Feb 22 -- lowlands to mountains

It was a sleepy day. We set off by 8:00 for San Jose, and I slept the whole way. We stopped at Hotel City One (the official OTS hotel now, I guess) to drop off a resource person and pick up two more, and then it was off to Cuerici. I slept through that trip too. We piled out of the bus at ~10,000 feet, loaded our luggage on smaller trucks, and started walking. Luckily Don Carlos came back with the OTS truck after it was unloaded to take us the rest of the way down. The high elevation was really affecting me – I was dizzy and unfocused, and got loopier as time went on. I ate a lot at lunch and then went to bed for 4 hours. When I got up, I felt okay again.

Cuerici, the station we’re staying at, is beautiful. The temperature is fabulous – up to 60º F in the day, and down to freezing or a little below at night. I can wear my wool sweater, long underwear, and scarf. It even smells good here; it just feels more like home. And they serve amazing hot chocolate with dinner. We live in two buildings. The two-story has a small kitchen, dining room, sitting room, and porch; the bunks are upstairs. The classroom is a separate building attached by a covered walkway so you can move between them without getting rained on. (It rains a lot here.) There are 2 big woodstoves to huddle around, one in each building. There is absolutely no insulation here; I think the buildings are thin wood planks covered in corrugated metal roofing material to keep out the wet. It means that anything that goes on in the main building is audible everywhere, but it also means that when it rains it sounds beautiful.

I haven’t gotten outside today (slept through the introduction hike) but I got the full story. We’re staying at a small diversified sustainable farm. They grow blackberries (a big cash crop in this area) and have a rainbow trout farm. Fish farming is a tricky business environmentally – lots of wastes associated with it – but they are more conscientious than most, letting the fish wastes settle out and using them to fertilize the fields instead of washing them into the waterways. We get most of our electricity from hydro, a mountain stream running down near the buildings. They also keep ducks, chickens, cows, and a horse. There is a forest reserve nearby (montane rain forest, higher elevation than cloud forest) and a short drive up to get to subalpine paramo – the habitat just above the treeline. There are some cool bogs, too. We’ll get an introduction to these three habitats tomorrow.

There are lots of new birds and plants here. So far the only new birds I’ve seen are the large-footed finch and sooty robin, but that’s because of the altitude. I saw lots of birds on the way up and couldn’t focus or remember well enough to identify them. Tomorrow will be better, we’re going out at 5:30 am. I’m looking forward to seeing some friendly familiar plants in addition to the new ones. Oaks, Indian Paintbrush, Spanish Moss. I wish we had more than 6 days here!