I going to get that chance ever again?

We also ate termites (they taste like celery; it’s crazy) and two different types of tree sap. One literally tasted like marshmallow fluff.

We came back for lunch, and then I spent almost 3 hours on the porch finalizing the macro invertebrate manuscript. I had worked hard enough to deserve an afternoon swim, which I promptly took.

At 5:30, we pitched project ideas and gained a general sense of the current projects that everyone had in mind. After dinner, Leah, Hannah (the professor) and I went on a walk with special recording software to look (or listen, really) for bats. We returned and wrote some of the Cuericí manuscript on the balcony as the ocean crashed in the background.

 

Day 27: Have you ever seen a cow-hippo-elephant-mouse? As of today, I have.

We had breakfast yet again at 6:30, and today was devoted to project exploration. Francesca, Caroline, Leigh, Sam, Callum and I decided to hike the trails and look for more manakins. Doing a project on birds that Planet Earth covered would be preeeeettyyy cool. As we came around one bend in the trail, we found 5 toucans!! We hung out with them for a bit and I got some (almost) incredible pictures by putting my binoculars up against the lens of my camera. We only found 3 manakins, which was a bit of an issue for the project. We saw a snake on the way back to the station, but it wasn’t a fer de lance. We had an hour until lunch, and we figured we all deserved a break (I was also sweating liters, did I mention it was really really really really really really really really hot and humid here?) So, we went swimming.

Hm. There seems to be a theme developing here…

After lunch we had Emily’s paper presentation. She talked about bridge-building in army ants (if you didn’t know, army ants will cross gaps by making a bridge with their bodies). Afterwards we had another project pitching session. I still wasn’t committed to an idea. We talked about manakins, army ants, bats and tapirs. Afterwards we had the afternoon free to continue exploring for our projects. The Cuericí group hung around the station and met with Madi and Braden to talk about our rainbow trout paper. We basically edited that right afterwards for the rest of the afternoon. I talked with others and thought about projects for a long while; I decided on studying bats or army ants if we could find them.

At 5:15, I left with some others including Nancy to go catch bats at the bat cave. The hike there was awesome, we walked across secluded beaches, rocky outcrops and jungle streams flowing to the ocean. We got to a large rock outcrop next to a crack in the cliff, apparently leading to a cave filled with tens of thousands of bats. Right around 6, bats started pouring out of the cave. Two of us took up positions across from each other and held a mosquito net between, which we used to catch bats as they flew by. Nancy taught us about the three different species in the cave.

Hannah and Laurel stayed behind to put up a mist net and catch bats, Callum, Leah and I volunteered to take them dinner. We met them along the trail and stopped to look at the bats they had caught. While we were listening to a renowned bat expert (Hannah) talk about her study subjects, I heard something rustling behind us. It sounded a lot like a big person walking along the trail.

I turned around, turned my light on and nearly had a heart attack.

IT WAS A TAPIR.

These are truly insane animals. They are the size of a cow and have a big prehensile nose that they use to grab stuff, and they have huge ears that make them look like Mickey Mouse. We watched for a while as this huge animal ate leaves not 10 feet from us; of course I didn’t have my camera, so I took some photos with Hannah’s. I ran back to the station and grabbed everyone else so they could come see it.

Unfortunately, wild (nocturnal) animals apparently don’t like groups of ~20 humans running towards them with lights blazing. The tapir made his way into the woods before we could get another good look at him.

 

Day 28: Social insects are nuts

After some group drama, Leah, Callum, Gabby and I are back together for a project in Campanario. Everyone wanted to do something on terrestrial hermit crabs (there are a ton of them AND they’re really only found along the numerous beaches… hm, interesting), but that meant at one point there were three different groups trying to ask different questions about these crabs. That definitely didn’t work out, and after some strange group shifting, Callum, Leah and Gabby (three of the original hermit crab people on day 1) no longer had a group.

Looks like the trout group is back in action.

We decided to do a project on the various species of bats in the cave nearby. Unfortunately, this meant we couldn’t do any research during the day. Hm. Darn. Guess that means we just swim all day. Which is exactly what we did. We swam until lunch.

Man, I already love bats.

After lunch, we started planning our project. We talked to Hannah and developed some cool hypotheses to test. With the evening planned out, I lounged on the porch, drank coffee, and enjoyed the afternoon. When 5:15 rolled around, the other half of FSP went to the bat cave (not everyone could go in one night) and we stayed behind to listen to a lecture from Matt about social insects. These organisms have pretty much won the game of life and are so incredibly successful. It was amazing learning about the evolution of eusociality (organisms that give up their right to reproduce to benefit the colony) and how this seemingly ridiculous concept has actually led to some species completely dominating the game.

