Bocas del Toro

Since I wasn't raised in a family that prioritized travel, I always thought that trips beyond the states were these impossible adventures out of my reach. After being given this amazing opportunity this summer, I'm glad to say that I have discovered all on my own the real value of exploration. Every new place I visit makes me feel more lucky than I was the day before. And for a girl who even feels lucky to spend time in Knoxville or Athens, Panama is a bit overwhelming. Bocas Town is certainly no exception. I love that this place isn't your typical tourist trap, and how little things make it feel special.

Like the...errrm...interesting view out of my balcony window:

The...errrm...interesting local businesses:

(Bocas Town Books might be my new favorite establishment)

And the cutest hotel room infestation anyone could ever hope for:

Ok, infestation is a bit of an exaggeration...we've seen 2 of these little geckos in our room. We've also seen 50 cent beers at the hostel across the street, hippies riding all types of boards (skate, surf, and long), and delicious bagel sandwiches about 20 feet from our door:

Also notable, is that neither Buck nor I realized that we had entered a new time zone when we crossed the border, so we wondered why everything was closed as we tried to have dinner at what was actually 10:00PM. We had pizza that night and have since had pizza for dinner at 3 different establishments all three nights we have been here. Pretty classy, eh? The best pizza so far was from "The Black Olive" where we had greek pizza and falafel for a total of $11.

What else...

I bought this book used at the Bocas Book Store:

(and will in the future lend it to anyone who would like a good laugh)

Everything is splendid (as my good friend LBach predicted)! What's not to love about a week spent in a beautiful place just walking, eating, lounging, and exploring? Tomorrow we will take a boat tour to Isla Bastimientos to try and find some poison dart frogs...then back to the San Jose airport and finally back to the states.

CRAZY!

In Transit

Both today and yesterday were spent mostly in transit. But alas, Buck and I have arrived in Bocas Town on Isla Colon in Panama. We begin with a 5AM cab yesterday, followed shortly by doughnuts and significant downpour. This leg of the trip was to San Jose, the land of overpriced cabs, what seemed like millions of shoe stores, and a man selling rubic's cubes to drivers sitting at a busy intersection. We weren't huge fans, honestly. But we stayed a little out of San Jose in San Pedro - actually at Hotel Milvia once again. I really enjoyed our walk around the UCR campus and of course, seeing Harry Potter at the San Pedro Mall! Even with the fun, yesterday served to prove that I am not a city-person.

So this morning we were at it again with another 5AM cab. This time, to catch a bus to the border. The ride was about 5 hours, followed by 20ish minutes of shenanigans at the border. Once in Sixaola, you fill out your paperwork then walk across this terrible bridge to get into Panama. Buck and I were recognized as gringos, and were therefor approached by many people offering to "help" us. Ignoring everyone else, we hailed a cab to Almirante, where we would catch our water taxi to Bocas.

All this is boring, so I'll skip ahead to our arrival in Bocas Town. Here, I instantly recognized this as a place full of much friendlier people, much cleaner streets, and a fair amount of tourists. The main advantage, to me, of being in a somewhat touristy town is the availability of diverse foods that we missed in Costa Rica. One other advantage is the look of the place. It is BEAUTIFUL since the island is quite small, and therefor not crowded with many cars or tall buildings. The majority of establishments in Bocas Town are actually on the water, which will certainly make for some beautiful meal-times and more over the next week.

We have very few plans for this week, but I know this:
I want to sleep in past 7:30. I want to eat indian food. And I want to take a boat around the other islands of Bocas del Toro. Maybe even see some red frogs on Isla Basimientos!

I'll write later about some of my final thoughts on Costa Rica in the days before all this travel (they were very fond FYI), but for now, I'm falling asleep as I type.

Buenas

Pretty things

The researcher here studying monarch butterflies fully realizes his ability to spread joy. He collects monarchs and measures them all while they are still alive. They can survive in the little paper bags for a day, and then the next day he lets other people release them! First, Katie was marking them so he would know if he caught them again.

 

But then, I got to release a few and watch them fly off the porch! What a good feeling!

Plus, yesterday was possibly the most beautiful day here. We had super clear skies, it warm enough that people were being lulled to sleep in their rocking chairs, and we even made more brownies after the sun went down! I'm really going to miss this place. Look out for some pre-nostalgia in the coming posts. There are so many things I want to make sure I don't forget about once I leave this beautiful place.

Ugly Things

My nightly ritual: Before hopping in bed, search the room fully for any organism that could potentially feel the need to crawl across my face in the middle of the night.

