Vacation Update

Vacation Pictures

General Cool Pictures

Bocas del Toro is a relatively small town on Panama's Caribbean coastline. You can tell it used to be nothing more than a typical Caribbean island and has now turned into the "new" typical Caribbean island, complete with bars, dive shops and vendors. It still managed to be pretty charming with colorful houses and most touristy areas limited to the main few streets. I'd say the majority of housing options were hostels (compared to hotels), and I don't think any of the buildings in town even had a third floor.

I stayed at a spanish school/hostel populated by Europeans and you were more likely to hear German than English, although almost everyone spoke English as well. Surprisingly there were quite a few people in their thirties who had been at the school for a month or were planning on staying for weeks. I expected everyone to be college students on break.

I definitely enjoyed the people at the school, but it was a bit difficult to be there on my own, since most of them spent at least half the day in class. I ended up doing a few tours on my own, and went to the beach with a pair of Argentine girls who were also staying at the hostel.

I took a short tour through the Smithsonian research station on the island, which was interesting. The facility is pretty new and obviously very nice. We got to hold some starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers and ended up seeing some interesting birds in their swamp. Northern Jacana and Boat-billed Heron and a male Passerini Tanager were the coolest. We also saw a few caimans in the pond.

Playa de Estrellas was probably the highlight of the week. Ines, Paz (the Argentines) and I took a local bus to the other side of the island, Bocas del Drago, got off the bus and walked about 30 minutes along the deserted shoreline. You see a hand-painted sign that says Please Do Not Touch the Stars and in the water you can see at least 10 starfish. The ocean was maybe 1-2ft deep for a good 20ft off the coast, and there were seagrass beds and bright starfish. I got to borrow snorkelling gear and further offshore was some soft coral. I ended up seeing a cuttlefish and a snapper fry that kept trying to eat me.

The return trip was a bit annoying, particularly when I got held up a bit at the border and only just caught the bus on the other side. When I finally got back to the center there were two IT guys from headquarters hanging around. We had dinner and on Sunday went to Manuel Antonio National Park, which is woods with pathways to the beaches. The wildlife sighting was unbelievable, easy spots everywhere. We saw three different types of monkeys (white-faced capuchin, squirrel and howler), raccoons, tame white-tailed deer, and a sloth on the way back. The beach was pretty as well.

A fuller account of Finca la Flor! Stay tuned for photos, I didn't bring my camera connector cord with me to Panama. By the way, Mom, I'm safe and sound in my hostel and the town is super super safe.

So Finca la Flor is an organic farm that also hosts groups for vacations. The farm part isn't too large, just enough to help support themselves and sell excess food. There are maybe 3-5 people who work year round for the farm, and usually a handful of volunteers. I worked with a French Canadian man and a Swiss woman, and the farm is owned by a German woman. I definitely improved my Spanish, since I didn't speak English all week.

We would start around 8 in the morning, usually doing something with planting or preparing ground for planting. We'd have to till the ground (with hoes), add some compost and mix it into the soil, and either plant seeds or replant seedlings. I'd never heard of some of the things we planted, or ate. We also spent some time repairing infrastructure around the farm, using bamboo to make beds or steps on the hills. It was pretty hilly so the beds were all terraced, which is pretty cool.

We also worked with their goats a little. They had them in this stable that was on stilts, so all the goat poop (theoretically) would fall through the slats to the ground. The goats were like penthouse residents. Once a day we'd let them out for the Running of the Goats into their field. Then we'd clean their stalls (basically poking poop through the slats with sticks) and get them back in their stalls later in the day. This was harder, since each goat had an assigned stall so they wouldn't bully each other. So there would be 10 goats milling around and you'd have to sort them by grabbing their horns and trying to convince them to go to their own stall, which was not always easy.

The food was pretty amazing, it was all vegetarian and the majority of it came from the farm itself. The cooks really knew what to do with it too. We had a lot of really fantastic soups, and one night they made a really good Italian style pizza.

I wish I'd stayed longer, and I may go back during other breaks.

Vacaciones

A quick update! I ended up spening the last week volunteering at Finca La Flor, an organic farm near Cartago. Pardon typos and lack of apostrophes, Im using an internet cafe keyboard and I forget how to do them. Finca la Flor is really gorgeous and a pretty cool place. We spent most of every day planting, weeding, and preparing the beds for planting. Its pretty tough work, and at the moment Im exhausted. Ive got another night at the Finca, then Im spending the night in San Jose and heading to Bocas del Toro Panama for a week. Ill give a more detailed post (complete with pictures) next week, when I dont have a bus to catch!

