Day 5 July 19th

Day 5 in Costa Rica

A sloth and her child

With our experiments planned and proposed, many of the groups chose to convene early in order to get a head start on fieldwork today. After eating another excellent breakfast at 8, we continued our work and research. 

Around noon, we wrapped up our morning work session to eat lunch early. Immediately afterwards we took a long bus ride to Volcano Miravalles (a place that offers hikes and zipline tours) where we made a trek up a steep incline in the forest in order to reach the first of many zipline platforms. The whole adventure lasted well over an hour, and we were able to view the forest and its surroundings from a high elevation! The tour ended with a long descent from the canopy back to ground level. 

Next, we traveled to a local butterfly garden where we got to see examples of all stages of a butterfly's life. Larvae (caterpillar), pupae (chrysalis), and adults (butterflies) were all present at the garden. We made sure to take lots of pictures when we walked through the garden! Before we left the garden, we were treated to coconut-pinneapple tea and tortillas with a black bean paste by the caretakers of the garden. 

Our final stop of the day brought us to the home of a local family where we were taught to and made tortillas on a wood-fired stove. It's harder than you think! This was only a small part of the meal the family prepared for us, which consisted of chicken, rice and black beans, plantain cakes (not a dessert!) and the tortillas we made. For dessert, we had deep-fried tortillas coated in a sugar sauce! As an addition to the meal, we were offered habañero peppers to try. Alex and I (Nick) both had portions of the pepper and subsequently suffered from the heat. 

We walked back to Finca La Anita from the family's home and arrived a bit late. We had to scramble to get all our work done before going to bed. We've completed another exciting day in Costa Rica!

Signing off for now,

Pranav and Nick