Vacaciones!

My time here is split into three chunks: session A, vacation week, and session B. Session A I had a class and my internship. Session B I only have my internship, and a whole lot of free time to enjoy Costa Rica (and yes Dad, study for the MCAT). But mostly to enjoy Costa Rica :) Anyways, here is a selection of photos from my trip. I didn't take a considerable amount, but I will try to tell the story as well as I can. 

Our first stop: Cahuita. Cahuita is in the eastern province of Limon which is also the Caribbean coast. This picture is from when we got there and had a full meal gazing out on the national park's Playa Blanca. We had the fortune of meeting up with profe Kim Hernandez and her family, with whom we traversed the famous Playa Negra (black beach) which was just a short walk up the coast. 

We only stayed in Cahuita for one night because it was fairly cloudy there and we wanted to hit the road because we had a lot of destinations in mind. We took a bus to the Costa Rica-Panama border, crossed with minor difficulty, and bussed to the islands of Bocas del Toro without getting ripped off by anyone! The picture above is from the balcony of one of the hostels we stayed at.

If you didn't know, that banana you are eating right now while enjoying my wonderfully presented masterpiece of a blog (chiste) probably came from Central America. Whereas driving through the fields of North America you would see rows and rows of Wheat, Corn, Grapes, Apple trees, etc; here there are hectares and hectares of bananas (and coffee plants) all over the place.

And here is a major shipping port for Chiquita bananas in Panama, if you didn't believe me.

One day in Bocas we went to this lovely beach which is appropriately named after all of the WILD starfish that are there. They are pretty crazy, they were swimming all over the place. While we were there it started to pour rain, so we hid our stuff under our rain jackets and jumped in for a swim! Later on we went to a different beach and were wondering why nobody else was there as we were having fun body surfing, until we realized we were covered in algae and smelled really bad. That left a scar on my swim suit for the rest of the week. 

The first day in Bocas we rented bikes for US$1.50 per hour and biked around to a couple of different beaches for two hours. It was pretty awesome.

Here is a shot I get when we were taking the ferry back to the mainland in Panama to head back to Costa Rica. This was taken at about 7a.m.; after that we took a 4 hour bus ride across the country to David, another several hour bus ride to the western/southern border of Costa Rica, and another short trip to Golfito on the inner shore of the Golfo Dulce that touches the Peninsula de Osa. Fun fact: when I left Panama I only had about 78 cents left and my debit card didn't work in Panama to take out more money if I needed it. Thank you God!

The next morning we took another ferry to Puerto Jimenez on the edge of the Peninsula de Osa. We were sort of running low on Colones too, so we decided against staying til the next morning to take a bus to the inner-national park or renting kayaks or hiring a guide. Instead, we took a little adventure to a river nearby that was supposedly loaded with crocodiles.

Well, we saw one. While we were sneaking around the forest trails trying to avoid spider webs, we heard this giant noise of water rushing and a huge chomping noise that kind of freaked us out. Then we went out and saw this guy just floating around waiting for an unfortunate bird to land close enough to him. Austin had the great idea of throwing stuff at it to get it to move closer to us. It sort of did, but then he went underwater and we couldn't see him beneath the glossy surface so we thought it best to leave.

There was a tooooonn of Scarlet Macaws everywhere. They are beautiful, but they crow like an old witch. Their lifespan is about 25 years and they mate for life, so they always come in twos. You're probably thinking, "HEY, THAT GUYS BY HIMSELF" well good job on your math. I cropped the picture. 

That same day we went up to San Isidro de El General, and the next morning we bussed up to the BEAUTIFUL beach of Manuel Antonio. These Iguanas were all over the place, and they were pretty neat.

After spending a whole day on the beach, we were wiped so we went to bed at like 8:45. Actually we went to bed by 9 every night because we were so tired from traveling and activities. Doncitos. The next day we went into Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio and we saw some wild stuff. This is a dead baby venomous snake that Austin spotted on the trail. Red touches yellow, kills a fellow; Red touches black, venom lack. Fortunately/unfortunately we couldn't find his mommy.

