Tortuguero, Day Two

For our second day in beautiful Tortuguero, we went for a morning boat tour on the numerous rivers that meandered through the region. We saw tons of animals, including a caiman (think alligator) that came right up to our boat. After lunch we visited the town of Tortuguero, which was really cool. It was kinda poor-looking, but still had a certain charm to it and lots of friendly people. We got back on a boat and saw a sloth, our first howler monkeys, and more! Then we went to a happy hour at a local bar. Pretty sweeeet. A night swim and more bonding ended our last night in Tortuguero. I would recommend anyone interested in the tropics but not willing to get "too close" to nature to travel to Tortuguero!

In case you were wondering how we were able to survive without Internet and TV and Facebook--here's how. We talked! What could we have possibly talked about? We shared stories. We told jokes. But we also exchanged music. I learned of so many great musicians and grew to appreciate so many more genres. If you're interested in music: check out this blog for some new stuff!

Tortuguero

8/12 6:15 AM: En route from San Jose to Tortuguero. We hop in a van followed by a riverboat with part of our luggage and are on our way. We meet Modesto, a tour guide who brought us to and showed us around Tortuguero. Modesto became part of our family for the 4 or so days we knew him, and he was honestly one of the most wise and interesting people I have ever met. He could spot monkeys and nearly invisible lizards and birds in the rainforest canopy from his boat. It was amazing.
After about 5 hours of travel on a boat, we finally reach our hotel, the Laguna Lodge, where we were greeted with a delicious cold coconut beverage and a wet towel to clean up with. We had an delicious buffet lunch and then went straight to a zipline canopy tour.
After a refreshing swim and dinner, we had a nighttime tour of the Caribbean shore where we got to see turtles laying their eggs!! It was one of the most memorable and unique experiences I have ever had. The trained guides walked around until they found a turtle in the process of digging her hole to lay her eggs in. Then they radioed our group to come join them, and we got to stand right next to the turtle and watched the actual egg-laying. We had to be very quiet and use dim red-lights, but we could still see everything perfectly. The combination of being in the presence of such a beautiful creature, at night, on the beach turned out to be one of my favorite nights ever. How could this night have gotten any better? It ended with the first of many hammock sessions, in which we just hung out and talked. What a GREAT day.

Let's Begin at the Beginning

Finally! I've got my journal from the trip and I'm going to start writing down some of the fun things I did and cool things I saw! I hope I've sufficiently built up the anticipation!

Day 1: San Jose, CA to San Jose, CR
So the first day in San Jose definitely set a standard for the rest of the course. I was basically thrown into a whole new culture for the first time without having my parents there. I have to admit that I was pretty nervous, because I don't speak much Spanish (and by much I mean I know maybe 10 phrases that I casually throw around). We stayed in a pretty nice hotel called the Don Carlos, and the staff was very gracious and kept an eye out for us.

We spent the morning at the Natural History Museum, which was somewhat interesting. Then we had the rest of the afternoon to spend to ourselves. We split up and set off to explore the interesting city. I somehow managed to order food at this delicious little restaurant called La Flor. We wandered around the tourist market filled with colorful bracelets, comfy-looking hammocks, wooden trinkets, and lots of merchandise featuring Imperial, la cerveza de Costa Rica.

If you ever find yourself in San Jose, Costa Rica, and you want a break from the local fare, you should check out Cafe Mundo for some excellent Italian food!

 And here are some pictures of San Jose. Enjoy!

The Giants Won the World Series.

Well, this week we're supposed to blog about something huge that happened this week and relate it to our blogs. Honestly, all I've been able to think about this week is the fact that the Giants won the World Series. Considering I've been rooting for the San Francisco Giants since I learned what baseball was as a wee child, this is seriously a once in a lifetime opportunity. I never thought the Giants would actually realize their full potential this season and win the World Series. I think the best thing about this team is that they are young, talented, and self-proclaimed "misfits." Everyone wants to root for the underdog, but at the same time no one wants to be the underdog/misfit.
My time spent in Costa Rica has definitely made me feel like a misfit. Although I readapted to civilization very quickly (as in I got a Droid phone the day before I left, and when I got back a month later I was figuring out how to use it), I still feel uncomfortable or spoiled in many situations. I'm more environmentally conscious, even though sometimes it's still not considered "fashionable" to be so. I like spending more time outside, even though I know a lot of people who prefer to be indoors watching TV or on Facebook. What's even funnier is that in many ways, my Costa Rica classmates and I called ourselves  misfits as well. One of my classmates (when talking about how awesome the class was and what a great time we were having) said that 12 of the weirdest and most random kids at SCU out of 5000 came together on this trip and became great friends. So I guess the moral of this story is to be nice to the "misfits," because they might become your best friend. Or win a World Series.

Some Background Information

My class travelled to a lowland neotropical rainforest in northeastern Costa Rica. The field station we went to, La Suerte Biological Field Station, is located on the Rio Suerte which flows into the Caribbean sea. It includes a wide range of habitats and is teeming with life. The station is home to 3 different species of monkeys (howler, capuchin, and spider), toucans, macaws, poison dart frogs, iguanas, snakes, and thousands of insect and plant species. 


When I look back on this trip, it starts to resemble a vacation. However, we actually did a lot of work, and I did get a grade. The school part of the experience wasn't monotonous or boring though. It required us to go out into the forest and take data on a project we got to choose for ourselves. Not too shabby. Although I secretly loved the monkeys, I decided early on in the course that sprinting through the forest (off trail) at 5 AM chasing those elusive capuchins wasn't for me. I went onto the field station website and looked at the conveniently provided species list. Probably the most difficult thing about this course was that all of our research had to be done before we even got to the station, at least for me. We had to jump right into our projects because of time constraints, so I needed to learn all about my topic of choice ahead of time. 


So I end up on the website, and see a bunch of Latin words, indicating the family, species, and genus of all the different animals at the station. I start copy-and-pasting into Google, and come across the two species of poison-dart frogs. I was instantly drawn to the cute and colorful little frogs, and decided to research them. 


After many frustrating editing sessions and countless hours of research, I decided to base my project on the conspicuous behavior of the frogs vs. their coloration. If you're curious, this article explains it well. 

Bienvenidos!

Welcome to my blog!
For the past month of my life, I have told anyone and everyone I've come across about my recent study abroad trip to Costa Rica in August/ September 2010. Of course, people have asked me about my trip, but this usually only happens in passing. Like, "Hi Elisa, how was your summer?" And then I tell them I went to Costa Rica. "Oh my gosh how was it?!?" Umm...amazing? "Well you'll have to tell me about it sometime!" Ok, can I have 5 hours of your life so that I can tell you about every awesome thing I saw and every new experience I had?

No? That's what I thought.

So in this blog, I want to give a proper play-by-play about my experiences in Costa Rica. I wrote down a journal of what I saw, what I did, and where I went. I took about 500 pictures. I ran my own research project. I have lots of information that I am just dying to share.

Additionally, I want to explain how different my worldview is now. I lived in (kind of) isolation in a field station in a rainforest for 3 weeks, and then came back to Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. One of my professors jokingly told us that we would get "jungle googles" at the field station, which are essentially beer goggles, only we find each other so much more attractive because we haven't seen anyone else for a month. I don't think I took my jungle goggles off. But for me, it's more like I'm seeing the world with new eyes-- with jungle goggles on. It's a blessing and a curse. I want to go back to that isolated state of mind, where I was immersed in nature, and where I spent every minute with a group of 15 other fantastic people (whom I am mildly obsessed with) that totally feel the same, and are also struggling with this return to reality.

I hope you enjoy and see the world through my jungle goggles too!