A day at La Selva Biological Station

11/29/2012 Dan: Torrential rain through much of the night. A staff member says if they gave out medals for rain, Chilamate would have won gold last night. 

Susan: We hiked some of the trails at Chilamate on our own in the morning, but were grateful to be shown a sloth by William, who was giving a tour to the latest guests to arrive at the retreat. If William had not pointed out the sloth, we NEVER would have seen it. My photo isn't very good, I'm afraid, since the sloth was high up in a cecropia tree.

We also got to see a basilisk running across the grounds. Very cool! 

 

Dan: At mid-morning we took a taxi over to the legendary La Selva Biological Station and arrived shortly before lunch. We hung out on the suspension footbridge over the Puerto Viejo river.

Just like Tirimbina, the bridge proved to be a spectacular place to see beautiful birds like the Collared Aracari at close range. 

 

 

The cafeteria lunch at La Selva was a huge disappointment compared to the superb meals at the eco retreat. The tilapia was the slimiest fish that I have ever been served and I dumped 80 percent of my lunch in their compost bin because it was so poor.

At 1:30 we met our youthful but experienced nature guide. He told us that after high school he had attended a year of Eco-guide training at the University of Costa Rica. Our guide said he hoped we were his only tourists and he got his wish. He asked what we were most interested in seeing and we told him we loved learning about everything in nature.

Many of the trails at La Selva are paved and quite wide.

Susan: Although our guide was technically very knowledgeable, he seemed to suffer from boredom in paradise. It rained during much of our tour, and our guide told us the policy was that when it rained hard, we could not be in the forest (there is the very real danger that branches will break under the weight of many water-logged epiphytes), so he hopped us from building to building during downpours. We did get to see another sloth in the distance before the rain started, which was great. We also saw a peccary near the main buildings - these wild pigs are becoming too numerous in the absence of large predators, and can do substantial damage to the rainforest vegetation.

While we sheltered during the rain, it was hard to engage our guide: we felt we had to pull the information from him. While researchers played ping pong and we read posters about invasive plants, our guide was off talking to someone else instead of noticing our interest in invasive plants. Even when the rain lessened, he seemed anxious to get out of the rain and finish his work day. This tour was our only disappointment of the week. We heard from others that La Selva has experienced recent cutbacks, and morale may be suffering among the guides. It would be nice if La Selva had an alternative for tours that get cut short by heavy rain, either by providing a sheltered program or by offering a partial refund.

 

Map showing the mountains above La Selva and the Sarapiqui Valley. Yellow areas are banana plantations. Purple areas are pineapple farms. Tan areas are pastures.

Waterfalls in the Cloud Forest

11/28/2012: Susan: On Wednesday morning we got ready early and hurried off after breakfast to catch the 8:15 bus to San Miguel to spend the day in the cloud forest. I had asked Meghan the night before to write out a cheat sheet for me so that I could ask the bus driver to let us know when we came to the cemetery outside of San Miguel, where our tour guide was to pick us up. I handed the note to the bus driver, and he said something to me in Spanish, shaking his head. I could understand enough to catch that this bus didn’t GO to San Miguel, but couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me. We asked if anyone spoke English, and one passenger spoke a tiny bit and tried to help us. The best I could get was that we would have to take another bus. I had no idea where we were supposed to get off to get this other bus, so the ride was a bit nerve-wracking to say the least!

The bus driver took us as far as his route went, and let us off at his turn-around, pretty much in the middle of nowhere! Why he didn’t drop us at a bus stop in the town we had just driven through, I’ll never know. Perhaps he thought he was doing us a favor to get us as close as possible to our destination. But we had no idea how far it was to the next bus stop, and had no choice but to walk for about 1 to 2 kilometers along a very narrow busy road with no shoulder or sidewalk, and tractor trailers whizzing by us. Not fun! We finally came to a bus stop, where a young boy in his school uniform was waiting. We tried to talk with him, but alas, he spoke no English. Eventually the bus came along (the 8:45 bus DOES go all the way to San Miguel), and we were able to get to our destination. 

