I believe that phrase was originally written by Dr. Seuss, however it feels very applicable to the past week of my life!
Last Saturday we left San Jose and headed to another biological station called La Selva. It is a much bigger station, with more researchers living onsite and more groups living and working here. It was funny—when we arrived there was another group of American students here and we were all quite taken aback. We’re used to being the only ones around! It is much hotter, stickier and buggier here. I’m currently sitting under a fan in shorts and tank top in an attempt to stay cool. I will not even try to count the bug bites…more on that later.
Dengue—yep it’s mosquito transmitted and I have mosquito bites. Let’s hope I don’t have Dengue too! Wednesday we went into Sarapiqui, a nearby town to help the local EBAIS with their Dengue education programs. There have been recent outbreaks, so we were working to make sure that people are taking necessary precautions to protect their families—bed nets, screens, no standing water where mosquitoes can breed. We also educated people about the warning signs of Dengue including Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, which is common the second time a person is infected and can be fatal. We went house to house, filling out short surveys, talking to people and giving out educational material. We helped people identify and dump out any containers with standing water and also collected any mosquito larvae we saw. When we got back to La Selva we looked at that larvae under a microscope, unfortunately identifying most of it as the larvae of the Dengue carrying mosquito.
Thursday, we headed out on another field trip to the Dole banana plantation. We sat in the POURING rain for an hour and half, briefly walked around part of the plantation and then were done. Needless to say, not my favorite field trip. To add to the discomfort of being wet, our next endeavor was a four-hour bus ride to Kekoldi—a Bribri indigenous community where we spent the night. Actually, let me rephrase that…it was a four hour bus ride to the base of the mountain that we walked straight up for an hour (with a backpack full of clothes, mosquito nets and other supplies) to get to Kekoldi! Fortunately, by the time we got there, it had stopped raining and the sun had come out…it was still pretty muddy though!
The hike was worth it though…we stayed in a beautiful tree-house like structure, made hot chocolate from freshly roasted and ground cacao beans and had Nutella for breakfast. The showers were questionable, however, so we rationalized not utilizing them by taking a swim at the bottom of a gorgeous waterfall. Only problem with that is that a 1.5 hour hike straight downhill to the waterfall = an even longer hike straight back uphill. Needless to say, we were gross…we had also only brought one change of clothes, so we stayed gross until we hiked back down to our bus where we had a change of clothes. (With a brief stop at an iguana farm on the way back down.)
Once we were feeling semi-human again, it was time for another bus trip to another Bribri territory. There, we learned more about the culture, visited a small chocolate production center run by the women’s association and talked to the Awapa (shamans) in their traditional conical houses. It was an exhausting few days with lots of “we would like to welcome you” and “we are so thankful for your hospitality” and “thank you so much for coming” and “thank you so much for having us.” (everyone had to say their bit!) If you’re a little bewildered by all the traveling and where it means I was all week, don’t worry! I still am. Unfortunately, indigenous territories and/or towns are not well marked on googlemaps, so I’m still lost. For now, enjoy these pictures:
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| Our gear for the hike up the mountain--including mosquito nets |
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| So excited to hike! |
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| Separating cacao shell from the cacao....I failed and dumped most of it on the ground. |
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| In the boat on the way to Cachabri |
