Crazy Week

Sorry I haven't had time to post for a while, there has been a lot going on and most of it is school related so not very exciting.  This is a list of things I have to do:

• Project proposal due this afternoon
• Presentation on project tomorrow
• Test on spanish grammar for Fri
• Skit in spanish for Fri
• Leave for study site Sat- make sure I have everything I need for a month

The good news, I met my new host family this weekend.  They have three daughters (ages 7, 13, and 16) and four dogs (one of the dogs is pregnant!  I'm hoping for puppies while I'm there).  I will be spending about 2 months with them in total, pictures to come.

I finally met my advisor and figured out my project.  I am going to be putting recording devices in the forest (here is the link to the reserve- http://www.tirimbina.org/), at the edge of the forest, and at the edge of a pineapple farm and comparing the diversity and abundance of the bats at each site.

This is what the recorder looks like, they can stay outside for about 4 days and then I will get the information and use the sounds to identify the species.

Everyone keeps telling me that bats are scary and creepy looking.  In general I agree, but look at these fruit eating ones that live under leaves, I think they are really cute.  I won't be studying these ones but I'm hoping to see them!

New Fruits

So there are all kinds of awesome fruits here and I have been trying a bunch of them.  On Sunday I went to a farmer's market with my host mom and she showed me a bunch of new ones that I got to try. (I didn't take any of these pictures.)

Granadilla.  It looks really gross, but its so good.  You eat the seeds and the clear stuff around it, so its kinda crunch, but really good.

Manzana de Agua. (water apple).  It has the consistency of a hard pear and doesn't really taste like anything, these were not my favorite.  My host nephew however, loves them and ate 6 in one day.

Ciruela.  Mini plums, the ones I had were really sour, but I don't think they are supposed to be like that.

Caimite. You eat the white part of the fruit, the black part are seeds.  It was so good, kind of tasted like a sweeter lychee if you know what that is.  We were talking to a street vendor about the different types of fruits he had yesterday and he just cut one of these up for us to try.  I will definitely be going back for more.

Coffee Co-op

Yesterday we drove 2 hours up into the mountains that we can see from the back of our building to visit a coffee co-op called Llano bonita.  This means "beautiful plain/ flat area".  It was definitely beautiful but not at all flat.  The coffee is grown on the side of the mountain!  We got a tour of how they make the coffee but I couldn't hear anything over the sound of the machines so here are some pictures, I don't really know what the machines do though.

This is the toaster that turns the coffee beans from tan to the well known dark brown.

This was the bus we took, isn't it a great color?!

Part 4: Tirimbina Biological Reserve

Tirimbina Biological Reserve is where I will be studying bats for two months.  We went to a bat lecture when we got there which was really interesting.  Then the next day we learned how chocolate was made historically and went on a walk around the park.

Its really hard to see, but this is a picture of the mist nets used to catch the bats.

This is a fruit eating bat.

This was how the cocoa was ground up- it would take 8 hours to get it to the right consistency.

This is the bridge that you cross to enter the park.

 

Half way across the bridge you can go down to an island.

I'm embarrassed to admit that we all tried termites.  They taste like pepper, it was really gross.

Agouti

These fruits are called granadillas.  The next day I went to a farmer's market with my host mom and we tried one.  They are kinda gross looking but really good.  They are orange when they are ripe.

There were some really cool root systems to deal with all of the water.

I forgot to mention the really cute kittens that were living at the cocoa farm.

Part 3: Banana Farm

There is a lot more work that goes into growing bananas than I had expected.  The farmers work hard to make sure the bananas are as little bruised as possible (they mention to us though, that even if there is a problem on the outside, the banana is still fine on the inside).

All of the bananas are at different rates of growth.

Each of these parts make up one tree. The grandmother has been broken off, the middle is the mom and on the left is the baby.  Each part only lasts for about 24 weeks to grow the fruit and then dies.

These blue bags are like bug spray for the plants.

The plastic protects the different layers of the bananas from growing in to each other.

Before the bananas are cut down, cushions are put between the layers.

The bananas get hung up and...

...pushed to the main building.

Each bundle is so large, that the trees are held up with ropes so they don't fall over with the weight (see all of the orange cords in the pictures above).

The bundles are cut off the stalks and cleaned.

Then they are sorted.  The small and bruised ones were going to England to be made into baby food.

The larger ones where packaged carefully into boxes and loaded on trucks for the US.

Next up: Tirimbina Biological Reserve