Day 9: Departing La Anita and Traveling to Horizontes Research Station

This morning we had our last breakfast at La Anita Rainforest Ranch and said our goodbyes to the owners, Pablo and Ana. After packing up the vans and heading out, our first stop was in Colonia Libertad to visit a group of women and their bead shop. We learned about how they started out with farming vegetables to sell in attempt to improve the local economy and have now moved on to selling jewelry in a shop they built themselves. They are also in the process of building a butterfly exhibit to attract tourists and be able to educate people about the morpho butterfly. We have seen several of these butterflies on our hikes and they are truly spectacular. Below is a picture of one of them.

After we did some shopping at the jewelry shop, we continued on our travels. We took a quick trip to a local supermarket in Guayabo to stock up on some snacks for the ride to the coast. We traveled from the rainforest to the dry forest where we were greeting with a downpour. We unloaded our bags and everyone got settled in their rooms.

Luckily, the rain slowed and stopped about an hour after we arrived so we were able to explore the not so dry forest for a bit in the afternoon. Students broke up into their research groups once again to look at a new type of ant: pseudomyrmex ants. They live symbiotically with acacia trees. The students took 15-20 minutes to study the ants and the trees to try to understand the relationship between them. We then returned to the classroom at the research station and the groups reported out on what they had seen. Beth Hunt (St. George's Class of 1983) from Seeds of Change joined us last night and led us through the discussion this afternoon.

We had dinner as a group at the research station and students are now gathering supplies to head to the beach for our night of turtle surveying. The name of the beach is Cabuyal. They will work in groups to walk the beach and look for turtle tracks with hopes of finding a turtle that has come to shore to lay eggs.

Tomorrow morning we will do a guided hike through the dry forest starting at 7am. Our plan is to have breakfast by a waterfall before returning back to the station. After lunch there will be some time to explore the beach and have a little down time before our departure Friday morning.

- Devon & Bob