A Brief Encounter with Civilization

In our travels up north after leaving Cuerici, we stopped in San Jose for a day.  Our first initiative was to find food.  One of the guys in our group knew of a good place that also served vegetarian dishes (a non-issue for me, but it affected a majority of the group).  It was a nice eatery called Shakti, and I recommend it to anyone who visits San Jose.  Sorry, but I can’t begin to tell you where to find it since I have no sense of direction.  After eating our fill and ending the meal with milkshakes, we headed to the Avenue Central and walked around for a few hours.  We passed through the artesian mercado and the Mercado Central, both very interesting places.  After walking around the Mercado Central for 20 minutes, I realized that I had been there before! Once again, it was something I had previously seen during the Costa Rica Tree Climbing course in 2007.  Except this time I had a slightly better idea of what was going on.  We slowly made our way back to the hotel after spending five hours in downtown San Jose.  Needless to say I was exhausted. 

After napping, the next hour of the evening was spent looking up and down many streets for open restaurants, learning that many are not open on Mondays (it was Monday), and finally walking back to a small place about a block from our hotel, where we got grilled cheese sandwiches and heaps of French fries.  We walked back towards the hotel, stopping by a convenience store to legally buy some alcohol (it’s still a novel feeling), then we returned to the hotel and drank our beers around the pool, talking and enjoying the last of our free time in San Jose; the next morning would be spent driving up to our latest field station: Palo Verde.  However, while I am thrilled to be going back into the depths of the jungle, I am beginning to look forward to my upcoming homestay, where I will live with a family in San Jose for two weeks, taking Spanish classes and trying to imitate the Ticos.

Head in the Clouds

Living in a cloud forest is rather surreal and enchanting. It is called a cloud forest because clouds literally roll through the area.  In the middle of the afternoon, the sun suddenly disappears from view in this montane oak forest and you are engulfed in a thick mist that is a passing cloud.  This high elevation area tends to be rather quiet, although birds can be heard in the distance.  What made a striking contrast to the wet forest that we came from was not only the cooler climate, but the lack of insects droning constantly.  This area was devoid of crickets calling and cicadas drumming incessantly, making the place peaceful and a bit eerie. Thankfully the mosquitoes were also lacking.

clouds in the cloud forest

To add to the perceived enchantedness of the site, there was a white horse that would appear around camp, contentedly grazing and just being gorgeous.  Soon after arriving in Cuerici, I decided to take greater advantage of my surroundings by waking up early and going on walks in the woods.  This (not surprisingly) proved to be a very calming activity and often produced resplendent animal sightings! On one such occasion, I awoke at 5:30am, pulled on my boots, arranged my wool hat-and-baseball cap combo, and sleepily headed out the front door of the cabin.  As I stepped onto the porch, I was greeted by the sight of the white horse, peacefully grazing just in front of me, surrounded by mist and the pale blue light of early morning.  Not to mention the backdrop of stunning mountains and verdant slopes.  I half expected a group of sparrows to fly down and adorn me with a flower crown.

 the white horse

At each of the field sites we go to, we are required to spend at least half an hour in the field, observing.  Obviously upon hearing of this I was ecstatic at the prospect of sitting by myself in the jungle.  One afternoon, after a somewhat depressing lecture about how to sustain a forest reserve, I was feeling rather glum.  To improve my spirits, I decided to go do my field observations.  I pulled on my raingear and departed the camp, heading for the 3km trail that looped up and over a nearby mountain.  As I rounded a corner, I was greeted by the white horse again, grazing along the side of the path.  I skirted around him and continued walking, but to my surprise the horse began to follow me! He would stop to pull up some grass along the way, and would then trot to catch up to me, walking alongside me on the dirt road.  At one point I stopped to pet him and feed him some tasty dandelions.  Eventually I reached the end of the dirt road where there was a barbed wire fence and the start of the mountain path, and had to say goodbye to the horse.  Any unexpected encounter with a large charismatic animal always brightens my day.

