Finally, photos have been posted!!! Follow this link to check them out.

Here in the lowland tropics the katydids are buzzing, in spite of the cicadas' piercing rattles which overwhelm all other noises in this place. Lithe treefrogs scurry gecko-like along the walls of the buildings, hunting insects. Big brown cane toads like chocolate rabbits bounce along the walkways and disappear into the shadowy depths of the rain gutters, trying to escape the strange two-legged creatures with lights on their heads that wander among the buildings here. We humans tiptoe nervously along the trails and walkways, headlamps blaring, eyes peeled for venemous snakes which we never see but rightly fear we might. All around, the forest hums with the electricity of billions of tiny, animated exoskeletons, each dancing to its own rhythm. Warm blooded diurnal creatures will soon enter the world of dreams, but this forest will never sleep.

Rainforest research students started trickling into the Jungle yesterday. Today I was part of the second wave of Evergreeners to arrive. Chances are good the rest of us will arrive tomorrow. For all practical purposes, our research projects have already begun, never mind the fact that none of us seem to have much of a clue what we need to do to get these projects off the ground. This first week is our crash-landing session, when we all get to make our most valuable mistakes and hopefully learn how to avoid them in the future. Jack arrives next week to head a collective counseling session in which all our prayers will be answered and our problems resolved. Then the data collection begins.

It's been confirmed: Rebecca arrives tomorrow. I'll be up in the morning bright and early to catch the breakfast wagon, and then my week of planning and frantic networking will commence. Wish me luck.

I have arrived at La Selva. Right now my skin is evaporating moisture into the chilly, conditioned air of this lab. Soon I will eat dinner. Soon after that I think I will make my first phone call since I arrived in this country. Tomorrow Rebecca arrives, fresh from her vacation in Honduras at a friend's wedding. I'm sure she will rave about the posh resort, the chance to consort with her long-term love James, and just how great the beach was. I'll be happy for her. Then we'll get down to business with the planning of our research project. If we're lucky, the eminent canopy researcher Cat Cardelúz will grace us with her insight and grand master plan. We will basically be working on her project, so I'm sure she'll be more than willing to provide the guidance we'll need. In fact, I am not the least bit nervous, concerned, or anxious about this next quarter. I feel like everything is just going in the direction it's supposed to, and soon puzzle pieces will be snapping together like magnetic legos, building the foundation for the rest of my life as a scientist. Oooh... I can't wait.

Spring break ends today. I'm headed for La Selva biological station to begin next quarter's research project, examining biomass of epiphytic plants in the lowland tropical rainforest on the Caribbean slope of the Cordillera Central. The notion of staying relatively stationary for the next few weeks at least sounds very attractive to me. Living out of my backpack is fun, but my feet could use a break.

Right now I'm in a little cultural bubble in downtown San Jose. This backpacker's hostel has a pool, a nice sounds system broadcasting Latin jazz and US pop hits, a television showing reruns of Hollywood blockbuster movies from a few years ago, and lots of gringos. It's too familiar here. I'm uncomfortable. I want to get out into the city where people don't speak English. I'm looking forward to this busride, as strange as that may seem.

Much time has passed since my last post here. I’ve been rather busy.

La Selva Biological Station lives in the middle of the lowland Caribbean jungle. We spent a few nights there at the end of our class session. Then we returned to San Jose for a night of dinner and dancing, then all disbanded and went their separate ways, except for a few who stuck together. Jorge called it the “sheep mentality.”

Six of us went to the beach between Mal Pais and Santa Teresa on the west coast of the Nicoya Peninsula. Here is an excerpt from my journal:

My mind wanders lazily here. I listen to the sounds of the ocean as I fall asleep each night. Last night I swam in a sea of tangible starlight under a universe full of distant stellar bodies. The alien green glow of phosphorescent plankton illuminated the waves as they crashed and rumbled into my body like hallucinogenic steamrollers. It was unreal. My mind could hardly grasp the truth of it. How many centuries have these stellar plankton blinked in the surf of the Pacific ocean? how many other people swam in these waters and wondered the same thing? What do these microscopic organisms have to teach me about life on this planet, and will I ever learn?

