Despite a delayed flight and an amusing sense of delirium upon arriving, we made it to Costa Rica! Actually Madeline managed to get here earlier than the rest of us...definitely a first. While she was asleep in our hotel, the rest of us stumbled out of the airport at around 11:15 pm to find Ryan Calsbeek, our Dartmouth professor for the first 3 weeks, waiting for us. After herding us onto the small coach bus that apparently is going to cart us all over the country for the next 6 weeks, the first thing he did after giving us our room keys (Maddy and I are roommates...total coincidence, I swear) was assign each of us a spirit animal. Obviously. So instead of counting off from 1 to 13 in order to make sure our whole group is on the bus, we'll be shouting our spirit animals in alphabetical order, from agouti to peccary. Hence, the title of our blog. Madeline's is the ocelot, a spotted jungle cat related to the jaguar, while mine is the motmot, which you should just google right now because words won't do justice to its incredible colors. Hopefully we'll see both while we're here!
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| 3-Toed Sloth in INBio |
This morning after breakfast at the Best Western in San Jose we piled onto our bus and went to the headquarters of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), which runs our program, to learn a bit more about what we've gotten ourselves into and to retrieve boxes and boxes of field equipment. We spent the rest of the morning wandering around INBioparque, the "Natural Biodiversity Reserve" of Costa Rica, which is basically like a huge zoo stocked with all kinds of plants and animals native to Costa Rica (3-toed sloth, white-tailed deer, pineapple, blue morpho butterflies, etc). Then it was back to the hotel to drop off our backpacks (and Maddy K, who channeled her inner ocelot by taking a 4-hour catnap) and wander around to find lunch, which we found in the Mercado Central. Lunch was delicious and yes, involved rice and beans. We returned to the hotel for some downtime which I used to remove a cockroach from our shower (thank you Bio 14, are you reading this Kelly Kennedy?) and then join Maddy in taking a nap. Tonight we're going to dinner as a whole group and tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for Palo Verde National Park!
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| Blue Morpho Butterflies |
Hasta Luego,
-Madi and Maddy
This morning after breakfast at the Best Western in San Jose we piled onto our bus and went to the headquarters of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), which runs our program, to learn a bit more about what we've gotten ourselves into and to retrieve boxes and boxes of field equipment. We spent the rest of the morning wandering around INBioparque, the "Natural Biodiversity Reserve" of Costa Rica, which is basically like a huge zoo stocked with all kinds of plants and animals native to Costa Rica (3-toed sloth, white-tailed deer, pineapple, blue morpho butterflies, etc). Then it was back to the hotel to drop off our backpacks (and Maddy K, who channeled her inner ocelot by taking a 4-hour catnap) and wander around to find lunch, which we found in the Mercado Central. Lunch was delicious and yes, involved rice and beans. We returned to the hotel for some downtime which I used to remove a cockroach from our shower (thank you Bio 14, are you reading this Kelly Kennedy?) and then join Maddy in taking a nap. Tonight we're going to dinner as a whole group and tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for Palo Verde National Park!
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