Palo Verde

Palo Verde National Park is my home through March 10^th.  It is a reserve in the northwest of the country that has seasonal dry forest and a large marsh.  I can already tell from the few days that I’ve been here that the park is unique in several regards.  First, the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) owns and operates a field station at Palo Verde even though it is a public park run through the Costa Rican National Park Service.  OTS had to pay a fee for each of us to enter the park and there is a separate station within the park for the rangers.  The park is a very different experience than Las Cruces and Cuericí.  There was one guard at the front gate of Las Cruces (and no guards at Cuericí), but many rangers patrol the whole park at Palo Verde, including walking around our station.  There were no other visitors at Cuericí besides our class and only a couple families a day visiting Las Cruces, but there are tons of tourists here in Palo Verde.

The OTS station

Palo Verde is quite unique in its management strategy.  The park used to be part of a giant cattle ranch until it turned into a park in the late 1970s.  Cattle were removed and cattails began invading the entire wetland area at the same time.  The wetland area is important habitat for lots of waterfowl, so the disappearance of the marsh was of great concern.  Palo Verde received an executive decree in 1998 that allowed for active management to restore the marsh (most national parks cannot do much alteration to habitat).  One of the management strategies has been to reintroduce cattle into the park in the hopes that their grazing will control the cattails.  I don’t think this has been effective, but allowing nearby farmers to keep cattle in the park must go a long way in ensuring good will between the park and the surrounding community.  In that sense, I don’t think having cattle in a national park does too much harm, but it can be annoying to find a cowpie on the soccer field or to have a cow glare at you when entering the marsh. 



View of the marsh with lots of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks

I have been told that January through June corresponds with the dry season in Costa Rica, but I didn’t understand what that really meant until arriving at Palo Verde.  Las Cruces and Cuericí were both very green, with Las Cruces receiving rainfall about twice a week and Cuericí getting a lot of fog and moisture from the clouds.  Palo Verde on the other hand is dry.  Very dry.  And hot.  It has not rained here in a while, and it is likely that the area will receive no meaningful rainfall for the remainder of the dry season.  The dirt on the soccer field is cracked and the grass is brown.  A large amount of trees in the forest have lost their leaves and the marsh looks like it is at a low level.  There have been practically no clouds overhead.  I’m incredibly fascinated what the area is like towards the end of the dry season.



View of some of the dry forest

Interestingly, the area around the park is extremely productive despite the dry season.  A lot of water intensive crops like rice, sugarcane, and watermelon are produced here.  Farmers depend on irrigation, but this seems like a low efficiency system.  Costa Rica created an artificial lake near the Arenal Volcano to create electricity through a dam, and the water flowing out of the dam is used to irrigate dry farms in the Guanacaste region that otherwise would not be able to grow the crops they do.

Rice field

This area is quite rich in wildlife, and I have already seen tons of White-faced Capuchins, two Howler Monkeys, one Spider Monkey, several Coatis, and more Black Spinytail Iguanas than I can handle.  I’ve also been able to observe the famous Ant-Acacia tree interaction firsthand, which is featured in all ecology textbooks.  Palo Verde is also quite buggy.  I am always itchy due to bug bites, and we need mosquito nets over our beds at night.  The only large animal that I haven’t seen yet that I want to is a crocodile, but hopefully that will change soon!

Two White-faced Capuchins



Black Spinytail Iguana

The next two and a half weeks will be extremely busy, with faculty-led projects starting tomorrow, then independent projects, two midterms, a plant taxonomy key, and our insect identifications all due before we leave for San Jose (and basically no rest days until San Jose).  Hopefully I can survive!

Cuerici

I spent the past six days in Cuerici, which is a field station and farm located in the Talamanca Mountain Range.  The station was a bit more rustic than Las Cruces in the sense that there was basically no heat, no phone service, and no Internet.  The station's elevation is around 2800 meters, so we definitely felt the effects of elevation.  The weather was much, much cooler than the other parts of Costa Rica I have experienced.  Nights were spent huddled around the wood stove before stuffing ourselves into our sleeping bags to keep warm.

The station has a rather interesting setup because Don Carlos, the man who manages the station, also has a farm at the site.  I think that Don Carlos would just run the station and manage the forest if he could, but from my understanding, the farm is necessary for Don Carlos to make money.  He is part of an association of seven people who have protected 200 hectares of primary oak forest.  Although he makes some money from the researchers and students who stay at the station, it is not enough income to live comfortably.  This may be an indication that small scale private reserves are not a financially sound investment in Costa Rica.

