My notebook is shaking with the bus as I scribble this down. We're cruising about as fast as we can through the forests and farmlands of Costa Rica. Outside, 30-foot-tall walls of mud interspersed with brief views of cascading water falls or lake-side fruit stands flash by. I have come here to study just this kind of nature, but the first few days of this study abroad program through Dartmouth's Biology Department haven't gone exactly as planned. I left New York this past Wednesday on a flight to Miami with a huge Kelty hiking backpack, a school bag with as many books as I could fit, and a duffel filled with diving gear. These are to be my supplies for the next two months, as I journey through Costa Rica for 6 weeks and work on Little Cayman for 3 with 13 other equally biology-crazed Dartmouth students, 2 TAs, and a rotating faculty of 4 professors. I left winter behind without a coat, and I'm not looking back. It would be too much baggage.
I arrived in Miami as scheduled, only to find that our group flight to San José, Costa Rica, had not only been delayed, but, horror of horrors, cancelled. Cancelled, in fact, due to the eruption of the active Turrialba volcano within sight of the city. I therefore met the rest of the group I was to be traveling with for the next 9 weeks in a terminal of Miami International Airport between the currency exchange and a wall memorializing those who have died for our country. We milled around there for perhaps the next 6 hours, in which I read 75% of the book I had brought and ate some ill-advised Taco Bell. We had to wait for the travel agents in charge of our trip to scramble together a plan. We finally managed 8 rooms at the "Sleep Inn" (14 students + 2 TAs) near the airport, and, without formal introduction, we divided into room buddies. As the youngest person here, I'd had barely any interaction with anyone (and didn't know many of their names), and I actually ended up in the only room by myself through the odd circumstance that one of the girls went to visit her grandparents because of the delay. The privacy was nice, especially considering the lack thereof I was expecting for the next 2 months. It was a little lonely, though - I wish I was better at the initial meet-and-greet.
We had to wait for our flights until Friday because all those on Thursday had been booked. So, to pass the time, we picked up some lunch at the grocery store and headed to the Zoo Miami. The Biology Department's various contacts managed to set up at meeting for us with a conservation biologist who works there. We headed to the "Flooded Forest" exhibit to meet with him, and we essentially grilled him about everything from the ethics of zoos as a concept to the generation of his thesis on amphibians. He answered every question cogently and carefully, and he further inspired me (as I have been before) to potentially pursue a career in a zoo or aquarium. We then spent the rest of the day wandering around, making our own internal observations on the various animals in residence there, from the grumbling brown bears to tree kangaroos that, as one of my peers pointed out, look like stuffed animals with seams up their backs.
That night, we drove to Bayside Market, a conglomeration of seemingly hundreds of shopping and dining options. A small group of us splintered off and headed for a Cuban restaurant where I sampled a very sweet (virgin) piña colada, "moros" (black beans and rice), and "mariquitos" (plantain chips). We weren't even in Central America yet and we were already practicing our Spanish with Miami's large Spanish-speaking population.
On Sunday, we went through the process of transporting sequential groups of students and TAs to the airport for the three flights to San José the travel agency had distributed us between (I found myself on the second one). The first two flights got off and back on the ground without a hitch (mostly). On the flight I began working on my first few assignments, thinking of "good questions" (for research), as we had been instructed by our professor (and director of the program), who was already in Costa Rica. I also started reading the scientific article that I will present a few weeks from now. It discusses behavioral changes in agoutis, a species of neotropical rodent, based on predation pressures from ocelots.
It was a relief when we finally landed in Miami, and we went to a new hotel, this time the "Park Inn," only to discover the third group, who flight was supposed to depart at 6pm, was delayed until 8am the next morning. Not only were they still stuck in Miami, but we couldn't make our way to the first field station. So, instead, we had a pizza dinner at the hotel (though I ordered falafel) and went to bed, exhausted (this time I had a very nice roommate).
Today, we woke up around 6 for a 7am breakfast at which I had gallopinto, a Nicaraguan black bean and rice dish, and mango juice. We made our way back to the airport (it was becoming a theme for the trip so far) at 7:30am, and waited for the next group for several hours. Having finally obtained them, we finally set off for Palo Verde, our first field station of the trip! So here we are, journeying through the Costa Rican countryside, finally about to begin our foray into tropical research!