We were discouraged for awhile because all we could find were spiders and ants, but then when we took a trail to one of the beaches we spotted a whole bunch of these little guys! They had no fear, and were doing all sorts of tricks for food and attention.

One of the beaches of the national park. Beauteous. There were little monkey footprints in the sand, and we had just left went suddenly...

...There was this super loud noise like something from a horror movie! I looked up and there were probably 20 howler and white-faced monkeys just hanging out up in the trees. They had been watching us this whole time! Creepers...

While we were leaving the park, we spotted a few of these little guys galloping through the woods. I think it's called a Picote or something like that. Apparently it's the cousin of ant-eaters. We also saw a few sloths and, of course, a ton of iguanas and lizards--all of which are on my facebook album. If you want to hear more about my trip feel free to ask me!

Proyecto

So it's time for a little learning! For the class I took last month, one of the projects was a wonderfully vague little piece called our "artistic exposition" and "investigation" (essay). I'm a biology major, and I am in a wonderfully biologically intense place, so naturally I was dying to do some kind of display on the natural beauty surrounding us here. I have no idea why, but I decided to make some wire sculptures  for the artistic exposition of an animal, an insect, and a plant. And technically insects are animals but let's not go there. I also thought it would be great idea to do specific organisms with a little food-chain action going on. I contacted my cousin Theo for help since he is master ant expert, so big props go to him. I present to you first: Pseudomyrmex ferruginea.

This is to scale in terms of the size of its body parts, but the actual ant is between 5-10 mm so don't have any nightmares about this because that would be embarrassing. This ant shares a special symbiotic mutualistic association with Bullhorn Acacia plants. A colony of these ants begins when a young copulated queen ant smells out a plant, eats a hole into one of the hollow pairs of bulbous spikes, and lays 15-20 eggs. As the colony grows they move to the other spikes within the same plant, and when the colony reaches a size of 300-400 it begins to ferociously guard the plant against an array of threats. Herbivorous animals looking for a snack leave with hundreds of stings around their mouth to discourage them from returning, other insects that come in to nom on a leaf are literally stung to death, and the encroaching shade from nearby plants is quickly eliminated as the ants scurry to chew off branches or completely destroy neighboring plants. If the colony becomes large enough, it will move to other nearby Acacia trees, and if another colony approaches an already-occupied Acacia there is a bloody war to the last man/ant in which the larger colony more frequently wins. 

La Acacia cornigera. As you can see by my beautiful sculpture, the cornigera has a pair of spikes that begins from the base of leaf stalks and serves as the plants only natural defense. The cornigera can grow up to 15 meters tall, which is quite a considerable plant. Other Acacias have alkaline properties to their leaves that taste bitter upon consumption, but the lack of this in the cornigera is a huge disadvantage for its survival. It is for this reason that it desperately needs the protection of ferruginea. But why does ferruginea need cornigera? Apart from the housing within the spikes, cornigera has these lovely little structures on the end of each leaf stalk (those little orb things coming off the branches in my sculpture) called Beltian Bodies. The Beltian bodies are rich in lipids and proteins and serve as the main sustenance for the ants, although they literally have no benefit for the Acacia. For this reason it is quite obvious that over time these two organisms have co-evolved to become best buddies and provide for each others needs.

The first shocking fact that I learned (I don't know why it was so shocking, but it was to me so don't tease me) was that there are only four kinds of anteaters alive today. I'm not sure if it was shocking because I only thought there was one kind or if there were a lot more, but enough about the shock factor. The giant anteater can grow to be as long as 1.8 meters (about 6 feet), and mostly eats terrestrial ants and termites. The other three species are smaller, perhaps 30 cm at the smallest, and are arboreal so that will be the focus of this discussion. An anteater can go through about 200 mounds or colonies per day, flicking its tongue that is about twice as long as its head at a rate of about 150 licks per minute. He would get to the center of a tootsie pop(tm) in no time! The stomach of an anteater is similar to the gizzard of chickens, and it uses consumed dirt and a crushing action to aid in the digestion of the ants. And, not surprisingly, ferruginea is a minority of the total consumed ants on average. 

