Guanacaste

“This God – his way is perfect; the promise of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all who take refuge in him.”

~Psalm 18:30

After camping for a week in the jungle, I more resembled a prune than any other fruit.  All of my clothes were dirty or wet, and my legs were covered in bug bites.  I had hope that clothes would soon dry out at our next camping spot, as we were heading north to a dry forest.  However the name is deceiving.  Apparently ‘dry forest’ insinuates that there is a ‘dry season’ and September is not that season.  According to one of our instructors, this was the second rainiest camping week in the last 16 years or something like that.  I cannot believe how much it rained. 

We were fortunate to stay the night in a really nice (by camping comparisons) hotel the night between our two weeks in the national parks.  This gave me a chance to dry out a few clothes and go for a run on the beach.  However this proved to be more of an evil tease than anything else.  Getting back in the camping mindset after that was not so much fun…

Touristy hotel with a pool and pineapple drinks and a beach!

Our camping spot for this week in Santa Rosa National Park was more like the typical camping I am used to.  Surrounded by trees, some tarps strung up for shelter, even the forest reminded me of home.  Unlike the lowland wet forest, the lowland dry forest is deciduous, and looses leaves during the dry season.  Many of the plants looked like they could have been plucked straight from a New England temperate forest.  Heather and I set up our tent on the highest ground we could find, but after the first rain it appeared like even that would not be enough. 

It rained so hard, for so long, that I didn’t even think it was possible for the sky to hold that much water.  Our campground shelter soon became part of a river, and sporadic lightening illuminated the lake of the rest of our camping area.  And still it rained more.  Thank goodness there is some Calvin and Hobbes comic relief for every situation.

The first night we were there we went on a night hike to search for frogs.  We found a few different species, as well as a turtle and a viper!  None of us were too pleased with the idea of walking around in the rain (again) so soon, but after we got over that we had a great walk!  And on the bright side we  had a lantern (because it’s bright…)  After the viper sighting I was a little apprehensive to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night…

While at Santa Rosa we went on a hike to see the volcanoes, however it was too cloudy for an actual view.  We also studied the species abundant in the area, and did another field research project.  My group’s project involved the acacia tree (Vachellia collinsi) and the ants (Pseudomyrmex spp.) associated with it.  The two species exist in obligate mutualism; the ants can’t live without the tree, and the tree can’t live without the ants.  The ants provide protection from herbivory to the tree and the tree provides domatia and nourishment through extra floral nectaries and Beltian bodies (deposits of lipids and protein at the ends of the leaf).  Our study was to determine if healthier trees we home to more aggressive ant colonies, or if different species of Pseudomyrmex ants were more aggressive than others.  To measure aggressiveness, we found a spot on a branch and counted the number of ants that crossed an imaginary line in one minute.  We then tapped the branch a few times to aggravate the colony and mimic a predator, and counted the number of ants that crossed the same imaginary line in the next minute.  The difference represented a measure of aggressiveness.

Branch before

Branch after

One day while we were there we went on a 22km hike to a beach.  The most exciting part of the hike was finding a crocodile on a bridge that we had to cross, except half the bridge was washed out.  When the crocodile saw us, it jumped into the water that we had to wade through to get to the other half of the bridge…  Here are a couple pictures from the hike!

La playa

View from a look out point

We saw lots of animals during our time in Guanacaste.  Here are just a few of them.

Odocoileus virginianus
Deer are smaller in the tropics because they
don't need as much mass to stay warm.

Ctenosaura similis

Boa constrictor
(AHHHH!!!!!)

Cebus capucinus

A super tiny leaf litter frog I found in a puddle outside of my tent.
(At least the puddle was not inside my tent...)

Glossophaga soricina

Hypopachus variolosus that I found in my tent!

Our last day in Guanacaste we went to a nice little beach and played around in the waves.   At one point I left the group and went for a nice walk down the beach by myself.  On my way back I found a pufferfish!  This was definitely the highlight of the week.  I found it on the beach gasping for breath, so I picked it up and brought it back to the ocean.  Then it puffed all up and bobbed around for a while, so I picked it up again and ran it back to where every one was gathered to show them!  They told me to throw it way out to sea so that it wouldn’t be washed back on shore again, but throwing a pufferfish kind of hurts your hands…  In the end we had to leave it bobbing in the ocean and just hope for the best!

We watched the sunset together and then said goodbye to camping!  The next day we would head to Monteverde!