To heaven and back

Sarah: Last week we had the privilege of visiting one of the most beautiful places in all of Costa Rica - Playa Conchal. We have good friends here in Costa Rica, Trevor and Laura, with whom we get together every couple weeks or so in San Jose. We go out to eat or cook at their house and always enjoy a nice evening of chatting and spending time together. We've never taken a trip together before, unless it was education related through the Latin American Studies Program (where Trevor and Laura work) and a QERC collaboration. A few weeks ago we were out to eat with them and they had just returned from visiting this paradisical Playa Conchal and mentioned that we should all go up there together sometime. Upon further discussion we realized that trip had to happen soon, or it never would. Since David and I are only committed to staying in Costa Rica one more year, and LASP has semester programs in both the fall and the spring, we took advantage of summer break and made the trip happen.

We stayed at Reserva Conchal and had planned on renting a condo for 3 nights. There were good offers going on, like 20% off and breakfast included, and once we showed up we found another offer for a 4th night free. It took about 10 minutes to decide that we wanted to stay an extra free night at the place! The condo was very nice - 2 bedrooms, 2 bath, air conditioning, and a small porch off the back where we could see the ocean down the hillside below. Though as nice as the condo was, we spent most of our time on the beach and by the pool!

The owners of the condos pay a monthly fee to give them access to the club house, so we took full advantage of the club house pool, spa, and restaurant. The pool was perhaps the nicest pool I've ever seen, and most of our days were spent in and out of the water, relaxing, and reading. We also took advantage of the spa area and indulged in massages one day. Trevor and David also realized they really enjoyed sitting in the sauna at different times over the course of our 4 days. The jacuzzi and pool area inside the spa was dreamlike, and during times when the sun was beating down above us we sat in the covered area. The restaurant was extremely reasonably priced with excellent food, so we took advantage of the free breakfast and at enough in the mornings that we only had to snack on leftovers for lunch. We also tried out a couple of restaurants in the area and had delicious seafood throughout the week.

So besides the nice condo, the stunning club house, and excellent company...the beach was also unimaginable. The waters were the bluest I've ever seen, with a white sandy beach and pristine forest all around. We enjoyed some beautiful sunsets, and the water was so warm that we could swim in the ocean while watching the colors change and the sky darken above us. Trevor and Laura had actually gotten married on this beach at sunset years ago, and it was fun to be back with them. All in all, it was the kind of vacation we could only dream about, and we are thankful that we currently live in a country where we could make that dream a reality.

Herpetological Adventures

David: One of the many aspects of this job that has been enjoyable is the interaction Sarah and I are able to have with visiting researchers and professors. It gives me the opportunity to expand my career experiences into several fields of ecology and Sarah always loves a good adventure that includes some wildlife. John Cossel, from NNU, is a professor/ researcher that we have been blessed to spend a significant amount of time with down here within the context of professor, researcher, and friend.

John was back in Costa Rica with his family in May. While spending a week at QERC and several weeks at other locations his many goals were research driven while also hoping for many photography opportunities. John is a talented herp (reptiles and amphibians) photographer and has won awards for his work. In fact, at QERC he is working on a photo library of the 4 frogs, 1 caecilian, 2-4 salamanders, 3 lizards, and 7 snakes that we have confirmed present at our location. Hopefully someday we will have a digital library like this available on the QERC website.

One of the most recent aspects of John’s herp research is looking at the presence of a micro fungus in the populations of frogs at San Gerardo de Dota. This is a fungus that most likely is responsible for the virtual overnight extinction of several species of frogs and toads in Costa Rica and the drastic drop in populations throughout the Americas. John is conducting a pilot study of the frogs in San Gerardo in hopes to obtain funding to expand the project for future studies. Kyle Luthman, NNU student who attended the QERC semester program this last spring, was advised by John and collected 30 swab samples of our most common frog species the Piglet Leaf-litter Frog, Craugaster podiciferous. John’s goal in his week at QERC this May was to collect 30 swab samples of a much more secretive species called the Meadow Tree Frog, Isthmohyla pseudopuma. Although the Meadow Tree Frog is secretive it acts in an explosive way during a few weeks in the beginning of the rainy season. When heavy rains create puddles in meadows and forest openings these tree frogs descend onto the forest floor to find puddles and mates. The subsequent tadpoles that are created then spend their transformative days in these seasonal puddles before changing into adults and then ascending into the trees to live the majority of the year in the canopy of the forest. Luckily for John, and just as he had planned, these tree frogs were found in puddles on a nightly basis throughout his week here. We were able to collect swabs from 30 individuals. We also were able to include some of our neighbors in the hunt, capture, and release activities. It was great to expose some community members here to this little known frog species. The majority of the 250 people that live in San Gerardo have no idea that this frog exists and is living out its life in the tree tops.

Upon leaving QERC John’s next mission was to find, record, and capture a frog called the Zetek’s Tree Frog, Isthmohyla zeteki. The destination for this mission was Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. I say record because John has the equipment to record the tree frog’s song that it uses for territorial and mating purposes. The song of this particular tree frog has not been described to science. We were able to accompany John to Monteverde and assist in the efforts. We spent a total of 23 hours on location and had great success. The Zetek’s Tree Frog was found, recorded, and captured. This will enable John to author a note on the song description that he will be able to publish in the appropriate herpetology journals. He was also able to have a nice photo session with a glass frog called Fleishman’s Glass Frog (pictured here, not his photo as you can tell by the quality).