I hiked up the trail to a nice ridge overlooking some large, mossy oaks.  And when I say large, I mean massive trees, hundreds of years old – this forest is certainly something to marvel at.  I picked out a nice place that had a view of the valley and sat down to begin watching and listening to the forest.  I was also making a sketch of the area, focusing on one oak in particular on the horizon.  I noted that a cloud was coming in, reducing visibility drastically, such that I could no longer see the oak I was sketching.  As I looked up, I noticed a large shape swooping quietly into a nearby tree – a quetzal had decided to land 10 meters from me!  It was hard to make out in the clouds, but I could just see the outline of its body and long tail feathers.  I turned away to grab my camera and when I came back up it had gone.  It was amazing how silently it flew into and out of my sight.  And then it rained for the first time since we had been there.

giant oak

The montane oak forest is a pretty spectacular place, with each moss-covered tree seeming to have a presence – I could almost feel the trees taking deep breaths and slowly exhaling.  When walking through the forest, my eye was immediately drawn to the huge base of a tree, spanning more than two meters in diameter.  Slowly, I started to follow the trunk up, craning my neck more and more until I eventually found the crown some 30 meters in the air.  At that point, my tree climbing instincts kicked in: I began looking for solid branches that could hold my weight and were exposed enough to shoot a line into.  There were some pretty promising candidates, and it wasn’t until 20 minutes later that I actually spotted some p-cord tied around a sapling!  The small tree that this thin piece of cord was wrapped around stood next to a very large, very old oak. The p-cord ran up into the oak, out of sight, and probably over a nice large branch.  I was very excited at the idea that tree climbing was already established in this forest, at least for arboreal studies.  Perhaps I’ll come back to this area on my own someday and play around…

On another morning, the group packed into the OTS van and drove to an ecosystem known as parámo, a habitat in the exposed high elevation areas where all the plants are dwarfed.  This ecosystem has daily freeze/thaw cycles, meaning that anything containing water gets quite the beating (i.e., all the vegetation).  Therefore the plants have evolved special adaptations to this, including fur on their leaves.  Not many animals live in the environment full time; they migrate into the area to feed occasionally, such as coyotes and hummingbirds.  It was a pretty neat area – we stood on the continental divide and were able to see the Pacific; supposedly on a clear day, you’d also be able to see the Atlantic on the other side.  It makes me realize how small the country really is and how important its watersheds are.

Speaking of watersheds, the Cuerici reserve is owned by a local campesino named Don Carlos, who runs a trout farm on a small part of the land.  It is cool to see hundreds of trout at every stage of their life – and they taste pretty good too!  The farm is chemical-free = good for the environment & for me.  The water from the trout ponds drains into a natural stream, which runs downhill and powers a hydroelectric turbine that provides electricity to the reserve.  All in all the place is pretty sustainable - the biggest resource expense is firewood to keep the cabin warm at night.

Don Carlos, owner of Cuerici

We learned that there was a small shack at the top of the mountain trail, near a nice overlook.  Some of the people in the group decided to hike up one night and sleep in the shack, in order to see the stars and the sunrise the following morning.  I unfortunately had to decline the offer since I did not have a sleeping bag (and the temperature dropped into the 40s at night).  But I really wanted to see the sunrise, so me and another girl woke up at 4:30am to hike up in time to catch the view from the top of the mountain...it was well worth the trouble, and we reached the peak  just as the others were awaking in the shack.  The views were spectacular, and we headed down for breakfast around 6:30am, lucky to be greeted by tasty pancakes!

clouds blanketing the valley at sunrise

For our final day in Cuerici, I went on one final early morning walk, this time with two guys looking to do some birding.  As we ascended the mountain, the man in front stopped suddenly, and excitedly whispered under his breath, “Quetzal.”  I peered over his shoulder to find a male resplendent quetzal sitting in a tree some yards away.  It was beautiful: an emerald green body with a bright red breast, and tail feathers that were as long as the bird’s torso that blew calmly in the wind.  I looked away for a second, and when I returned my gaze to the area, the bird had disappeared, swiftly and silently.