When Buck was here, he helped remove any offending insects. Now, I have to be the one to physically relocate them. You'd think I'd be more used to it by now, the near end of my trip, but moving this guy from my bedpost was still a bit unsettling:

Earlier yesterday, I got to join some of the groups at Lelo's tilapia farm and restaurant in Lower San Luis. The whole place was a beautiful example of what hard work and a firm commitment to the environment can produce. All the chairs and tables were hand crafted, but in a very simplistic style. The tilapia ponds were gravity fed from one to the next, and the landscape was beautiful and green.

Everyone was served whole tilapia, and I got the last one! It looks really ugly, but was CRAZY delicious!

If you had told 10-year-old me that I would be eating the fins right off a fish like they were garlic chips in 10 years, 10 year-old-me might have passed out. Luckily, 20-year-old Dana loved trying something new and exciting!

Both a Blessing and a Curse

It's not a new website, by any means, but my recent discovery has brought both great fortune and terrible longing.

www.foodporndaily.com

I now spend hours a day dreaming of food that I will never have. I seek satisfaction from the beans and rice I am served breakfast, lunch, and dinner...but satisfaction never comes.

But for the blessing column - Jessica, Rachel, and I did manage to sneak into the kitchen last night and make this, the most magnificent desert in all the land.

Seriously, perhaps the best dessert I've ever had:

In conclusion, please do yourself a favor by going to www.foodporndaily.com and going to the bottom of the page to click "Gallery" and enjoy looking at some freaking amazing foods. I mean maybe not as amazing as a "Moist Brownie Layered with Peanut Butter Truffle and Chocolate Peanut Butter Ganache," but certainly something that isn't beans and rice.

Learning

No...not Spanish, sadly. But today I did spend my whole work day learning to use both Photoshop and InDesign. Knowing how to operate these programs is going to be incredibly valuable for my future career. Both were frustrating at first, but very surprisingly, one day of hard work got me pretty far! Enough fiddling around with the features really does a world of good. I have a pretty good template for the 2011 Sustainability Report that I built from last year's. So I still know nothing about making a document from scratch, but I'm getting good at manipulating the things on the pages. That will certainly do for now.

Also on my mind today, the fact that I haven't heard back from any of the 6 places where I submitted my resume. I knew that getting a job in Athens would be difficult, but I'm getting antsy. I'll have to keep applying! Lots and lots of applying...

The good news: banana bread in the dining room for snacks today!
Random, but those are the things in my head today.

I hope everyone in the states is doing well :)
Adios!

Cabeceras

I realize I haven't posted in a while...and I plan on getting around to posting on some things that went on in the last few weeks, but first I want to talk about the lovely trip I took this weekend!

I had a wonderful taxi driver that made me laugh and took me to Cabeceras, Costa Rica to see the man that he called "Senor Hormigas". Cabeceras is about an hour away from San Luis, and as we approached this small farm town, Evelio explained that the root of the town's name is cabeza. The closest translation of the town's name would be like pillow, you know - the place you put your cabeza. It made sense to me, and I will forever think of this place as "The Pillow of Costa Rica".

First of all, it was freakin' beautiful:

Buck managed to find a little pulperia that also had a place for him to rest his cabeza:

(business in the front, Buck's room in the back)

I felt so happy to be able to help (even just a little) with the scientific process. We sought out fire ant mounds, but had a great time with some great weather. From morning to noon, the plan of the plots went from little squares, to big squares, back to little squares, then to triangles within squares, and to sqaures within triangles. I won't try to explain the methods, but it really was a lot to work out in our heads. All that matters is we got some mounds marked before lunch time.

Here is the view from plot #2:

(plants in the foreground will be bursting with ripe coffee berries in about a month)

And here is the little bugger that stung the hell out of Buck:

 

After lunch, I discovered that no taxi driver was willing to come pick me up from the middle of nowhere on the day that transporting bicyclists to and from Santa Elena could fill their time. So sadly, the trip was cut short around 2:00 as I quickly packed up all my things and made the bus to Santa Elena. However, once there, I still had to get down to San Luis. Luckily, it was a very nice day, and I walked down the Trocha without even once wishing I were traveling by car.

However, if I had been traveling by car, I totally would have gotten to the cheese factory in time. Instead, I approached the door at 4:03, not sure if it would be open or closed (things close pretty early on Sundays). To my delight, I saw people inside ordering the most delicious coffee and chocolate chip milkshakes you could ever imagine. My euphoria was abruptly interrupted when a door closed right in my face! I watched the employee flip the sign to "cerrado", and my heart sank a little. I'll have to wait until my next trip to Santa Elena to enjoy some of that heavenly beverage.

