Community Ecology in Mesocosms
Believe it or not: we made it to Pitilla!! The 5 Srivastava lab musketeers are safe and happy in the jungle! Been running around in the forest all day, looking at things and awing and things. We saw an amazing army ant swarm with amazing ant birds all around it! I couldn’t stop jumping up and down in excitement! Right now, the big lab mum is cooking dinner for us while we are watching the sun go down behind the volcanoes. Life as a scientist…..magnifico!
“The latest bashing by Mother Nature left the country in a mess. Roads are blocked, some residents are homeless. Many more are in shelters. And transportation between the Central Valley and the rest of the country is hampered. A weather alert continues, and there is no sign rains will cease.”
~ A.M. Costa Rica
The good news is, we weren’t there to be caught in a landslide. The bad news is, the latest Tropical Storm to hit Costa Rica has done severe damage to all infrastructure and pretty much all major roads, including the Interamerican highway (Hwy 1) are closed, and it’s still raining. Our fearless leader, who left yesterday morning, found herself stranded in San Jose with no way to get North to Santa Cecilia and Pitilla. Last report was that she was going to catch a plane to Liberia and meet us there tomorrow.
The upshot is… no new ATV (yet), and potentially no way of getting from Liberia (where we are flying in) to Santa Cecilia and our field site in Guanacaste. I guess we’ll just have to get there and find out! T-1 day!
I can’t believe it’s here. After more than a year of anticipating this dream field season… we leave in 4 days. Lisa (my friend from master’s degree and current field assistant ) just arrived in Vancouver and we spent the day meeting the lab, packing, and experimenting with new field equipment. Last week, I told my boyfriend that it didn’t feel like we were leaving in a week! And he said, it will when Lisa gets there. And he was right! Our trunks – three 50 lb. trunks (one more than we expected!), plus leftovers now being crammed into our personal backpacks – are packed. When I introduded Lisa to Diane this morning, she said ‘I guess I’ll see you on Sunday!’. She meant, meeting us in Santa Cecilia astride her brand new ATV, ready for us to load it up and head up to Pitilla!
Yes, I still have equipment that I haven’t built yet. Yes, my rubber boots are still 2 sizes too big. Yes, my pack is still half full of my gear from my last camping trip, and I haven’t even made my ‘remember to pack’ list. And yes, I still have no form of currency valid in Costa Rica! BUT, my field assistant is sleeping in my apartment, I have new batteries in my camera, I have my research questions firmly in mind, and I can almost SMELL the jungle!
And we leave in 4 days!!
…some frantic microscope de-assembling, hat-making and swearing over heavy trunks later we are (almost) ready for 3 months of jungle! Hooooray field biologists!
Does anyone else feel that field biology is just an excuse for scientists to do arts and crafts?
Seriously – what are the main pieces of equipment you use in the field. I bet it involves hot glue, duct tape, and ziploc bags!