Last Day (Dec 20)

I'm writing this post super late; its been almost two weeks since the last day of CRIRE. There were so many things that happened on the last day that I had to take time to gather my thoughts.

Most of the last day was passed in a large bus. I spent most of the ride in short naps. We made a couple stops for bathroom breaks, gator watching, snacks, beach-wandering (which was awesome), and congested traffic.

It was dark by the time we made it to our destination, the "Hotel Aeropuerto." As with every trip that is about to end, there was a certain quiet vibe about everyone. 

After getting situated at the hotel, it was said the final kind gesture would be showing up to dinner; and so I did. I was the first to find a seat in the spacious, and largely-decorated dining room. Good thing I got there first because my order of food would take way longer if I had showed up late.

My eyes turned heavy after finishing the best brownie I ever tasted. That night I only slept 4 hours. 

No matter what, I knew I would miss this feeling of happy exhaustion. I made many friends on this trip. I just hope the students and mentors made it back home for Christmas.

Presentations!! (Dec 19)

It was crucial that I wake up on time today and get straight to business. Today was the day for presentations and I didn't practice at all yesterday. First, I needed to find Kassandra, so we could start practicing our presentation. Practicing was more for my sake than hers. She was more experienced with these kinds of things. 

As nervous as I was this morning, I had to choke down what I could from breakfast. Outside the cafeteria was a group of people saying their good-byes to a few of the Ngabe. 

After that, we practiced the presentation for close to 2 hours before it was actually time to present. 

Presentations went well. Gracias a dios.

After presentations, I immediately grabbed my hiking stuff and set out to see the waterfall again, I needed to clear my head of the presenting. This time, I found a little frog near the waterfall.

Later in the night, it started to rain like crazy. I figured I should enjoy my last stay at Las Cruces, so I went outside, grabbed a chair and set as close to the rain as I could without getting too wet. From that chair, I heard pieces of peoples conversations about their crazy days; I saw the silhouettes of tall tress in the night; I felt a sense of comfort in the dense fog that covered the forest like a steaming sauna. I would miss this.

Crunch time (Dec 18)

I woke up feeling homesick. I cant remember how long I laid awake in bed looking at old pics on my phone. I definitely missed breakfast. When I stopped being a lil' kid👶👶, I made my way over to the lab with a cup of tea in hand. Scott was at the end of giving tips for our poster; Something else I missed because I couldn't get out of bed. Smh

Trying to not make two mistakes out of one, I quickly got my head involved in the project. The whole morning was dedicated to finalizing the poster. My group partner was very smart, and experienced with these types of posters, and so was the leading contributor to the poster. I did what I could with what I knew. 

Good thing a night-hike that day was announced by Scott during Lunch. It left something to look forward to later in the day.

After the night-hike: I chose to go on the Jungle Trail. Expecting to see at least tracks of an animal bigger than a rabbit, I was disappointed because nothing happened. We only seen a big insect on a leaf. It on;y emphasizes the fact that the rain forest is nothing how they portray on T.V. back home; there isn't a crazy animal around every corner of the forest waiting to kill ya. Lesson learned.

Ahead of Schedule (Dec 17)

The healthy breakfasts kept my head clear and my energy going. 

After working on the poster in the morning and putting into perspective just how much work we'd done and how much work we'd yet to do, I would be able to squeeze in a visit to town to get a haircut like I'd planned the day before. First, I wanted to see the waterfall everyone was talking about. So, I set out on the water trail with high spirits. 

The "catarata" was like how people described it. Nothing huge, but it bragged its own unique beauty. I sat on a log watching the water fall like an obsessed person for a good forty minutes. I figured that I would leave at lunchtime, then head to town for a quick haircut. 

Someone told me they wanted to meet at 3 to go hiking on one of the trails when I got back from town. 

I got back on time. After asking around, I found no clue of them. In my head,  I could still see the catarata feeding the water beneath. I chose not to wait a moment longer, grabbed my things, and headed to hike the water trail again. The second time was just as awesome as the first time I visited the waterfall.

Maybe I'd go a third time the next day, so far, the water trail beat all the other trails.

I went to bed happily with tired legs.

San Vito (Dec 16)

The morning was a blur, mostly because I was excited to see the town later. On "Free-Sunday", I decided to go at 1 in the afternoon with a group of students to San Vito. The traffic in the narrow streets moved quick. As soon as I got out of the taxi, I could feel the stares of the surrounding community. I wanted to break away from the group of arriving taxis of arriving taxi's but wanted to stay with the pack a t the same time.

After walking around for a bit, I eased myself into stores looking for souvenirs to buy.

What stood out to me while walking around was the mural near the town square garden. It was unfortunate that many stores were closed during our short visit that day. If things worked out the next day, I would try to head back to town.

Exploring (Dec 15)

Having collected most of our data for the project, I thought it'd be a good day to go further down the trail than we did before.

Skipping to the afternoon: I grabbed my hiking stuff and asked my group partner if she wanted to come with. I emphasized that this time I was hiking until I got tired. She was just as prepared as I was. In fact, she took the lead. It was no longer my hike, but hers.

We were speed-hiking the main trail for several minutes when it came time to take a turn and go on to one of the longer trails. I only heard the rumors of how tough a trail it can be. Those thoughts flooded my head when I felt my legs get really hot and felt sweat collect on my forehead. I felt the burn going up every slope. All of a sudden, she halted and quietly pointed ahead of the sloped trail. I peeked over the top of the sloped trail, doing my best to keep my loud breathing under control. There, I'd seen what looked like black monkeys crossing the trail. A group of these animals came out of the forest and crossed the path even closer than the ones we were looking at.

That experience fueled my imagination and so helped push me through the rest of the trail.

I went to bed nice & tired that day.

Warm Tea and Laptop (Dec 14)

This day was well-needed because my soft feet were aching anytime I was standing. I took my time eating breakfast this morning and went to the lab after. 

Mike, our mentor, was excited to see what we could put together with our collected data. Kassandra was already an expert at these types of things and got straight to work. I tried to make myself useful in any way possible. So I mostly worked on the easier things like making the graphs and making small tweaks to the poster. Warm tea made working on the poster a more relaxing experience. 

We took a long lunch break.

Then, we returned to working on the details of the poster. It was around this time that I read Scott's email about what is expected in a poster. There were a few changes to the poster that had to be made to meet those expectations. In between making edits to the project, I would sit back and take a sip of the warm tea and feel that the laptop charger was warm because it had been plugged to the wall for so long.

The day ended without any surprises, which I was thankful for, but at the same time bummed about. Weird.