I'm back from Costa Rica

I returned from Costa Rica on Sunday night to a tired, crabby baby who couldn't quite figure out what was going on and a wife who was relieved to have some help around the house. I will remind you, kind readers, that the trip was scheduled before the baby was born. Okay ... I have some latent guilt about ditching my family to go bird watching in a tropical paradise, but I'm sure I'll recover.

It was very hard to be away from my brand new family and I missed Sara and Beth very much. I was sad to miss Sara's birthday, but the students cheered me up by singing happy birthday to Sara on a bus ride.

I went to Costa Rica as a co-instructor for a field biology course my department offers. Sixteen students, my colleage Diana Tomback, and I travelled to Costa Rica for a whirlwind 12 day tour. The students were great and it turned out to be a hectic, tiring, and wonderful trip. We saw over 75 species of birds, sloths, 3 species of monkeys, a bunch of reptiles (including crocodiles), and plants. We also saw army ants swarming, leaf-cutter ants carrying leaves, and acacia/ant interactions. Our guides, Inti and Hurben were fantastic. They led nature hikes, identified plants and animals and generally kept us on schedule.

Here is a brief overview of the trip and a few pictures:

Night 1: We stayed at Don Francisco's lodge after arriving at the airport in San Jose. The lodge is run by a Costa Rican family.

Days 2-3: We loaded students on the bus (our driver "Rollo" is on top of the bus loading our bags) and we travelled to the Talamanca mountain range to Cerro De la Muerte, "The Hill of Death".

We stayed for two nights at La Vuelta Lodge in the cool, rainy cloud forest spending time hiking and bird watching. I saw some great birds but did not see the one species I really wanted to see: The resplendent quetzal. The lodge is run by a family originally from Michigan. The parents moved to Costa Rica after the birth of their first son. They are pacifists and decided to move to a country without an army (Costa Rica abolished its army 50 years ago) so that their son would never be drafted. The family squated in a house that was an hour walk through the forest to the nearest road. The kids were home schooled and are now outstanding naturalists who run the lodge and are in the process of restoring a farm back to native forest.

We visisted a coffee co-op and an organic coffee plantation run by an amazing man named Arturo who is growing organic, shade-grown coffee. If you want good coffee, you should order it hear to support his work:http://www.co-store.com/tortugacoffee. Currenlty, Costa Rican farmers earn about 10 cents on the dollar (after coffee is sold in the U.S. or Europe) and this project is an attempt to allow the organic farmers to earn more money. They need you money more than Starbucks does.

This is what a sustainable coffee planation should look like:

Days 4 -7: After a hike, we travelled to the Caribbean coast to visit Estacion de las Tortugas . Students performed research projects and we patrolled the beach every night to remove turtle eggs from their nests in order to raise them in a protected hatchery. On unprotected beaches, about 100% of turtle eggs are poached. The students found a turtle on the first night and named it Sara!

Students looking at the protected turtle hatchery (Sara the Turtle's eggs are buried inside and protected by a guard from poaching):

We patrolled this beach for egg-laying turtles each night. I saw one turtle laying eggs:

After the turtle station we spent a few days at Fortuna, near Arenal Volcano National Park; a hurricane blew in and we got very, very wet:

We spent the last few days at Punta Leona on the Pacific coast:

After the trip and seeing all of those plants and animals, this is still my favorite animal, the fruit-eating, vegetable-loving, babbling monkey: