by Micaela Roy, of Middlebury College
I jolted awake after a drop of water fell directly into my ear. It had gotten cool, and the humidity that hung in the air had condensed into fat drops on the inside of my tent fly. I sat up in my tent, throwing off the jackets that I had lain over myself in the middle of the night. We were back in the rainforest, this time on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica in an area called Santa Rosa de Poco Sol. Honestly, the scattered clouds that swept over the sky each day were refreshing after our weeks of mucho solin hot, dry, Guanacaste.
It was our first morning at “La Sopresa,” a working cattle farm owned and run by a man named Gerardo, and his son–also named Gerardo. Lucia Valverde, of Fondo Biodiversidad Sostenible, was scheduled to arrive any minute to accompany during bird surveys. I looked at my watch: 5:45am. Still time for a cup of coffee. Stumbling out of my tent, I nearly tripped over a dog that had ostensibly slept inside my open tent vestibule. No wonder I had so many flea bites. I slipped on my sandals and trod through the dew-covered grass to scrounge up something to eat before our hike.
Gerardo Jr. opening a gate on the finca
Lucia and Gerardo (Jr.) arrived promptly, and we piled into the truck to drive to a forest corridor that traversed the finca. After a bumpy ride, we arrived at an open field overlooking a thick band of rainforest. Mist spread its sheen over ground, and spindly trees reached out towards the sky like silent druids. Everything was still save the occasional moo of a nearby cow and our own motley crew scrambling for binoculars and bird guides.
We split up into two groups, and both groups descended into the forest. My group followed the lead of Gerardo Jr. as he pushed through the dense understory and into the darkness of the rainforest. I slapped at the mosquitoes floating around my face and slid through the leaves and vines that covered the ground, trying not to trip. The stream shone in front of us, cloudy black from tannins, a still plane illuminated in patches by a few thin rays of sunlight. We hopped around on the rocks trying to spot birds through the green, crowded, coalescence of plants. While watching the water bugs skim over the tepid water I heard a sudden growling overhead. I looked up to see a group of spider monkeys, breaking sticks off of branches and trying to intimidate us with snarls and barking noises. We moved slowly out of the stream and out of their territory.
The stream.
The bird watching was a success, the forest-pasture ecotone was absolutely teeming with avian acitivity. We returned back to our camp and bid Lucia farewell–she was heading back to the city after her visit. After an afternoon of class, I had a brief dance party with some other students, and cooked dinner. And just like that, another day was over!