Las Cruces 1

Las Cruces Biological Station & Wilson Botanical Garden is a research station 300km SE of San Jose in the Fila Cruces mountain range.  The area is 1200m above sea level, gets about 4000mm rain/year and is a Tropical Premontane Wet Forest.  Las Cruces is a small forest fragment but has a huge diversity of plants (including the second largest collection of palms in the world), birds, bats, and mammals (White-headed Capuchin are definitely present, and Squirrel Monkeys' range supposedly includes this area, but they have not been seen recently).

It took a 6 hour bus ride from San Jose to Las Cruces.  I had a delicious lunch of arroz con pollo and platanos maduros:

Everything I saw during our stops was beautiful and really different from the types of plants I'm used to seeing:

When we got to Las Cruces, we moved into the Wilson House, which is located right in the middle of the garden:

I'm in a room with 3 other guys.  I'm on top bunk:

There are so many beautiful plants just in the garden around the house (This one is a bromeliad):

Since we got here, we've been busy non-stop.  A typical day so far:
6:29 wake up.
6:30 walk to breakfast.
8:00-12:00 class time spent either in the classroom, in the garden, or heading towards the forest (generally with two half hour breaks)
12:00 lunch
2:00-4:00/4:30 class time
4:30-6:00 free time (usually spent playing soccer or running with everyone)
6:00 dinner
7:00 class time
11:00 bedtime

We don't have specific classes at specific times and all of the professors help teach every class so there is always something different happening.  I spend most of classtime furiously taking notes because lectures all move extremely quickly, so any free time between classes goes by way too fast.  We haven't had too much homework other that reading so far, but there is so little time to get it done.  We were also just given a taxonomy assignment, involving finding, catching, and identifying insects to the level of order and family on our own.  I don't know how I will find enough time to do all of it.

The food here is pretty good.  Almost every meal has some sort of rice dish and many meals have beans.  For breakfast there is also some type of bread or biscuit, fruit, eggs, and orange juice.  For lunch, there is salad (very thinly sliced cabbage with tomatoes and cucumbers), rice, a vegetable, and a meat dish.  For dinner, there is again salad, a meat dish, a vegetable, and a small desert.  For example, we had salad, lasagna, cauliflower, bread and ice cream for dinner tonight.  The meals are spaced out and there aren't any opportunities to snack between meals, so I have to force myself to eat more food at each meal so I don't get hungry.

The weather in Costa Rica is amazing.  It doesn't feel too hot or humid when just walking around, but it gets bad when hiking, even in the shade of the forest.  It is always light out by breakfast time and the sun always sets right around dinner time, so flashlights or headlamps are completely necessary to get from one place to another after around 5:45PM.  We generally all hang out in the giant common room after dark, trying to read, socialize, or get on the Internet.  Las Cruces only has a certain amount of bandwith shared among everyone who works or lives here, so we can't look at large pictures online or use video Skype during the day.

So far I am loving Costa Rica!  My goal is to start taking even more pictures (even though I probably won't be able to upload all of them).  Hopefully I will be able to take full advantage of everything Las Cruces has to offer before we leave in a few weeks.