Sarah and I very much enjoyed the short trip to our rival cloud forest at a lower elevation in the Tilaran Mountains. The hummingbirds were incredible (check out the video) and we had some luck in our nocturnal mammal sightings. A Grey Fox bolted pass us in front of the research station and paused for a quick photo. A Prehensile-tailed Porcupine gave us a good view of its talented arboreal habits. And the owls put on a vocal show to entertain us while we were frog hunting. Hopefully it will not be our last visit to the famous Monteverde.

Three and a half exciting things!

Sarah:
Ok let's start with the half.

1/2) We bought a new car! Well sort of...the university gave us money with which to buy a new car, so we happily spent their money. :) It took a couple of months of searching for the right deal with the amount of money we were allotted, but we finally settled on a '97 Hyundai Galloper. It's in excellent condition with only about 40,000 miles, and our mechanic checked it out thoroughly and gave us the thumbs up, so we went with it. We are only waiting for the paperwork to be complete, and we'll have it this week! Once we get it out here, we'll post a picture - it only deserves a "half" exciting thing because we don't have it quite yet.

1) It's quetzal party time in our tree again! This time of the year is always exciting as our aguacatillo tree right outside of our building is fruiting with the aguacatillos, which the quetzals feed off of. It's a lot of fun to look outside and see 2-3 quetzals sitting in the tree, or be making lunch and see one fly past the window. It's truly a remarkable bird. I'm posting a picture of its cute head, which doesn't show off it's long tail feathers, but gives you a good close-up look.

2) Our mural is complete and installed!! Last weekend, our muralist Mario came out to QERC to finally put up the long-awaited mural in our museum. It is BEAUTIFUL. We have already had many members of the community come by to check it out, and they keep coming back with more people to take a look. We couldn't be more thrilled with the way it turned out, and we now look forward to other details in the museum to make it even more complete.

3) And for the most exciting news in our life right now...I'm pregnant!!! (Aaack!) I'm due November 26th and we are very excited for this new stage of life. We will indeed be having this baby in Costa Rica, at a top-notch hospital in San Jose with our top-notch doctor. Pictures to come as my tiny baby bump begins to grow!

And that's "all" for now...

Part III (of III)

Sarah: And finally...here's Part III.

As David and I don't have anything other than tourist visas, we are still required to leave Costa Rica every 90 days. May was shaping up to be a busy month with groups, professors, and researchers, so we needed to quickly renew our visas as soon as the semester program ended. SNU provides us with a stipend for the purpose of visa renewals, and anything we spend on top of that stipend comes out of our own pockets. Rather than doing what we would normally do - take a 12 hour bus ride to Nicaragua or Panama and find a place to stay - we decided to do something a little easier.

We had always seen these promotions for a Caribbean island called San Andres, owned by Colombia, in the daily newspaper. The deal was for 3 nights, and it was all-inclusive, including airfare, airport transport, and of course lodging and all food. David and I aren't the type to be drawn to all-inclusive resorts, and usually enjoy finding a smaller, more locally-run lodge, that gives us the freedom to explore the area and eat where we want and do what we want. However, being that our visa renewal trip came up in between the end of a busy semester program and a busy May with people in and out of QERC, we decided to go for it. We only had to pay a small fee extra on top of our stipend in order to get the complete experience. And it was worth it!

We really enjoyed a few days of complete relaxation, reading by the pool while the bluish-greenish ocean waves crashed behind us. The resort is owned by a company called Decameron, and there were a number of Decameron resorts on the island. The deal was that we slept at the one we had booked, but could take advantage of any restaurant or pool or facilities of any of the other resorts at anytime, which was a part of the all-inclusive package. Every day we explored a new pool to sit by and relax, new beaches to sit in front of, and new restaurants to try. It was just what we needed in the midst of our busy schedules!

One interesting thing about the island was that we only saw 3 other North Americans the entire time we were there. San Andres is a very touristy place to be, but for tourists from Colombia, Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, etc. Being a Caribbean island, the majority of the people were of African descent, and that often means that English is widely spoken. If that was the case, we didn't experience much of it! We hardly heard any English spoken the whole time we were there. It was very fun and an interesting experience to be in a tourist location where the industry caters to primarily Latin Americans.

Upon our return to QERC, we welcomed a researcher named John Morrow and his wife Melissa. They are here for an entire month while John is working on a project for his Master's degree at Penn State. He is looking at the model of the Chacon family and how they've come to develop the valley and the decisions they've made along the way, looking closely at how the environment has impacted their choices and how they've impacted the environment in regards to conservation and sustainability. It has been a lot of fun to see his work progress as he interviews many family members and they open up by showing him old documents and pictures from the last 50 years.

We also welcomed Point Loma Nazarene University for a few days while they were here in Costa Rica for a Tropical Ecology course. Dave Cummings was the professor in charge of the course, and we have enjoyed getting to know Dave over the last year. His students were a great group and we are hoping some of them will be interested in joining our semester program in the future.

Messiah College is another group that came for a couple nights at QERC. They kept a busy schedule and were going to spend around 3 weeks traveling between Costa Rica and Panama. The oddest encounter with that group was seeing a friend I graduated college with, Craig Dalen, hop off their bus! I had no idea he even had any association with Messiah, nor that he would be showing up on my doorstep. He and his wife were along as chaperones and it was fun to catch up with Craig and meet his wife Tashya.

Finally, John Cossel from Northwest Nazarene University, is currently back at QERC with his family for a week. They have a total of one month in Costa Rica while John is doing some preliminary work with herpetology, primarily with frogs. David especially has had a good time going out at nights searching for frogs in our puddles that form on a daily basis from all the rain we are now getting.

And that's it for now! You are all caught up on our lives from the past couple of months. Actually, we do have some more exciting things to share about QERC that I will be posting about in the next few days. So be sure to check back here soon for even more fun things going on in our lives.