Week 3

This week has been really hectic due to classes and reports being due.  I’ll tell you about my weekend first, which was full of a lot of day trips instead of staying over several nights at one location.  On Friday we visited the Tarcoles River Basin and the Caraca National Park.  It was amazing but also sad to see the large contrast between the level of pollution and the surrounding wildlife.  We took a boat down the river, which was full of birds and crocodiles.  They even have a “Crocodile Man” tour in which you get to see a man feed a crocodile so that it leaps from the water.  We didn’t do that of course because that would be too “touristy.”  I’ve only been here three weeks but I already have an aversion to “tourist trap” type things. 

At the mouth of the river, where we had a Natural Resources Management lecture, there was trash strewn all over the beach.  There was even the torso from a Ken doll!  The effect of the pollution could also be seen where we had lunch.  Although the view from where I sat to eat lunch was gorgeous and looked like the perfect atypical scene from a tropical beach, when you got close to the water you could see discoloration and foam forming on the incoming waves that are a sign of contamination.  The discoloration is known as red tides because of the color.  Afterwards we had another lecture, this time for Tropical Ecology in the mangrove forest.

Next, we went to Carara National Park.  I got to see leaf cutter ants, butterflies, a snake, a basilisk (aka the Jesus Christ lizard, which gets its name from its ability to run across water) and a toucan!  Although scarlet macaws live in the park I unfortunately didn’t get to see any.  At one point of the trail it also felt like it was raining, which was strange because it was sunny.  When we looked up we saw what looked like water spouting from a tree.  We found out later that it was actually cicadas peeing on us!

The next day we went to the Poas Volcano National Park.  We were very lucky to have a clear, perfect view of the crater, the second widest in the world, in the morning.  When we returned later in the afternoon to survey visitors for our Economics FEX the wind had shifted, blowing gas from the crater so the it blocked the lookout view and made the air smell of sulfur (which for those of you who don’t know smells like rotten eggs).

I have found that my favorite type of rain forest is the elfin forest (the type that is at Monteverde), which was also present at this park.  We walked through the elfin forest to visit the lagoon, which is the remains of the original crater of the volcano.

That night we went to a carnival celebration at Sabanca Larga, a neighborhood in the Atenas area.  The carnival lasted until Tuesday, the start of Lent.  It was a great, authentic cultural experience, with Latin American music and dancing, such as cumbia.  There were also booths with games and food, and also a very unique game which involved people crawling into inflated plastic balls and running around in them on the surface of a pool to “fight” each other.

Sunday was a very relaxing day, in which I went into Atenas to use the internet café.  Also I had pizza for the first time since arriving here.  The pizza was good but not nearly as good as authentic American pizza. :P

On Monday, we went into San Jose to attend a guest lecture about genetically-modified-organisms (GMOs) at the University of Costa Rica.  For lunch I ate at an Italian restaurant that was delicious and then had some soft serve frozen yogurt at a place that had unique flavors like rose, peanut, and apple.

That’s all the time I have to update on now.  I will write about the rest of this week later.  Tomorrow begins my weekend stay with a host family.  I will be staying in San Jose (the only SFS student staying so far away!) with Marvin, an administrator at the center that speaks only Spanish, and his family.

P.S. Internet is being slow tonight, but I promise I will upload some photos as soon as I can!