We stayed at that beach for three nights and made some good friends in the owners of a small, secluded resort called Luz de Vida, which translates to Light of Life. I’d love to go back there again someday.

After our hellish bus ride out of Mal Pais and subsequent ferry and bus rides back into the great bubble of car exhaust that surrounds San Jose, we ate and collapsed in a backpacker’s hostel, where we met another classmate. One of our number left early in the morning to catch a plane to Honduras; we left another behind to meet her boyfriend at the SJO airport. We left for another long day of travel towards Chirripó: the highest mountain in all of Central America and our next destination.

We arrived in San Gerardo de Rivas, a small mountain town, in late evening, exhausted from a day of intense travel after a morning of intense shopping. Thoroughly prepared, we walked to the ranger station to make our reservations. We walked right past it, and kept going for another four kilometers before we turned back. Thus we didn’t get to bed until midnight. Six hours later we packed, ate breakfast, walked to the ranger station and secured our place in the hostel at 3,600 meters up the mountain, and departed for our 17 kilometer trek to get there.

On our way up the mountain, we phased from lush lowland tropical rainforest into magical cloudforest where birds with voices like glass flutes serenaded us for hours. Just a slight breeze rustled the leaves of the oak tree canopy, lightly brushing hanging columns of orange moss against one another. As the altitude increased, the height of the vegetation fell sharply, until we rounded a bend and looked out upon scrubby, barren, rolling hills interspersed with the bristly blackened remains of trees. Fire. We later learned that in 1976, a colossal wildfire wiped out 90% of the park. Where oaks and presumably other trees used to grow, now there was a dense brushy understory interspersed within the rocky flats. Bamboo, huckleberries, tiny weedy geraniums, wild fuchsias and grasses dominate the scene. Talk about biological culture shock! The feeling of the place reminded me so much of the Sierra Nevada of California, except for the alien and wonderful plants growing there.

The hike brutalized everyone in our group. By the end, we could barely keep ourselves going. Every step tortured our muscles and taxed our lungs. We climbed over 2,000 meters in one day, and the oxygen content of the air at the top did not favorably compare with that below. We checked into the hostel and were disappointed to find yet another series of stairs leading to our rooms! But we survived the stairs, ate dinner, and passed out, only to be awoken in the middle of the night, freezing inside our sleeping bags because of the frigid cold. The next night we rented blankets, shared beds, and slept like babies.

That morning, we climbed Chirripó. A short hike to get there gave Michael a chance to examine the geology of the area. I scrambled around the trail and nearby brush, my excitement mounting as I recognized plant after plant. At least ten different species on Chirripó are almost identical to species found thousands of miles and hundreds of climates away in Washington. How is that possible? My only logical explanation is that these cold-tolerant species must have evolved in the tropical mountains and then migrated northward, colonizing new habitats whenever possible and adapting to the new conditions. It blows my mind to imagine such a process. This provides at least a partial answer to the question of why our planet looks the way it does! Fantastic! I’m trying to come up with experiments to examine my hypothesis.

Anyway, back to Chirripó. The final scramble hurt a bit, even though I carried only my camera and a few small things. At the top, we looked out upon the deep valleys and placid lakes, and watched the clouds overtake the mountains around us. We stayed on top of the mountain for an hour or so, celebrated Michael’s twenty-first birthday with a bottle of wine and a joint, and then descended to swim in the lake. We walked back slowly in the afternoon sun. I took a much-needed nap.

The next morning we climbed another peak. Here is an excerpt from my journal.