Cambio de Vida

I write to you now from Las Cruces Biological Station in the south of Costa Rica, about 20km north of Panama.  The place we’re staying is much nicer than I expected … with running water, hot showers, wireless internet, and American outlets, I feel completely spoiled in the middle of the rainforest.  It has definitely been a transition period, as I am getting to know new people, new plants, new foods, and new bugs.  Things have settled into a nice routine, now that I’ve been here for about a week.  Breakfast is at 6:30 each day, then lectures or a jungle hike, lunch at 12pm, nap for an hour, another lecture, play futbol for an hour, dinner at 6pm, then one more lecture around 7pm.  We are learning a great deal of information each day, with the topics ranging from Costa Rican history to coffee to plant identification to insect taxonomy.  I am beginning to realize that there is a large diversity of plants and insects in this country.  Who knew?

Oh and they gave us a great intro talk: “All of the things that could possibly harm or kill you in the jungle” - in under 2 hours! The dangers ranged from mosquitoes to diseases to bot flies (look em up) to fungus to killer bees to everybody's favorite (i.e., the most poisonous): snakes.  Hearing it all in one sitting made even me want to curl up in a ball on my bed and not go outside anymore.  But after a good night's sleep I got over that and went on a lovely trek into the rainforest :D

And the déjà vu I had experienced in my first 24 hours did not let up for another couple days … on our journey to San Vito (the town outside of Las Cruces), we traveled on the Cerro de la Muerte, a highway that winds through the high mountains of central Costa Rica.  I had gone down this same highway two years earlier for the Tree Climbing class, which is not all that strange, given it is a main highway.  But what was weird was that we stopped at the same restaurant along the way, a quaint place called La Georgina where you can get quite a good “chocolate caliente.”   There are also hummingbird feeders set up outside the windows, allowing visitors to watch three or four species speed around in the drizzly cloud forest.   It was weird to be in the same place, but once our bus set off down the road again, there were no more familiar encounters – everything seen and experienced became new.

The atmosphere is much calmer than I expected – all of the students still seem a bit wary of being in a new place. It’s probably part of the adjustment period, and it is just beginning to hit me that I will be with these people for the next four months (and only them), in a country that is not my own, and without all of the comforts I usually take for granted.  Yet I am optimistic that once I shake myself out of the daze of being immersed in an entirely new life, everything will start to get quite exciting.  For now, I’ll just keep my eyes open for terciopelas.

--> I changed around a few things on the schedule that is listed in a previous post ... some of the places and dates have changed. Enjoy!

Separation of Past and Present

For all those currently wondering out there: yes, I made it to Costa Rica and I am still alive!

As I stepped off the plane and entered the San Jose airport, a feeling of déjà vu overwhelmed me.  Standing in line for customs, I immediately looked to my right I to find a memorable giant green mural of rainforest trees looking back at me.  Then once I got my bags, I checked across the street to locate the grassy area under the overpass.  Carrying the same EMS Summit 4500 bag with red tape still wrapped around the straps, I walked to a familiar type of bus and took up a window seat.  By this point, I was more than expecting to drive along the Cerro de la Muerte and arrive in Tres Piedras to go see El Duke!  Nearly everything I did and saw in the first hour of arriving in Costa Rica this time around reminded me of my first trip to the country two years ago.  I was a nervous freshman, signed up for the Costa Rica tree climbing course, embarking on a journey that – I would later come to realize – had shaped my college life.

But even with all of the similarities to my previous journey, I quickly realized that it was going to be quite different this time around.   Instead of looking for Keyser Arbolski’s friendly face, I was searching for a sign that read “Duke/OTS Semester Abroad.”  And once I had found that, I was not greeted with a bear hug by friends and ushered over to a slackline, but I awaited further instructions from an unknown professor, clinging tightly to the bags that were to be my only possessions for the next four months.  And stepping onto the bus, I did not find the faces of Cornell kids with whom I had practiced tying knots in the COE basement, but I saw eager, unknown faces amazingly not from Cornell at all.  As the bus drove us to a hotel in San Jose, I struggled to stay in control of the flood of feelings and memories that were washing over me, pulling me back in time to a sunny afternoon spent kicking a hacky sack and walking a slackline as planes screamed overhead.  I was certainly not expecting this nostalgia aspect of the trip – what other surprises will be in store for me?