Anyway, it's getting late (9:48...HA!) so I'm scooting off to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow so I can get some writting in before the Earth Charter meeting with the kitchen staff. Work is going well, and I can't wait to see what the UGA Costa Rica employees think of our implementation of Earth Charter initiatives.

Adios!

New Friend

Excuse me, but you are not welcome in my room:

Gracias Super Pollo

Sunday was a big day full of all the things I needed and more. The things I needed: nachos (available at an establishment in Santa Elena called Super Pollo). It can be pretty dangerous when a craving like that hits, because oftentimes, the only readily available food is some variation of gallo pinto, or beans and rice. It is somewhat widely known that Ticos aren’t huge proponents of flavor. Most meals are bland compared to their American equivalents, and even the ketchup here has less flavor. Luckily, these nachos were the exception to the rule. Amazing!

Before the nachos, though, Buck and I spent the morning exploring the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.

We hiked to this small waterfall in about an hour:

 

We saw my favorite tree in the whole world, a HUGE strangler fig:

 And made friends with this little weevil:

 

His name is Scout, and he’s the only bug I will allow to crawl on me:

 

Weevils move very slowly, which makes them far less terrifying if you ask me. Buck pointed out a bunch of other unique insects, and there are pictures on facebook. The other cool thing we saw in the reserve was the Santa Elena 7 mile foot race. Four of the Naturalists and 3 UGA Costa Rica Staff ran in the race, so we waited at the trailhead to cheer them on! Vamos, Vamos! Rapido, Rapido!

Frank was a champ and finished 18^th out of 500+ runners:

(Bringing home a delicious cheese basket, no less!)

 

The remainder of the day was full of ice cream, tiger beetles, and TONS of walking. We walked from the reserve into Santa Elena, then took La Trocha back down to San Luis. There were mucho vistas bonitas, as per the usual. Still glad to be here in such a gorgeous place!

hmmm...

So, I figured it would happen...the inevitable lull in things to blog about.

Ho hum.

Don't get me wrong, because things are still fantastic here in Costa Rica. Here's just a few of the things that I can remember being excited by this past week. Go figure that all the things I remember are the things I took pictures of. HA!

White-faced capuchin spotting, once again, above the casitas:

Significantly more exciting though, was my transformation from mere girlfriend to hairdresser! haha

So here's Buck, in desperate need of a haircut:

And though you can't see it very well, this is Buck's new haircut!

(by yours truly)

 

And only Jenier and Kevin have made fun of it thus far...an accomplishment on my part, if you ask me. And anyway, from what I understood of their Spanish, it wasn't the actual haircut they were making fun of, but instead my ability to safely execute the task. They were marveling at the fact that I didn't cut Buck's ear off in the process. That would have been less than ideal, certainly.

The two of us took lunch on Wednesday at Mario and Margot's house. My favorite part might have been finding out that their 4-year-old son, and my little brother for one night in March, had such a good time that night that he cried a little when Amanda and I left. I asked in very poor spanish if he did that when all the students left. The answer, surprisingly, was no. Apparently we left a mighty impression, which was lovely to hear.

Did I mention that I finished the book Water for Elephants in my last post? Time is running away from me, and one week blends into the next.

Now I'll have to wrap up my blogging since a small winged bug just crawled under the keyboard keys. All hope might be lost for this little guy, but this last bit is taking a long time to type since I have to strategically avoid certain parts of the keyboard.

Adios residentes de los Estados Unidos!

**Holy Cow! I think it just escaped from the bottom of the keyboard! No wings left, but come on...that's still totally impressive!**

Corduroy

I forgot one very important memory that I must preserve here.

I never want to forget sitting in the library with Alex and Kelly's watershed class doing a dramatic reading of a childhood favorite accompanied by Buck on that terrible, full-of-holes guitar.

The book:

(mi favorita)

no internet for 3 days = no blogging for 3 days

The past few days absolutely flew.

With the arrival of ecology clubmates Kelly and Alex, Don Ontoniel’s retirement party, today’s wonderful weather, and the new book I started reading, I have stayed relatively busy…you know, like relative to a tica. Things are still very relaxed as my work transitions from collecting and organizing data to outlining and designing the 2011 Sustainability Report.

After work in the afternoons, it was wonderful to stay up late (10:30…HA!) and reminisce about Athens, past parties, and crazy ecology shenanigans. It was also nice to do a bit of yoga with them; although my heart aches that we neither hashed nor took an ecology calendar photo. I guess that will have to wait.

Friday, I started reading Water for Elephants, which is now my go-to procrastination tool.

