Saturday had to be one of my favorite days so far in
Monteverde, even though it was a very long day for most of us. A bunch of us
decided that it would be a great idea to hike up to la ventana (the lookout
spot that sits on the continental divide on one of Monteverde’s mountain peaks,
just over 1,600 m (5,250 ft)) to watch the sunrise. So the 9 of us that were
crazy enough to get up at 4:15 in the morning bundled up and set out in the
darkness, hiking up the steep trails to the top. Our timing was perfect; as we
arrived at the lookout point, a tiny glimmer of color was beginning to show
above the mountains to the east. The sliver of moon glowing brightly made for
quite a picturesque scene:
It was an awesome experience, in the true sense of the word.
We endured the cool winds blowing fiercely in our faces in order to watch the
clouds form literally just a few feet below us and then fly over our heads. We
were worried the clouds would take away from the seeing the sunrise, but the
opposite was true of these thin and quickly moving clouds; each time a cloud
cleared and the colors on the horizon grew brighter, I was overtaken once again
with that warm-fuzzy feeling of awe and inspiration. Here’s a sample of what
the clouds looked like among the mountains, one of the last good pictures I got
before my fingers went numb…
The crazy group that got up even before the crack of dawn, standing in the clouds before hiking back down for breakfast:
Even though nothing could compare to witnessing that sunrise,
the rest of the day was pretty great too. We spent the majority of the day at the Calandria Bellbird Conservatory, doing activities and listening to lectures from Deb
Hamilton. She told us about her project for Bellbird conservation, a project
that started out by first studying a population of bellbirds that moves through
Monteverde. They learned about the brids’ population dynamics and migration
patterns from the pacific coast of Costa Rica to the Atlantic coast of
southeastern Nicaragua. Looking at a map of forested area of Central America,
and especially protected forests, there is a clearly an imbalance of essential
habitat for the Bellbirds – and it is significantly lacking on the Pacific
side.
And
so began their reforestation project. Deb told us all about the challenges of
restoration efforts in the tropics. Very little information is actually known
about survival and growth rates of many species, and they are attempting to
reforest within many different life zones (many different growing climates). Due
to the lack of information, there is a lot of research being done on the basics
of reforestation – if anyone interested in conservation was looking for
graduate research projects, there are definitely numerous possibilities for
work in tropical ecosystems! In spite of the fact that their research is just
beginning, the project has had a lot of success. Their nursery has produced
over 140,000 trees, of 79 different species, which they have given out to
farmers to plant on the farmland. They are attempting to increase the size and
number of forest patches, and encourage the use of live fences, all of which
will help promote connectivity of habitats that the Bellbirds (as well as other
birds) can use. Learning about the whole process of the project was really interesting,
Deb was really great, and we even got to enjoy a little bit of downtime
lounging in the sun enjoying a great view of the mountains running down to a
view of the Nicoya Peninsula:
Our day continued as we spent some time in town in the
afternoon working on our papers, and then enjoyed a night off of class
discussion by instead going out downtown as a class. It was a wonderful 21
hours!
-Rachel W.
