Friday, Feb 13: Leaving San Jose

Today we left San Jose for our first field trip. We had breakfast at 7, then on the bus at 8. We first stopped about 15 minutes later at a cathedral in Cartago. Cartago used to be the capitol of Costa Rica, and this is the largest Catholic Church. It was really beautiful. The church was built based on a story where a girl found a picture of the virgin under some rocks, so she took it home with her. The next day, she went back to the rocks and found the picture again. She ran home thinking she now had two pictures of the virgin, but when she got home, the first picture was gone. This happened once more before she went to the priest to tell him about it, and they built a church on the spot where the picture was found. Once a year (I think), people from all over walk on foot to the church to celebrate the girl. Some people walk for days. There was a mass going on, so of course we went in and took pictures.
We left the church and headed up the mountains for Cerro de la Muerte (Hill of Death). This place got its name because it is the only passage through this area of the mountains, and it’s really cold. It even gets below zero, so back in the day a lot of travelers weren’t equipped for the cold temperatures and would die. But it wasn’t that cold for us, maybe in the 50’s. We were also there just for a few hours during the day, not at night. The drive up the mountains was beautiful, such a good view down into the valley. We had lunch at this cafeteria in Cerro de la Muerte, and then went into the woods for some species reports. So in San Jose each student was assigned an animal and plant to prepare a 5 minute report on, and when we would see that species during the trip we had to give our report. It was very much like Wisconsin, with lots of oak trees.
After Cerro de la Muerte we headed back down the mountains to the costal town of Sierpe. More gorgeous views. Before hitting the coast we stopped at a pineapple plantation. So many pineapples. Of course we did a species report. We drove miles through the plantation to come to the store, where we had pineapple that was literally just cut off the plant. It was so good, it melted in our mouths. There was a soccer game right next to the pineapple place, so we got to watch that for a few minutes too.
Then we left for Sierpe. It was dark by this time, so no good views. We arrived at our hotel, which is right on the mangrove river. After getting settled, we had a lecture on mangroves by a mangrove expert. He was telling us about mangrove ecology and all the species we were going to see the next day. I’ve come to realize that beer and night lecture go hand-in-hand here in Costa Rica. Too bad for me.