Las Cruces -- land of the agouti

This summer has been really flying by and unfortunately I haven't had much time to post on this blog! I have been teaching the graduate OTS course since the first week of June and we are nearly done (2 weeks left). We have just spent a week in Las Cruces and there are still plenty of agoutis running all over the garden here. Tomorrow we head up into the mountains (2600-3000 m) for six nights in Cerro de la Muerte. I can't wait to rejoin Carlos and our good friends Deedra and Bob there. I also really love that station and the nearby paramo habitat.

We won't have any internet there and after Cerro we travel to Las Alturas (no electricity there). We finish up the course on 29 July. After that I have about a week in San Jose (with Carlos and my co-coordinator Ana) to finish up all the paperwork/reports/accounting of the course. After that, Carlos and I return to DC on 5 August whereupon I start my new position at the Smithsonian! I am very excited to have an official position there now. I will have more information about everything once get back to the states~

In the dry forest: Palo Verde, Costa Rica

I have been in Costa Rica for about two weeks now and I am currently sitting in the classroom working on data analysis and preparing my presentation for the 2013 Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation conference. I am leading one final graduate-level tropical biology course (8-weeks in the field with 22 students and a gaggle of every-changing faculty resource people) and things are going well so far.

We have been in the tropical dry forest (in Palo Verde National Park) for 10 days now and the air is thick with swarms of mosquitos (we abut a huge wetland where the mosquito larvae hang out) and hot, humid air. I really like this site in the dry season, but it is a little more challenging in the wet season (the season we are in now). I will be very happy to head up into the mountains tomorrow morning. We set out for Monteverde at 0700 h tomorrow morning and it should only be a quick 2-3 hour drive to the station. We will meet our resource faculty at the station, eat lunch, then set out for guided hikes in the cloud forest reserve and around the biological station.

My posting might be a bit sparse during this trip (internet, or even electricity, is not consistent between sites). I will try to download some pictures to post soon, but things are very busy! I will be in Costa Rica until 5 August and the course will be visiting five more sites before we finish at the end of July.

New York City trip - Day 3

We started our final day in New York City with pastries and coffee at a cute coffee shop near our hotel called Gregory's. It was really crowded (like everything in NYC) but we managed to snag a table.

Our big journey of the day was to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art: a museum made famous in the muppet masterpiece Don't Eat the Pictures! We took the subway to the Natural History Museum stop and walked across Central Park to get to the MET. It was a beautiful, cool, sunny day and we had a nice time seeing a bit of the park on our way to the Museum.

When we arrived at the MET, the front was covered in scaffolding (kind of a running theme for this trip), but there were plenty of hot dog stands out front (like the one that Cookie Monster eats at the end of Don't Eat the Pictures). We entered the museum (bypassing the $25 entrance fee again because we are affiliated with the Smithsonian) and headed first to the Egyptian exhibits. There were so many amazing artifacts (and reconstructed temples) here. Except...the one exhibit I really wanted to see, the Temple of Dendur--featured prominently in Don't Eat the Pictures--was closed! Grrr, oh well, we saw plenty of other neat things.

After touring ancient Egypt, we left the MET to have an early lunch at Papaya King, a well-known hot dog place. We had some tasty dogs (I had one with cole slaw and pickles on it!), which we ate in Central Park before heading back in to the museum.

We toured the entire place and made sure to see more highlights from the Don't Eat the Pictures tour, including the medieval armory and Washington Crossing the Delaware. We had a really great day at the MET because there is so much to do and see!

After a full day of art-gazing, we headed back to the hotel for a break before our dinner at Eataly (I told you we would return!). We started our meal with some tasty bread. olive oil, and a cheese plate. After that, Carlos had a seafood pasta dish and I had one with pancetta, basil, and tomato sauce. Everything was very fresh and tasty. We shopped a little (for souvenirs) and couldn't resist bringing a couple of little pastries back to the hotel for dessert/breakfast the next morning.

That does it for this trip report. We left the next morning on our 10 am DC2NY bus and everything went well. Carlos and I can't wait to plan another trip to New York City in the future--it is such a cool and vibrant city!

New York City trip - Day 2

After a good night's rest in our super-comfy bed, we set out the next morning to find some breakfast. We walked to City Bakery and had a pretzel croissant, maple bacon scone, hot chocolate, coffee, and orange juice. It was all really tasty!

After fueling up, we walked to the nearest subway stop and took the subway up to the American Museum of Natural History. We arrived a little before it opened at 10:00 am, but there was already a pretty significant line! Luckily, with our Smithsonian badges, we were able to bypass the line and $25 entrance fee.

This museum is massive (compared to NMNH) and maze-like with so much to see and do. All of the exhibits were great, but among my favorites were the North American mammals--those dioramas were pure art. I also especially liked the dinosaur and evolution exhibits.

After walking miles in the museum (trying to take in as much as we could), we headed outside to the nearby Shake Shack for burgers and fries. We have a Shake Shack in DC too, but this was a nice, easy (and inexpensive) meal. After eating, we walked to the subway and headed back to the hotel for a little break before setting out for dinner and other evening activities.

We walked to Greenwich Village (a really cute neighborhood) to have dinner at Keste: a pizza and wine place. We were still a little full from our late lunch so we had some wine and split a super-cheesy burrata/tomato/basil pizza. After dinner we wandered around, peeking into shops, and looking for the Huxtable residence from the Cosby Show. We found it, but it was covered with scaffolding!

 

We walked back up Broadway to Rockefeller Center (it was getting dark by this time) and looked around that area for a while. One place we found was the Nintendo World Store! We got in 10 minutes before closing and looked at all the cool stuff before getting a snack at Bouchon Bakery across the street. We looked at the Prometheus statue and played around some Stonehenge-like structures before walking back to our hotel and calling it a night. Tomorrow we visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art!