La Ceiba

La Ceiba

This purpose for this expedition was for my second tropical ecology field study. I'm not gonna lie, I was not super excited about this one. It is probably because I had just gotten back from a really great trip to Cuba and because I was not looking forward to spending another weekend sweating it out in the jungle like La Selva. Little did I know, La Selva was paradise compared to this place.

We left at noon on Friday for a four and a half hour bus ride to the place. I was kind of surprised because the park was really close to where we stayed for the Manuel Antonio trip. Along the way, we stopped on the road by a pineapple plantation so our professor could explain Costa Rica land use to us. It was really interesting, but I had taken a Dramamine and just wanted to fall back asleep on the bus.

The view

When we got there, the first thing I noticed was the view. It looked right over the rainforests and the clouds were just starting to come in over the hills. Shortly after arriving, we split up and headed over to our cabins. The one I stayed in was in the middle of the others and fit four people. We were given a little time to settle in before dinner. One of the things I noticed is that the mattress was not comfortable at all. I could feel every single spring in it and when I went to get up, I stubbed my toe on one of the springs. It was gonna be a rough two nights.

We were supposed to come prepared for a night hike to dinner. I had a dinner of mostly rice for me, while everyone else had pork hot dogs with rice and beans. During dinner, my professor noticed how none of us had rubber boots and only a few of us had hiking boots. After this, she said it was too dangerous to go on the night hike without rubber boots or hiking boots. Luckily I brought my hiking boots, but since it was raining we decided to postpone the hike until the next night. The next morning, I found out why the rubber boots were so important.

Sign outside of the trail

For our first full day here, we began with a breakfast of eggs, ham, and toast. So I just ate three pieces of toast and hoped that would be enough to keep me going for our hikes today. It wasn't. Right after breakfast, we went off on our first hike, bright and early at 7:30 am, to the waterfall. The first thing I noticed about this trail is how muddy it was. Not even twenty minutes in, we are crossing a patch of flat trail covered in debris when my friend Charlie in front of me say, "Oh look, a snake." At this same moment, my friend Cierra walks up behind me and steps on a vine that wraps around my leg. Normally, I am not scared of snakes but the snake that Charlie pointed out was a fer de lance, the most deadly snake in Central America. So when the vine wrapped around me, I screamed bloody murder. This got everyone's attention, which is good because 10 of my classmates and my professor had walked within one inch of this snakes head, as he was about halfway across the walking path. Everyone stopped what they were doing to take pictures and figure out how the rest of us were going to get across it. Someone suggested poking it out of the way with a stick but both of the Costa Rican with us told us that was a very bad idea. It wasn't moving, even after a couple minutes of no one else moving, so we just decided to cross in front of it like normal. I was the last one to cross and the second I got passed it, it decided to move. While we were all passing the first snake, the group on the other side saw another fer de lance snake that slithered away quickly. After this experience, everyone was very cautious and did not take their eyes off the path for the rest of the way. The guy behind me, Zach, got a stick to clear the ground in case of snakes. I think this freaked us out especially because 10 people and a trained biologist walked passed it without even noticing.

The fer de lance snake

I'm not gonna lie, the trail did not get any better after this. There were no more snakes but there were a lot of biting ants. Not long after the snake part, we had to cross a river by hoping on rocks. I gave my phone to the trained mountain climber bus driver that was with us and hopped over, semi successfully (I got my shoes wet, but I didn't fall in). I thought this would be the hardest part, but boy was I wrong. After this, for pretty much the first half of the trail, it was basically one giant mudslide down. A total of four people wiped out, including me. It was really awful and difficult, but that wasn't even the worst part. About half a mile from the water slide, it was basically just rock climbing backwards. We started seeing plastic tubing tied to trees and then our hiking trail quickly became wet and muddy bolders that we had to repel backwards down. This was the worst part because the tubbing was incredibly slippery and it was all on the side of a steep cliff. I cried. Twice. There were two especially hard parts where it was quite literally just rappeling backwards down these rock faces. I almost gave up right there but leer pressure got me through it. When I got down, my professor promised me that was the worst part. But one thing I've learned by being in Costa Rica is to never trust a tico when it comes to hiking. Because right after that part, was another part that was pretty similar, only worse. I was pretty much done at this point, but my friend Zach helped me down. Finally we had reached the waterfall. It was pretty but it wasn't really worth it. We were also promised that we could swim in it so everyone did this hike in their swimsuits, but the water level was too high and it was too dangerous.

Finally reached the waterfall and hiding my tears

The hike back up was kinda worse. I thought rappeling down those rocks was hard but climbing up them was so much harder. After an equally wary and grueling hike back up, our professor told us there was a shorter hike down to a stream that we could do but me and two other people said no thanks and went back to the cabins. I took the nicest cold shower ever and collapsed into a nap until lunch.

For lunch this time, it was chicken stir fry, vegetables, and rice. It was actually really good and exactly what I needed after that hike. For the rest of the day until dinner, we had time to work on our projects. The main purpose of this field study trip was to conduct our own experiments in a tropical rainforest. My group chose to do the biodiversity and density of forest floor plants under emergent trees. This didn't take too long, so we spent about 2 hours collecting data then went back to our cabin when it started to rain. We basically just hung out and napped some more until dinner.

The owner's dog

After dinner, since we postponed it the day before, we would go on the night hike. Since about two thirds of the group couldn't go because of a lack of appropriate footware and because rest of us were still shook up because of the snake, only about five people and our professor went. I chose not to go because we couldn't even spot the snake in the day time, let alone be able to at night. Instead, I played cards with some other people who stayed behind. After a while, we went to bed.

The next morning was just spent collecting more data until it was time for lunch. After lunch, we got back on the bus and headed home.

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