Punta Morales bonus post!

People have asked me where the background photo for the blog was from, so here's your answer. The crepuscular hours in Punta Morales, which was near ECMAR, a marine biology field station we visited on our way to Santa Rosa National Park.

Costa. Rica.

Think about it.

After yesterday's low key plant diversity day and first official Spanish class (we learned the Alphabet and got snack time, I kid you not), we left the field station to visit a cheese and meat factory and a local farm for Humans in the Tropics. Apologies if I don't wax philosophic on global patterns of consumption and food industry practices in this post: I'm currently too embattled debating animal rights and food reform with my varied-opinion peers, who are similarly passionate and appreciative of a good, heated debate.

        Alan, the vegetarian, environmentally conscious director, gave us these videos to watch when we got back from visiting the Monteverde Cheese Company (Quaker founded in 1953) and a local, 9-cow, 6-pig, 20-hen home operation. Check them out if you haven't had previous exposure to food industry practices (River of Waste: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-WAGf-4gC8 ) OR if you like chipotle's buy local focus and animations set to covers of Coldplay songs ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos ). I have to say, I really, really appreciate the serious focus on the mutualistic interactions between humans and the environment versus the doomsday, "We suck all the time" message people seem to get from conservation in the media. This program is really getting me to think critically about alternatives, consequences, geography and ecology at a much deeper level--which is, additionally, getting me to reconsider the impact I really want to make and where I want to make it. Tropical biology? Wildlife veterinary science? One thing is for sure: I want to make conservation a priority, whether that be through my career, or my volunteer work and lifestyle. 

All that being said, today was incredible. Drinking warm, fresh milk (Dominga, her lush lashes and big, plaintive eyes against caramel hair, didn't mind that 22 non-farmer kids from the U.S. tried their hand at milking), eating empanadas with cheese and black bean, cheese-sampling, milkshake-savoring field-tripping under clear, windy skies should put everyone in the frame of appreciation. And if the good food doesn't do it, maybe the barn kittens and feather-legged pullets could. Ask me about why I'm in favor of the switch to mostly small scale farming or my vegetarian preferences after ending 7 years of vegetarianism when I came to college: I love meat as much as you do, I approve of your deer hunting, and I would love to keep debating the pros and cons of large-scale production. 

So.

Pictures? Yes. 

Coconut ice cream: Monteverde fresh. 

The road to the pig farm portion of the cheese factory.

The cheese farm's pork production. These pigs are kept in pretty good condition compared to most: they are in clean, but extremely confined spaces. They were first brought to the cheese factory for a profitable means of disposing of a cheese-production by-product: whey, which is readily digested by swine. 

 There were a few nurseries, where piglets nursed by the dozen per pen. All of the pigs were in open-air environments, which is a step up from some factories, scarily. 

 Sleepy piglet. 

Nursery for post-weaned piglets. 

Beef: kept around for eating (I kid you not, this is an extremely common practice) washed pig waste. When also fed grass, their manure can be used for agriculture and reduces the toxic by-products of swine development. It was crazy to see it first hand. 

Yeah, okay, okay. Call me a hippie or whatever you want: Alan told us to look in to their eyes, and I really think that this is an important thing for people to do. Alan and many others are right: we have lost the connection to our animal food sources, which is certainly a major factor in how so many people can just avert their eyes. Many people see it as a tradeoff: In exchange for cheap meat and the taste we've grown to know at every meal, we have sacrificed both human and animal welfare. (Disagree?)

A small-scale production near San Luis. The farmer, Jesus, and his wife were the only workers, and they produced and sold cheese, milk, and eggs; as well as providing for themselves food -and- energy-wise. They used the gases in pig waste for biofuel in both their house and the house of Jesus's brother (most of the time...today when we visited, the biodecomposer that collects the gas was rendered out of service by marauding armadillos).

Jess in front of the cow and cheese barn. 

Looking out over the pasture. Brisk mountain day. Gorgeous as always. 

All of the green. 

In front of the pig pens. 

