Tirimbina

Last weekend, the students in the Environmental Sciences course, their professor (Alejandra), her TAs (Olivia and Nacho), and I journeyed into the mountains near the Sarapiqui River to visit the Tirimbina Reserve (near the La Selva Reserve).  The trip is part of a course project to catalog organisms in the river to study their habitat.  We left on Saturday morning and arrived at lunch time.  Originally, we were scheduled to hike for two hours to the biological research station where minimal accomodations (bunkbeds and communal bathroom) awaited us, but once there, we discovered that we would have to stay at the hotel instead.  Oh, darn. I've posted some pictures of our surroundings, the Sarapiqui River and hanging bridges, wildlife, and students playing ... I mean, researching, in the river.  We enjoyed some of the best food we've had in Costa Rica.  Following lunch, we hiked in the forest to look at plants and crossed the river on the many hanging bridges, the students enjoyed an afternoon soccer game and a dip in a nearby pool.  I enjoyed a quiet afternoon of reading, listening to the rain on the metal roof of the hotel, and flower/hummingbird-watching. And even though our evening frog and bat tours and morning bird watching trips were rained out, we still had a wonderful and educational two days, seeing bats in a classroom,toucans and hummingbirds in the wild, and our first snake(a non-venomous variety)scurrying into the forest. I appreciate so much more now the work that biologists such as Alejandra do in their research with the fauna and flora of Costa Rica.  The river was so much higher and swifter than in previous trips that the students were unable to complete much of their laboratory work in the water. Such a fragile balance exists, and we learned firsthand how an earthquake many miles away can affect the ecosystems of the rivers and forests.