Our first day there we had a short tour around Don Carlos's property.  I can't provide much information because I slipped and pulled a muscle in my leg 20 minutes into the tour.  I had to sit out a hike the next morning, and injuring myself negatively influenced my experience at Cuerici for the first couple of days.

Nonetheless, I still had an enjoyable time and got to go on some great hikes.  We did several hikes through the forest, where I got to spend some quality time appreciating the beauty of nature. 

We went to a paramo ecosystem, which is a high elevation grass and shrubland (similar to a tundra, but in the Tropics).  It is characterized by harsh and unpredictable weather conditions (rapidly changing temperatures), intense sunlight, strong winds, and fog.  When we went, the area was covered in fog so visiblity was quite low (perhaps 50 to 100 feet).  Plants have developed many adaptations to survive the paramo, so most of te plants have a low stature to avoid the wind, small and hairy leaves, and upward-pointing leaf orientation.  Most animals only migrate into the paramo during the day to feed and then go down the mountain at night, or burrow in the vegetation.  I really didn't see many animals at all, including insects.

Example of plants typical to the paramo

I also hiked up to a lookout point in Cuerici's forest one night to camp out with a couple other people to watch the sunrise over the mountains in the morning.  We left around 9:00PM, so we needed our headlamps to help guide us through the pitch black forest.  We huddled around each other and tried to keep warm for about an hour before going to be in  shack that was open on two sides.  It was so cold!  However, the view the next morning was well worth all of the sleepless shivering the night before.

Obviously, my camera couldn't capture how stunning the sunrise was, but the view was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.  One of the things I find so fascinating about being in the mountains is how quickly the clouds move.  Fifteen minutes later when we started hiking back down for breakfast  clouds had completely covered the entire view and we couldn't see anything.

Finally, on our last full day we did a six hour hike where we got to see a 1000+ year old oak tree and a nearby waterfall.

 Cuerici was overall a great trip and very different from the warm, tropical rainforests that most people imagine when they think of Costa Rica.  I'm so glad that I got to experience the diversity of Costa Rica's ecosystems, although I am glad to be back in warm weather and away from the cold!

Las Alturas

We went to Las Alturas yesterday for a quick overnight trip in order to see a huge forest not too far from Las Cruces.  We drove two hours to a beautiful, more rustic cabin in the mountains.  No heat, no Internet, and electricity only from 6-9PM when the generator is on.  We unpacked and then had a lecture about the area.

Las Alturas was fascinating to learn about.  It is a farm community of 49 families that is owned by a wealthy American businessman.  They grow organic produce and honey for local consumption and have a small seedling nursery.  The bottom third of the property used to be selectively logged, so the trees are grown as part of a reforestation effort.  The rest of the property is untouched primary forest that is next to La Amistad International Park, a protected area shared by Costa Rica and Panama in the Talamaca range.

Seedlings

This morning we made a two hour hike from an elevation of 1500m to 2100m.  It was obviously steep but the beauty of the forest made the hike worth it.  At first the forest looks like a typical thickly vegetated forest, but transitions into a forest dominated by oak and bamboo, and the very top is a dwarf forest with tons of orchids.

Forest at low elevation

Forest at high elevation

Around an hour into the hike, we heard the calls of White-headed Capuchins from far away.  Hearing their loud vocalizations took my breath away.  I assumed that this was the closest thing I would have to any contact with monkeys and already considered the hike to be a huge success.

However, about twenty minutes later the people in front of me stopped hiking and started staring into the trees.  High up in the canopy about 75m away we could see a Spider Monkey swinging through the trees!  The monkey was so graceful and much bigger than I expected.  The monkey was obscured by branches after about 30 seconds, swung away through the forest, and then disappeared as suddenly as we had spotted it.  Although the moment was brief, I felt like I was rooted in spot for several years.  A monkey just passed by me.  In a rain forest.  Where I had already heard other monkeys.  Life does not get much better than this.  If I could spend everyday hiking outside and getting to experince nature like this, I would be the happiest person in the world.  It amazes me that this forest is big enough to support several species of monkeys and that this individual Spider Monkey felt comfortable enough to forage near a large group of noisy people.

I spent the rest of the hike in a state of delirious happiness.  The view from the top was almost as spectacular.  All that was visible as far as the eye could see across the moutains was forest.  Pure unadultered forest.  It was a gorgeous sight.  Although I don't think any of my picture of the rain forest do it justice, I found it impossible to capture just how majestic a sea of forest actually is to see. 
Las Alturas was definitely one of my favorite trips so far.  I can only hope that the rest of the semester will be as eventful and beautiful.