2019 Costa Rica International Research Experience

Woke up again this morning to see the sunrise, This time there was a team of us to watch it and on a much clearer day,  Myself, Aldwin, Luke, Jacob, Jameson, Nichole and Rachel all went up to lookout tower.  We definitely did some more bonding as we knew the days were being counted down till we all came home.  It felt we were all there for another that morning more so in support of Lucas lol, we got to see him deploy the drone that he seemed pro at right away, he was so nervous but we all encourage him and think just trying to watch him land the drone on the tower was the most nervous feeling. But he did it and we all went in together to celebrate his landing by saying NASA on the count of 3 and throwing our hands up.  Juan and I did the last few touches on our poster he decided that we needed to include two more graphs onto our poster to emphasize the data of forest types in there as well.  I was a little worried because I didn't want too much going on in out poster but turned

Good Morning All once again, I know it has been a few days, it has been from this day and so forth where days went by fast with so much to do and be crammed into a day.  Woke up this morning to see the sunrise and it was beyond beautiful.  Super cloudy almost looked like there was an ocean over San Vito as the clouds layed over the valley.  Myself Luke and Jameson were able to witness it together.   After such a great morning watching the sunrise we got straight to work since we were able to collect all of our cameras and successfully went through them once and just to make sure we got every ounce of data I double checked all the cameras, marked the gps points, how many files were in each one and all the detections that triggered the camera then recorded all animal classes out of those detections.  Juan and I from there were able to put some graphs together and decided that we were going to do our research based on the amount of animal species we caught on camera in the primary

What a day, Start of the morning was a rough start, I was tired, congested, sore ear, throat and pressure in my sinus but thankfully got through that from hiking.  Today we went about 6 miles to collect the remaining trail cams along the Melissa Trail and Wilson Trail.  It was pretty cool because on the way Juan showed us where the Vampire Bats roosted in a tree that had a hollow center.  I also got to see capuchin monkeys up close there were about 10 around us playing and eating in the trees. Another experience I got from the hike was to dress in my ribbon skirt to experience what it is like for Lucia to hike many miles in her traditional dress.  Well I sure did have an experience, I kept having to roll up my dress in order to have more freedom to walk, it was so got kinda just retained the heat within the dress but I was able to keep it clean just like hers.  I also wanted to experience this due to how our ancestors used to travel in their traditional clothing and do the same. 

Good Late Evening Y'all, So I had been wishing for pizza since I got to Costa Rica, didnt have the greatest of experiences in San Jose but did this time in San Vito.  I also got a strawberry cream crepe and Vanilla Milkshake,  We left for San Vito this morning at 11:30am and didnt get back till 4:40.  I am beyond full of food that I gorged in town.  It was a cool little experience to shop in their local grocery stores, I was on a quest to find hot cheetos but was unsuccessful, however I did find something similar that will do just fine.   It was nice to take a break for a few hours to get out of the house and relax, visit, and walk town.  It was so funny though because even though I had been craving pizza so bad we ended up back here at the station for dinner and pizza is what was for dinner.  I no longer want pizza for a very long time and want to get back to these good portion meals they serve here lol.   A treat that I treasured today was that we got to see the white

I know I know, 1 day late for my blog, I was so excited about experiencing another cultural day with the Indigenous Peoples.  But before we get into that Juan and I had a busy day.  We began to work on our poster for Wednesdays presentation, it was really awesome to learn and observe Juan create the map for the Biological center with the QGIS software. I decided to go with a green scheme since Juan mentioned his favorite color is green but I am still playing with the poster so we won't know the final product till tuesday night.  I am super excited to get all the cameras by monday and analyze our captured images and videos.   It was a half day of work and then culture day for the other half. I forgot what the plant was called but it looked like a green potato that was shaved down with a grater and squeezed the juice out of it.  It should usually seep for a few hours and be a good temporary ink for your skin.  I got mine done and it didnt show almost at all, but it represented

Another Late Evening, Today was a more chill day, didn't go out to the field today, Juan and I took this day to go over some more poster guidelines and expectations on our projects.  Input all out collected data into a few excel sheets.  Downloaded a GIS software to help with our coordinates to get a visual of the areas we went to present with the poster.  Ran into a few hiccups on some noted errors out in the field but became and easy fix once we got to meet on it.  At first I was freaking out so I wasn't focused and thought that we would have to redo some coordinates and waste a day doing something we should have had in order when we could've been working on data.  But all was fine, it all worked out, good thing I take notes and write comments we were able to continue with data input which made a successful day.  I learned more about bats today from Juan while we got a little distracted but its never a waste of time it turns into learning new things.  I thought it was