Pigs are SO SMART. We're talking Lassie-levels here. These post-weans were wagging their tails and fighting over a sprig of grass Jesus had thrown in. Gah. So adorable. 

Ohai pig.

The spotted one was my favorite. 

Standing in the barn. 

Making cheese! He's straining post-boiled milk that's been treated with bacterial cultures specific to flavor and a solidifying enzyme. 

We got to milk one of Jesus's cows, Dominga. 

True blue farmer. He was always smiling. 

Parting shot of their front porch. 

So the beauty and the adventures and the school continues. I've got some big tests coming up, and another few packed days: don't expect another update 'till Sunday or so. Also, guess I forgot to mention that on my morning hike I saw a taira (http://zoobaq.org/especieani/taira.php) and this HUGE iridescent jay (preening!) on my walk this morning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure-hooded_Jay). Planning to get up early with people tomorrow and hike back to where I saw a female quetzal on Sunday. 

The life. 

Cheers. 

Toucanets and the beginning of traditional class.

You know it's going to be a good day when you open your door at 5:32 AM and a blue-crowned motmot is sitting in the grass under the clothesline.

        After the hiking marathon yesterday, what more was there to do than go exploring again?

At about 5:45, Skyler and I left the field station intending to do some creature-scoping and mild cardio: at 8:27 AM we returned, covered in moss and burrs and thorns and iron-red clay and morning rain---having done the loop to the T.V. towers, waded partway down a river, and climbed through patches of what looked like banana or heliconia---having leaned in to the insane, foggy wind blowing over the pacific slope at the hilltop.

Alan (the program director; and the victim of quotes from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaPepCVepCg ) understood that one could get turned around in the woods, and excused us for being late on the first day of lecture. The below picture does our actual state of forest-streaked glory.

 

So I guess that was pretty sick. But the day certainly didn't end there.

Today we had our first official tropical community and diversity lectures in the classroom, before heading to the all-inclusive resort they're trying to tell us is a Spanish immersion school. It is through this institute that we will both learn how to be functional in and get matched up with our homestay families: classes there go for three hours each afternoon. A lot of class, right? But get this: the campus has an internet cafe, multiple fountained and wrought-iron-furnitured courtyards, a gym, a huge jacuzzi, and large-windowed classrooms looking down on the valley. They taught us a few songs and fed us guava-glazed corn starch cake before showing us where to sign up for free dance and cooking lessons, movie nights, and discounted charter trips, such as canopy level ziplining, canopy walking, rope-swinging, bungee jumping, and horseback riding.


...and then we waited for them to tell us they had to be joking, but got distracted by the hammocks strung up inside the tiled study halls.

So that was my day. And now I'm here drinking Chamomile tea with milk and still in utter disbelief that this place is actually real.

Pictures and then I -must- study. Goodness. We're really in school now. Score.

The hills right outside the station. The weather is okay, I suppose. 

 The place I want to live a year and a half from now. Currently it belongs to our professor Bronko. 

If I keep doing push-ups with the boys here, I think I can take him out when the time comes. 

 Can I just say how much I love having to -walk- everywhere? Seriously. With views like this....

This is the road from the field station down in to town. 

The resort/Spanish school.

Toucan in Spanish is....toucan. 

Hastily snapped courtyard photo!

And of course...sunsets. Walking back with Jess, Genevieve, Sarah, Matt, and Alayna in the sunset. 

Score score score. 

Also: bonus pictures for people who asked me about what my room looks like! Answer: it looks like a hurricane with the intent of keeping damp laundry safe from the eternal mist ripped through it, and happened to drop a few bird feathers and souvenirs on its way out.

More adventures to come. Planning another early start. Cheers!

Lazy Sunday?

...Not actually.

Heeee. As if I could sit for more than an hour in a place like this. I suppose I will have to considering I have an essay to write tonight. 

I don't know how long Costa Rica can keep this whole each-day-is-better-than-the-last thing up. Monteverde is perfect for me. 

Recap.