This morning I woke up above the clouds, before the sun. I left our shelter on the mountain while the stars still shone like billions of glittering eyes looking down on the top of the world. One step at a time, I huffed and puffed my way to the rocky saddle of Cerro Crestones, following shortly behind Michael. I scrambled up until my line of sight cleared the mountaintop and looked out upon the Caribbean plain of Costa Rica, shrouded in clouds. At over 3,700 meters, we were the highest humans for hundred or thousands of miles in every direction. What a feeling, to see the earth awaken with the rays of the dawn! The clouds in the lowlands slowly began sliding westward as the heat from the sun warmed the air. The cloudblanket expanded, spilling over the lower foothills of the Talamanca like froth pouring over the lip of the most massive, deep green, forested beer mug you could ever imagine. We turned to look at craggy Chirripó, which we climbed yesterday. From our vantage point, the monarch appeared as just another peak in the Talamanca. Impressive, yes, but hard to pinpoint as the tallest among giants.

Now I am in San Isidro de General, thinking about where we should go. It’s looking like the Peninsula de Osa will be our next and last stop before we return to La Selva in Sarapiquí, but perhaps Dominicál… Soon all will be made clear.

I just finished reading Vinson's wonderfully descriptive writings of his journeys in central Mexico. I highly recommend taking a peek at Mycoblastus to see for yourself. Latin America enchants others as much as it enchants me, it seems.

Spending time at La Selva makes me feel like a scientist. My world is a bubble with green leafy walls and a floor of well-kept tropical grasses. The kitchen staff serve the same cafeteria quality meals every day at the same times, and I grab a tray and settle into the rice and beans with the rest of my classmates and many other visiting white people, all of whom profess to be outrageously busy working on this or that project.

Last night we wandered through the darkness staring at the ground, looking for raiding colonies of army ants. The forest at night chirps, slithers, whistles and drips with an intensity rarely seen in the temperate zone. Occasionally a lone bird hoots or grumbles in the darkness. Peccaries snort in alarm and rocket away through the underbrush. Phosphorescent beetles bumble through obscured obstacle courses of branches and leaves like so many remote-controlled green and orange Christmas lights, spinning and weaving down the trail, eventually disappearing around a tree tunk or winking out of sight.

Spiders rule the night here. Adam observed that there seems to be just about a one to one ratio of leaves to spiders in these forests. These eight-legged hunting machines scurry and jump through the forest, tracking down the billions of potentially tasty insects. The majority of spiders here live large, dwarfing the tiny temperate species we're so used to seeing in the States. Gargantuan wolf spiders like hairy, brown sea stars in miniature wait in the leaf litter to ambush unfortunate crickets. Their larger pairs of eyes (they have several pairs of smaller eyes) reflect the light from our flashlights and glimmer in the black; a universe of twin star systems scattered around the forest floor, prowling.

Adam's headlight works much better than mine. Anja's lamp lacked batteries, so we relied on Adam to see for us in the dark. We could not have picked a better person. A lifetime of hunting critters in the Ozarks of Missouri has provided the skills to spot the most cryptic of creatures in the tropical night. He spotted a glowing eye a couple meters off the trail, then crept up and caught it, revealing its identity: a nightjar. One of a group of nocturnal birds blinded by bright lights and hesitant enough to capture. They rely of camouflage to conceal themselves from predators, but not from an Ozark boy gone tropical.

No snakes last night. We suspected a Fer de Lance might make an appearance, but it never happened. Their venom is a hemotoxin, dissolving one's blood vessels and generally causing a great deal of pain, though usually not death. A heightened sense of danger pervades this place. Such a density of life seems to push toward an equal increase in the capacity of the organisms here to compete for resources, which means danger for other organisms. Venomous snakes, scorpions, spiders, and painfully thorny plants are just the tip of the leafy green iceberg. Jack warned us against the practice of standing near trees with monkeys in them. The little primates have a nasty habit of pitching branches down at unsuspecting human victims. The weight and velocity of such a falling branch is sometimes enough to kill a person. But they look so cute! How ironic! I thought. Appearances are deceptive.