Last night was la fiesta at Alvarro’s trapiche. A percentage breakdown of my time at the party would show:

So obviously, that was a great time. Then this morning, Buck and I took advantage of the beautiful day with a hike toward San Luis. It was the first time that I’ve hiked down into one of the valleys here, and I was amazed to find myself feeling even more surrounded by nature. The valley walls are steep and awe-inducing.

Luckily, on our hike, we ran into Mario and Margot with little Jorje Mario on the front of their motorcycle. They stopped and invited us to dinner on Tuesday night, proving that there are more good things to come.

 Pura Vida!

*One quick afterthought: Even if hard rain drives you indoors for an entire Saturday afternoon, don’t watch the movie Sin City. It won’t lift your spirits.

la lluvia

Oh man...the rain...

I have seen at least a slight drizzle every day of my past week or so of time in Costa Rica. But both yesterday and today were punctuated in the mid-afternoon with thunderstorms. Today, the rain has yet to really let loose, but the thunder and lighting here are the most stirring part.

The elevation here is so high that some of the long-term residents on campus have joked about how everyone's heads are "in the clouds", and sometimes you really can feel a cloud move across the porch or through an open room. So it makes sense that thunder and lighting would seem more ominous than they do back in the states. The lighting just strikes so brightly, and the thunder claps so powerfully, since it's just above your head. Eek!

I can't complain too much. My office is open to the outside on sunny days just like these rainy ones. There's something pretty special about being tied in to nature in this way...even if I am stuck on a computer filling out Excel spreadsheets.

So for now, I say "Chao" (which is a more casual way to say goodbye that is apparently not spelled the same as it is in Italy), and head back to work...

♫ Me Gusta Maaanngooo ♫

Sunday, a small group of us went to the river (that I think was in the Guacimal region) and enjoyed some down time away from campus. On the way, we stopped at a small pulperia with a very interesting business plan. For every drink a customer purchases, the customer also gets a small plate of food like an appetizer. By the time everyone had bought their drinks for the day, we had earned approximately 20 small meals! So we sat under the hot tin roof, surrounded by risque Pilsen advertisements, and ate and ate and ate. Total, I had a chalupa, some rice soup, a bit of a pork sandwhich, and a bite of chicharones (essentially, fried pork fat).

We arrived at the river ready to relax with our very full bellies. Our first sight was a family of about 9 monkeys crossing the canopy at the water's edge, which was more than I've ever seen outside of a zoo. There were some very young ones, and I thought how nice it would be to spend a childhood jumping from tree to tree in such a beautiful area.

Here's Sheldon surrounded by the few butterflies that were left after we scared the majority away:

My favorite part of the day was learning to fly fish with Buck. I am by no means a pro, but together we caught (AKA he caught) cinco peces pequeños.

 Here's the biggest fish he caught:

It was also the cutest fish he caught:

 Walking upriver, I saw this little guy relaxing in the sun:

And to finish the trip, Jenier collected some fresh mangos, about which Sheldon was very excited! She began to sing the most beautiful song, entitled  ♫ Me Gusta Maaanngooo ♫. Expect the international release of this hit in the coming months.

After such an amazing weekend, it was difficult to get working again (especially without internet or connection to the server). I wonder if Ticos have a hard time working in such a beautiful place. I kind of just want to frolic all day every day! My motivation needs to kick into high gear pretty soon, here...as does my Spanish learning.

Oh well, Pura Vida!

free time

Since my last post I have only done a handfull of things:
I slept. I ate. I translated three of the campus's conservation documents from spanish to english.

Most importantly, I read this book:

I would highly recommend it to anyone with free time. Luckily, this concept of "free time" has really manifested itself this weekend. Never before have I been able to sit in a hammock, uninterrupted, and read a book in one day.

More free time today will mean a trip to the river. Some river I actually don't know anything about, but I am excited all the same. Plus more dancing tonight! This really is a wonderful place. Adios!

Royal Road

Today was lovely.

Maddy, Buck, and I very slowly hiked the Camino Real (or royal road) this morning and saw tons of cool insects. Luckily, I can quickly feel my hatred of bugs disintegrating. But in addition to the insects, I got my first good picture of a white-faced capuchin monkey. 

"Hola Mono!"

 I also got this nice one of some fungi:

 I'm particularly proud of this one, where I caught a butterfly mid-flight:

And finally, this is a walking stick insect (order phasmotodea):

 This is Buck investigating the walking stick insect:

And this is Buck after the walking stick insect jumped on his face:

HAHAHA

This afternoon, I got real work done too! I read last year's sustainability report and now have a detailed outline that I can adjust for the report I'm writing. Plus, dinner was delicious and we had ice cream for dessert! If you were to ask me "Como esta?" then I would probably say "Muy bien" ...probably.