So what's the point? Other than really cool biology information? Well, if you must know, I made an analogy between my three organisms and the people of Latin America. The ants have a colonial mindset and ferociously protect their means to survival. Similarly, Latin Americans have a tightly-knit family and friend structure. The relationship between the Acacia and the ants represents the ingenuity of Latin America to survive in a climate that is often dangerous (ie. militant dictatorships, guerilla activity, narco-trafficking, human slave trade). The big ole anteater represents external forces that threaten the well-being and uniqueness of the people of Latin America (ie. large multinational corporations vs the farmer, infiltrations of north american culture, an ineffective or militant government). I hope you liked it! I worked pretty hard on the sculptures so I'm planning on bidding them off starting at $1000. Gotta pay for college somehow, you know!

Cataratas La Paz

The day after the Canopy tours we got a group of 6 together to go to the Cataratas la Paz (Peace Waterfalls). It was expensive but so worth it. Besides the natural beauty there, this place was a fully developed resort and zoo with a serpentarium, butterfly....tarium.. and more!

I wanted to jump into the waterfall but I don't think I was allowed to so somebody stopped me....but next week when I go travelling to Limon I'm pretty sure there's a place where we can swim under and around some waterfalls so I'm psyched for that.

Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous. There were flowers with blends of color, plants with leaves bigger than me, trees covered with 100+ species of other plants all surrounded by the thundering ambience from the waterfall and the mist enshrouding us all.

Double waterfall! The waterfall hit the bottom in a booming roar that made the water churn and bubble like a kraken's lair. I wouldn't want to swim near this one, I might die.

There are going to be more pictures on Facebook of the other stuff I saw in the animal cages, but I will share a few on here. This amazing bird is a kind of green toucan. 

Albino squirrel! I think one time I saw a negative albino squirrel at my house in Green Bay with bristly black hairs and blood-red eyes. This guy barely stood still for me to get the picture!

Love birds! Actually I think it was mommy and baby.

This is my pal Toucan Sam. He harvests fruit for me.

The main attraction! These guys were crazy, they were swinging on ropes and running around and playing raucously. It was great.

Oh wait, that was these guys. They also picked at each others butts as is obvious in the picture above.

There was a little area with about 30 of these feeders and like 8 types hummingbirds. They were flying around everywhere!

The master Boa. This guy is like a tube of muscle. I hope I don't meet any in my later travels that aren't behind glass....

So adorable! All of the wild cats were sleeping. I guess we came at naptime.

Of course we had to stop somewhere for lunch after, and this wouldn't be an Andrew blog without talking a little bit about the food I ate.

8 bucks for all this food! My drink was blended strawberries and milk. Bon apetit!

Canopy

Last Saturday we went on a Canopy tour! Canopy is more commonly known as "zip-lining" and at this particular place we did 8 runs.

Our guide Arturo spoke flawless English, except he had a slight New York/Spanish accent which was an interesting combo. He explained to us that our tour was in a cloud forest. What makes a cloud forest different from a rainforest is that cloud forests hold in the rainwater and feed it into the aquifers deep in the mountain. Rain forests grow such that the water drains through it quickly to coastal bodies of water or rivers/lakes. One percent of all forests in the world are cloud forests. Canopy tours started in the 80s and was developed by scientists who used it as a means to travel between different trees in the pursuit of researching the local flora. 

Yup, there I am! The first 3 or 4 lines were really slow and short but were a good warmup for the later ones.

Here I am on the last line. It was about 250 meters long and just about as high over the ground. The way they stopped us was with a big wooden block on the line that made a huge knocking sound when we hit it and brought us to a nice grinding halt.