Greetings from Costa Rica!

The week of June 7th brought a change of pace for me. The rest of the REU students arrived that week, so I got to participate in different programs during their orientation week. Sessions like risk management in the field, the history of Costa Rica, ethics in research, birds of Costa Rica, plants of Costa Rica along with various other topics were held to help us while here at La Selva. Two of the more notable events were the nature walk with Joel (one of the guides here at La Selva) and the boat tour of the Sarapiqui River.

The nature walk with Joel was truly amazing. Joel has lived in this part of Costa Rica his whole life, so he knows the fauna and animals really well. The highlights of the walk were when we saw a Fer-de-lance snake, and a hog-nosed viper. It's amazing how well their camouflage works. I was looking right at the Fer-de-lance for about five minutes before I finally saw it. Just so you can see how hard it is to see them I've included a couple of pictures.

Are you having a hard time seeing them? Maybe this will help.

The pictures on the left are of the Fer-de-lance. For the bottom picture I used Photoshop to zoom in on him so it's a little easier to distinguish his features. You can see two shiny circles, those are his eyes. The white coloring you see is his “chin”. In the picture he is all coiled up with his head resting on part of his body.

The Hog-nosed viper pictures are on the right. In the bottom picture I put a red box around him because he blends in so well with his surroundings. As you can see, he is laying there in a tight coil.

On Sunday, June 13 th, we took a boat tour of the Sarapiqui River. The guide was telling us that about 30 years ago they started clearing the rainforest along the Sarapiqui in order to put in banana plantations. Prior to this, the Sarapiqui was only a few meters wide in some parts. According to our guide the boat we were on wouldn't have been able to fit down the Sarapiqui. Now, a short 30 years later, the river can facilitate several boats due to bank erosion partly caused by the banana plantations. It's amazing to see the impact humans can have on geological processes that should take thousands of years.

The boat tour was a lot of fun, and I was able to get some good pictures:

The picture on the left is of a crocodile that we saw while on the boat tour, it's really a beautiful creature. The picture on the right is a howler monkey. It's hard to tell, but he is actually facing towards the camera. If you look at the dark circle amidst the fur, you can see two really small dots and those are his eyes.

The last couple weeks we have been staying pretty busy around here. The good thing about being so busy is that we are always doing something different. I've been getting to go to the plots a lot lately and I love every second of it. I've been here for over a month and I still can't believe I'm in the rainforest doing what I'm doing, it's really amazing. This weekend (June 26th & 27th) I have an ethics workshop with the REU students and we will be visiting a banana plantation, so that should be neat. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted on that.

Well that's all I have for now. As usual if you have any questions about what it's like here or anything else be sure to email me at njo35@iastate.edu . Thanks a lot for stopping by.

Nathan

Since I'm a water guy, I thought I would throw in some river pictures

The above pictures are of the Sarapiqui River taken from a little hand cart.

The picture on the left is of the Peje River on the way back from the plots. The picture on the right is also of the Peje River, it was taken from a little rock beach by our plots where we will often eat lunch.