Hasta luego y buenas noches, amigos y familiares!

Wallace

I forgot to mention, Wednesday morning I discovered that I have a roommate in my research casita. I saw this little guy on my window the day I moved in, and rediscovered him in the exact same spot 4 days later.

His name is Wallace:

I am sad to report, however, that last time I saw him he was flying into my hotbox, and I fear he may never return to his window dwelling. He was a good butterfly and a very inconspicuous roommate.

pizzazz

Since my last post, nearly 30% of my meals have been pizza. Granted, that's only 2 meals...but it does seem a little curious here where beans and rice are the staple foods.

Tuesday, my hard work planting wild avacado trees (family: Lauraceae) at Finca la Bella in the AM seemed to warrant a fun night out in Santa Elena. The naturalists and I celebrated a staff member's birthday at Johnny's Pizza then went to the tourist-filled bar, Mata e Cana, where I learned wayyy too much about some of the staff. haha just kidding...it was all good fun for sure! This tourist bar suffered from a serious lack of pool tables and dancing, so we relocated to Bar Amigos. Here I enjoyed mucho bailando merengue with wonderful dance partners. I've never been much of a dancer, but I LOVE merengue!

I didn't do anything productive Wednesday morning to earn a night out, but Maddy, Buck, Amy, and I rode to Santa Elena anyway. We left campus to grab an early dinner there, and after some debate, decided on more pizza.

This time, though, it was way more greasy and delicious:

 Here's Maddy and Amy partaking in pizza consumption:

Oh yeah, and there were cats everywhere we went:

(Buck was thrilled!)

After pizza on Wednesday, we ended up back at Mata e Cana where we listened to ska music, got yelled at by a bartender for no reason, and tried to convince Buck to like cats. It was an...interesting evening.

Embracing the Tico Way

This morning, I made sure to fill-up at breakfast to prepare for a hike to the San Luis waterfall (the 2nd highest in Costa Rica). Just as in March, the hike was great exercise with highly rewarding views. Sadly, though, I didn't take any pictures. My lack of camera was most unfortunate when I saw what I can only describe as a chrome beetle. It was maybe an inch long, but entirely silver. Not just metallic, this thing looked like it could have been a robo-beetle. I can give ten imaginary points to anyone who can identify it without actually having seen it...GO!

After the freezing cold dip at the base of the waterfall, we hiked back and had some lunch. And oddly, I think my post-lunch vegetation was the best part of the day. From 1:00-6:00 the lovely Buck Trible and I sat around and did next to nothing. Fiddled on our computers for a bit, napped for a bit, and just before dinner I enjoyed a private guitar performance.

I've often thought that real work can always wait for tomorrow. Today was perfect :)

In-transit Oops

Yesterday began with a cup of truly spectacular Costa Rican coffee. I said adios to Hotel Milvia in San Pedro after I downed my cup and snapped a few more pictures.

My breakfast with some local kids:

The small courtyard in the middle of the hotel:

(where the rain could fall and lull me to sleep)

The entrance to the balcony:

And the lovely view:

All the UGA students (and now the Universidad de Costa Rica estudantes) met at a nearby community center for the drive to campus. While we were loading the buses, let the record show that I specifically mentioned our "professores" to the driver. He said "No...(something in spanish)...Monteverde...(some more spanish)." I attempted to clarify that we were meeting them elsewhere and I recieved a reassuring "Si!"

Never-the-less, about 40 minutes into our drive to Monteverde, our driver gets notice that we left two members of our group behind. And sure enough, our group of students had left behind the director of the UGA honors program, and the coordinator of external affairs for all of UGA honors. Oops would be quite the understatement. But once we met up with them on the side of the highway, we spent a few hours getting to know the Costa Rican students and laughing about all the ridiculous (and inappropriate) phrases in my Lonely Planet phrasebook.

As we grew closer to the cloud forests of Monteverde, we saw views like this:

Followed by views like this:

One of the things I remember most clearly from my visit in March is how small I felt driving through these gorgeous landscapes. It was very peaceful then, and it did not disappoint yesterday.

Once we arrived on campus, we had lunch then launched into research presentations from the other students. Just before dinner, Quint gave a very inspiring lecture on sustainability which only reaffirmed that I am in the right place doing the right thing with my life.

Dinner was proceeded by the requisite "baila, baila, baila!" The group was short on guys, so I learned to lead (sort of) in the merengue. Overall, a magnificent day!