From the Field: Week Seven

I am feeling quite bittersweet at the end of this week as I embark on my final days of field work in Costa Rica, however the journey is not over yet! With just two weeks of field work (and some vacation days) left ahead of me, I am getting ready to close things out. So far this field season has gone along pretty smoothly, besides some bumps this week when a trail camera disappeared and my sites were almost hit by a tropical storm. This week there was a lot of rain to deal with (rainy season in full swing), a battle with a spider, and a visit to a local coffee plantation.

We lost our first field day of the week due to the non-stop rain on Monday, but I was able to use that time to catch up on some seedling identification and blog writing. Once we were able to start our field work for the week, things went as they normally do. We finished work at one site just in time for the sky to open up, and had some nice exercise running to the car. All of the rain also caused a pretty large branch to fall into a set of plots, but luckily we were able to remove it and it did not disturb the seedlings. We had a scare closer to the end of the week with a tropical storm moving in, but we were lucky that it missed our area and all of us (and the plots) remained safe.

Samuel removing the branch from the plots

On another note, one of our trail cameras went missing from a site which is unfortunate, but not atypical when dealing with camera equipment. However the plots and seedlings remained untouched which is a good thing for my data collection.

This week I had an encounter with a very large spider (my second battle with a large bug here) that decided to occupy the ledge above my doorway. Typically, I scoop up the bugs that wander into my room with an empty Pringles can, but this guy was too big for that. In a late night, last minute resort, I opened up my bedroom door and threw some dirty socks at it, until it made its way outside (and it waited outside all night long to haunt me in the morning). I am now prepared to battle any more reasonably large bugs/insects that make their way into my cabin (but hopefully no more do)!

I spent the latter of the week catching up on volunteer work, seedling identification and talking with family and friends. I also prepped the sterile bags that I will need to use to collect soil samples from the forests in the next couple of weeks as well.

This week I saw two monkeys (and got a photo of one–finally!) and of course, some more cool birds. On Sunday, my friend Vanessa and I took a tour at Coffea Diversa, a coffee plantation about an hour away from the station. Coffea Diversa is unique because unlike many other coffee plantations, they grow, harvest, dry, roast and ship all of their coffee on site. We were able to tour the plantation and see all of the stages that coffee goes through to make it from fruit to the roasted bean we use to make our morning coffee. They also have ‘coffee basket’ shaped cabins for students, researchers and tourists to stay in, all made out of recycled materials (stay tuned for more about my trip to Coffea Diversa!). Afterwards, we were served a delicious lunch and dessert (and of course tried some amazing coffee). We ended the day with some fresh ice cream and headed back to the station.

The process from fruit to bean (left to right): raw seed, dried without (top) or with fruit skin– to give different flavor profiles, roasted for export!

One of the tents used to dry the coffee seeds

That’s all for this week! Looking forward to enjoying the last of my time here and having a successful end to my field season. As always, photos are below!

Best,
Gina

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