Pocosol

“By the tender mercy of God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

            ~Luke 1:78-79

After our stay in Peñas Blancas, we hiked out another 10 miles to Pocosol (little sun).  Despite the name, our stay was rather nice and it only rained a bit in the afternoons and evenings.  The hike began with a descent river crossing.  So a hope of dry boots for the hike was pretty much non-existent.

We found an armadillo skeleton in the trail!

The hike to Pocosol was much like the first; lots of green in all directions, and water everywhere.  I didn’t take many pictures.  Mostly we just walked in the rainforest.  When we were almost there, we came to a small pond with refreshing water and so I jumped in, boots and all! (I did take my backpack off first…)  I figured everything was already soaked so it didn’t really matter all that much.  The station we stayed at was very nice, and had electricity in the evenings so we didn’t eat dinner by candlelight as we had in Peñas Blancas.

The station (with Johel's reflection in the window)

View from the porch

As you can see, the view from the station was nice and open.  This doesn’t happen much in the rainforest as everything is so grown up that you can’t see very far.  Here however, trees had been cleared and the station sat on a small hill.  This made for excellent bird viewing, which is why we had Bird Diversity Day here.  This consisted of a series of lectures, some bird walks (I can’t remember what we saw though…), practicing identifying birds by their calls, and some live demonstrations by our resident bird expert Johel.

Green Hermit (Hummingbird)

My favorite activity of the day was “casual afternoon birding from the porch.”  It was a very relaxing day (an anomaly here) and we saw many different species of hummingbirds, wrens, oropendalas, trogons, and I forget what else.  The next morning I woke up super early like I usually do, and about eight toucans landed in a tree near the station!  That was super cool, and probably the highlight of my time in Pocosol.  Most of them were Keel-Billed Toucans, but one was a Chestnut-Billed Toucan.

Our second night in Pocosol we had a stats lecture to prepare for data analysis for our independent research projects.  We learned the difference between a regression and a correlation.  Then, since this is an experiential learning program, we had to demonstrate.  So we gathered data and determined the regression for our ability to taste expensive rum.  Not even kidding.  Turns out I don’t like rum.  I do however have statistically significant good tastes and was able to correctly identify the $60 bottle of 23 year aged rum as my favorite.  Only in Costa Rica…

Our final day in Pocosol we walked around and learned about some of the different plant species growing in the area.

Class

A cool spider

After our lectures, we hopped in the back of a truck and rode out on some sketchy, very steep, very rocky roads.  It made for an adventure!

Peñas Blancas

“Our steps are made firm by the LORD, when he delights in our way, though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the LORD holds us by the hand.”

            ~Psalm 37:23-24

Here I am two days into my home-stay.  I am living with a family in Cerro Plano, and am about a mile and a half from the biological station.  My favorite member of the family is Naomi, she is about six years old and includes me in all of her activities such as coloring and painting nails.  I don’t think I’ve had this much paint on my nails since I was her age going through a similar nail polish obsession.  She is very patient with me, and repeats things very slowly when I don’t understand (which is most of the time).  I spent most of tonight making her paper airplanes, Chinese lanterns, and butterflies out of paper.  While she thoroughly enjoyed it I’m not sure the rest of the family appreciated airplanes and butterflies flying all around the house…  It is difficult not being able to understand 99% of what is going on, but I am hoping and praying that things get easier!

Ok on to my recount of our field trip.  We left Monteverde on foot, beginning our adventures with a ten-mile hike into Peñas Blancas.  It wasn’t that terrible of a hike, more wandering through the woods than climbing up mountains, which made carrying a pack a little easier.  I was thankful for all of my practice hiking this summer, so this trip was not overly difficult.  Others in my group would not agree with that statement.  I enjoyed the walk, and marveled at the plants when the horseflies didn’t distract me too much.  There were many river crossings; dry boots are kind of an anomaly here…

Beginning our hike!

A view from a lookout point on the trail

A monkey friend that yelled at me for a while before getting
board and moving on to more interesting things

One river we came to actually had a bridge!

The place we stayed was a little station in the middle of the rainforest.  Eladio, the owner, first acquired the land for logging and farming, but he has left most of the old-growth forest intact, and now hosts school groups like us.  We stayed in two rooms with lots of bunk beds and bugs.  Thankfully we brought mosquito nets for the night.  It was nice and cozy inside my little tent, and when I climbed into bed I could blissfully ignore the spider silhouettes and other creepy-crawlies lurking outside.   I forgot to take a picture of the station, but here is the view from our porch.

While we were there, we went on a few different little hikes to learn about the species in the area and to experience the rainforest.  This was a legitimate rainforest (the other places I have been were only wet, moist, or dry forests, despite all the rain).  Rainforests get on average 8 to 9 meters of rain a year!  Whereas Santa Rosa, a dry forest, only gets about 1 meter per year.  Ironically I think that we received more rain in Santa Rosa than the entire two weeks we spent in the rainforest, we must have gotten the entire 1 meter in the week we were camping there.  The “wet season” for the rest of the country is actually the “drier season” for the rainforest.  That is because the rainforest is on the Atlantic slope and the rain is influenced more by trade-winds and mountains than by the sun.  Anyway, here are some cool pictures from our hikes!

A big tree with lots of epiphytes on it

The group

An eyelash viper.
I will think twice before hugging a tree from here on out...

A pretty stream, and me!

Heather under Xanthosoma robustum, this plant is huge!
Fun Fact: The flowers of this plant are thermogenic
and heat up to 40 degrees Celsius when in bloom!