Habari Gani

Continuing with the Swahili titles, habari gani means "what's new."  This post is all about my latest news from Kenya.  Here is part two of two in my chronicles of the time I spent in East Africa! (uploaded late due to lack of internet access)

Kenya has exceeded my expectations and has been more than I could hope for, in terms of its beauty and the insight it has given me.  It is strange that this experience is over, because only two weeks ago I viewed it as something always looming in the future, as a journey that would never come to fruition.  It shocked everyone last year how quickly the social conditions deteriorated in Kenya, and it was even more surprising to me how the country has turned around in only a year’s time.  Even with their relations towards Americans, Kenya has become far more welcoming over the course of this past year, especially with the coming inauguration of a U.S. president with Kenyan roots.

The rich culture of the country is something I will never forget; all the people we met seemed quite easygoing and friendly, if shy.  Our three guides joked and swapped stories with us throughout the trip, and when we went to visit the children, we were able to meet many of their mothers who were selling jewelry they had made.  We were able to support their craft, while at the same time interacting with the kids who were nervous at first but soon warmed up to the large group of strangers.  On the final night, after we had said our goodbyes and finished our last smores around the campfire, a troupe of traditional dancers came to camp to give a performance.  It was hypnotizing to watch them, but we soon snapped out of it when they came over, grabbed our hands, and had us join them in the dance circle.  Everyone was mixed together: dancing, jumping, and singing – you could not make out the dancers from the students because it was quite dark and the moon had not risen yet.  It was a remarkable and unique experience that left everyone’s calves sore the next morning.

One of our guides left us with a story of how the hyena came to be as it is today:

There was a time of great famine in Kenya many years ago.  The hyena had not eaten for days.  He met a hare that also was very hungry, and together they went in search of food.  One day they came upon a beehive, high up in a tree.  The hyena told the hare to go up into the tree and throw down the honeycombs and he would catch them on the ground; when the hare was done, the hyena promised they would split the honey between the two of them.  So the hare climbed up the tree, branch after branch, and finally reached the beehive.  He called down to the hyena and dropped the first honeycomb.  But the hyena, being so hungry, devoured the honey as it fell into his mouth.  He did this for each piece the hare dropped.  After a while, the honey stopped falling, and the hyena had eaten all of it.  The hare saw this, got upset, and left.  The hyena smiled at his good fortune of having so much food.  However, he was afraid it was the only food he would get for a while.  He saw a raven flying in the air and called to it.  The hyena asked the raven to sew up his back end so that he could keep the food inside him, and not have to be hungry again.  The hyena found some string and used an Acacia thorn to sew up the hyena and left.  A few days later, the hyena began feeling very uncomfortable.  He had a terrible stomach ache that was so bad that he could not move.  Luckily, the hyena spotted the raven again and called to him once more.  The raven flew down, and the hyena requested that the raven remove the stitches.  As the bird began to do so, the pressure that had built up within the hyena was finally released – spraying the contents of the hyena’s stomach all over the raven, turning him black.  Angered, the raven flew off instantly to try to clean his feathers.  He could not get them clean and they are black to this day.  Meanwhile, the recovered hyena had become hungry once more.  He joined with a pack of his fellow hyena in search of a meal and they looked for days and days without finding sustenance.  One night, the raven caught up to the hyena and his pack, and told them that he had good news.  The raven told the hyenas that up in the sky, the moon was a giant piece of meat, waiting to be eaten.  The hyenas started licking their chops and looking to the sky anxiously.  The raven offered to take them to it and they agreed; one hyena held onto the raven’s tail feather using his teeth, and the next hyena grabbed the bushy tail of the hyena in front of him.  In this way, the hyenas made a chain, and when they were all set, the raven began flying to the moon.  He went up and up, so high that the trees looked like small green specks.  Then the raven began saying to his tail feather, “Come loose, come loose.”  Eventually, the tail feather that the hyenas were holding was plucked from the raven, and all of the dogs fell, plummeting towards the ground.  They all landed hitting their back legs first and breaking those bones.  When they tried to get up, all they could do was limp off, crying in high-pitched yelps.  Because of its greediness, today the hyena has short hind limbs and can only yelp.

