The Final Countdown

It's hard to believe that I'm nearing the end of my field work in Costa Rica. Only 2 more weeks of nonstop monkey action and then I will be returning to the U.S. It's been an amazing experience, but I'm ready to move on to the data analysis and writing stages to see what results come out of all of these months of hard work.

Here are some of the big events that have been happening lately:

Naming Monkeys

Although I have been working with these monkeys for almost 2 years, I never got the chance to name a baby. The rule here is that the first person to see a newborn baby monkey gets to give it a name. The ability to name babies is a coveted privilege and the monkey researchers will work hard to be the first ones to see newborns in order to leave a legacy. I had been unlucky in that I was never out in the field with a specific group on the day that a baby was born. But this streak finally ended. I saw a newborn monkey first! I named it Ebobo which is Sango (Central African Republic) for gorilla. Then I lucked out again by being the first to spot a new male that immigrated into one of our groups. Shira and I named it Yukon Cornelius after the claymation Rudolph movie character. So now my legacy will continue even after I leave Costa Rica.

Yukon Cornelius

Ebobo, with mom Cosmos

Heat Rash

Although I finally got rid of all the infections that plagued me in March, April brought a new affliction - heat rash. If you've never experienced this (and I never had before), heat rash consists of lots of little itchy red bumps all over your skin. I researched it online to see if there was anything I could do to get rid of it. All of the medical websites gave me helpful advice like "the best way to relieve symptoms is to cool your skin and prevent sweating". Gee thanks webmd, but I'm living in Costa Rica where it's hot and humid and my job consists of hiking around in the forest for 12 hours a day. I'm pretty sure staying cool and preventing sweating are not feasible options for me right now. So I guess I'm just going to have it for the rest of my time here. Oh the joys of field work!

Rain

In case I didn't emphasize this enough in last year's blog, rain is the bane of my existence here. It's not good for my research since I can't film monkeys when it's raining and also it causes the monkeys to go to crazy places since they are no longer dependent on the river for drinking water. I cut June out from my field season this year because it was rainy and unproductive last year. But Mother Nature decided to play a trick on me and bring rain in April and May. We had daily rainstorms from the end of April through the beginning of May. When I returned from vacation, we had a huge rainstorm that flooded the rivers and washed out some bridges. I was nervous that all of May was going to be a big wet disaster. But instead we've had no rain for the last week and a half. But I feel like I'm living on borrowed time here since the rain could return any day now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the sun will win out for the next week and a half, but even as I write this the sun is disappearing and the wind is picking up. Could today be the end of my lucky streak?

The swimming hole after a big rain - not quite so inviting

Climbing Chirripo
For my last vacation in Costa Rica I decided what better way to take a break from hiking all day while following monkeys than to climb the tallest mountain in Costa Rica? I know, it seems a little crazy, but I've been meaning to climb Chirripo for years now and this was my last chance. Luckily, it was all worth it. The hike was difficult and very painful, but the views made it all worth while. To get to the base of the mountain, we had to take 3 buses (a journey of almost 8 hours) and then stay overnight in San Gerardo de Rivas.

We started our ascent of Chirripo at 6am and were rewarded with great views from the start.

On the trail

Beautiful view

But it was a tough climb. Here I am at the first kilometer. Only 13.5 more to go!

Fun fungus

It was rainy and foggy for half of the ascent

It took 8 hours to reach the base camp located 2 km from the peak. The park station provided beds with only mattresses and drinking water, but not much else. We had to hike with all of the food we wanted to eat, lots of warm clothes, and a sleeping bag. We went to bed around 7pm, partly because we were exhausted and partly to get ready for our early start. We awoke at 3:15am in order to hike the 2km to the summit in the dark and reach Chirripo in time for the sunrise. We made it to the summit right after sunrise and the views on the trail to Chirripo and from the top were breathtaking! We were so glad that we had made the early start since the clouds rolled in by 6:30am, closing off the scenic view.

The trail to the summit

View from the top

We did it!

Then began the hike down, which due to my not so great knees, was rough. The first 9 km went decently well, but the last 5 km was extremely painful. Even with my hiking poles, my knees felt horrible and each step was a struggle. But I did see some cool things on the way down - like this lizard.

I finally made it to the bottom of the mountain by 3pm and was completely wiped out. I really needed to ice my knees, but the tiny store in town didn't sell ice so I used the next best thing - icy orange flavored drink.