After a "late" breakfast (8 AM instead of the usual 7 AM), I studied for a few hours, nearly giving everyone a heart attack screaming about my first quetzal sighting in the process (RIGHT outside of the east-facing window in the classroom, where I had strategically set up base), made it to lunch, and spent the rest of the day hiking in the driving wind and rain. I've decided I -must- see this place in the rainy season. I don't care if nothing I own is ever dry ever again: the more time I can spend in dripping, shining, chirping, crawling epiphytic forest, the better life will be. 

The tropics. 

Maybe I will end up a tropical biologist. This place really does something to me. 

I can't really tell all of my forest stories to you: this post would drag on forever. Some highlights include finding some hair and bone on blood-soaked dirt and sticking around to see if anything came back, finding three species of trogon nesting in more oak-type forest on the lower Caribbean slope, and pulling a Walt Whitman and crashing in to a clearing with a YAWP--and not knowing whether the five curassows that flew in all directions, or if I was more freaked out. Banana plants and passionflower vines and angry hummingbirds in the distance. 

Too much to say. Come see it for yourself. 

     Anyway, accomplished a ton of shopping for the family (coffee by request and grad presents for my sister) and bought a few things to cook for people. I suppose I'm continuing my tradition of Sunday treats down here. I don't have pictures of the fireflies or the butterflysplosions I caught on my twilight hike; I already ate the mango I bought from the fragrant, sap-stuck pile of fruit next to the checkout. (Mango season.) I can't tell you how much I want to live in one of these small houses in the hills, with cracking, brightly-colored paint, wooden floors glowing in orange evening light from the windows: the moon variably visible as the clouds rush past. Made it back only 15 minutes late for dinner. So much win. 

 I really have to study! Gah. This will become problematic. 

Here are some pictures of tonight's cooking escapades, minus the watermelon-jello-making. 

The female to male ratio for the program is 17:5. 

And the females are all armed, apparently. 

Amber, Skyler, and Roxanne helping me chop and peel things in the field station kitchen!

Cute, Roxanne. (She's super great, people.)

Carrots, turnips, parsnips, chives, carrots, purple cabbage, sweet yellow onion, scalded tomatoes, and beets in a beef broth. 

Some expertly chopped ingredients. We didn't manage to get a picture of everything...

Friends lolz

And voila! La Sopa. And now I've got a water bottle full of it to study for the night. 

Don't know how life could get any better. Cheers.

Monteverde.

Someone took this place from a dream or my journal.

Amber and I have decided that it's basically like Marin and Kauai had a mountainous love child. 

Let's begin the tour, because I don't have long. There's so much to do. Fingernail moon tonight and species names to study before we commence movie night. It's really hard to express how much I enjoy the home feel of this place: all of us joking around one big dinner table after a day of hiking and town exploration.

This is Monteverde. For those relatives that don't know the story, the field station was founded by Quakers in the mid-seventies and has been operating as a tropical biology and conservation driven field station ever since. More info on the program here: http://www.ciee.org/study-abroad/costa-rica/monteverde/tropical-ecology-conservation/

The whole building is made of wood. It's absolutely beautiful. The compound contains a few gardens and greenhouses where we hang our laundry: there are some cabins and a lab building in addition to the staff housing. Trails head off in all directions directly in to the cloud forest. Just like my favorite trail in Marin, the main road leads to a radio tower...which I thought I heard creaking, until Joel told me that the noise we were hearing in the forest understory was the tremulous, metallic call of the black faced solitaire. Ohhhh birds. 

 Alayna hittin' them books and whatnot. 

Moncho gave us our orientation lecture. This classroom is amazing: two walls of windows facing the forest. We've arrived in the middle of some unseasonable mistiness, and as with everything...it's absolutely breathtaking. 

 School? Really? Haaaa.

Amber and I have a room to ourselves here. Pomona rooming abroad! Wooooo! 

...we still see 47 everywhere.

...yep. 