After dinner, we were supposed to meet up with Hannah and Laurel to bring them dinner. They were out collecting bats for us (we’re not actually allowed to handle them due to rabies, so they would catch the bats and keep them in bags for us). I mention that we were supposed to meet them. That unfortunately didn’t happen. Someone had told Nancy that today was my birthday, so she and the cooks had baked me two cakes! I didn’t care that my birthday is actually tumorow, I was amazingly grateful that these guys had taken extra time out of their day to do this for me.

Especially with no oven.

Yeah, they baked a cake for me without an oven. Apparently they improvised a Dutch oven with some hot rocks and a big pot. Wow.

While we were eating the (incredibly delicious) cake, Laurel and Hannah actually came back. Luckily they weren’t upset when they realized we had a reason for not showing up. They both sat down to dinner so the bat group grabbed a spot on the porch and relaxed for a bit.

Our hypothesis dealt with one species of bat in the cave (Pteronotus gymnonotus, or the naked-backed bat). This bat has wings that extend entirely over its back and meet along the spine, as opposed to ending along the sides. It is one of only two species of bats in the world to have this adaptation. We wanted to look at how this trait affected flight maneuverability and speed to see if there was some advantage over other bats.

Nancy had told us this wing might exist as extra rain protection, but her umbrella hypothesis didn’t cover the whole story for us.

To do this, we had to measure the bat wingspan and surface area, so we took the bats that Hannah and Laurel had caught and traced their wings on graph paper. We then released them in a specially made ‘bat tunnel’ (multiple bedsheets draped over a rope between two trees with some poles for support) and recorded their echolocation calls from the other end as they flew out. That was plenty of work for the day, so we hit the hay.

 

Day 29: I’m Legal!

It’s my birthday!! Breakfast was great. We spent the morning analyzing bat data (which basically meant counting graph paper squares on the porch). Sam was presenting his paper at 1, so a bunch of us started drinking Cuervo right around 11:30.

What? It’s my birthday! We all needed some time off.

By lunch at 12:30, we were ready for a great presentation (also the squash soup for lunch was so good). Sam’s presentation was fascinating and a great time for all. Unfortunately, Matt surprised us with a lecture about conservation biology right after. As interesting and relevant as it was, many of us were nodding off in the afternoon heat (I’m sure something else played a role… hm).

Weirdly, I developed some horrible reaction when I stood up after the lecture. Pain started shooting down my knee to my foot, almost as if a huge wasp had stung me. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand. Weirdly enough, there were no marks on my leg. I took some Benadryl as weird hives began appearing on my knee, but the pain had already started to recede and was gone probably before the Benadryl even kicked in.

Now, Gabby had offered me Zyrtec or Benadryl. Those of you who have taken allergy medication before probably know the difference between the two.

Me? No, of course not. I chose the Benadryl, not thinking there would be any difference.

Ha. Hahaha.

I spent the rest of the afternoon prepping for our bat project at night while simultaneously trying to keep from falling asleep on my feet. Yeah. Apparently Benadryl makes me super drowsy. Like, REALLY drowsy. I sat on the porch for a while and dozed off, all the while enjoying being 21. I relocated to my bed and took a nap. After waking, my group decided it would be great to go swimming. So we did. We collected more bats and outlines after dinner, where I kept falling asleep between every data entry. So once we were finished, I went straight to bed. No more celebrating for me, at least definitely not tonight.

 

Day 30: Holy crap. A month here? Weird.

I woke up today feeling old and weird. Everyone has been telling me there are no more birthdays to look forward to now… Now that’s just boring. I’m sure 22 will be just as eventful.

I worked on paper revisions with Gabby in the morning while Callum and Leah analyzed bat frequency calls from the previous night. We decided to call it at 11:30 and go swimming. I hung out with Gabby and Caroline in the water until lunch.

After lunch we went swimming again. Until 3.

This research thing is really tough.

We had something called sugar cane crushing at 4 with Nancy so we got out and cleaned up. Callum, Gabby, Leah and I set up the bat tunnel. We were hiking back to the station when we ran into Nancy and Graham preparing the sugar cane crushing. She showed us these incredible hand-carved bowls from someone in a nearby town, then pressed Gabby into service cutting up fresh star fruit. I ran back to the station, grabbed my camera and summoned everyone to join us. Nancy showed us how to press sugar cane juice out of sugar cane using a wooden log. We drank it with rum and starfruit. After that siesta, the bat group grabbed some nets and we made our way to the bat cave to catch the rest of our bats. We spent probably 45 minutes catching bats in a net as they flew out of cave. I got to stand next to thousands of bats as they flooded out of the cave; it was a surreal experience.

On the way back, we ran into a female tapir eating the sugar cane we had processed earlier in the day. She allowed us to sit and watch from not 5 feet away, and tonight I finally had my camera. We returned for a late dinner and sent everyone on a wild chase to go look at the tapir. Unlike the male, she stuck around for the group to watch. After dinner we processed bat data and then I went night swimming with Leigh. We found a ton of bioluminescence in the ocean; every time we moved in the water it would light up green. Definitely need to tell everyone else in the group about this.

