Domingo

Words of wisdom: If you open your mouth too big in the rain forest, something will fly in. Gosh, I keep on thinking of lots of things to write about but at this point in the day it all escapes me. Let’s just start at the beginning.

Bonfire never happened last night, rain, paid 5,000 Colones for some pretty terrible pizza. There is some kind of prohibition on tomato sauce in this country. None with the spaghetti, nor lasagna, nor pizza. Makes each item that much less appetizing. Got to watch the Spurs at Jazz meanwhile, decent game.

Got myself to bed kind of late, 10:30, which still really feels like 12:30, as it would be in CT. Started reading Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. It’s about this out-of-shape middle-aged guy who decides to thru-hike the AT one summer with his equally out-of-shape friend. The writing is quite entertaining, looking forward to more tonight.

So, nobody was at breakfast this morning, just the few of us who work around the old lab here. With plans for today I opted out of staying up late last night. Pretty standard breakfast, lots of iced coffee, really falling in love with it. Discovered that there’s usually coffee on between meals too.

Sticking with the plan, Amanda and I got the bikes pumped up with some air and shot off for the Lindero Sur Plot at the back of the property. The back of La Selva is adjacent to the sprawling, mountainous Braulio Carillo National Park that we drove through on the way here. The trip was quite formidable. Started with a 3.75km bike ride, then a 1.25km hike up and down hills, but definitely a fun hike.

Best weather ever today, couldn’t ask for much better Memorial Day weekend out of the country. Rarely a cloud in the sky all day, right now the moon is nice and bright. It ended up taking us an hour to reach the plot, which should shorten as the summer goes on. Lindero Sur will be the second plot I cover, following LEP. Only stuck around for 20 minutes or so and headed back to get spiffy and go to lunch, without the getting spiffy.

Had a relaxing lunch, ate some peccary. Today at the dining hall there were everyone’s bills for station fees stuck up on the white board. Couldn’t find one with my name, probably going to let it slide for a couple of days since the bank is charging me a 2% fee on every swipe down here. That’s $40 on $2,000 which is about what I’ll have to spend for 12-13 weeks of fees, not cool.

Had a very very relaxing afternoon, everyone else was being quite lazy, so I joined in the fun. Fooled around on the computer before hitting the porch hard with my book. Sat in the sun; it felt like a warm blanket, I could have zonked (MS Word takes that word, nice) out at any moment. Didn’t want to leave my rocker, but eventually pulled myself up and got back into field clothes to go batting.

Got going a little after 4pm to go to the LEP plot so Amanda could practice going out to the plots. We also had the 3m poles to carry on the bikes. I had two lodged between the grip and brake, which seemed to work all right, except for the fact that I was forced to sit on the bike, my behind will thank me in the morning.

We have come to a crossroads as how to get new bikes: 1) steal nicer bikes or 2) get our bikes stolen. Option #1 is much more likely. So in total today did 15k of biking and 5k of hiking, just wait till I start swimming with the crocs, triathlon here I come. Batting was good, had some ugly beetles get caught in the nets.

Requested a PB&J for my field dinner, was pleasantly surprised to find crunchy peanut butter, yum. Got a little reading in before night came. Caught a bat with a cut, so there was some bat blood, kind of creepy. Had a couple of bats free themselves, then fly right back into the net. The picture for today is from last week, but I’m pretty proud of catching the bat mid flight.

Have a pretty solid schedule lined up for the coming week, last week before assistants arrive. Taking the night off tomorrow, planning on watching Spurs/Jazz again. Regaining my obsession with platanos in every form, can’t wait to fry some up at home. Trees tomorrow…and hopefully more to say.

BP