We’ve arrived in Atenas! Each student spent the first evening with his or her host family. It feels a little strange to be spread out now after 4 days dormitory bunk style living!
Meeting up with the families at the drop-off locations went smoothly thanks to the hard work of Juan and the Spanish School director, Isabel, who have been working tirelessly to match students with their homestays and prepare for classes. We waved goodbye to each student last night and this morning reunited for the first day of Spanish classes. The students arrived smiling broadly and brimming with stories.
We enjoyed our time in Santa Rosa. Fifteen years ago, when I was a student on the Tropical Ecology and Spanish course, we stayed in the same research station dorms. The nearby landscape has transformed considerably since then. I remember being able to look from the bunk rooms across the dry, mostly open area to the cafeteria. Now the view is blocked by the thick tangle of trees, shrubs and vines. Little winding pathways connect the buildings. This different view is part of the effect of a grand reforestation project to bring back the dry forests to Santa Rosa.
About 400 years ago, the pacific dry forest, which was once quite expansive and stretched down from Mexico, was almost completely converted into pastureland for cattle. The ranchers introduced a hearty grass from Africa that took well to the extreme conditions, producing a savanna-like landscape with the arching Guanacaste tree, one of the few trees left standing. However, about forty years ago, at the dawning of the conservation movement in Costa Rica, a track of land in Santa Rosa became the very first national park in the country. Over the years, the government continued to buy more land creating a unique corridor of protected land. This “Area de Conservacion Guanacaste” now encompasses four distinct bioregions and stretches from out in the Pacific ocean marine area, across the regenerating flat dry forest, up the over the volcanic ridges and cloud forest and down to the mountain slopes of the Caribbean side. I find it quite exciting to be able to personally see the changes in the landscape from this dedication to conservation and reforestation.
The rainstorm that passed through while we were in Santa Rosa points to greater global patterns of environmental change. We are officially in the dry season here. So the rainfall comes as a surprise. A researcher from the national park who spoke with the group also mentioned new trends of multiple days without clouds in the cloud forest. These are telling events to the biologists who have studied this landscape, and to them quite worrisome, since it disrupts some key life cycles of plants and animals. Too much rain too soon may cause some animals like frogs, which we saw out on the trails, to lay eggs to soon, or for seeds to sprout before there is enough moisture to support their full growth. What will it be like in another fifteen years? What new plants and animal communities will begin to flourish again and which ones will need to shift to other areas, as the new growth of trees shade the grassland. The land here is a portrait of the changing trends of human values.
And to close, let’s thank the inventors of paired back wheels on a bus! While we had a bit of a scare when one of the tires blew, all worked out fine and we made it on time. The bus driver José, navigated us from one tire repair shop which was closed because it was a Sunday to another only a few kilometers further up the road. Luckily the shop owners here lived out in back and a young mechanic in flip-flops hammered and hoisted with an almost effortless quality until we had a replacement wheel.
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