Bioluminescent Click Beetles

Beetles that GLOW in the DARK.
These beetles of the click beetle family glow out of two eye spots on either side of their heads. This video is one we caught and played with on the ottoman inside the Wilson cabin (our home until Friday)

pineapples and fried bananas

ok, so now we're in Las Cruces OTS station. the giant house we're staying in is surrounded by botanical gardens. Some of the palm leaves here are bigger than I am. The flowers (ok everything) here are amazing and come in forms that are going to take over my camera space. We have a pickle jar with a dead bothrops asp (very poisonous snake) in our living room. I now know where pineapples come from. I'm finding that being a bug hater on a bug research trip is not working to my advantage, but I did catch a beetle off my dinner plate and put it in a kill jar for later study. We've seen a bunch of hummingbirds at the stations, and immense plant diversity by elevation and latitude and other more random circumstances...like the acidic bog. Ok, so you can comment on the blogs by clicking the "Comments" link at the lower right corner of the blogs. My mistake.

Traveling across the Montanas

We had a wonderful car ride across the winding mountain roads of CR today. We traveled along the pan-am highway. It was a crazy drive! I am so happy we had a Costa Rican driver. Between the random bikers (cycles), passing slow trucks on curvy roads, and managing pot holes, David gets an A for his driving abilities.

I had a blast taking close ups of flowers, orchids and the like, today. I cannot wait to go to the library and look up more information about the plants I found. (Look for fun facts in another blog to come :D )

I really enjoyed the Cerro de Muerto mountain. this tower filled mountain top offered amazing views of the clouds, forested mountains, and showed the impacts of humans in the area. The plants on Cerro de Muerto were totally different. The cooler temperatures, lower rainfall, and windier slopes decreases the size and types of plants in the area. this habitat type is common in the Andes Mountains. It is interesting how many different areas have contributed to the diversity here (which is a lot).

We also got to see the agriculture area of CR. We saw and smelled the burning of sugar cane. Pineapple cultivation is really interesting also. Every field we passed had pineapple at a different stage. Some were full grown, others just tilled. Some had bunches of pineapple plants stacked up ready to plant. I never realized how much human power it takes to grow pineapple; no wonder it costs so much in the store!

While, catch ya later!

Busy day! Luckily, i slept 11 hours last night, apparently through car alarms, revelers, etc. We tramped through muddy bogs (exelente!), visited two research stations, spoke bad spanglish at the locals (don't belittle Caroline in front of them, by the way - lol), and watched half of Costa Rica fly by the van windows on the PanAm highway. This place is like heaven- warm, friendly, packed with fresh fruit...

Don't blink or you'll miss something in this country! After lunch, i fell asleep in the cool, misty mountain air of Cerro de la Muerta and awoke sweaty in the sweltering warmth of the south. Everything around you - fauna, land, cityscape, climate - changes within a few short kilometers. Costa Rica truly is the heart of global biodiversity. Tonight, we stay in Las Cruces, a tropical garden paradise reclaimed from lands previously deforested by coffee plantations. The adventures ensue...

Vida pura, friends and family!

Day 2 = ROAD TRIP

Road trip day! We hopped into the van, driven by David, a native Costa Rican. Our first stop was at a bog (pantana) called “Tres de Juno” (third of June). The entire area is smaller than the area of a foot ball field and created by near surface drainage accumulating. Sphagnum moss grows in the soil, dies and makes an acidic environment, from which many other things grow.

Second stop: The mountain of the dead. Cerro de la Muerte, the highest point in Costa Rica that you can drive to. We got tons of great pictures of us above the clouds.

Third stop: Cerro de la Muerte Biological Station (CMBS) We ate a lunch of very nice melons and some kind of pasta with meat sauce, not much like spaghetti but that is all I have to relate to it. We hiked around here and found a small waterfall and a bunch of orchids that have a center that mimic female flies, then male flies try to mate with them..... kind of gross but you gotta do what you gotta do to get pollinated these days.

Finally we arrived at the Organization for Tropica Research Station (OTS). Our rooms are beautiful. The land used to be a coffee farm, and was bought and turned into a huge tropical garden. Dinner consisted of rice, beans, broccoli dish, bamboo dish, mung bean dish, and some kind of dessert resembling carrot cake with rice.

Day one adventure

Here are a few picture of our short outing after settling in to our hotel.
We stopped by a little mercado and I overpaid for some souvenirs and feel really stupid about it. I´ll have to do better next time. I do like the things I got, I just need to get an idea for this exchange rate.

San Jose

Ok, we are here in the beautiful sunny Costa Rica. The flights were long, the layovers short, and my CD player has decided to stop working. I have had a pretty long travel day and am ready to hit the sack (in about 10 min). We have seen a lot of new plants, some familiar cultivars, many different looks at coffee farming, our first trip to a market, and ATTEMPTING to use Spanish. I really wish I had brushed up on my Spanish...it has been almost 4 years since I have taken a class. There are some sweet birds here too...and some familiar ones. I heard a robin singing today. Our hotel is getting remodeled, so there is some construction, but it has beautiful wood floors. At dinner tonight I tried "Comida De Costa Rica" slightly Americanized. I had soup and palm in this cheesy cream sauce. On the side...French fries! While, I am off to bed.