La SELVA!

On Saturday, I woke up rather early in the morning to get on a van to go to La Selva. This was my first of two Tropical Ecology laboratory field trips. La Selva, which translates ¨the jungle¨, is a Biological research station located in the Caribbean province of Limon. In order to be able to go to La Selva, we each had to purchase rubber boots, because there are a number of venomous species of snakes, spiders, and frogs in La Selva. The drive was only about two and a half hours to get to the La Selva. The first thing I noticed after getting out of the van with my twenty some classmates was the dramatic change in the climate. San José is in the middle of its dry, summer season. However, because we are surrounded by mountains, the temperature is still rather lower than the surrounding provinces. La Selva is in the middle of a tropical rain forest, and it NEVER stops raining. There was a slight drizzle when we arrived, the air was thick and humid, and it was uncomfortably hot. It pretty much rained the rest of the day.

My friends Rachel and Rachel and I on the suspension bridge in La Selva.

My classmates and I stayed in a lodge with bunkbeds and a shared bathroom. The bathroom did not function most of the weekend, because many Americans still do not understand that you simply cannot flush toliet paper in Costa Rica. The plumbing cannot handle it. The cabin and the station reminded me a lot of being at Kirchenwald. Instead of being homesick like many of my classmates, I was ¨campsick.¨

After settling in, we put on our rubber boots, put on our raingear, grabbed our field notebooks, and prepared for a guided tour of the rainforest. Due to the fact that it was an Ecology laboratory field trip, we were expected to take extensive notes while walking through the forest. The only problem was that even with rain jackets and an umbrella, my notebook managed to get soaked. Have you ever tried to write notes on a soaking wet piece of paper? It does not work so well.

The rainforest!

On our guided tour, we had the opportunity to see spider monkeys, howler monkeys, parrots, toucans, and many other species of animals and plants. Our guide showed us a rare species of bats. Bats are the most abundant mammal in all of Costa Rica. There were three bats that were a little bit bigger than cotton balls. They were a light green color, and they make their home underneath of a large leaf. They chew part of the spine of the leaf so that it creates a protective tent. Our guide told us that we were very lucky, and this particular species of bat is rarely seen in the wild.

This is the leaf where the bats lived.
It was hard to get a good picture with the lighting
 and the fact that it was raining.
They are in the center of the leaf towards the bottom. 

After lunch, a man told us to take a couple of bananas from lunch and drop pieces over the magnificient suspension bridge that the station is known for. A couple of my friends and I decided to try it out. Much to our surprise, the fruit parahnas in the river practically caught the pieces of banana before they even hit the surface of the water. There were dozens of them! From the bridge, we could also see iguanas and other lizards in the higher branches in the trees soaking up the sun. There were also crocodiles in the river.

We were given a presentation by one of the educators at La Selva. It is one of three main Biological research stations in Costa Rica. Many students and scholars from around the world come to La Selva to conduct research. They stay in the same lodges that we stayed in. Around the main inhabited area of the station, there was a small herd of peccaries. The peccaries are a species of wild pigs. I especially liked seeing the younger ones that were only a month or so old.

These are just a few of the peccaries living around the station. 

After the sun went down, we went on a night hike with one of the guides. Most species of snakes are nocturnal, so this was our chance to see snakes. We saw six different snakes! There was also a random armadillo that crossed the path behind us. We saw a number of species of birds sleeping in the trees, golden orb spiders spinning their webs, iguanas, bats, and many others.

This is just one example of the huge spiders we saw in La Selva.

The next day, we were expected to spend our time conducting our own research, and we were permitted to walk anywhere along the trails in the station. We are talking thousands of acres of rain forest! My friends and I decided to walk to this one swamp. It was about a two hour hike, but it was definitely worth it. We saw a lot of smaller, skinnier snakes. For our project, we looked at leaf-cutter ants and their interactions with eachother and their environment. The day before we had seen a number of leaf cutter ants that had dropped their leaves in the middle of the path to avoid the rain. Raindrops can kill the ants.

Leaf cutter ant: In action!

I could write a ten page paper on the activities of leaf cutter ants (and I probably will for my Ecology Class), but I will not bore you with all of the details. While taking photographs of the leaf cutter ants, I had a Bullet Ant fall out of a tree onto my arm! Bullet Ants are extremely painful if they bite you. Apparently, it feels as if you have been shot, and some people are bedridden for two days after being bitten. Luckily, I was able to flick it off of my arm before it could do any damage.

A Bullet Ant!

La Selva was definitely a once in a lifetime experience. Many people will travel to Costa Rica to experience all of the opportunities that the Ecotourism industry has to offer. However, it is rare to be given the opportunity to stay at a Biological research station. I had the opportunity to see primary growth rain forest. I tried to take pictures to put into perspective just how big the trees were, but the pictures really do not do the trees any justice.

Just one of many large primary growth trees.