Monday, Feb 16: Corcovado

Hot, hot, hot. It’s so freaking hot. I woke up at 5:30 this morning. Not on purpose, that’s just when I woke up. Luke and I tried to snorkel, but we couldn’t see anything. We gave up on snorkeling and just walked on the beach. I LOVE mornings in Corcovado. It’s so peaceful and the perfect temperature. Down the beach were some tapir and jaguar tracks, which was really cool. They were huge! We also saw hermit crabs eating a lizard. There are hermit crabs everywhere, especially at night when they all come out. Breakfast was so good, French toast and fried plantanes. Fried plantanes are quite possibly the best food every.

After breakfast we divided into 6 groups to do field projects. Luke, Brenna, Scott, Sarah S and I went with Moncho to catch norops (little lizards). We wanted to see if males have more tail regeneration than females. They were kind of hard to catch at first, they’re really small and camoflague with the surroundings really well. Then when you find one they jump away. After some practice it wasn’t too hard. We caught about 50 total. We had a ton of fun. We sang Alanis Morsette and the Backstreet Boys, and were laughing the entire time. It definitely lured in the norops.

After lunch we had to make a poster of our findings. It’s ridiculously hot today. You can’t even walk on the grass barefoot it’s so hot. I definitely burned the bottom of my feet. Before the poster session started we had a little time to swim, which felt so good and much needed. The poster was full of laughs. Our poster was not serious at all. We drew of picture of Scott trying to lure in the norops but putting army ants on his tongue. Our conclusion was that further research needs to be done on the ability of Alanis to mesmorize and lure the norops.

After the posters almost everyone went swimming again. How can you resist, really? We were in the water for almost 2 hours probably. Luke and Danny even threw me up in the air. It was fun. After dinner each group presented their poster. Anjali and Alan tore our group apart because some of my group members commented on our study was poorly designed, which it wasn’t. I went to bed after posters. I go to bed really early (at like 8) but there’s not much to do here at night and I’m usually completely worn out by then anyways.