Major drip-tips.  Notice the droplets of water hanging from
the leaflets.  This is an adaptation so that water is shed from
the leaf and ideally things can't grow on it. 

One day of our trip we had “Fungal Diversity Day.”  This was a day to learn all about fungus.  After some readings and a lecture, we had a Fungus Scavenger Hunt to learn about the types of fungus in the rainforest.  Some of the things we were attempting to find included crazy-cup fungus, dead man’s hand, terrifying tooth fungus, cute and colorful coral, a poofy (not popped) puffball, a jiggly jelly fungus, and some others (obviously we were going for morphospecies on this one).  We also were asked to fin a fungus-covered body and my group (me and Heather) actually found that one!  It was a moth pupa that had been overtaken by a fungus.  We were the only group to find that one, and also found the most different types of fungus.  We nick-named our collection “The Basket of Things That Make You Go Hmm…” as soon it evolved from just a fungus collection to that of anything interesting.

The basket of things that make you go hmmm....

Our collection

Fungus covered body!

One night while there, we went on a night hike to look for tree frogs and other interesting creatures.  We were lucky enough to find that and much more!  It was raining a bit, and took some effort to convince myself to put my boots back on and slip back into my wet clothes, but it was totally worth it!

Agalychnis callidryas

Moncho can catch anything

Hyalinobatrachium valerioi (glass frog)

They are transparent!

Sarah and Heather with a snake of some sort

Heather is not afraid of snakes...

Our final day in Peñas Blancas we did a mini research project to determine if increased subdivision of leaves would have an effect on epiphyll cover.  Epiphylls are plants that grow on leaves and impede photosynthesis of the host plant.  Leaves that are more highly subdivided have more drip-tips and are theoretically more efficient at shedding water.  Less water would make it more difficult for epiphylls to colonize a new leaf.  So we walked around and counted epiphyll cover on new and old leaves of three different types of plants.  Here is an example of a younger and older leaf on the same plant, and how we measured epiphyll cover.

Youngest leaf (Geonoma)

Oldest leaf (Geonoma)

We used a grid to estimate epiphyll cover

After data collection, we hiked to an awesome waterfall in the afternoon!  The water was refreshing, and a pseudo-shower felt so great after a few days without one.

I highly recommend visiting the rainforest if you ever get a chance.  God’s creation is so wonderful, and there is no better way to appreciate it more than to get out in it and explore!

Cheese and Trees

“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all who wait for the LORD.”

            ~Psalm 31:24

I have just returned to Monteverde after an awesome two and a half week field trip exploring Costa Rica and Panama.  Over the next month I hope to blog about where we went and what we saw, however it may take awhile to finish up with everything in between school and Spanish and my independent research project.

Two more of my “Humans Days” have focused on livestock and deforestation.   For the livestock day, we explored the dairy industry in Monteverde.  One day we went on a tour of both a local, individually owned farm that produced cheese, and the cheese factory in Monteverde that was established by the Quakers. 

At the local farm we talked to the farmer (Jesus) and learned how he makes cheese.  He has owned the farm for 28 years, and he used to sell the milk produced by his cows to the Monteverde Cheese Factory, but now he keeps it and makes his own cheese.  He has 8 cows that produce 15 liters of milk each per day.  So naturally we had to first milk the cows.

He usually makes about 10 kg of cheese per day, which requires 84 liters of milk.  The milk is pasteurized and cultured, then the curds are pressed to form fresh cheese.  He is able to sell 5 kg of cheese for about $20, and works independently.

Cheese press

The whey byproduct of the cheese production is fed to the pigs, which are raised to sell and also for Christmas dinner.  The pig waste is utilized in a biodigester and the gas produced is used to boil the milk to make the cheese.  Pretty cool cycle right?  Here are some other cute pictures.

Things worked in much the same way in the Monteverde Cheese Factory, but on a much larger scale.  There 40,000 L of milk are processed daily from about 40 different farmers.  The farmers are guaranteed prices for premium milk that meets certain temperature, protein, and bacterial counts.  Again the milk is pasteurized and mixed with culture and rennet to form curds.

The type of cheese produced is dependent on the type of bacteria culture used.  The curds are pressed and often aged to give the cheese more flavor.

The whey again is fed to hogs (2000 of them).  The waste produced from the hogs however is not used in a biodigester, but is feed to steers (this cycle is not as pretty…) The wastewater is treated in lagoons and eventually flows back into a river after it has been treated.

On the field trip, we learned about Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) and tree plantations as two methods that attempt to reduce the stresses of deforestation of tropical rainforests.  RIL attempts to remove trees in a sustainable manner, and avoids clear cutting, as is often the method for timber extraction.  RIL requires that certain canopy cover percentages are maintained, only common trees are removed of certain diameters, and the extraction method is done in a way to minimize damage of surrounding areas.  This is often easier said than done, and requires quite a bit of oversight and certifications and the work of a forestry engineer, however it is often a decent income supplication for people in areas that qualify. 

Talking with a forestry engineer about RIL

Tree plantations were first started in the 1980s, to incentivize reforestation with commercial interest (though I would not use the term ‘reforestation’ if your intention is to cut it down with in 20 or 30 years).  Anyway, it is an alternative method to timber production than clear cutting rainforests, and I suppose anything is better than that.

We have one more humans day left.  Hopefully in the next few weeks more posts will come containing adventures from the rainforest!  Tomorrow I begin my home-stay period and I pray I have picked up enough Spanish to get by!