La Selva, round 2 is quite the experience. Last night I shared a bed with cicadas, some ants, and the random moth now and then. Trying to go to bed with all of this insect fauna in and around my bed is an adventure in itself.
Running through the rainforest is a new venture as well. Not only are the peccaries everywhere, but on a trail in the jungle, I saw some butterflies as big as my hand! Running itself is not quite such a marvelous joy in this weather -- even the temporary relief from the cold shower is forgotten ten sweat-soaked minutes later. It is very beautiful here, but I miss seeing the mountains everywhere. I don't think I can ever cease being awed at the stunning misty mountain views around Las Cruces.
We arrived to this humid locale on Saturday, after doing an exercise in examining spiritual remedies in Mercado Central. When we first got the assignment, I was pretty skeptical about finding these remedies to bring luck, love, and money, among many other things. But it turns out there's a great market in spiritual candles, incense, and bath salts! Nearly every corner of the giant market had these superstitious remedies, and apparently some of them were quite popular. The vendors were also quite open and willing to talk to us about their products, even though we didn't buy anything (that may have to do with the fact that my group consisted entirely of blonde girls).
Saturday afternoon we arrived in La Selva, and after dinner we donned our new Costa Rica national jerseys for the inaugural game in the new stadium against China. It was pretty exciting for the first half -- Costa Rica scored the first goal, and they were up 2-0 -- but then China retaliated and the game ended up in an anticlimatic tie. I think I was in bed by 10:30, and that seemed like a late night! We had gone out on Friday as our last night in San Jose, and a lot of the Tropical Biology group (of the TWENTY EIGHT OF THEM) were out in the same place. There were lots of dancing (and of course the relentless reggaeton....); it was a good night to end on.
On Monday we visited the Dole banana plantation. We had an enthusiastic guide who gave us a little too much free reign of his machete. We learned a lot more about the banana plant history on top of our information from the National Museum and the Musaceae family presentation by yours truly. Anyway, bananas have a long history in Costa Rica that have origins in the railroad, and I will provide more information tomorrow once I get my field notebook and pictures uploaded.
Today (I can't believe it's only Tuesday!) we went over some statistics and had a bunch of lectures on various diseases and epidemiology, but we also went for a nature hike around the myriad trails in La Selva. I haven't seen any snakes yet, but we did see a lot of big birds, peccaries (you can smell them before you see them) and bullet ants.
Tomorrow, after learning about dengue fever, we're going to a dengue hotspot in a nearby town to work with the local EBAIS and Area de Salud and take a community survey about dengue awareness and prevention. We're even going to bring any larvae we find back to the lab to see if they're A. aegyptus species, the carriers of dengue. Bring me to the microscopes!!
Hasta luego!
Anya
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