Would I do it again? Yes! But maybe I will wait until my knees recover from field work first :)

Life in Lomas (a photo hodge podge)

Whitney adapts to the monkey lifestyle (maybe I have been here too long?)

Mezcla, alpha female of Rambo's group

Darwin sitting on a fence

The sun shining through the palm trees

Pod, a loveable juvenile female

Darwin, an adult female, enjoying a stick

Hodge Podge Vacation

Two blogs in the same day, can I really be this lucky, you say? Is this some kind of April Fools joke? Yes you can! And no it's not! You didn't think I'd leave without posting my vacation photos, right?

My friend Vivek came to visit at the end of March. He wanted to drive around and see a lot of Guanacaste so we headed off on an adventure with a new destination almost every day.

Road to Volcan Tenorio

Cabin where we stayed. It was so nice and cool there that I slept great!

View from the cabin front porch

Cow hanging out by the car

First we traveled to Volcan Tenorio National Park, a beautiful cloud rainforest containing a slightly active volcano (no lava, just fumeroles and hot springs).

Cicada

Forest trail

View of Volcan Tenorio

We hiked around the forest and stopped to check out Rio Celeste, a river that is colored aquamarine due to some combination of minerals in the water. Very cool!

Waterfall on Rio Celeste

Check out that blue!

Where the blue begins

We didn't go swimming here because apparently they don't know the health effects

The next day we headed to Volcan Miravalles to try out the pools heated by geothermic energy. We stopped at Thermomania (yay for cheesy names) to soak in their hot springs for the afternoon in 90-100 degree temp water.

Bathing in 100 degree water while viewing a volcano...very nice

Fancy waterfall

Then we headed to Playa Conchal on the Pacific coast for a taste of salt water (check my blog from last year to see pics of this beautiful beach).
We finished our trip off with a visit to my friends Eva and Nando, 2 scientists working at Santa Rosa National Park in the northwest corner of Costa Rica.

And I really wanted to trap rodents that day!

We saw spider monkeys. They are really cool looking monkeys with their long arms and legs

March Madness - Monkeys, Infections, and Forest Destruction

Happy April Fools Day!


March has been a decent month for us. We had some good experiments and were able to find the monkeys that we wanted almost every day. But it has been HOT (over 100 degrees at the beginning of the month) and so both the monkeys' and our activity has slowed down during the hottest time of day. This means we spend a lot of time waiting for the monkeys to wake up and start moving so that we can set up experiments. But hanging out with monkeys in the shade by the river is much better than searching for them on the often shadeless trails so we can't really complain (at least we try not to). We reached our halfway mark in the field season and celebrated by...going out with the monkeys and doing more experiments ;)



Forest Destruction

Returning to the home range of one of our study groups, Rafiki's, reminded me that I have yet to describe the devastation to their habitat that took place in July and January. This particular group lives right next to a privately owned gravel pit. It was always one of my least favorite places to visit last year because the noise of the gravel pit made it difficult to communicate. I can only imagine how this must affect monkey communication. But last year, the gravel pit company decided to chop down chunks of forest in order to put in huge (double lane) roads so that they have easier access to gravel in other parts of their property (see pics below). This not only makes the habitat much uglier to work in, but also makes us worry about the monkeys. Will they continue to cut down forest to make roads in the future? At this point they don't seem to be progressing very quickly, but as gravel becomes more profitable, they may slowly cut away all of Rafiki's group's territory.





Road where there used to be forest



Infection (Warning-these pics may ruin your lunch)


Just when you thought all I did was romp around outside all day playing with monkeys - bad health, the ugly part of fieldwork, strikes! Although I have basically been healthy while I have been here, I recently had a bad bug bite turned infection. I can only guess that my body was run down from the work month and thus wasn't so great at fighting off the germs. I fought with it for a while and then gave in and took antibiotics :( Check out the photos below



My beautiful arm infection


The swelling in my arm. It looks like I am flexing, but I'm not.


Ok, enough gross pictures, on to...
Beautiful Monkeys


I could think of some reason to tie all of this into the rest of the blog, but really I just want to show you pics of my monkeys so here goes:

Moth, alpha male of Rambo's group, looking tough

Cassie, adult male in Rambo's

Brava and her baby, Bedlam

Pitufo, male in Pelon group, looking disgruntled

Babies like to stick their tongues out...especially in the wind...we think it may have to do with cooling down

Baby monkey running

Wait that's not a capuchin. You're right. It's a howler monkey with baby on back

Twilo (?), male in Rafiki's group

Monkeys foraging at sunrise