Costa Rica -- La Fortuna

For a little break in the midst of data collecting at La Selva, Carlos and I took a little trip to the cute town of La Fortuna a couple of hours away from La Selva. We stayed at some nice, quiet cabinas near town and were lucky to have fantastic weather for the four days that we were there!

Our private cabina had a gorgeous view of Arenal Volcano (one of the most active volcanoes in the world and looming over the town of La Fortuna) and was extremely cute and comfortable inside. We even went swimming in the pool located just outside our door!

We spent our time walking around town, eating nice food, and relaxing. We also took trips to a paca breeding center (I will talk about that in another post) and Eco Thermales -- a gorgeous hot springs resort hidden in a jungle environment. We enjoyed the warm pools and waterfalls while sipping on non-alcoholic piña coladas -- the hard life of the ecologist!

After a really fun trip to La Fortuna, we were re-energized and ready to continue collecting mounds of data in La Selva!

Costa Rica -- Lab Viejo 27

While Carlos and I were at La Selva a few weeks ago, the lab manager was nice enough to place us in our old office -- Lab Viejo 27 (Old Lab 27). I think this is one of the best offices in the lab building: it is upstairs, has a nice amount of shelving and desk space, and has a window facing the forest where we can watch parrots, aracaris, sloths, monkeys, etc. I made a little sign for our door to let people know that we were in there for the month. I want to see a peccary-crossing sign on STR (the biggest main trail) because I don't know how many times I have almost run over a peccary on my bike when it has darted across the trail in front of me!

I also took a picture of my favorite part of the mural across from our office -- it is a really nice forest mural painted in beautiful colors.

Costa Rica -- Shakira & Chola!

While Carlos and I were at La Selva, we ventured out to the old neighborhood where we used to live: La Flaminea. Our goal was to see our old neighbors -- the puppies Chola and Shakira! We visited them a few times and they were really happy to see us again (and we were happy to see them again too). Shakira is tethered now so people don't harass her, but she has a lot of room to run around in the yard (the leash is tied to another rope and can move around, sliding on the rope).

Chola is funny as usual and always wants her tummy to be petted. While we were out there, Carlos and I also had some fresh coconuts (pipas) where we drank the juice and ate the coconut part -- Chola liked it too!

It was fun to see our furry friends again and to see that they are doing well. Oh yea, I also still have some pictures to post from La Selva -- when Carlos and I went up into the canopy towers!

Costa Rica -- La Selva plants & fungi

This is my final picture post from Carlos' and my trip to La Selva and in this installment, I have a few pictures of vegetation and assorted plant-like things. In the picture above, I am squatting near one of my baby Astrocaryum alatums that was planted in the lab clearing. I reared this little tree from a seed and now it is around 5 or 6 years old and doing great -- very spiny too!

Here is a typical trail going through the primary forest in La Selva:

A huge tree, possibly a Sura, in the primary forest:

One of my former study species: Socratea exorrhiza (also called the walking palm):

A huge liana (woody vine, genus = Bauhinia) going up a palm tree:

Some cute, white fungi:

A typical sight -- a strangler fig strangling a host tree:

Although my La Selva posts from this trip are finished, I still have lots of pictures from La Fortuna and around our old neighborhood outside La Selva (La Flaminea) where we met up with some old (and furry) friends!

Costa Rica -- La Selva animals

Things are too busy here and I haven't had too much time to write anything for my blog in the past couple of days. I've been working on some projects with looming deadlines (Smithsonian contract, OTS job) and trying to plan out my busy summer and spring -- hectic! Anyway, maybe that is a topic for another blog post. In this post, I have lots of pictures of some of the animals I encountered while Carlos and I were in La Selva.

As usual, the peccaries were ubiquitous and mischievous around the lab clearing. They were usually pushing over banana plants to eat the fruits, tearing up Heliconias and eating their roots, or snoozing during their afternoon siestas!

Here is a tent (made from a Heliconia leaf) with a few little Ectophylla alba (Honduran white tent bats) inside! These are the cute, little white cotton-ball shaped bats that live in leaf tents that they construct. They are also frugivorous and Carlos and I were lucky to watch them zoom around fig trees at night, snatching small figs to carry back to their tents to eat!

Here is a cute Tinamou taking a bath in a puddle after a day of heavy rain:

A pretty Mot-mot resting in a tree:

I saw lots of Curassows on this trip -- this fella was wandering around the lab clearing.

One night, Carlos and I led a night walk to the Cantarrana swamp and we found a couple of cute tree frogs:

Strawberry poison dart frogs were everywhere throughout the forest (as usual!).

I found this little turtle napping next to the trail one day:

I saw more snakes than usual on this trip (including a huge fer-de-lance and a little hog-nosed pit viper -- no pictures of those venomous guys though...only cute snakes!).

I also saw many, many butterflies in La Selva, but only this one stopped long enought for me to take a picture:

Costa Rica -- La Selva environs

On this trip to Costa Rica, Carlos and I spent most of our time at our old haunt: La Selva Biological Station. In the midst of our 2 weeks at La Selva, we took a side trip out to La Fortuna (where Volcan Arenal is located). I took plenty of pictures throughout my trip and I thought a good start to my Costa Rica blog posts would be a post with pictures of the environments that I like best within La Selva.

On my first day at La Selva, I took a hike on trails CES --> CEN --> STR. This picture was taken from STR trail (it's a pretty open trail, and spans through secondary forest mostly):

One of the more picturesque streams in the station, taken from the middle of a metal bridge. Note the many bromeliads growing on the rocks!


Carlos and I both really like this little pond off trail where we feed the frugivorous fish (machacas) any fruits and seeds we find on the trail.

To relax, we often take walks in the swamp (Cantarrana) and look for frogs and turtles jumping into the water. Too bad giant trees always fall down and break the boardwalk!

I have lots of other La Selva pictures to post (in a post on animals and another on plants) along with lots of pictures of our old neighborhood and La Fortuna!