 Spotted Hyena

I came to Kenya thinking that, with the country’s almost desert-like conditions, we would rarely see any wildlife.  But I was quite mistaken and it’s been very inspiring to see such an array of life thriving in this semi-arid bushland savanna.  Especially during the night-drives.  On four separate occasions, two of the vans would head out at night to look for animals with a spotlight.  We located animals by their glowing eyes that stood out in the darkness.  It was always amazing to come upon a herd of sleeping impala, because 30 pairs of eyes would appear out of nowhere.  Yet even more exciting was discovering a pair of eyes that didn't belong to an herbivore.  n my last night drive, I was controlling the spotlight when I strafed across a pair of eyes far in the distance.  We redirected the path of our van to follow the animal and try to identify what species it was.  After much searching and chasing, we learned that it was a striped hyena - it was the first one we'd seen all trip!  I felt like I saw at least one new species of mammal or bird every day.  If it is like this during the dry season, I would love to come back and visit in the rainy season.

My time abroad has better prepared me for my coming semester in Costa Rica; I realize it is definitely something I must do.  The more time I spend in the field, the more I love the outdoors.  This planet has a great deal to offer and I hope to do my best to appreciate and respect it.

Even the vegetation here is stunning – everything has thorns!  One of the species of Acacia trees is locally known as the “Wait-A-Bit” tree, due to the frequency of getting caught in its thorns while walking by.  We did one of our projects on the Acacia trees in the area around camp, looking to see how much elephant damage there was to different species, and in proximity to the river.  This involved a day of walking around studying individual bushes for over two hours with very little shade.  Another day we spent high noon in an Acacia forest looking for the ants that live mutualistically in the trees.  After a couple hours without water, the heat was starting to get to me, and definitely gave me a feel for the Kenyan climate.

The weather was in the 80s and 90s during the day and dropped to the 50s at night.  It was constantly sunny, making it a complete opposite of the weather I’ve been experiencing in Ithaca for the last three years.  It did not rain a single time during our stay, until the last two days; on Thursday we had a brief shower late in the afternoon, but on Friday, there was a downpour that lasted through the early hours of dawn.  This turned out to be a somewhat inopportune time for a rain shower, since we had to drive 6 hours to Nairobi that morning.  I was in the first van to pull out of camp and onto the dirt roads, and the roads did not seem to be in good shape.

Within 100 feet of leaving camp, our van had begun fishtailing in the mud as we drove.  Dustin, our driver, did a great job of keeping control the entire time.  We reached a dip in the road where a river crossed during the rainy season.  As we started to go through it, Dustin tried to punch the gas in order to get our luggage-laden van up the opposite side of the hill.  The first and second attempt failed, so we all got out to push.  As Dustin began giving the van gas, it slowly started creeping sideways down towards the streambed and the giant boulders it contained.  The car managed to stop with its front bumper gently resting on a massive boulder.  We heard a tractor coming and people went to flag it down.  Another person ran back to camp to enlist some help.  The two men in the tractor were a great help and aided us in getting the van back on the road.  We all began pushing again, but one of the tires was stuck behind a large rock in the road that had been exposed by the rain.  We laid down some smaller stones for the van to roll over, and put dried elephant dung under the rest of the tires to absorb the water.  We all got behind the van once more, pushing even though our feet were sliding in the mud and the tires were spraying dirt all over us, and managed to get it up the hill.  With a cheer, we scrambled up to the van to continue the long journey back towards America.  It was going to be an interesting trip since most of us were wearing our only clean clothes and shoes before we started pushing!  To our amazement, along the way we spotted a pack of wild dogs off the side of the road.  We sat and watched them for some times, getting to see them play while watching hyenas and tawny eagles in the background.  It was a perfect way to end the wildlife portion of our trip!  

 Wild dogs, playing

Soon after, we reached the tarmac roads and let go of our fears of having to get out and push the van again.  Three airports, two plane rides, and 34 hours later, I showed up in New York, exhausted but happy to be finished traveling … for the week.

