home                  research              life pursuits            travel log               u.w. biology

Cabo Blanco -

science on the beach

cabo blanco is on the very tip of the nicoya peninsula.   when the tide goes out there is a beautiful lagoon (we did lots of snorkeling - but more on that later).   cabo is the oldest national park in costa rica.   it is neat to be in a country that is still actively creating large sections of park land and trying to build corridors for movement of species between different systems.   when we arrived, i felt like i was in biologist heaven.   our bunk house was really neat and after the military issue cement block house we all slept in at palo verde it was such a relief to sleep in a ventilated room built of wood.    we all slept in one big room that was sort of divided into three separate spaces.    

four people slept out in the open.  that was inticing at first until i learned that  they had to sleep in tents.   it used to be people could just sleep out on the porch, but a year ago a student was bit by a vampire bat....yikes.   so then he had to get rabies shots and it was a bad experience.  vampire bats live for a long time and have very good memories so it is unwise to sleep outside after one has visited.    since we were only at cabo for a brief time there wasn't time for independent projects...but we did do faculty lead studies.  one of the faculty led studies went caving for bats.  they were interested in finding out where bats like to live best and in what types of light conditions/temperatures.    that group had a fun time, but they got peeed on by bats!  yuck.

i was sad not to have time for an independent project; so i skipped out of a lecture on statistics so that i could explore a ravine the ravine was carved by a river.   first i went upstream looking for shrimp, but the river was nearly dry.   so i turned back and walked down stream.   i had told people where i was going and so i wasn't worried... but as i walked down stream the slope got more severe until i was bouldering over rocks.   then i started to wonder how long i would have to wait for some one to come and help me if i did slip down into one of the deep crevices... but i was far enough down that i figured i would just keep climbing down until i got to the ocean.   

i was distracted from my worry because i was seeing little macrobrachium shrimps - yeah!  so they also live in rivers with short runs ( this river was very small maybe not more than 2 or 3 miles at most.   in the middle of the hike down the river i took a picture of myself and the big rocks unfortunately the picture doesn't do a good job of showing the slope of the ravine, but it was steep.   i'm learning a lot of plants i definitely know 20 species of tropical trees, and i'm learning the families of lots that i can't identify to species just yet.   so the hike was good for that too.

when i finally got to the bottom i was relieved!  and eager to let everyone know about the shrimps!   so that night i went back with some friends to look for the shrimps in the river and we found a ton.   big ones and juveniles...i don't have a good shrimp key with me so i wasn't sure if the juveniles were of the same species that i'm interested in studying...

in the afternoon after i got back from my treacherous walk we broke into our faculty led project groups..  i was happy not to be in the bat group and a little sad not to be in the group studying land crabs...but in ended up in the fish group and we spend the next several days learning tropical fish and performing a study to see where fish spend the most time and if that is related to the habitat complexity.    mostly we just snorkeled around the bay .... i'll write some more about that tomorrow....i've got some great pictures of the snorkeling.  they come from katie who has a camera that can go under water - crazy!

for now, it has been a long few days of traveling from cabo to san jose and from san jose to  la selva.   it is nice to be at la selva where there is internet access and lots of resources, but i miss the quietness of cabo and palo verde.