Day Seven: It's like Disney World, on a bus!

Hi! I'm Kate and I'm a junior from Marshfield, MA. Contrary to popular belief I am not still in San Jose at the clinic where Nick apparently thinks I have been all week. Also, I'm sorry the post is a little late in the day!

Yesterday we all woke up for to a lovely 6:00 AM hike through Monteverde in search of some birds. We saw quite a few orange-beaked birds and were missing Prof. Hope's identification expertise. We also saw some more easily identifiable birds such as the black guan and the common bush tanager.

After our intense morning of bird seeking we headed back to La Casana for an awesome breakfast prepared by our very own Inez. Breakfast was great and included some typical rice and beans, scrambled eggs, and toast with two different offerings of jam. Many of us piled on "the green sauce" (a common Costa Rican seasoning) as though we would never see it again. Here's a picture of Nick's ambitious breakfast:

After Breakfast we packed up and were picked up 10 minutes early by our van driver. Our first stop on the way to Selva Verde was the illustrious Mega Super grocery store to pick up snacks for our 5 1/2 hour ride. This detour is basically summed up by this quote: "It's not just mega, it's not just super, it's MEGA SUPER"-Bill

The ride was absolutely beautiful! We drove through rolling hills of coffee plants and two of our favorite sights on the ride were the reservoir near Arenal and Arenal volcano itself. We also came across some adorable coatis. Our bus driver pulled over and even reversed so that we could get pictures of them.  We also played "the wave game" for over an hour of the ride and gave some of the locals a laugh! Here are some photos!

The reservoir

Arenal

Coati!!

On another note, we did our project presentations after dinner last night...

And the results are in...

The Bromeliad Group: There's more water in the bromeliads in the Elfin forest at the Continental Divide in Monteverde than there is in the primary forest which is at a lower elevation in Monteverde.

The Morphospecies Moss Group: There was no significant correlation found in the amount of epiphytic moss on the Pacific versus Caribbean sides of trees at the continental divide in Monteverde.

The Hummingbird Group: Angry Birds: The violet sabrewing was by far the most aggressive hummingbird at the Hummingbird Gallery at Monteverde and many of the other species of hummingbirds show aggressive behavior.

The winner is... All of us for doing awesome projects! We all get A's!

And last but not least, we have a gem of a photo taken while we were eating lunch by our very own Nick Kyratzis

                                                          #classicbill #maybewewon'tgetA's


Lots of love from Costa Rica!
-Kate