Thursday, we went to a banana plantation and opinions were split upon whether or not this large corporation was hiding information from us. We did spend a ridiculous amount of time watching power points showing off the merits of Chiquita and its numerous outreach programs and none in the plantation or the packing plant. That night we even had an organized debate where our most vegan member surprisingly defended – to a certain extent – the use of pesticides. In reality, she was only correcting a technical error that many of us were making (using pesticides is not bad for the consumer’s health because of how thick banana skins are) but the fact remains that she sat on the pro-commercial side of the argument for a couple minutes.
In the afternoon, because of how far away it was, we weren’t able to make it to a non-commercial banana plantation. Instead we had the time to ourselves and went to visit the local people. First we went into town and I once again tried my hand at interpreting. We asked the local people how they felt about the rainforest and the government’s efforts to preserve it and surprisingly most of them agreed with those policies and felt they were important.
Then Shanté and Jakob told me about a couple that made pottery a short way out of the hotel, and how the day before they had conversed with them in French!! Indeed the woman is French and moved here after she fell in love while on holiday. We had a long conversation where we asked her questions in French and she translated to her partner in Spanish when she didn’t know the answer he then answered and she transmitted the information to me which I then relayed on to the others in English, all of this recorded for a potential radio program.
It was very interesting to see everyday life broken down for us by someone who knew how we thought. She explained for instance that the people live in a day-by-day matter, and if they can’t buy food on one day, they believe God will give them double the next. She also translated that no matter the amount of money her partner would not doing anything else because “no hay dinero que valga si no tenemos cultura, si no tenemos bosque, si no tenemos naturaleza.”
Yesterday, we woke up bright and early in order to go bird watching. At first the pickings were rather slim. Therefore, we left the garden area, where the more colorful birds live - since there is less of a canopy, there is more light for them to show off their colorful plumage – and went into the forest. Despite our guides pessimism due to the denser canopy we heard a Motmot, Our guide then imitated its call (with surprising acuracy) and instead attracted a different, much more territorial Motmot. The bird is so beautiful!
On our way back to get breakfast, we saw a spider monkey (see video below) and a parrot. These definitely made the early morning worthwhile!
In the evening, after a coffee tour plantation – where most people stocked up on fair trade, organic coffee – and a hydroelectric plant, we had asalsa dancing class. It was entertaining to watch everyone come together and learn to dance. Even our teachers joined in!
I’m still hoping we will get to Boston before midnight. Perhaps the storms over Florida will abate and we will be able to leave soon.
Today we switched focus from biodiversity to eco-tourism. This means we went out to a local sustainable farm for breakfast this morning. Many of us weren’t too happy at getting up even earlier than previous days to do this but we once again piled into the cars at 6:15 this morning on our way to Finca-Albergue. This small village is at a higher altitude than Tirimbina (1000m or 3000 feet) and the access road was not meant for minivans. My van driver once even had to ask all the guys to get out and push while the rest of us sat in the front of the car as dead weight to give the driving wheels more friction (MIT students never stop doing physics). As we caught up to them, we saw Erin – a TA – rescuing a horse from some barbed wire. Later up the hill two of the three vans were once again stuck. After a couple failed attempts, everyone was forced to walk up the hill while the cars stayed parked at the bottom.
Today, and a little last night, we also got our first taste of rain in a rain forest. The sound is beautiful and the coolness it brings refreshing. The radio students aren’t as happy with the rain because it means that they need to take extra care with the fragile equipment and keep it out of the rain. The best way to do this is to cover the microphone in a condom! Now, the radio people are already being somewhat invasive because in order to get good sound you need to hold the microphone rather close to someone’s mouth. Imagine the scene when the protected microphone is held up to a speaker’s mouth!
I hope tomorrow will be as exciting as today was!
Yesterday was by far the best day of the trip and a day that I will undoubtedly never forget. Of course several things happened in succession that added to it sticking in my mind. For one, Nikita found an adorably cute (but poisonous) caterpillar that had red, black and white fur, and I absolutely fell in maternal love with it. It crawled in the most amazing way, and literally held my attention for the entire trek through the forest.
Also, the most important thing on the “things-I-wanted-to-see-in-Costa-Rica-list?” I saw it. A sloth with a baby on its stomach lying in the trees definitely competed with the caterpillar for my excitement. Also, I think so much of our attention had been focused on the small caterpillars that it was nice to be reminded of the larger mammals that represent the diversity of the tropics. This picture is a very blurry but I'll try to get a better one from others who were there soon!
And what better way to end the day than with real, live, adorable bats caught and studied in Tirimbina?
Undoubtedly, however, everything almost seemed to pale in comparison to my experience in the afternoon. During our hour-and-a-half of relaxation, Jaya, Ana, and I (all of whom are Terrascope Radio students) decided to explore the community outside of Tirimbina, and possibly hear the voices of the people of Costa Rica. We weren’t really sure what we would get, but armed with Ana as our translator, we stepped out of our carefully-planned schedule and walked to some neighboring roads. After almost making one woman miss her bus, talking to a high-schooler about the lack of school education in biodiversity, hearing a construction worker describe how so much has changed in Costa Rica regarding the blind destruction of forests and wildlife for agriculture, and adorable little five-year-olds who made animal noises, we thought it couldn’t get any better. With the remaining time, we crossed the street to talk to perhaps one last person.
