Thursday, February 19: Corcovado

Today was another day filled with learning.  We started off the morning with some beach biology, mostly learning about plants that live right up to the sand.  I got to present my species report on Cocos nucifera, the coconut palm.  We also learned about the scarlet macaw.  After lecture we broke up into groups to do posters on common plant families.  I was in the Bromiliaceae group, which is the pineapple family.  Lunch was the best meal so far, fried whole red snapper.  it was so good.  After lunch we finished up our poster and went for a swim.  It's so hot here, at 10:30 in the morning the grass is too hot to walk on with bear feet.  

They took us into the forest to present our posters because it was so hot.  It was actually really cool having a class in the forest.  We all just sat on logs and the ground.  It felt really nice to be out of the sun.  We even got interrupted by a howler monkey!  I was so happy to finally see one, I haven't even heard any calling yet.  

After presentations we had more free time.  Luke and I went to check out this other path at the end of the beach.  The forest was so different, you could tell the area was recently disturbed and was in a very early stage of recovery.  The short path led to another beach.  We climbed out on the rocks and saw a crocodile! It was so cool! We heard they were in the ocean but hadn't seen any yet.  

After dinner we had a night hike.  We didn't really know what to expect, but we knew that all poisonous snakes are nocturnal.  We all wore long-sleeve shirts and tucked our pants into our socks.  We looked pretty cool.  The hike was ok, we didn't really see much.  Pablo and Moncho led us up the river, so we all got soaked.