So there's a bunch of huge maps of Costa Rica everywhere. This is the main one in the classroom. The pieces of red tape on the western half of the map seem to be in some Eiffel tower-esque formation; Monteverde is at the top. Gosh. I love me some mountains. 

 WOOO Coatis and Motmots and QUETZALS. Only have the one at the top left to see. My life is bird-style search-imaging until I've completed the hunt. Everything in the forest is green and red though...yeee. 

Orangey, badly shot photos of the insect room. Just sneaking a peek---they have a sweet collection here. 

 My forest eyes. Or bird eyes. Or binoculars. 

I love these things. 

Morning lecture: species reports. We were a bit feisty today, if I do say so myself. Probably why we had so many banana peel/rock-placing/shoulder-tapping battles midday. Silly biologists. 

Work and play, work and play. 

Marisela being a badass botanist. 

Joel leading the pack up the mountain.

Really inadequate picture of the awesome fog and cloud cover. 

Epiphytes (ferns, mosses, orchids, etc.) are the absolute bomb. 

Walking in the Elven Forest. We never really got an explanation as to why it's called the elven forest...but the trees thin out towards the peak, so maybe because they were small? And very green?

Mysteries. 

Sierra and Sarah decided to put their extensive knowledge of natural tropical camouflage to work. Joel had a pretty funny story about legitimate (sorry, gals) camouflage escapades in La Selva...ask me about it!

These field station benchmarks were all along their property. Pretty helpful. 

Moncho being serious, as usual. But for reals, our TAs have mad tropical knowledge.  

Looking down the Caribbean slope. So much fog! We saw a longhorn beetle and a few swallow-tailed kites, but as always, I was too excited about the animals to take pictures. This will be a recurring theme. Apologies. 

Amber is the best. 

Branden and Audrey...possibly talking about the movie "The Fog."

Skyler found a dying moth and moved it out of harm's way. Such cool bugs!

Headed back down the mountain and back to the field station. So...this is kind of crazy. We haven't really had legitimate, do-what-you-want free time for ages, and this hike marked the beginning of free time until Monday at 8 AM. 

Weekends? We get time off?

Isn't this some kind of fantastic vacation?!

Apparently we're in school. Anyway, we all had to buy laundry detergent (though we don't even have to do our own laundry here...or cook our own meals...I can't even explain how spoiled I feel. Going to stop) and various other things in town, so we set out mid-afternoon to explore. 

It's really not a real place. 

Look at those clouds. 

Seriously. 

Love the colors of the houses. Neon apple greens, hot flamingo pinks, banana sun yellows, fiery tangerine oranges...

 Heading in to town with Skyler, Roxanne, Jeff, and Amber. 

Pastureland and ecotourism. 

A sweet gazebo outside of the artisan's market we visited. Scoping out the local pottery scene. Unreal. 

...lots of ecotourism. 

And the Saturday night crew out in force: taxis and Pilsen/Imperial distributors. Nice. 

A bunch of us are staying in to watch a movie in the upstairs classroom and listen to the rain instead of getting straight in to the salsa and bar scene. 

Pretty standard house here.

Convenience store. So much more excitement with the colors...

These guys were hailing us for a picture. Hehe. Everyone seems to own a motorcycle here. 

And this one's for our Costa Rican mentor and CIEE grad, Drew Quinn. He knows what's up. 

So after a leisurely afternoon of birdwatching and exploration, I'm super distracted and hanging out with everyone in the classroom. Man, does movie night sound great. 

Three more weeks of this. I'll post more about class and Spanish immersion later: I'm in desperate need of improvement before I head off to the homestay. Befriending the amazing cooking staff in Santa Rosa was the best: they're teaching me phrases like "you all look like shrimp in your bathing suits (after being in the sun all day)," "you're insane for liking spiders," and "you woke me up when you came back from your night hike" in Spanish! I helped them with dishes and said I wanted to cook for them at the field station in gratitude, and they made me my favorite food one night (vegetable soup.) 

Have I mentioned this place is amazing?

Rant ends and movie night begins now.

Cheers.