Weekend Festivities

Emerald Tucanet chillin' by the research station



Tool Yee, the hummingbird whisperer...





Hello all. I appologize for the long delay since the last update. Life continues to fly by down here in San Gerardo, but as we say, "pura vida"...it's all good. Since I last checked in, another entire week of research has past, and some exciting breakthroughs have occurred! After weeks of patience, without anything too exciting on the cameras, we picked up video of two more species to add to our list of northern raccoon and red squirrel: OCELOT and COYOTE! Yep...we've got multiple videos of coyotes walking past the cameras and an ocelot wandering past. It's hard to describe how big of a deal this is, but if you had been here for 4 weeks, on the trail for 4+ hours a day looking for any sign (scat, hair, etc) of large predators with nothing to show for it, you'd understand how elated we now are. We confirmed our identification of both species by consulting with local Tico guides, who recognize the animals better. YAHOO! Let's hope for more and more!


Dario and his baby cow

On a non-research note, this past weekend was San Gerardo de Dota's first annual "Horse and or Open House/Valley Day"...don't know how else to describe it. The entire community pooled together their horses and you could pay money to ride a horse through the valley trails and visit various fincas (small farms) and homes for refreshments. The whole thing was a benefit fundraiser for the community.


Official Scat Analysis...the bandana was key for the stench

The horseback riding was intense, with one significant injury (a man's horse flipped going up a steep trail and rolled down on him...the guy sustained some head wounds, but is OK), but the best part was the stop at Fernando's for Tico Karaoke...lot's of Tico guys singing Spanish pop/love songs...I couldn't resist and volunteered Jared and I to do a duet for anything they had in English...in front of the whole community. As luck would have it, they had about two songs in English: Hotel California and Tears in Heaven. We opted for Hotel California, and after a off-key performance, we were applauded and laughed at...good times. The last event of the night was a 5 hour, community-wide game of BINGO...let's just say I will never play that much bingo again!


BINGO! SOOO unlucky...you'd think the chances of winning in FIVE HOURS would increase...

Heated rounds were broken up by short acts of entertainment by community members: this one guy who looked like Napoleon Dynamite did a fire dance with twirling flaming balls, and some little girls did this cool hula-type dance. Great times...the rest of the weekend was filled with getting my butt kicked on practice GRES, devotions, pickup soccer games, improv hikes with visitors, and pushups...life is good! Take care until next time!


Game of pickup soccer ("muhangee")...fun!