A little further down the road stood a small house completely surrounded by gardens and greenery, with an elderly couple on the front porch. After Ana explained what we were doing and got their permission to interview, we walked up to them and stood outside of the porch, expecting this to be pretty short. Soon however, they invited us on their porch, and a few minutes after, the woman led us to her garden and showed us her cacao tree (the plant responsible for chocolate goodness). She showed us her dogs and cats, and Ana continued to lead a conversation with her as Jaya and I stood transfixed. When asked about why and how she chose to make her house full of greenery, she said simply that they were very poor and didn’t know any other way to live. When Ana asked her about school, we were in for another surprise. Her mother had passed away at a young age, and her dad gave her away to one of her aunts. As she recounted the ways in which she and her sister had been horribly mistreated and abused, tears filled her eyes, and words actually can’t describe the way my heart wrenched. As Jaya later said, “Of all the lectures we’ve had this week, there was nothing like this where I just couldn’t take my eyes off of her face—and I didn’t even understand what she was saying!” The woman led us back to the front porch, and we thought we were about to leave, when suddenly the man told us to come with him. He took us back to the cacao tree and told us about his early years working in Tirimbina biological reserve. As we was doing this, he hand-pollinated the flowers of the cacao tree. I didn’t even realize my mouth had dropped open until I turned to Jaya and Ana and saw the same expression on their faces. And as if this wasn’t enough, he gave us a cacao fruit to take home.
For me, that is what our trip is really about. The naturalism and science that we have been experiencing for the past few days is incredibly interesting and valuable, but our days of fieldwork almost made me lose sight of the larger importance. And yes, this may sound incredibly cliché, but we are here to understand a world different than ours and completely immerse ourselves in it for a week, and maybe we had forgotten to do that. This couple, in only half an hour, led us into their lives, opened up their hearts, and simply gave everything they could without any expectations or strings attached. If there’s anything I can convey from this trip to the world, it’s that privilege of hearing someone’s story, of being allowed into their past, is a feeling that you can just never forget.
Instead, a couple of us went exploring the surrounding forest where we followed butterflies and found a horseshoe. Perhaps it will ward away the mosquitoes. On the way back to dinner I was amazed to see how many stars are in the sky when you are not surrounded by city lights. Their number more than doubles! Stars really are beautiful. It’s really too bad that cities are so bright.
So, yesterday, during the day we helped scientist Lee Dyer count caterpillars and were sent out into the field to collect as many as we could find. My group was brutally unsuccessful (we found many "blue jean" frogs and colorful spiders to compensate though), but since others had more luck than we did our final total was 140 individuals! We even found a species that Lee had never seen before. Scientific research is very unpredictable.
Here are a couple samples of non-caterpillars:
For lunch, we had the most amazing drink: horchata. The most surprising part was that, apparently, you can buy it at Ana’s, MIT’s fast food burrito place. I know where I’m going next time I’m thirsty!
This morning as we were packing, we noticed that some tourists were staying in the resort, and to my great surprise they were speaking French! The students that are in the radio class decided to interview a couple of them and I tried my hand at interpreting for them. It’s much harder than it looks. Especially when the person goes on for a while and you forget what they said at first.
We then arrived at Tirimbina, our new place to stay, and went out to look for more caterpillars. I was very disappointed to once again find none. My morale was boosted however by the fact that I had a short conversation – though admittedly it didn’t flow very well – with out tour guide who only spoke Spanish. Knowing that those five years of classes were not in vain is rather comforting.
We were supposed to look for caterpillars off the path, in order to find them in a more natural setting and this rapidly turned into an Indiana Jones-like trek through undergrowth, over roots and under vines. My hat and braids completed the picture appropriately.
Today I also got to play with the radio equipment. It is amazing how much it enhances the sound of every nearby bird! I also caught on tape our second guide explaining to us how the local wildlife use the suspension bridges around the reserve – they know this from images taken my motion censor cameras. The raccoons will wait until there are no people around before crossing, but our presence does not seem to disturb them more than that. It is nice to see that despite some fears that eco-tourism, if conducted on too large a scale, can disturb the natural environment, this is not always the case.
I am about to leave for a bat talk! More on that later.
I should have expected it, after how pitch black 6pm was last night, but waking up at 5:45 am to light, birds and cicadas was a shock. Admittedly, the canopy is so thick in our camps that the light wasn't strong enough inside the tent to see much. The sounds were nicer than last night's though: toads are rather loud and obnoxious. I will include the recording of their croak when I learn how to do that.
After a delicious breakfast, we piled - 14 at a time - into minivans and were jostled along to the sound of Bob Marley to la Selva Biological Reserve.
La Selva is only accessible via a suspension bridge that is 15m high and 100m long. My MIT training rapidly kicked in and coerced me into searching for the resonance frequency of the bridge. My diabolic side then took over and, with Jakob's help, we made the bridge move quite a bit.
We then explored the local forest, discovered brightly colored fauna and recorded new and different sounds. Our guide also had many interesting stories to share. One story I really enjoyed was that since he moved to this area of the country, he has seen more fauna than before, even in his own backyard. He has birdfeeders with pineapple and bananas for toucans and other local birds. He also mentioned that when he forgets to leave fruit out, they attempt to come and get it themselves from his kitchen.
Here are a couple of pictures of local wildlife.
The best way to finish off the day was with another suspension bridge (24m high and 262m long). This bridge however needed no help to undulate and make people uneasy. It was worth the hassle though, because on the other side we were greeted with chocolate tasting from cocoa bean to hard chocolate and every other state along the fabrication process.
We also were given some beans that will allow us to make our own chocolate thanks to our newly acquired knowledge. Hungry yet?
