The Trip Here
Holy smokes the trip here was rough. To start, I forgot my passaport when I was checking my bag and had to get out of TSA when I was halfway across, and then TSA took about an hour. When I got to Georgia I RAN across the busy airport and ended up needing to take a shuttle because of how massive the airport was even though we didn’t get told we needed to take a shuttle. Ugh I wish I would’ve looked up the airport layout because I was anxious to be late. Colin ended up being at the gate and I was relieved to be with someone coming on the trip. We got stuck on the flight because Jill Biden was leaving the San Jose airport so we had to turn around and around in Costa Rica for like an hour. When we got there baggage was hella hard to find but immigration customs was more difficult because the man kept asking me questions and I didn’t have answers to them so I had to pull up my phone and find La Selva on the map. Anywho, I think Cafe Malinche was overrated but maybe it’s because I didn’t know they had comida típica and only had a calzone and coffee. The coffee was good though. The bus ride to La selva made me realize how beautiful this country is and seeing a waterfall every two minutes out of my window was dreamy. When we got here we had dinner and got our rooms. I was pooped from travel.
The People
Dr. Libby mentioned a phrase unrecognizable to us students that was taught to him by Dr. Wasserman. The love and fascination towards big animals finally had a name us animal-loving people could use. Charismatic megafauna.
Coming to Costa Rica I didn’t know what to expect and was surprised when I was living like Steve Irwin’s daughter.
My first week at La Selva was a week of meaningful connections that has made me reconsider career paths a questionable amount of times, but my favorite connections thus far are with the tour guides that have a passion for sharing information.
I mention the phrase charismatic megafauna because I believe there’s a niche for people who enjoy animals at a micro and/or just small scale- insects, reptiles, fish, etc. those are the tour guides here at La Selva. Octavio, the first tour guide I had the day I got here, is a college-educated man working at La Selva since 2008 who credits his education to experience more than the institution that taught him textbook skills.
Octavio has a sixth sense for all things nature- but what fascinated me more than his ability to predict the coming rainstorm or the baby bats below the canopies- is his ability to convey knowledge.
Pictured holding a bullet ant (yes it’s like an inch long), he was explaining to my group how the chemical compounds in their bellies produce a stinging sensation when they bite, except they’re used in many indigenous communities for either healing practices and/or ceremonies.
Hanor was the next tour guide I had for the night hike and I really enjoyed it and felt safe with him. We had to turn around because of a fer de lance snake I wouldn’t have spotted on my own. I am really grateful for the tour guides for always putting our safety first. Hanor also impressed me with his knowledge of wildlife and I laughed when he told us to be quiet so that we could actually hear something in the jungle because it was very blunt. My favorite thing to see with him was the bioluminescence in the fungi on the wood. I think that him showing us that was probably one of the neatest things I’ve seen thus far because it reminds me of the bioluminescence in fish and in the ocean in California as well as the pGLO lab in most biology labs.
The Munchies
The food at La Selva deserves a subsection for itself. My goal for the rest of our time here is to ask the chef what his name is but he’s intimidating and I feel weird at this point asking him. Nonetheless, the food is absolutely delicious and nothing I can say is going to prove it so I will be using pictures because the chef even focuses on aesthetic. My favorite meal was the pork that tasted somewhat like Al Pastor but was cut into cutlets and not chunks. A big portion of this trip is me trying new foods and expanding from my comfort zone along with learning how to eat three meals a day (strange for a college student) instead of snack all day.
We have three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner all provided by La selva. The meals always consist of a fruit plate but if it’s dinner we get a desert. Breakfast is at 6:30, lunch is at 11:30 and dinner is at 5:30. Most of the meals consist of beans and rice which are staples to my diet already so the transition was not hard.
The Biodiversity
This week we saw SO many cool things. We did a tour of a day hike, night hike, and a bird walk. We saw so many different species of birds, reptiles and amphibians. The scariest thing seen was the fer de lance or the poison dart frog because I’m scared of frogs especially if they’re poisonous. The hollering monkeys were so cute I think the sound they make is so interesting (especially when Madison does it) and I enjoyed seeing the sloth climb up the tree by the library.
One of my favorite things about La Selva is the orchid greenhouse. They are yet to have flowering orchids but seeing that any orchid plants made my heart happy and reminded me of my mother.
One of my favorite memories of the bird walk with Hanor was being taught about the fern that produces a powder and gives you a tattoo. He said during his childhood he used to pick the leaves and tattoo his whole body with fern leaves. I think it’s a beautiful thing learning about what the culture of children is like here, and from what I’ve noticed it is very outdoor oriented. I love it
Leave a Reply