The sheer amount of homework my professors have suddenly wanted to assign is staggering. My classes were solid this week though. Bio Diversity dealt with viruses and how they have changed our genome. Which is actually super crazy and true. Because RNA viruses, like HIV, go in a rewrite our actual genes. So, sometime in the past, our genes got rewritten by a little dead creature, and we've ended up the way we are today. Wacky stuff. Tropical Marine bio as always was awesome. We analyzed the different biomes on the shorelines. From sandy shores (so straight up beaches) to mangroves (which are the coolest kind of tropical tree). Straight up, mangroves are wild. Their roots act as snorkeled, and their leaves can literally sequester salt from the air so it doesn't poison the plant.
Please support mangrove conservation at: https://mangroveactionproject.org
But anyways. Ocean habitats are awesome. We discussed the ethical value of conservation in Tropical Conservation. Which is all well and good, because I find nature to be the absolute best. Spanish was tough this week though. I got my oral presentation tomorrow (I'll let y'all know how that one turns out), and the final Thursday. Hopefully I understand more Spanish than I think. But I'm pretty good at talking.
But the weekend! Always an adventure. This weekend we headed up and over to Santa Elena and Monteverde. One of the most famous cloud forests of Costa Rica. I was cold for the first time since being here. The high elevation and the permanent misty air from the cloud bank made for chilly evenings. But yeah. It took a long whiles to get there, because there was road construction, but the views from the bus were worth the hours of sweating in the valley. There were also a lot of interesting backpackers on the bus. Me and a French girl sitting behind me took bets on how long the bus ride was going to take. I won.
I stayed in Hostel Sloth close to the center of Santa Elena. I met so many interesting Europeans. Two danish guys that were staying in my room were really nice, and they were asking me about the cool stuff to do in Costa Rica, because when I say I've been here almost two months, people think I'm some sort of expert. But yeah, and there were several British girls I met at breakfast one morning. I got to tell them that papayas are antiparasitics.
We didn't end up going to the Monteverde cloud forest. Instead, we went to the lesser traveled Santa Elena Cloud Forest. Worth it! It was cheaper, less crowded, and the trails were longer. The mist between the trees was other worldly. You could see the vines and bromeliads climbing to the tops of these enormous green trees. Just looking around you could see every shade of green and brown possible. We were hoping to see some cool animals, but we only saw some funky centipedes and one tarantula.
That night we got to go on a night hike. Unfortunately is was very falsely advertised, and we didn't go to the Monteverde cloud forest, just a reserve near it. And our guide was crazy, he didn't even find the animals, he had a spotter ahead of him doing it. We saw lots of beetles, crickets, spiders, sleeping birds, and one teeny-tiny frog. Overall, not bad, but very much not what we paid for. Further into the night, when I was wanting to actually sleep. This dude in my hostel room from Staten Island SNORED like a FREIGHT TRAIN. Absolutely horrendous. 0/10 experience with trying to sleep through the jet engine of his breathing.
But Sunday was a lovely day. Jenna and I got hot chocolate in the morning from a local shop with a Swedish girl we had met at breakfast, and we all practiced our Spanish. Jenna, Isaac, Jeff, Erin, and I then went to a little hideaway hike to a natural root bridge. It was right by the road, but you never would be able to spot it. Seeing the beauty and the strength of the roots spanning this huge gully was awesome. I could've sat on that bridge, looking into the leaves for hours. After we explored the creek bed around it. I got to Tarzan swing on a vine that was hanging down. I'm glad it didn't break haha. I felt like a little kid again, knocking around a creek with my friends. After that we went to a butterfly conservatory. The butterflies were so beautiful. We saw swallowtails, monarchs, blue morphos, and plenty of others I couldn't possibly name. But yeah. Their wings were like stained glass, and the color variation was incredible. We kept trying to get them to land on us. Isaac kept holding up this bright orange plastic egg he got from a vending machine. No takers though unfortunately.
The bus ride back was long. But chill. I slept a lot because I hadn't slept that night haha. Overall, a solid week.
I don't have all the pictures I want to post yet. So that'll be a whole other post, because I know y'all eat those photos up.
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