Community Service

To nobody's surprise, the day started with rain. The usual thunderous downpour, just a little earlier than we expected. The weather around here works to an unsteady rhythm, but it's one we rely on: light rain in the early morning, and downpours in around two in the afternoon, with copious sun in between. This morning's rain certainly ruined several groups' hopes for getting a jump start on field work today. See, the trouble is that the ants are smarter than us. They realize when rain is coming, and opt to quit work early rather than risk carry on and get washed away. Us students on the other hand, tend to venture out into the forest while the rain clouds are moving in to try and do field work, only to find the ants called it quits ten minutes before we got there and are nice and dry in their colonies while we get soaked on the way back.

After breakfast, which was delicious as usual, the groups separated and mostly did their own thing. We checked our fungal cultures, which are growing nice and disgusting, and worked on our groups' experiments at our paces. The lesson today was Gram staining, a technique Pinto said any real microbiologist can do in their sleep. It was interesting because it allowed us to identify the bacteria we had cultured earlier. Putting a name to what we were seeing was nice, especially if it's a nice long Latin one.

The delicious cheeseburger lunch we had reminded us of home. Soon afterwards, we all headed into town to join some locals in a community service project. They're developing and building a community spice garden as part of a plan to grow herbs to create natural shampoos and soaps to sell to visitors. They have a very well, thought-out plan of how they are going to construct the project, so we stepped into help with some labor. We separated into groups, in which we weeded, moved rocks, and carried away dirt on wheelbarrows. We all worked very hard, and have plenty of dirty clothes to prove it. Then we walked to one of the local families home, where we had a delicious chicken and plantain dinner. Tired, dirty and full, we walked back to Finca La Anita and went to bed content.

Jake H and Sam

Second Years Student Experience............

 The second year students were taken on an experimental trip: repelling down a waterfall on the Santa Maria mountain. We climbed down the side of the mountain using rope and climbed down the side of a waterfall by hand. This was done to help create new ideas for midday trips for future first year students.

The Santa Maria mountain (a majority of the land) is privately owned by a billionaire that owns a cattle plantation. We met him on his land and he gave us permission to explore the mountain. He was even nice enough to drive us through a large open field of cattle on the mountain. The trail for the hike was uphill and became more and more narrow as time went on. Once we reached a point where we could hear the waterfall we reached our first point of descending down the mountain.

The climb down was rather frightening. It was a steep and slippery climb down the side of the mountain. The only support we had was rope to repel down. Climbing down the side of the waterfall was almost worse, because it was more slippery, but we had a guide who would hold us as we went down each step. Once you hit the bottom of the waterfall and could look out to see the surrounding, it was incredible. Words and pictures don't do the view any justice. To the right was the waterfall, and all around us was this beautiful thicket of rain forest ascending upwards. Unfortunately we could only stay and swim at the base of the waterfall for a few minutes. Climbing back up was a lot easier so it didn't take nearly as long.

Overall, I would say that it was a great experience. I don't even really know how to describe the scenery, other than saying that it was indescribable. It's so different to see an image and compare it to being there. This experience was so awesome that it makes my second year here even more special being the only group to have tried it.

DJ