Mzuri Sana

In Swahili, mzuri sana means "very beautiful" and aptly describes my adventures in Kenya.  Here is part one of two in my chronicles of the time I spent in East Africa!  (uploaded late due to lack of internet access)

Jambo! I’ve been in Kenya for two weeks now, but it feels like far longer.  Each day begins at dawn, with a breakfast of eggs, toast, and pineapple served under an open tent overlooking the Ewaso Ng’iro (Brown River).  After breakfast at camp, we usually embark to do one of three things:

•  go to the field to collect data for our projects (i.e., walk around the African savanna)
  
• work on drafts of our research papers at the Mpala Research Center, where the computers are
  
• set out on game drives during which we usually find herds of impala, zebra, and gazelles, and the occasional giraffe, elephant, or warthog along the way
  

We spend the morning and the afternoon out, stopping back at camp for lunch (and a nap if I’m lucky).  We return to camp for the night usually around 6pm, giving people time to shower, wash their clothes, or play some soccer with the camp employees before dinner.  The dinners are always amazing – there is always some variety of delicious meat (once they told us it was camel) with a side dish of potatoes, pasta, or rice.  Once in a while we are given chipates, which are delicious fried dough pancakes.  If you add meat, it’s a taco; if you add chocolate sauce, it’s a crepe. Yum.

After dinner, we hang out around the campfire watching the amazing array stars in a sky that is clear enough to make out the Milky Way.  I usually go to bed around 9pm.  We sleep in deluxe “tents” located under thatched roofs.  They house two students each (my tentmate is Jennine! She’s awesome!) and most are not far from the river.  After dark, we can hear hyenas, hippos, baboons, and sometimes elephants on the opposite riverbank or just outside the tents.  If we don’t hear them, we often find evidence of animals in the form of fresh dung piles or browsed bushes around camp in the morning.  Just before daybreak, a loud chorus of birds breaks into song, helping wake me up whether I want to or not. I’ve included pictures to show what the tents look like.

    

The diversity of life is amazing – I’ll step out of my tent to brush my teeth in the morning and I’ll be watching a bushbuck grazing across the river, or see a Vervet monkey just waking up in the Yellow Fever acacia trees (Acacia xanthophlorea) outside my tent.  For the final project, I was watching the foraging behaviors of a bird called the Forked-Tail Drongo (Dicrurus adsimilis).   I spent four hours watching a short section of the river, and in the first two hours I saw: a toad, a lilac-breasted roller, 2 goshawks, a pygmy owl, 3 parrots, an egret, 2 hadada ibis, 2 vervet monkeys, a guineafowl, and some drongos.  I’ve never been somewhere with such richness and abundance of species!  It fills me with a desire to see more, do more, and know more.

  

Bushbuck     Vervet Monkey

  

Lilac-breasted Roller     Toad

Merry Christmas!

My present to you is the gift of communication!  

For those of you interested in keeping in touch, below is a tentative schedule of when I will be in email contact, in addition to where I'll be.  It is not exact, but it is the best I have.  My cell phone will not work while I am abroad, but I'll have a phone card as well as Skype (jess_stitt) when the internet connection is good enough.

If you are feeling ambitious and wish to send me mail while I am in Costa Rica (please don't send packages), then I give to you my address; good for Jan 26 - May 12 2009!

Jessica Stitt

Organizacion para Estudios Tropicales

Undergraduate Program

Apartado 676-2050

San Pedro 2050, Costa Rica

As is the case with all snail mail, this service will probably be quite slow...

Learn Spanish!

• Snail mail: correo de caracol (lento)
• E-mail: correo electronico (rapido)

(Maybe I'll continue to include fun Spanish things I learn throughout the semester!  Me gusta!) 

As an additional gift, here are the links to the sites where you can find more information about where I'll be!

Kenya

http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/department/courses/265/HOME.html

Costa Rica

http://www.ots.ac.cr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=300&Itemid=469

I am thinking my next post will be from Kenya, so have a Happy New Year!