Some New Pictures

New Pictures!!
These are from pretty much the whole semester so far: Manu, Monteverde, Poas Volcano, Carara, Atenas, community outreaches, etc.

Some highlights:
-Monteverde. In total. It's a small (but growing) town in the mountains. The ecosystem up there is called "cloud forest" because it's so high up it gets a lot of precipitation from being IN the clouds. It's very surreal looking, all of the trees have tons of epiphytes (bromeliads, orchids) growing on every surface and it's almost dripping wet at all times. There's also swampy areas, and once you get up high enough you reach elfin forest, where all the trees are short from the wind exposure. Over the course of our stay we hiked the trails in Monteverde park twice, and one of the interns and I stayed an extra night with a professor and his family. We got to wander around the town of Monteverde and see a band of local scientists play in a bar. I get the sense that there's a really big scientific community in the town, I visited or heard of at least 4 research stations there.

Independence Day (Sept 15) in town. The parade was very similar, and yet very dissimilar to parades at home. You do have the marching bands, the baton twirlers, the floats, etc. But you also have girls with big skirts and guys doing rope tricks, and women in THREE INCH HEELS in a PARADE. The food was very similar. No hot dogs or burgers, but meat cooked over a grill, served on a skewer with a tortilla. Close enough (and delicious).

We've had a couple of outreaches with a local old folks group, called the Tercera Edad (Third Age). It's a bunch of active little old ladies and men who get together, usually at the church. Twice now we've done arts and crafts with them, and it's pretty fun. The little old ladies get pretty creative, and they're really happy to just talk to young people, even if we don't always understand them.

On our trip to Carara and the surrounding mangrove swamp, I saw some very cool wildlife: Boat-billed heron,, Roseate spoonbill, and big crocodiles (see album) and poison dart frogs.

I've also seen some white-faced capuchin monkeys around campus. They literally tried to steal our bananas the other day. Cheeky monkeys.

Finally, last Sunday I went with a professor and his family to a German festival in San Jose. We drank German beer, ate German brats, and listened to traditional German music. The first two were incredible, the last was horrible. I was also mistaken for German quite a few times. I usually didn't realize the person was speaking German for a few sentences. I just thought they had a really bad Spanish accent or something.