José Miranda met us at the bus stop, along with a young woman named Heylin, who was to serve as our translator, since José speaks very little English. José owns a large dairy farm and a piece of tropical cloud forest, which he is preserving and expanding. He and his wife and daughter operate a bed and breakfast called Albergue el Socorro, and provide tours of their beautiful piece of the cloud forest. The road to the farm was windy and rough, as we bounced about in the back of his very old Jeep. He pulled over to point out howler monkeys, and to allow us to admire the rushing San Fernando river. 
When we finally arrived at his property, he led us across the pasture into his cloud forest paradise. It started to rain (of course!), but as always, we had our umbrellas and rubber boots. We travelled through a section of lush primary cloud forest, and then entered a section of secondary growth, which had been cattle pasture just 12 years earlier. It was amazing to see how fast the forest returns! We hope that support for his eco-tourism business allows him to return more pasture to forest. 

We walked at a fairly brisk clip because José was anxious to show us a waterfall before lunchtime, but we did have time to stop and admire several orchids. 

The mud was slick, and more than once, our young translator slid and almost fell. I did a nice slide as well, and landed on my thigh in the mud. But we made it down finally to arrive at the beautiful river with huge boulders and a low waterfall.

Dan was particularly impressed by a large six-sided boulder that José showed him. The hexagonal shape of this rock indicates that it was formed when magma cooled very slowly in the throat of a volcano without reaching the surface. This type of rock is known as a laccolith.

As we started back up the steep hill in this deep river valley, José’s cell phone rang. It seemed impossible to us that he could receive a call in a place that seemed so incredibly remote!

When we emerged from the forest to his open pasture land, we were amazed at how soft and spongy the grass-covered ground felt. We could virtually bounce up and down on this springy ground. As we walked along the country road, we stopped to admire a beautiful tall waterfall far in the distance, just visible through a gap in the trees.

We finished our two hour hike at an open-air dining pavilion, and enjoyed a wonderful lunch of locally raised tilapia, the ever present gallo pinto (rice and beans), and fabulous fresh fruit juice. While we ate, we watched numerous colorful birds, including the scarlet-rumped tanager, come to the feeding platforms where José placed fresh fruit for the birds’ lunch.

After lunch, José showed us his methane capturing system. The manure from the dairy cows is moved to a large plastic holding “bag” and the methane it gives off is captured and transferred to the kitchen, where it is used as cooking gas for the stove. Ingenious, economical and great for the environment. Why don’t we do more of that in the U.S.??

Then we climbed back into the Jeep, and bounced down the road and through several gates. We ended up in a pasture, where we disembarked and followed José into another piece of forest. 

He led us down a VERY steep and slick hill, and Heylin and I gratefully accepted the bamboo walking sticks he had brought for us. I was impressed by the incredible diversity of ferns in the cloud forest: there were ferns of all types everywhere, from low-growing ferns on the forest floor, to epiphytic ferns in the trees, to large tree ferns. By contrast, in the lowland tropical forest, I saw far fewer ferns and more palms and aroids.

Although the footing was a bit treacherous, it was well worth the effort. We came to a viewpoint that looked over a deep canyon across to the very tall waterfall we had seen in the distance before lunch. 

It was a spectacular view, and one that probably few people get to enjoy, given that we were on José’s private property, looking across to the waterfall on adjacent private property. Heylin had never seen the waterfall, even though she grew up in the town at the bottom of the mountain we were on. It was astonishing to Dan that a waterfall of that significant size would not be a major tourist attraction. It is a testament to how much natural beauty lays hidden in Costa Rica. Anywhere else in the world, there would have been a large parking lot and a cement viewing platform and hundreds of tourists.

 

When we returned to the pasture, we found a couple milking the cows next to our parked Jeep. Rather than herd the cows to a barn to be milked, this couple traveled to the cows, along with their pack horse that carried that milk jugs. We smiled and waved at them, and climbed back into the ancient Jeep for the drive back down the mountain to San Miguel. The sun actually broke through for a while, and the views were spectacular. It was a wonderful day in the cloud forest, and we had no problems with the bus ride back to Chilamate, arriving back just as it was getting dark.

Turtles, Toucans, Bats and Red-eyed Tree frogs

11/27/2012 Dan:  Heavy rain again through much of the night. The day dawned bright and sunny with great local bird activity. After breakfast we used a lightly traveled gravel road through the countryside as both a nature trail and as a way to get a feel for how the locals live.

