long lost blog post

ok, so i'm totally still alive. I have been having such a nice time with my sweetheart that I haven't really been thinking about blogging. I will try to do better this week ok?

So here are just a few random updates.

• the vacation was great. After the hotel in Liberia, the sweetheart and I rented a car and went to Tamarindo - a cool touristy beach town. We ate awesome sushi and stayed in a really cool villa that unfortunately had a broken air conditioner (thank ghod for fans).


• after Tamarindo, we went to Playa Grande. I wanted to go there because apparently leatherback sea turtles nest there. Sadly, it was the wrong time of year to see them on the beach. The hotel there was great though. We had an awesome dinner (ahi tuna ftw!), and sat in a hammock under the stars for hours. Sooo nice.


• the day after Playa Grande we came back to Santa Rosa. I showed my sweetheart the forest, and the monument, and the little museum. He also got to see tonns of frogs, bugs, deer, coatis, and CAPUCHINS! LV happened to be hangin out by the casona when we went for a walk there. I got to introduce him to my favorite little Chutney (who is about to have her baby any day now), Mostaza, Cayenne, and all the others.


• Now I am back at work. On Monday, I took the sweetheart out to monkeyschool with me. We were following the group BH. It was a rough day. They didn't stop to rest the whole time and we lost them a couple times too. They also made us run up and down hills all morning. By 6am we were both dead tired. It was a good day for him to see what it is we do here, but it was not a good day to watch monkeys and see them up close. Hopefully when I spend the day with LV he will come and they will be a little kinder to us.


• the rainy season is supposed to start at the end of May, but it appears to have come early. The past 3 days in a row there have been crazy thunderstorms with tonns of water. I really like storms so I have been enjoying them. There are frogs EVERYWHERE! I could see how it could get old after a while though. Everything is damp and the bugs are starting to come out. I am thankful that I am going to be returning to Canada in a month because by then I will definitely be ready to go.


• The sweetheart was supposed to go home today, but we are having such a nice time he decided to extend his ticket for 1 more week. I am super happy that I don't have to say goodbye yet (cause that's going to SUCK). I will try to blog every day but you will have to forgive me if I miss a couple posts here and there. I want to spend every last possible second with him. I do have a few pics to post from the vacation.. so I promise i'll get to that sooon.

Anyway, I hope everybody is good!
xoxoxox
Day

vacation baby!

So its day one of the awesomest vacation ever! Right now I am sitting on the giant bed in my air conditioned hotel room using the free wireless. Below is a photo of the view off my balcony.


In a few minutes, im going to walk across the street and get some sushi for lunch. Then i'm going to look in the stores, and then i'm going to come back and sit in the sun near that pool all day. Hopefully I can get some colour on my legs (and not burn them again) so that my arms and legs don't look like they belong to two different people. When it gets dark, i'm going to walk around and find someplace good to eat dinner. Then i'm going to come back and talk to my internet sweetheart until it is time for him to get ready to leave to see me. I am sooo excited - there are butterflies in my stomach.

I will take more photos of this hotel in a little while. Right now there's some sushi that needs to be nommed.

happy happy happy
Dayna

Update: There is a mango and a banana tree beside the pool, and a lazy cat that hangs out in the yard! I love it.

custard apple?

YAY! So I am officially on vacation! I am really happy for a bunch of reasons. One: I was getting pretty burnt out from the long hours combined with the humid weather. It will be nice to have a few days where I don't have to work. Two: I am going to go stay in Liberia at a hotel tomorrow. I plan to eat a lot, lie by the pool all day, and sleep in an air conditioned room with a bed that has a real mattress. Three (and most importantly): on Thursday, my internet sweetheart is coming to visit me!! I cannot wait to see him. I'm sooo excited! We are going to travel around for a few days, and then (if I can manage to wake his ass up at 4am) he will be attending monkeyschool with me. Its gonna be awesome.

I will try to blog as much as I can while on vacation... but if I can't get online every day, i'll post like crazy when I get back to Santa Rosa.

In other news, here's a little bit of WTF for you. Here is a photo of one of the walls in the kitchen area. You can see the fruit poster on the wall (there's one with veggies on the other side of the door). Today after coming back from the field, I was looking at this poster while drinking some pop and noticed something strange.

So can somebody please tell me wtf a custard apple is? I have never in my life heard of one. I think it looks like a rotten cauliflower, don't you? Its kind of odd - of all the different fruits to put on a spanish/english fruit poster, custard apple made the cut. Anyway, if somebody knows - please tell me! I am dying to know. Also, does it taste like custard? Cause that might actually be good. NOM!

Anyway, im gonna go count down the hours till my sweetheart arrives. I'll blog again soon!

xoxox
Dayna

nom nom nom. ticks!

Yesterday I spent the day with the Guanacaste monkeys. It was again really hot and humid and the monkeys were lazy. They spent the entire day resting; sometimes too high in the trees for me to see them, and sometimes down on the ground with me. While they were down on the ground, I was hangin' out with the juveniles. One of them came right up to me and perched on a vine that was hanging near my shoulder. I looked over at him and he reached over to touch me. I stayed very still so I wouldn't scare him and he slowly put his hand on my shoulder, picked off a tick that was crawling on me (that I didn't notice), and ate it. I'm pretty sure this means I am one of the family now.

<3 Day

P.S. Tomorrow is the start of my vacation! I can't even explain how excited I am.

ssssssnakes!

