While at the station in San Ramon, we decided to hike the 12 km down the mountian to buy some beer at Soda Los Lagos, a small restuarant at the bottom. On the way down, I took some pictures of ornamental plants being grown in the foreground, with mountainous rainforest in the background…. kind of sad but cool at the same time. The other picture shows Erin and Mike reaching Los Lagos with a team time of 2:23… which won me 2 free beers.
While playing soccer with the folks here in Palo Verde, I got a blister that covers almost the entire ball of my foot. I made the thumbnail of a picture I took of the wound small, so if you find it disgusting it’s more difficult to see. I cut off some of the skin that had begun tearing off, but the rest is still intact. There’s currently no soreness after two days but it hurt quite a bit just after finishing our game.
On one of the day hikes Hugo led, we stopped at a swimming hole on Rio San Lorencito. The water was about 8 ft deep and crystal clear. On the deepest side, there was a cliff we were able to jump off of… It was a much needed break from our trailless hike.
Hugo is in the background of the first picture.
It’s like the Microsoft Windows commercials that Microsoft put out in response to getting trashed by the “I’m a PC; I’m a Mac” advertising campaign by Apple.
This is Rio Sue and Mike climbing up it. We sampled six, headwater streams feeding the Rio San Lorencito, each of which seemed to have a surprise waterfall around one of the bends. 
Allison and Erin handle one of their first freshwater shrimp out of Rio Drake, a river draining agricultural land on the Osa Penninsula that Mike wanted to sample for fish.
My first post from Costa Rica is a farewell to the first leg of my trip. This morning, at 4:30 AM, Allison and Erin climbed into a taxi for the airport, and so ended our three week excursion to the Osa and premontane rain-forest. I find it fitting then to post a picture of the four of us posing atop the first cascade of several in a river we dubbed Rio WTF. The river’s original name (Koyok) was immediately revoked when we realized that we would need to climb two waterfalls and a mountain to collect leaf samples from it (Mike and I were able to do it in under 10 sec with minor injuries). If you’re not aware of what the new name’s acronym stands for, google it.
Soon, I’ll be experiencing this tropical, premontane, river surrounded by wet forest with the folks in the sequence of photographs below: Mike and Erin. We may be more prepared for a hike through the river this time though….
As Jenn finishes writing her dissertation, I recall assisting in data collection. Here, we were collecting tagged crayfish several weeks after a major flooding event in the stream. Although the quality of the photograph is somewhat lacking, this is one of the few we have of actual crayfish collection.
Mike battles a chunk of volcanic rock on the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica. With this kind of attitude, I cannot be sure whether doing research with him in a remote, rainforest location is safe: either Mike is reckless and, therefore, dangerous, or he is a tough, hardworking researcher not afraid to face difficult challenges head on.