Day 31: Another Symposium? Wait… that means we have to leave?

Today was our final full day in El Campanario. I spent most of the morning finalizing the data with the group and preparing for our presentation. We were to meet at 5 to begin the symposium, so we had all day to do data analytics, write up an outline for our paper/presentation and practice a bit. We broke for lunch feeling fairly confident, so…

Yeah, you guessed it. We went swimming.

A lot of us took a couple hours off after lunch to bask for one last time in the sun and the ocean. We gathered at 5 to begin presenting. A lot of the groups have done some amazing stuff here! Two groups looked at hermit crabs (one was about size and thermoregulation on the beaches, the other looked at shell shape and size preference), another group studied leaf-cutter ant behavior in response to trail obstructions, and yet another looked at bats (my group, there was only one bat group, there can only be one bat group).

We had dinner right after the symposium, and no, we didn’t win the cool science award. I really wanted it, but the ant group beat us out by a few votes. Dinner was great. Everyone broke out the rest of the *drinks* that they had and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. After dinner, most of us decided to go night swimming. It was an incredible way to end our stay here at Campanario.

 

Day 32: Las Cruces, and wifi!

I woke up at 5:00 this morning so I could be packed by 5:30 breakfast. I am going to be so great at getting up early in the morning after this trip. Finally.

Right after breakfast, we loaded everything onto the beach. The boat was going to show up at 6:15 and we needed to have everything ready because loading it in the surf is not something you want to be doing for a long while. After some goodbyes around the station, we took a final picture in front of the Campanario sign and loaded onto the boat.

The ride back was just as fun, although we didn’t see anything too notable. We got back to Sierpe to see the (still egregious) bus waiting for us. As we unloaded everything, we noticed that Matt was offloading his luggage to a separate spot. What? Wait?

So that thing about him leaving after El Campanario was real after all? No no no no no no no no no noooooo.

Yeah, we had to say goodbye to Matt. It was tough, but it was time. Sadly, we all climbed onto the bus. Again, I passed out for the entire ride. I awoke to us backing into the botanical garden. Slightly upset, actually. We had been told it was a three hour drive, and we got there in just over an hour. I just wanted my sleep, especially after getting up at 5.

We met Rodolfo, the lead biologist at Las Cruces, and he gave a safety briefing and short history about the station. We then had free time until lunch.

Las Cruces is beautiful. This place is designed just as much for tourists as it is for researchers, so the accommodations are some of the nicest that we’ve had on the trip. We also don’t have a project to conduct here; Las Cruces is a time to recharge our batteries and finish two manuscripts. While here, we need to finalize the Cuericí draft for publication and write the Campanario paper in only four days. We also have an identification quiz for plants on the last day, so we need to study for that while were here. But compared to conducting a full-length research project, this will all be relatively easy.

We spent the rest of the afternoon writing our Campanario papers. The first draft is due tomorrow, so we needed to get it completed and no one wanted to work later.

After dinner, we got feedback on our Cuericí manuscripts and need to have them ready by tomorrow afternoon. This should be fun.

 

Day 33: This is the best garden ever

BACON. THEY SERVED BREAKFAST AT BACON

BACON AT BREAKFAST

WHATEVER

Sorry, did I shout? I guess I got a little excited. I didn’t realize I was missing/craving/thirsting for/in desperate need of bacon until there was a big pan of it in front of me. Then inside of me.

Ok, not the whole pan, but I was close to losing all control. Bacon does that to you I guess.

After bacon, we Rodo (Rodolfo goes by Rodo) for a hike around the garden. He took us on a tour of the station and taught us about many different families of plants, which will be really useful for the practicum. We ended around 11, so I had time to shower.

THEY HAVE HOT WATER.

Sorry, got too excited again I guess. This place has shower heads that heat the water as it passes through. It doesn’t get hot hot, but it’s finally nice to take a warm shower (although the cold showers in Campanario were both necessary and incredibly refreshing, there’s something to be said about a hot shower after a week of cold ones). In the afternoon, we got feedback on our Campanario drafts (the ones we had turned in at breakfast) and began writing the next version of those. We listened to Hannah (the student) talk about the paper on manakins she had read, then to a lecture about tropical birds from Madi. I stayed up late exchanging some strange Youtube videos with Braden, then passed out reading The Martian.

So far, it’s an awesome book. Would definitely recommend.

 

Day 34: I’ve finally caught up

Well, we’ve made it. After heavily editing many of the entries I wrote for those 2 weeks away from civilization, I’ve finally caught up to current time. Since today isn’t over, I’m probably not going to write much more. I need to get out and start studying for the plant ID quiz; this afternoon and tomorrow afternoon until 3 are the only times we have left.

Anyways, I’ve dumped out so much material and posted so many pictures that I’ve probably scared everyone away from this. And if you make it to hear before I come back and edit it tonight, very impressive.

You should probably find another way to spend your free time, there’s no way this is productive.