Author Archives

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Bibliotek de Palo Verde(Attencion! Spoilers)

I finished reading “And the Mountains echoed”, a book that I first read in December at my University Library. Someone here enjoyed it enough to add to the miscellaneous section of a bookshelf otherwise reserved for Taxonomy and research history.

Firstly, it was a novel about broken people. Everyone in the story was stolen from, lied to, or limited in some way that severely damaged their remaining relationships or perceptions of their lives.

There was a major theme of parent/child relationships, some of which would be reconciled decades later at the very end or never at all, like a last laugh or festering wound. Many events occurred relating to ideas such as unconditional love or shame of ugliness or beauty. Is a child meant to be raised in the image of a parent or independent? Is the purpose of a child to repay their parent when he or she has aged and requires assisted living, or can they be left to their own life? There is no answer a parent can give to what is best for your child, you can only encourage healthy eating, a responsibility against ignorance, and to assess yourself honestly.

Some of these relationships ended as well as they could. Most of them in fact, went as best as they could. I could say an important theme to conclude the story was “It is never too late to find yourself”.

It was an intense book that has been on my mind all this time, and the fact that an english version was here at a small research station 40 kilometers from the nearest town is something I would not attribute to coincidence. I was meant to finish this book!

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Jose Antonio Guzman(w/ camera), Pablo(who tarzan swings on lianas) and my Costa Rican name

DSCN0874  Not only are Costa Rican names as long as Jose’s, but all Costa Ricans are prone to giving nicknames to new people they meet. Mauricio’s is Mau(think cat call, or my personal favorite, like a cow moo), Jose’s is Tonio or more teasingly Takaco. I got a name very early on due to my UNC biology shirt. A bee was flying at me and I made a comment that it thought I was a flower. Pablo has christened me henseforth Floripondio.

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Week 2: Neat Coffee plantation and ant survey

This weekend was a participation in a genuine long term study of Shade vs. Sun Coffee plantations here in Costa Rica. For anyone who enjoys coffee and low prices, this is an important study. First I will begin by telling you all that I visited a coffee plantation for the first time ever and learned the secret ways of harvesting, drying and roasting the coffee bean. La finca de Don Roberto is a modest subsistence farm with sugar cane, cerro, pollo, and yucca. Coffee plants dominate the 3 hectares of his 6.5 hectare property. Coming onto the property is like stepping into the past. The front porch is the dining room and gourds and rusted farm tools hang from the ceiling. We receive a warm welcome from a man who grew into his farm. He was warm and welcoming to the gringo students and even lets researchers stay on his farm to research. Our favorite piece was the mutt that picked bananas for itself and loved getting its ear scratched!

Coffee is naturally an understory plant and Don Roberto grows his plants under banana trees and natural forest. He has successfully created a terrace system and irrigated the land to minimize erosion. The soil was dark in color, indicating its high nutrient value. It was a peaceful place, and old-time Latin music was playing nearby and children from the community, maybe grandchildren, played by the house and did chores. He is content to spend his life restoring fragments of natural forest on his land and enjoying seeing his grandchildren become interested in the outdoors; he finds modern technologies have created a barrier between people and the land. I would like to visit him again.

Our project was to help a researcher from El Universidad de Costa Rica count and identify species of ants and coffee boring beetles. We spent our first day at Don Roberto’s, a shade plantation, and the next day at a commercial sized sun plantation.DSCN0888 We started our survey by putting out tuna bait for carnivorous ant species and collected the ants that appeared after forty minutes. My survey site was at the far end of the plantation. I was required to crawl prone through a patch of coffee plants, placing baits along the way. Additionally, we collected 250 fallen coffee fruits to dissect later for evidence of beetle investation. When I came out of the tunnel I was greeted to a vista of the entire plantation, it was a moment of peace and reflection, because every piece of land and pasture was once old growth forest with wet soil and vibrant life. After collection we returned to el labortorio at la cruces and worked at identifying the genus of ant and sifting through our coffee beans and fruits. I am proud to be apart of real work that determines the livelihood of farmers here, and I will be involved in more projects later on in the semester.

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Fruit Lab: or: Americans are scared of food and the world is stranger than I ever imagined

Our first “lab” was the sampling of over 45 different tropical fruits and plant parts from old world and the neotropics. We tasted, smelled and touched the different plants, and I liked most of them, and almost all of them are more nutritious than what you will see in the United States. My least favorite to taste was sugarcane, it was too sweet!

We as “Americans” should be eating more plantains and yucca fruit, they are much more interesting in taste and more nutritious than bananas and potatoes. My favorite was called Guacuya. It was green with a smooth outer skin. and was a smooth sour taste, almost like a weak chaser if you don’t like lime. The best part was that the flesh was runny like egg yolk, so I would simply swallow the interior in one gulp. Most of what we tried were very established fruits that are eaten often in central and south america, but there was one fruit, Noni that is a favorite of bats. I should have smelled it before reading the informational placard for it, but it tasted mild, not outstanding in any way. It smelled like human vomit! It is a brownish fruit with stringy flesh and has a lot of water in it.

I have a list of everything I tried, so if you have any questions about a particular tropical fruit you may have heard of, ask me and I will let you know if I tried it.

This week we visit a coffee plantation, where our Boa Constrictor was found and hear the grower’s perspective on the global coffee economy. I will likely be tasting many different Costa Rican coffee blends here and will need help from my family and my Colorado friends in going through the bag I intend to buy here!