Soon I will again amble over to the cafeteria, this time in flip flops instead of clunky rubber boots. We will eat some rice, beans, and hopefully some vegetables, and then a few hours will pass before this evening's lecture on epiphyte diversity in the forest here. I'm excited to see this! The lecturer, by the name of Cat Cardelús, researched the exact subject of my former project, and has given Rebecca and I the chance of a lifetime by suggesting we do a study on epiphyte biomass here at La Selva. "The results of this study are perfectly publishable," she said. ¡Que suerte! What luck! Next quarter just keeps looking better and better. Now all I have to do is protect my biological resources from all these hungry tropical critters long enough to make it happen.

Often these days I find myself with so much to say and only a few moments in which to write it. I am sitting inside an air-conditioned building at the La Selva Biological Station just outside Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí. My professor Jack Longino sits across the room from me, wearing headphones. We're both working.

I've been cataloging my photos of which I have collected over 900 to date. For the first time in my life, I don't feel like I am missing an opportunity to take great pictures. I love it.

This biological station seems to have been dropped into one of the most lively places in this entire country. The first day we arrived, we saw toucans, peccaries, guans, and all manner of other critters. My classmates and I were standing on a bridge when a trogon landed no more than forty centimeters from my face. I couldn't capture it with my camera but the memory lives on in my mind. Trogons are exquisite birds, with hugely loud colors and patterning. They crowd the forests here in paradise. Collectively we've seen at least 7 different species since we arrived. All of them are mind-blowingly beautiful.

This morning we woke up for an early breakfast at 6:00 am, then headed out to the forest for nature hikes. Vipers and other more venomous serpents lurk around the trails and clearings here, so we wore rubber boots. The boots also came in handy for walking down the flooded boardwalk in the swamp where super-fragrant peace lilies grow, perfuming the entire basin with the scent of ripe peaches and jasmine. Yum. Alex wore hiking boots, so Orion gave him a piggy back ride through the 8 inch-deep wate. By the end of the hike Alex's feet were soaked anyway. This is the tropical rainforest, after all.

We toured a Dole banana plantation after lunch. Our guide told us we should buy Dole bananas and evaded most of our important questions like 'How many years can bananas be grown before the land becomes totally infertile?' No matter. These ecotragedies fix themselves after a while.

It's time for dinner, and I'll leave you here. Some photos soon, I promise.

Right now I am sitting in a plastic lawn chair on the third floor of an old building in downtown San Jose. The fluorescent lighting dimly illuminates the keyboard in front of me as I attempt to think of words quickly enough to keep up with my fingers. Time is short. Electric fans hum against the buzz of a radio announcer calling the shots from a nationally anticipated soccer game happening right now a few kilometers away in Heredia. Many of my classmates are there, witnessing the game for themselves.

I just bought some excellent plant books at a shop a few blocks away. Exciting! Soon this cafe will close and I will walk back to the hotel at the other end of downtown. Then dinner, which I also find exciting. I'm rather hungry.

We had a long busride today up from the lower slopes of the Caribbean side of the Cordillera de Tilaran (for those of you with maps), from the town of La Fortuna all through the central plateau to San Jose. Tomorrow we ride again for Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, where we shall encounter La Selva biological station: our next real destination. This layover in San Jose was intended to be as short as possible.

Brian, one of my classmates, sits at a computer nearby, typing nearly as furiously as myself. We don't get a lot of time to communicate with other countries. Every second is precious. I've heard no complaints, though. It's hard not to love this country, and Jack doesn't really give us time to think of things to complain about anyway.

A brief synopsis of the past few days:

About 5 days ago now, we hiked from Monteverde down into the Penas Blancas river valley to Refugio Eladio's: a rustic cabin structure right smack in the middle of absolutely exquisite old growth rainforest. You'll just have to wait for photos, because words cannot do it justice in the amount of time I have. Everyone lived through the 14 kilometer mudslide of a hike, some just barely dragging their weary feet enough to keep from collapsing by the time we got to Eladios. Dinner never tasted so good. The next few days were spent in field study with our two instructors Jack and Beth, and also doing field problems of our own.

