Week 9

Miles walked to date: 322.5


It's officially green turtle season! There has been lots of activity on the beach lately and every night we are seeing signs of greens either nesting or of their half moons (tracks coming onto the beach but with no nest). Some patrols have even seen the turtles mating in the water not far from shore! With all this activity, our jobs have been made a lot harder, not only in trying to reach every turtle to take biometric data, but also in keeping a constant presence on the beach to deter poaching (which reaches its peak during green season). We've already had at least 3 lifted turtles this year, meaning that the turtle came up to nest but was carried away, probably to be butchered for its meat or shell. To combat this, we now have two nightly patrols, instead of the usual one from10pm to 2am. Since the second patrol shift starts at midnight, I've been catching the sunrise while on patrol after a night of watching turtles nest in the moonlight. Sometimes I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world to have an opportunity like this. 


Here's some pictures of  various herps (reptiles) from this week!

Since Bryce, a herpetologist from California, has been here for the past week, he's been catching and processing various snakes. I got to help with this Fer-de-lance (Bothrops asper), and I didn't die!

measuring tail length from the vent (who knew snakes have tails?)

 Coral Snake (Micrurus alleni) These guys move really fast so it was hard to get a good picture of it (unless it's stuffed into a plastic tube like the one you see here)

 Red-Eyed Tree Frog (Agalychenis callidryas)

Juvenile spectacled caiman (Caiman crocodilus). I'd like to believe I was actually holding a baby T-rex.

Week 8

Miles Walked to Date: 293

Larissa, the York International Internship coordinator, has asked us to write about our experience as Canadians travelling abroad and how our identity has shaped the way that people percieve us. 

Being at a Canadian biological station in Costa Rica, we live and work with many other Canadians, but when I meet someone from another country, I find myself laughing at how much I fit into the typical Canadian stereotype. I apologize if I offend anyone by making gross generalizations here, please bear with me. When I think of how I percieve other Canadaian travellers I've met, I find most of them to be friendly, quiet, easy-going, and considerate. I'd like to think of myself as fitting this description, since some of my most frequently used Spanish phrases are "perdon" (pardon me) and "lo siento" (I'm sorry).  I try to be as considerate and as helpful as I can be while travelling abroad, especially when interacting with local people in and around the station. I'd like to find out what people think when I tell them I'm Canadian, but since my Spanish is very limited it's hard to know. Most people aren't surprised when I tell them I'm from Canada, I think it's because I'm a blue eyed gringa (Tico slang for white girl) and I say sorry far too much. Also, the fact that I brought maple syrup to the jungle probably gives it away.

More things from this week:

Chillin' with Juancho, who is starting to respond to us calling his name. 

Since a herpetologist has been at the station for a few days, he's been finding all kinds of snakes (some of which were hidden in plain view). We saw two eyelash vipers (Bothriechis schlegelii) on the first day he got here, it's interesting because one was yellow and one was green yet they are from the same species. The variation in colour is due to phenotypic expression of a certain gene - some are even pink or purple. 

Yellow Eyelash Viper

Green Eyelash Viper

Our resident herp man with a parrot snake bird-eating snake (Thanks to Melissa Coakley for helping me correctly ID this one!)

Bird-eating snake (Pseustes poecilonotus)

Turnip tailed gecko (Theodactylus rapicauda)

Since Playa Norte had lots of Leatherback nests laid in April, we are starting to see hatchlings emerge and go to the sea during morning census. I've been excavating nests for the past three days and I've seen so many babies! (with just a few rotten, maggot-infested nest chambers of course).

I look like I'm having fun but I smelled awful

On Thursday all the York Interns went to Tortuguero for a bit of pizza - a nice break from a diet of almost entirely rice and beans.  Living here makes me appreciate the little things so much more!

Week 7 ( I went to Nicaragua!)

