This past Monday marked the halfway point for the entire semester, which is absolutely mind blowing! It is pretty crazy how fast my time here in Costa Rica has gone; time flies when you’re having fun! This blog post is going to recap March 4th – March 17th, since I am a little bit behind on blogging with the business of homework and multiple trips through the country.

During the week of March 4th, we had a full day of Field Problems on Monday, which consisted of looking at the audio recordings from our San Gerardo field trip the week before in order to learn about soundscape ecology! We recorded various animal sounds using a tool called an AudioMoth that we left at a forest gap and another at a river location. We compared the sonotypes, or sounds, found at both sites to see which location was more ecologically diverse. Listening through each soundbite and figuring out if it was a different species was pretty time consuming! My group ended up with the conclusion that the gap sight had the most species. We had yoga that evening with our instructor named Kelsey, which was very relaxing after the hours of class we had beforehand. On Tuesday, we learned about the Maintenance of Biodiversity in Miguel’s Tropical Diversity Class and we did a fun activity where we went out on the lawn where there were three circles outlined on the ground at different locations. Each student threw a plastic bug, aiming toward each circle, which was a fun way to learn about species dispersal on islands! In Spanish, my group finally presented on Groundhog day and my professor loved it! She was so intrigued why people rely on a groundhog to predict the weather. On Wednesday, we learned about Herbivory in Adri’s Tropical Community Ecology class, and our activity was to find multiple plants with evidence of herbivory throughout campus. On Thursday, we got an overview of the Independent Research Project that we will be pursuing during the last month of the semester, and we learned about some field techniques that could potentially be applied to our research here. For Spanish class, we went to the river up the hill to tell ghost stories that we prepared for our professor! We all had a blast and took a dip in the water which was so nice! On Friday, we had our third Humans in the Tropics class, where we learned about the local wastewater treatment center and a composting facility in order to learn about sustainable ways of discarding waste. We also visited the community garden and a local thrift store to learn about the community efforts of Santa Elena to consume more locally and sustainably as well. That evening, some friends and I hit the road to go on our weekend trip to Coco Beach!

After a 3 hour drive, we got to Coco Beach and made some pasta and had some drinks at our Airbnb that night. We got so lucky in finding a beachfront house for pretty cheap, we had great access to exploring the shore. In the morning, we spent the whole entire day at the beach! My friends Astrid, Luke, Liam, and I walked along the entire beach to check out what it was like. We also swam for so many hours; it was so much fun! We went out to get Italian for dinner and I got some shrimp ravioli that was so delicious! On Sunday, we checked out the town and explored many cute shops. The sun was blaring that day, so we got some ice cream. I got chocolate, as I always get, and the chocolate was so delicious. It probably came straight from the Cacao tree! We also walked along the beach to watch the sunset. I found some really pretty shells that I might make into jewelry for friends back home! We ate pizza for dinner in the sand together and suddenly, these huge groups of hermit crabs came out from the sand and make their trek for the water! There were probably thousands! It was something that I have never seen before, and it was amazing! We made it back to the Airbnb to clean and pack up. Our taxi picked us up and we drove back to Monteverde for the next week of classes that were ahead of us.

Watching the sunset in Playa del Coco, Costa Rica with Kira and Astrid

On Monday, we had the whole day to prepare some project ideas for our independent research project. I am thinking of doing an acoustic analysis of either frogs or bats, and seeing how soundscape ecology is affected by human-made noise pollution. We are having discussions about our ideas with Adri and Miguel that next week when we are on our field trip in Palo Verde. On Tuesday, we learned about the biodiversity loss in our Tropical Diversity class in the morning and prepared a presentation about the provinces of Costa Rica in our Spanish class in the afternoon. On Wednesday, we learned about pollination and seed dispersal in our Tropical Community Ecology class, and our activity was to find fruits and flowers and present to the class about the ways they are pollinated or how their seeds are dispersed. That night some friends and I got together and went into town to celebrate Liam’s birthday! We made him a piñata and went out to dinner; it was so fun! On Thursday, we had another Field Techniques day where we learned about camera traps and completed an activity to see which species were found from camera traps that were set up a few years ago on a Monteverde hiking trail. There were pumas, coyotes, foxes, agoutis, coatis, and armadillos captured! On Friday, we had our last Humans in the Tropics class, where we went ziplining! We went on 13 different ziplines throughout the tour and it was so amazing! It was pouring rain and the raindrops really hurt our faces when we went really fast, but it was truly one of the coolest things I have experienced. I also did the Tarzan swing, where we jump off of a platform and a long rope swings you back and forth! My adrenaline was really high waiting in line, but I managed to do it! We had lunch and had a discussion about ecotourism and more sustainable and environmentally-friendly ways to travel. Because this class only consisted of four day-long sessions, we ended up finishing this class for the entire semester. It was a really great class and I learned so much about the community here in Monteverde through it.

Dariana and I in line for the Tarzan swing! We had a lot of nervous excitement 🙂

While these two weeks consisted of our normal class schedule, it was still so much fun and really rewarding. After these two weeks, I relaxed and recharged for our last big field trip that we were taking to Palo Verde, the dry forests, and Cuajiniquil, a beach town, the week after. I have just finished this field trip, but I will be writing about it in my next blog post! Stay tuned and ¡pura vida!