A well-dressed happy young man on his bicycle stopped to say hola, but he quickly discovered we did not speak Spanish. His black dress pants had a few small streaks of mud splatters from his bike. He proudly laid his hand on the black plastic bag tied on his bike behind his seat and told us something we regrettably could not understand. Susan only caught the word “fresh.” I imagined he had caught some prized fish and was taking them to market but he was probably telling us about his laptop computer. He encouraged Susan to take his picture, and he gave her a beaming smile (4 days later we discovered that he delivers fresh baked bread each morning). Baking is unpopular in this hot and humid climate.

Palm plantation (for hearts of palm)

Soon we were passed by a pickup truck whose cab and bed were filled with people who appeared to be headed to work at a small pineapple farm. Pineapple appears to be the main crop in the local area but most of the private land is devoted to cattle ranching.

We enjoyed considerably more sun than the previous two days. Of course, that meant it got hot and humid. The shaded parts of the road felt good but we walked on at a leisurely pace watching birds and absorbing the gently rolling countryside. We passed a home where the roof was about 15'x30' but the enclosed living space was about 15'x10'. A small hut of a home even by local standards.

Susan: Many of the homes in Costa Rica feature large areas under roof but otherwise open. It’s never cold, and the bugs aren’t bad, so it is more enjoyable to sit outside than inside. You don’t need a lot of enclosed space!

Living fence: sticks put in the ground root and sprout!

Dan: As we continued along the edge of this farm a man carrying a backpack sprayer called out to us. He walked up a little road on his farm and tried to see if he could assist us. Soon we discovered that none of us spoke the others language so we parted with smiles.

 

On the walk back to the retreat, a sizeable group of young tourists on a guided horseback ride passed by. One of the equally young guides found a six inch long turtle. After he showed it to his tour group, he galloped back to show it to us even though he spoke no English. He simply had the situational awareness that we were obviously nature tourists who would appreciate seeing the turtle.

After lunch we had a very engaging personal ethnobotany tour with a man named Jaime Alvarado. Jaime is in his fifties and is a lifelong resident of Chilamate. Jaime was the second oldest of 12 kids whose parents relied greatly on the rainforest to provide for the needs of their family. Jaime said he only went to school part-time until the third grade but he had an insatiable desire for reading.

Keel-billed toucan

His grandfather had come to Costa Rica from Corsica and brought with him many books. Jaime said his grandfather had the largest book collection in the Chilamate area. Nearby La Selva Biological Station hired and trained Jaime to be an electrician but Jaime said his passion was always nature. He eventually became a naturalist guide and now supports himself doing nature tours independently. Jaime was proud of the assistance that he provided over the years in helping BBC film crews produce documentaries of his beloved rainforest.

Papaya tree that toucan was eating from

Achiote

The depth of Jaime's knowledge, including scientific names, was remarkable. He was equally impressed by how much Susan knew about tropical botany and what I knew about general ecology and history. Together the three of us had a great time marveling at the beauty and complexity of nature, and pondering the many things we wished we knew.

The afternoon flashed by and our scheduled 2-hour tour lasted much longer because it was so mutually enjoyable. Jaime often asked us questions in the Socratic-style of teaching. He seemed frequently pleased by what we knew or what we were able to deduce with his help or by thinking scientifically. Jaime's tour was a wonderful combination of knowledge, experience, wit, humor, and experiential learning.

After dinner, we had another exclusive $25 per person nature walk into the rainforest at night with Jaime. We had not yet seen the beautiful red-eyed tree frog but during the tour we found 4 of them.  Jaime also found us a tent-making bat under a low-hanging tree leaf, and the only snake we saw on our whole trip: a black and white snake that Jaime said was likely a coral snake mimic.

What impressed me most was Jaime drawing our attention to how long it took for drops of water to fall to the ground from the tree canopy. As Jaime watched the long descent of the drops in his flashlight he smiled broadly and clearly delighted in the experience as if it were his first time. We went to bed that night feeling that we had a small but very real rainforest experience on the muddy trails of Chilamate Rainforest Eco Retreat.