Miles Walked to Date: 273.5


This week Shenique and I took a 5 day excursion to Nicaragua to renew our Costa Rican visas, so we visited Granada and Laguna de Apoyo which were incredibly beautiful. 

 Sunrise at Laguna de Apoyo

A typical breakfast in Central America, my favourite!!

In Granada, we got to visit another pre-colombian museum, which had a large collection of pottery with intricate patterns. The one below depicts the feathered serpent, quetzalcoatl from around 800AD-1350AD.

A female figurine above is from Pacific Nicaragua/ Costa Rican Guanacaste around 800AD -1350AD. This figurine has a typical indigenous woman's hair style, body decorations and clothing from that time and is in a position of authority. 

 

The museum also had lots of burial pots - which looked like shoes to me. Some of them had detailed impressions on them with body parts, fish, animals and some other shapes I couldn't quite make out. 

  In front of the Granada cathedral - it was Sunday and the singing eminating from within was beautiful.

Hanging out in Granada's central square. 

Guadalupe Church

Founded in 1624-1626 by Benito de Baltodano monk. Since it was burned it was rebuilded in a different architecture losing part of its historic value. The church is situated in the Calzada street (Calle la Calzada) near Nicargua Lake. The Guadalupe church during the Colonial time was very important because of its strategic position, infact it was situated at the entrance of the town from the lake. For this reason It was sacked and destroyed by pirates and filibusters. In November 1856 the troops of Willliam Walker were shut in Guadalupe church for 18 days by troops of Nicaragua Governement. During this time the troop gravely damaged the church. In 1890 the walls still kept the marks of the battle. It was rebuilt in 1945 as well as we can admire now with its plain and fine front.

Taken from: http://www.nicatour.net/en/granada/granada_chiese.cfm

Ometepe volcano peeking through clouds, seen from the bus on our way back to Costa Rica. 

Overall I found Nicaragua to be a faster paced, more untamed version of Costa Rica.It is not as tourist friendly and since we are two non-spanish speaking tourists, we had more than our fair share of miscommunication and moments of utter and complete cross cultural failure. Nonetheless, we had lots of fun and I hope I can go back one day to experience more of what Nicaragua has to offer. 

Week 6

Miles walked to date: 243.5


Hola! I can't believe I'm almost half way thorough my internship in Costa Rica - time seems to be moving so fast yet so slow at the same time and I'm already dreading having to leave this amazing place. Since I've been too busy to write lately, I'll try and fill you guys in to what's been cutting into my blogging time. Just to warn you, this post is very picture heavy! 


Yesterday we went to the beach and practiced digging egg chambers.We're starting to dig decoy egg chambers whenever we come upon a nest to make it harder to find and poach the real nest with the eggs inside. We also need to know how to dig a proper egg chamber if we ever need to relocate the eggs (which we are waiting on permits for). We had a competition to dig two hawksbill nests and a green turtle nest, and John ended up winning a free ticket out of kit cleaning and data entry (I think it's because he has the longest arms)

 Last week we went to the elementary school in the nearby village to participate in a bingo fundraiser. It was fun but we had to try really hard to understand the numbers being called out in Spanish and the bingo markers were beans, which I thought couldn't be more Costa Rican.

I was so excited to get ice cream in town but what I got instead was a frozen bag of pink milk. Close enough.

 On the way back from San Francisco, we took these photos:

I've also been working on mammal surveys in the jungle once a week. It's rare that we get to see the mammals themselves so we look for things like tracks and droppings. The most commonly found species are the 9-banded armadillo, the white lipped and collared peccary, pygmy fruit eating bats (which make little leaf tents!) and red brocket deer. We were lucky enough to find the tracks of a Baird's tapir last week, which were huge, I can't imagine how such a large animal can lumber through the dense jungle. 

Looking at white-faced capuchin monkeys

A precarious jungle bridge

Thanks to Mariya, my fellow York intern for the wonderful photos. You can follow her adventures on her blog at http://mariapuravida.wordpress.com/