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!