In which not much happens...

Dad has been begging me to post for a week now, but frankly I have nothing much to post! The past week was fairly boring since we didn't go anywhere. The students were busy writing up their research reports and the interns (myself and Daniela) took inventories and tried to stay busy (sometimes easier said than done).

The students all left yesterday morning and we had a staff party last night. So far, every Costa Rican party I've been to (total: 3) has included chicharrones, which are different than those made in Mexico or So Cal. Here chicharrones is pork slow cooked over a fire, as opposed to essentially roasted scrapple in Mexico. Each party has also included karaoke and dancing, although the karaoke may be attributed to Sergio (econ professor) who was a key player in both parties. My latin dancing skills are still shameful, but improving. Edgardo (ecology prof) and the guards took pity on me and tried to teach me. Edgardo would try to spin us and I'd miss his hands as he came around and it was generally hilarious.

I believe Mom has been working herself into a knot because I still haven't finalized my plans for my vacation time. I'm waiting on an answer from an acquaintance of Gerardo (center director) about macaw research, but I'm afraid if I don't hear soon I'll have to find something else to do. So for now I'm looking at some organic farms that do kind of a work program. The problem is finding something on short notice. Of course, I'm welcome to stay at the center but that would be fairly boring for three weeks. I also have to leave the country for a few days to renew my visa, which SFS will pay for. I think I'll let them pay for me to go to Bocas del Toro, Panama which is a set of islands on the Caribbean coast of Panama.

A Very Delayed Update

So, blogging is harder to keep up with this time around. I've been to 4 different parks (Tirimbina, Volcan Arenal, Carara, Bosque de Ninos) in the past three weeks and now I'm planning my 3 weeks of vacation. I believe I need to leave the country for a bit to keep my visa fresh for the next semester, but I have to time it right so my 90 days don't run out too early.

I just spent the last four days in Bosque de Ninos, which is a forest that was preserved using money collected by children. It's up in the mountains and was colder than we expected. It was gorgeous though. There were two different types of forest at the campsite. On the one side there was a non-native, planted pine forest. The trees were literally in rows, and there wasn't a ton of vegetation. The other side of the camp had native cloud forest with tons of different species.

I spent my couple of days helping students look for mushrooms for their research projects. We would mark out a 20 x 50m plot and walk around looking for mushrooms. We usually came back with 80+ after maybe an hour and a half of searching. Especially in the native area, they were just everywhere if you looked close enough.

The wildlife count is pretty high at this point. Of course there's tons of iguanas around, and there's some wrens that live on campus. I've seen two different types of toucans, three species of snakes (2 of them venomous), white faced monkeys, howler monkeys, bullet ants (giants, named bullet ants because that's what it feels like when they bite), hummingbirds, giant social spiders, katydids, tree frogs, toads, the list goes on. I've got my heart set on a sloth before the year is up, and I'd love to see a tapir but apparently they're super shy.

I uploaded some more pictures to the last album. The one from the last post now has pictures from Carara Park and an outreach we did with school kids. This album has pictures from Tirimbina park and Arenal volcano and the associated park, waterfall, and hot springs. I've also been messing around with my camera and made this album for just some pretty pictures that don't necessarily have anything to do with anything.

Update on the bedmaking

We've sighted (and killed) a chinche, although happily it wasn't in anyone's bed. Imagine that at about an inch long, and carrying the threat of Chagas' disease, which from what I hear is pretty nasty. I don't really care about the scorpion thing anymore lol.

Students arrived yesterday and so far today we've taken them on tours through both the center and Atenas. Atenas is like a 10 min drive from the center and has like 6 main roads, so it's pretty easy to navigate. There's a central plaza/park, a market, and a church that are the main markers. It's becoming apparent to me that my AmEx card won't work like, anywhere. It's all Visa and MasterCard.

I need to come up with some kind of project to work on while I'm at the center. One of the last interns was writing a paper with Sergio, and Daniela is helping with the Rainforest Alliance Certification that the center's working on. It's also hard right now because a) I don't know much about what everyone's working on, and b) we'll be going on field trips like every couple of days. Maybe for now my project will be improving my Spanish lol.

I've actually started running in the mornings with Daniela and Jess (the student affairs manager). I'm still awful and have to walk periodically, but we've been doing about 3 miles a day. This morning we got going at 6am because we needed to be on time to breakfast. It's also MUCH cooler then, so you're not dying by the end.