Sunday, January 15, 2012

Cahuita

Our first full day in Cahuita began with a short talk by a park manager at Cahuita National Park. We learned of the unique relationship existing between the government and the locals at the park. After locals abandoned the park when a $10 entrance fee was enforced, the government decided against the fee and instilled a voluntary donation instead. Cahuita National Park is also Costa Rica's only national park in which locals are free to fish within national park waters.

After the brief talk most of us decided to stick around and spend some time at the beach. We lathered up with sunscreen, using the half hour drying time to read or journal, or, I won't name names, skip the sunscreen drying time and dash for the water! Needless to say, we were all very excited to bob around with the waves and feel  a little salt on our skin.

While waiting for the bus to pick us up for lunch we heard a human-like laugh coming from the tree above us. We discovered a green parrot mimicking our laughter. Turns out the parrot was a pet of one of the locals standing outside the park. We resembled a bunch of little kids as we laughed back and forth with the parrot until our bus arrived.

After lunch it was time for snorkeling! About half of us had never been snorkeling before, but it seemed simple enough, right? Two guides helped us pick out our flippers and snorkels and then loaded us all onto a boat. Our guides were really funny guys, but a little too assuming that we all knew what we were doing. It took me awhile to breathe correctly so as to not inhale salt water; a couple of us couldn't get the hang of it and returned to the boat. Once we all spread out a bit so that we weren't running into each other's flippers the coral reefs became much more visible. I felt like a mermaid as I flipped around following fish that caught my eye. Our group saw a nurse shark resting between some rocks, a couple lion fish, and an eel to name a few. We also saw the two grasses common to the area, turtle grass and manatee grass. We snorkeled at two different spots and then snacked on bananas and pineapples as the guides took us into shore.

We went out to dinner in Cahuita at an Italian restaurant (go figure!) It was nice to eat something besides our staple diet of rice and beans. We enjoyed familiarizing ourselves with Latino top-40 music videos playing on the  big screen in the restaurant. One of our favorites was called "Kites in the Sky". After dinner we returned to our hotel to rest up or take advantage of the outdoor pool.

We awoke early to begin driving to La Selva biological station where we will carry out our first of two research projects. With traffic it was about a 6 hour drive NW from Cahuita to La Selva. The restaurant where we stopped for lunch had a butterfly area that we all checked out after ordering our food. There had to be over 50 species in a 20 m. diameter!

We finally arrived at La Selva and were assigned to Cabina Tortuga (tortoise cabin) which some of us-well, one of us-Hannah- was very happy about. Kenneth, one of La Selva's guides gave us an introductory talk and provided us with maps of La Selva's 60 km of trails. The biological station's base feels similar to a camp as there are many students from different colleges researching here as well. It felt great to be in such a research rich environment and to finally stay in one place for more than two days! At our evening group meeting we discussed research topics and formed groups based on interest in peccaries, termites, or leaf cutter ants. Tomorrow marks the beginning of our research so hopefully the weather will behave!

~Susan