From the clouds to Carara immersion

Hilary Cosentino
Sunday June 27th 2010

There is so much to write about I don’t even know where to start. Story after story comes to mind. I want to share all I’ve learned about Costa Rican culture, I want to tell you about their politics, and of course about their spectacular rain forest. Since our arrival in the early a.m. of June 22nd in San Jose Costa Rica (less than a week ago) I have already experienced more diversity than I had to date. The Costa Rican rainforest is tirelessly teaming and humming with life as the forest is thickened with the invisible cloud of constant transpiration. When I mention diversity I am referring to the rain forest yes, but this fascinating countries cities, culture, and politics are just as riddled with unexpected twists and turns and little cultural treasures (that to the unobservant visitor may go unnoticed) as the rainforest itself. Costa Rica’s diversity reaches to all corners of the continent with transformations of rainforest to agriculture and to urban sprawl. Only here have I seen a white faced monkey, Jesus Christ lizard, stopped the bus to wait for domestic cows to cross, removed multiple cockroaches from the bathroom, shared a room with a tarantula the size of my palm, and had a horse get run over by a car right outside the station at three o’clock in the morning. My experience so far has been just that… an experience, but I’m loving every second of it!
Costa Rica is extremely unique. Its topography is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Giant tropical mountains formed by tectonic movement surrounded by varying degrees of valleys are coated with every color green in the spectrum. The combination of rapid changes in elevation, differences in annual rainfall, and light availability are only few of the major forces driving the flood of biodiversity in Costa Rica. Monteverde, nicknamed “the cloud mountain,” was our first real introduction to the rainforest. We were stationed at the University of Georgia’s Costa Rican location. We stayed in quaint little huts with four rooms, all with their own bathroom, and each sleeping four students. Each hut was equipped with a gorgeous hard wood floor wrap around porch; from which I saw my first coatamundi and a toad the size of both my feet put together.
The easy road we were traveling quickly changed to one more like the 900 grade, heavily eroded, gravel road like the one we scaled to Monteverde. We left the comfort of our Americanized Costa Rica and I suppose you could say we began the true immersion process. We are now living in Carara National Park Research Station. The station’s 10 years old but it hasn’t aged well. Some of the windows have screens, some of the rooms have light bulbs, some of the toilets work, and all of the rooms have bugs. There’s a roof, but it’s disconnected form the walls and leaves about a ft gap for airflow and easy access to our insect friends. The girls’ room is packed with 11 girls, a resident tarantula, countless spiders and other insects, and no door (it somehow disappeared between last year and now). Our kitchen floor is now layered with cardboard as a result of a water dispenser mishap. It’s rustic, to say the least, but it’s actually starting to feel comfortable. The first night came with a constant chorus of screaming and “OH MY GOD”s but now a creature is only worthy of attention if it’s a new species or bigger than your fist. It’s safe to say this station’s just another niche to be filled by the jungle, not our home. The first monsoon brought an army of tree frogs taking refuge and our professor shares a desk with a brown hairy spider.
I have been assigned to the biogeography research team. I’m trying to learn how to use a $3000 dollar piece of military GPS equipment that will chart our tracts, take pictures, and post them onto Google earth as attachments. Today was our first research expedition. Following a trail from our station for three hours the trip was littered with sightings. We were blessed with two agoutis, a lime green parrot, 6 to 10 white faced monkeys, two Jesus Christ lizards (the ones that run on water), a non flight native bird, 6 toucans, a 4-5ft long snake we haven’t identified yet, and many other native bird and insect species.
Last night our group made it’s first trip to the Disco. Our group seems like a small one, with only 18 students and three profesores, until you enter a small Costa Rican town as a heard of young white outsiders. It is very interesting feeling like ALL the eyes in the room are pointed at you. In the beginning the bar awkwardly resembled a middle school dance, us on one side and all the locals on the other. However, alcohol does funny things and by the end of the night we were all practicing our salsa. One girl was even given a necklace and paper flower.
It’s different, but good different. Costa Rica’s amazing. They have a 97% literacy rate, are one of the leads in conservation efforts, and are statistically the happiest country in the world, and I’m happy we’re here.