Food 1 -- Macarons

Today is the first day of July ... that means this is my first entry for NaBloPoMo for July (with the theme of food) -- I almost forgot!

Yesterday, I woke up with a very strong craving for a cookie. Unfortunately I don't have any cookies and we won't be going to town for a few days. The reason I really wanted a cookie was because I had a dream that I was in France wandering around and eating a very fancy type of cookie -- the French macaron (not to be confused with the American-style macaroon made with coconut). I have never eaten a macaron, but I am sure that I would like them. Macarons are made with almonds, egg whites, and sugar. The cookie is comprised of two crispy, but delicate halves that sandwich a layer of sweet filling (a ganache). Macarons come in many, many intersting flavors (e.g. almond, chocolate, anise, lemon, caramel, pistachio, lychee, raspberry, vanilla ... there are to many to list!). One day, I will eat a macaron -- maybe in Paris!
(image courtesy of Laduree)

Tickets!

Yay, today Carlos and I bought our tickets to Cartagena! Unfortunately, there are no direct flights from San Jose so we have a little stopover each way in Panama City, but that's no big deal. I am really excited to have our tickets and now we just need to work on getting our hotel plans set up -- there are a lot of really nice-sounding and affordable places to stay within the walls of the old city.

NaBloPoMo -- July

I just received an e-mail from the NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) people with the new theme for July. The new topic is FOOD -- hey, I like food! I think that I will give NaBloPoMo another go for the moth of July and try to write a post per day about food. That shouldn't be too difficult! I should also be at the office every day in July so I will have internet access for posting. I haven't been doing NaBloPoMo the past few months because I haven't liked the themes, but food sounds like a fun and easy topic for me to write about!

Cartagena, Colombia

Right now I am working on planning a trip to Cartagena, Colombia this upcoming August. Carlos and I are going to finally take a real vacation to: (1) renew our visas, (2) celebrate finishing most/all of our field work and data collection before writing, and (3) see a little more of South America while we have the time to take a travel break. We will buy our plane tickets next week and then the real planning begins!

Cartagena de Indias is purportedly one of the most beautiful cities in all of South America (that is a pretty big claim) and is an increasingly popular tourist destination in Colombia. The city itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site comprised of a walled city that was fortified against pirate attacks in the 16th century. There are tons of museums and historical sites throughout the city center.

It sounds like Cartagena is a nice colonial place (it actually sounds almost European) to walk around and enjoy at a relaxing pace -- that sounds good to me! We are still trying to research an itinerary, but we will probably outline some of the major sites to see while taking it easy and just spending a lot of time walking and taking in the scenery. One of the things that I am most excited about doing is taking a horse-drawn carriage ride around the cobblestone streets on a city tour -- cool! Horseys!

Fungi

Since the rainy season began (about a month and a half ago), fungi have been very happy and prolific in the eternally wet forest. The variety of forms that fungi take here is incredible. My favorite fungus is probably this one:
I think it's called something like "Cup of coins" since it is shaped like a little goblet holding coins in the bottom. I don't know much about the fungi here, but this is definitely a great place to study them!

The Happening

Yesterday, Carlos and I traveled to San Jose for seemingly the millionth time this month (it was really only our second trip...but it is a pain to go there!) to pick up his passport and new US student visa. While we were there, we had a nice lunch and saw another movie: The Happening. This film was directed by the same guy who did The Sixth Sense, and from the previews, it looked really good. However, it was BAD...really REALLY bad. And not in a good "B-movie" way. The acting was awful (save for John Leguizamo) and the premise was stupid -- it tried to invoke science into the plot but the "scientific principles" they used to try to explain the in-film phenomenon seemed based more on religion (by deifying nature) rather than fact. Argh, it was so frustrating to see science twisted in such a way -- almost to a creationist bent. Annoying. Any science that was mentioned was outright incorrect. I strongly do not recommend that people see this movie and I am very glad that I paid less than $2 for my ticket. The worst part is that most people who see it will believe the pseudo-science that the movie hypes; it is bad enough to produce a movie hinged on inaccurate science, but to pass it off as truth to an unknowing public is deplorable. Boo!

More Ectophylla alba

A couple of days ago, while out working in the field, I saw a lot of mammals: an agouti eating a seed and bouncing around the forest floor, a coatimundi that I startled and sent jumping over a log, and a group of five Ectophylla alba (white tent bats). I have seen three groups of E. alba in tents during my time working here at La Selva. Their tents are fairly inconspicuous and ephemeral so once you find a colony, they may disappear from their roost soon thereafter. Here are some photos of these five fluffy white bats -- they are so cute and all squished on top of each other under this Heliconia leaf!

Mini-foods

Nothing super-exciting has been happening here lately -- I have been pretty busy with fieldwork! I was sitting at my computer this morning looking at a few of the things around my office and noticed some new additions that I picked up on my last trip to San Jose.

While wandering around the mall San Pedro, I stopped into a little Sanrio-type shop full of cute things and Carlos bought me these three cute mini-food erasers.
From top to bottom: cream puff with a strawberry, tempura shrimp on sticky rice, and dorayaki. Dorayaki is a tasty Japanese treat comprised of two pancakes filled with sweet red bean paste -- they are really good and the favorite food of the Cosmic Cat, Doraemon (if you don't know who Doraemon is, he is the main character of a really excellent Japanese cartoon series started in the 1970's).All of these are about 2 - 3 cm in width. They are really small but incredibly detailed (especially for rather cheap little erasers!). There is no way that I will ever use these as erasers -- I have them arranged amongst my things on the ledge above my computer.

Back from another San Jose trip

Ah, it was nice to have a little 3.5-day vacation away from work and in the city! Although San Jose isn't my favorite city, there are a lot of fun things to do there that aren't in Puerto Viejo. Carlos and I got to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it was great! Although it is my least favorite of the four Indy movies, it had some really excellent moments -- my favorite parts were the subtle little nods to the first films. That was the best movie I had seen in a while.

During our second day in San Jose (and the reason for coming to the city in the first place) I went with Carlos to the American embassy so that he could renew his student visa. We were there for a very boring 5 hours but finally we were able to leave and Carlos got a visa renewal. Yay!

We spent our final day in the city relaxing and we saw another movie -- Deadly Silence. We wanted to see Narnia 2, but we would have had to wait around for 3 hours so we chose the evil puppet movie. It was entertaining, but a little predictable -- also not very scary.

We took the bus back to Puerto Viejo yesterday after having a tasty lunch at Cafe Mundo. It was so nice to have a break (even though we spent one day doing boring visa stuff) and not have to think about research for a little while!

In other news, my blog turned one year old yesterday! Happy birthday bloggie!

Clearwing butterflies

Today, while out in the field, I found a huge pile of fallen fruits. Fluttering around these squishy, decaying fruits, I saw lots and lots of butterflies -- they were all drunk on the fermenting juice of the fruits! I was able to get a couple of pictures of two of the clearwing butterflies that were on the ground. The first, red clearwing is Cithaerias merolina. I don't know what species the blue one is. These butterflies are so amazing-looking in real life -- their wings are completely transparent and very delicate. These guys were so drunk on fruit juice that I was almost able to catch them with my bare hands (using a special butterfly-catching technique that doesn't hurt them or damage their wings).