Back in the CR

I'm back in Costa Rica, at OTS's La Selva Biological Station. I'm here with my friend and colleague Amanda Posto -- the one I wrote a postcourse grant with. OTS funded the grant, and so we're back at La Selva for two weeks. The grant covers our room and board. We're studying how flower shape affects rates of pollen deposition within and between species.

It took most of two days to get here, plane bus and taxi. We met up in the Miami Airport and spent one night in San Jose. Everything went smoothly, we were able to understand and be understood. We even found the grocery store with the essential items -- lighters and potato empanadas. The lighters are for preparing pollen slides, and the empanadas are very, very tasty.

Yesterday the taxi dropped us off by Reception here at La Selva. We checked in and then walked to kilometer to the building we're staying in now; after all that travel and with heavy bags it was a long km! But the room is beautiful -- obviously built for tourists, but currently accommodating scientist overflow. :) On Friday we move to the grungy River Station, which I think is the oldest building at the station. Moldy and apparently with some olfactory issues from the old septic system. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, yesterday we got set up with a little lab space and a locker to store our research equipment in. This morning we checked out a couple of bikes, which substantially shorten our commute from the distant lodgings; a lot of the trails around the station are bikeable, too. We spent most of the day today out in the field, looking for plants in flower. We found about 28 species, and are currently working on identifying them.

It's the rainy season here now. When we got in yesterday, they said it hadn't rained in two days. I told Amanda I figured it would rain today, and she said she thought it wouldn't, so we ended up wagering an ice cream on the question. I was surprised she did it, because (as noted) it is the RAINY season, in a rainforest. She lost in a big way. We had just finished walking trails for the day and were almost back where we'd left the bikes on the trail when it started to pour. We got out our umbrellas for the last few meters. Umbrellas work better in the tropical rainforest than rain gear, because you'd just soak in your own sweat under all that plastic. But they went back in the backpacks when we hopped on our bikes.

Biking in a downpour on the narrow leaf-covered trails of La Selva is hard core. Okay, I'm not a mountain biker, but I thought it was gnarly (as Jeff - the advisor - would say). My glasses were steamed up and covered in raindrops, but I was doing pretty well and having a blast. Then I heard a thump on the trail behind me; it was Amanda hitting the dirt after a small tree caught her left handlebar. She was laughing, which was good, but the bike didn't seem to be working quite right anymore, so we walked the rest of the way back to the lab where I could clean off my glasses and we could get a better look at the gears. It was an easy fix, and then we were back on wheels, speeding to our room where hot showers, baby powder, and dry clothes awaited. Bliss!

Now we're looking at all those plant photos I took, checking La Selva's online flora, and leafing through plant ID books to figure out what we have. That should keep us busy for a few more hours before we go to bed and sleep very, very well.

It's fun being a researcher at La Selva. Very different from being a visiting student in a big class. Now we make our own schedule, and it's just the two of us. It's easier to see cool things on the trail because there aren't 20 other people making noise and trying to catch every lizard they see. There aren't any lectures to attend (unless we want to) and no papers to write, just the two of us and our project. On the other hand, we have to be more focused, and we don't have boxes full of resources and people with diverse interests to ask about this bird or that mammal spotted on the trail.

Speaking of critters, I saw an armadillo and a 3-toed sloth. I'd better get back to work now!