Day Three: Black Guan...It's Not Terrible

Hey everybody. My name is Mark...I mean Eric, a junior from Sparta NJ. We woke up to a beautiful Costa Rican Monday, the birds where singing, the monkeys were playing, and we had NO power. This lead us to have a little delay in having a fantastic breakfast complete with rice and beans. After chowing down on what I assume is a traditional Costa Rican breakfast, we tied our boots and packed our bags for our first day in the Monteverde jungle.

Walking outside there were tons of people awaiting entrance into the jungle, but was also when we saw him the man the myth the legend, Christian. Christian would be our very knowledgable, very friendly tour guide for the first half of the day. We started the tour with Christian explaining the history of the park and showing some awesome examples of plants. We saw some birds too like a black guan, which is basically a black turkey that lives in the canopy. For everyone wanting to know the size of a black guan, it is about big enough to make enough soup for 5. Here's a picture of me with Christian to hold you guys over until Prof. Phunk is back with our group photo.

Let me tell you all a little about the legendary Christian. He is from Monteverde so he has seen the effects of ecotourism. On one hand he enjoys teaching people all about the wonders of the forest, and the amount of money that is raised by the preserve. On the other hand, he doesn't like the amount of development need to support the growing number of staff needed to support the amount of people staying at hostels, and hotels. Not to mention he can't make as much marmalade as the number of guava trees has decreased from the development. He also highly endorses the Costa Rican beer Imperial saying "It's not terrible."

On our guided tour in addition to the plethora of flora we saw, we also saw tons of insects, including another giant Lew-dawg flying insect. Sadly, no one got a picture of that bad guy, but Prof. Lewins got some shots of these cool looking guys. He also got a nickname in an update to yesterday's blog...it's Bill.

                                                 Leaf Beetle                         Platyhelminthes

                                              Katydid                                       Tree hopper
We also saw my chosen organism the strangler fig, or matapalo in spanish. It is the most dangerous plant in the jungle by far in my opinion. It kills other trees. It is also one of the coolest, with a large hollow center where the tree it "strangled" was. Here's a sideways picture of a matapalo (tilt head).

After our guided hike we went back to the lodge and had a nice Costa Rican lunch, with you guess it rice and beans on the side. We then decided to hike up to the Continental Divide. We set out on our own this time. On our way up the mountain we walked through and elfin forest and emerged to a spectacular view. It was a bit windy too. Unfortunately, Mary wasn't feeling well so her and Prof Hope had to leave.

We continued on our journey without Prof. Hope. We spent a good amount of time on a canopy bridge bird watching and enjoying the sites.  After our day of adventuring, we all piled in a van and went to dinner. For dinner we had some delicious pizza, you know the flavors, cheese, veggie, meatlover. Hopefully Mary is feeling better and will be back with us shortly.

Night from Monteverde round 2 and have a Feliz Ano Nuevo.
Eric
#classicbill