The day before yesterday, we hiked out of Penas Blancas. That journey made the former hike seem like a frolic on the lawn of Versailles. Buckets of rain fell the night before the hike, and we could not ford the river. When Eladio nearly lost his wife to the rushing water, Jack made up his mind. The trip around the ford added 5 kilometers to our trip. We crossed the river on a hanging footbridge and began the hike. All morning Jack hacked our trail through the dense rainforest that has since grown over the habitations of 30 years ago in the valley. At noon we reached the point of our original planned crossing.

The rest of the day we trudged through wet, wet rainforest. It was the most glorious hike I have ever undertaken in my life. After nearly ten hours of hiking with a forty pound backpack strapped to my waist, we arrived at Poco Sol. Immediately, we stripped and swam in lake. The water there felt like warm silk.

Sorry to leave you hanging, but I have run out of time. More soon.

Pura vida!

My, how things have changed.

It's been a while since I've had access and time to kill on an internet-ready computer. The past week or so has seen me furiously traveling and photographing in the magnificently beautiful country of Costa Rica. Today we're all in Monteverde, a Quaker town on top of a mountain in northern CR, home to a sizable preserve of the most amazing forests I've ever visited in my life. These cloud forests occur at the altitude where water vapor in the atmosphere condenses and turns to rain and fog, so they're wet all year round. The plants here love it. I'm overwhelmed by the diversity. It literally boggles my mind.

We explored a stream in some primary forest yesterday, taking data for a grad student working with our program. Oh, the wonders of the cloud forest... I saw (and photographed!) four different blooming orchids, among many other plants and flowers of the superexotic variety. Bromeliads and unbelieveable ferns cluster on the trunks and branches of hundreds upon hundreds of different species of trees and shrubs. White flowers float down from the canopy to collect on the forest floor. Bird sounds fill the air. Praying mantises scurry and bob along branches hunting for insect prey. Butterflies in more colors than you would believe flip-flop through the understory, alighting on vibrant flowers to drink their fill of nectar. Moss hangs from the branches, dripping water into the pools in the stream where tiny ripples spread outward, obscuring the view of the pool's bottom where freshwater crabs scuttle around collecting debris. Sunlight filters through the many layers of vegetation, illuminating the arboreal flowers of epiphytic plants, growing far above your head. Like gaudy airborne jewelery with wings, tiny hummingbirds investigate human visitors in their forest with the vain hope of retrieving nectar from our orange and red clothing. This forest is beyond comparison.

For some inexplicable reason, there is a rainbow every morning ouitside our cabin, arching up from the lower slopes of the hills which overlook the town of Puntarenas and the Gulf of Nicoya, tens of kilometers away. The view is exceptional We can see the entire Nicoya Peninsula and out into the Pacific Ocean. Every night the setting sun lights up the sky like a fireball disappearing over the horizon, only to return again the next morning, to make that very same rainbow right over our heads. On the radio a few days ago in Santa Rosa the dj said "it's another beautiful day in paradise." I couldn't put it better myself.

Last weekend we hiked to the beach from our campground in Santa Rosa National Park. The mighty Pacific bathed us in its glory and raw, tireless power. Some of my travel mates had never before swam in the ocean. What an experience for them! We bodysurfed, got thrashed by waves, drank too much saltwater, and generally had the time of our lives. Then we went and investigated the mangrove swamps. A few people braved the crocodile-friendly waters to get a deeper look at what the interior of a mangrove swamp looks like. They returned with all appendages intact, fortunately.

I have accumulated over 400 worthy photos so far, and my pace shows no sign of slowing anytime soon. My camera's ability to take great pictures continues to impress me. I wish could upload some right now, but patience, I suppose, is called for instead. This connection is far too slow to handle anything of that magnitude.

Well, time's up. Next up on the schedule is an early dinner and then bat netting tonite. That is bound to be an experience to remember. Buenos tardes, amigos! Hasta pronto!