So yesterday was another retardo-long day. I had to get up at 3:50am, and didn't make it home until 6:30pm. The air was really humid, i was soaked in sweat, and the monkeys didn't stop to rest for more than a few minutes all day. I was utterly exhausted when I got home. I am starting to feel a little burnt-out from these crazy long hours... I don't even have time to unwind when I get back to the dorms before its time to eat and then go to sleep. I am really happy that today is my day off, and that I only have 1 more long day before my holiday (i will post more about the awesomeness of my holiday soon. i am sooo excited.)

Anyway, yesterday while I was working I did see 2 cool things. Snakes! The first snake a large ratsnake. I was sitting on a rock and watching a monkey in the tree. The snake slithered up right beside me before it noticed I was there. IT WAS REALLY BIG! Like at least 6 feet long. When it saw me, it quickly went inside a hole before I could get a photo of it. After a while, it must have gotten bored because it came back out and was moving around on the ground. It even went up into the monkey tree and sat there for a bit. Normally, I would have been a little nervous around such a large snake that was so close to me, but the monkeys didn't seem to be too concerned by it so I decided it must not be too dangerous. (If they see a boa or a poisonous snake they will all alarm and cause a huge ruckus). Eventually, I managed to get some good photos of it and a video so you can see how big it is!


The second snake was a little brown vine snake. This one just slithered on past me while I was having my lunch and then climbed into a bush to chill out. Vinesnakes aren't dangerous either so I got in nice and close and took a good pic. It didn't seem to mind at all.


Anyway, hope you enjoy the pics and the video. I still need to see an anteater before I leave for home. Hopefully I can catch one on film for you.

Back to work. sigh
<3 Day

long day

Today I had to get up at 3:50am in order to get to the monkey tree by sunrise. I hung out with the monkeys all day and didn't get home till 6:40pm. That's like a 14 hour work day.
Im tired.. and annoyed that I have half an hour before I have to go to sleep and do it again tomorrow.

sorry, this is all the blog I can handle tonight.

ill do better tomorrow

spider baby!

So yesterday I was out with LV, and something pretty cool happened. In the afternoon, a mother spider monkey and her baby came along and spent some time with the capuchins. The capuchin juveniles started to play on the ground and the little spider monkey came down and joined them!! This is pretty cool because spider monkeys almost never come to the ground - and this little one was running all over the place! I took a whole bunch of video of her. She looks all gangly and crazy when she moves. Isn't she cute?

xoxox

Dayna

forest textures

Here are some photos of forestey textures that I have collected over the last little while. I like finding cool patterns in the trees and the ground and the plants. Can you figure out what it is you are looking at?

xox
D

tourist fail

I spent today with LV. In the morning, I was following them through a pretty decent spot of forest when I heard a rustling on the ground. I looked over and 2 awesome land turtles were plodding through the leaves. I walked up to them and they stopped and looked at me. I was pretty impressed because they were both very brave - they didn't hide inside their shells at all! After a minute, they continued on their way and I watched them for a bit. At one point, one of them got stuck in some twigs while its friend sped off so i lifted it up and put it back on track (and don't worry mom, i washed my hands and used sanitizer after). Then I went back to chasing the monkeys. They were sooo cute. Too bad my camera battery was dead. :(

Later on in the afternoon, I was sitting under a big tree while LV was napping in the sun. A couple tourists walked by and noticed me sitting there. Below is the conversation that resulted.

Tourists: hello. can you tell us what is at the end of this trail?
Me: this trail will take you back to the casona.
Tourists: what kind of things are at the casona?
Me: well, there's a beautiful park, and a monument, and a small museum.
Tourists: That's it?
Me: That's it.
Tourists: There's just nature here?
Me: yes. This national park is full of nature.

Then the tourists looked at me like I was somehow ripping them off and walked away. The whole time they were talking to me, the monkeys were asleep in the trees directly above their heads. They didn't even notice.

"Just nature". sheesh.

monday randoms

Good morning mah peeps. Here are just a few randoms to start the day.

• There is this cute little frog that lives in my sink. At night, it sits in the drain under the leaky faucet and lets the water drip on its head. During the day, it hides. Often, I build it a little fort using my mouthwash bottles and it will stay in there and chill out for the afternoon. Last night when I came home from the field, I found it inside my bathroom bag. um....I love you frog, but you swim in the toilet. Please do not sit on my toothbrush, ok?
  
  
• Last night while I was eating dinner, a praying mantis landed on my plate. It stared at me for a while with its huge crazy eyes but then flew away before I could eat it. NOM!
  
  
• Last night, I also found an assassin bug in the bathroom. I don't see them often, but when I do, I kind of get the creeps. Assassin bugs can bite people when they are sleeping and some of them are carriers of the microorganisms that cause Chagas disease. Chagas disease can have almost no initial symptoms for many years, but later serious problems like heart and intestinal diseases can show up. People can also die from it if untreated. Ayways, all assassin bugs are killed on sight. The one last night went "squish".
  
  
• Today is my day off. Our driver Ronnie just came over and offered me and the PHD student's PHD girlfriend a free ride into Liberia! We are going to get some more groceries (we need veggies) and I am going to buy a pair of leather polinas for one of my professors who works on spider monkeys in Belize. she asked me to bring her some as a favour and I have been meaning to pick them up for ages!
  
  
• Somebody messed with my sweet little Chutney. She has a giant gash on her left cheek. It is huge and bloody and looks like a mess. Who would fight with a pregnant monkey? It was probably KathyLee...the alpha female. KathyLee has a massive cut on her head that appeared at the same time as Chutney's wound. Perhaps poor Chutney stepped out of line and got the smackdown. Everybody must know their place in a monkey group. Anyway, I hope her pretty little face heals fast. It looks like it hurts. p.s. Chutney's baby belly is getting really FAT!
  
  
• Random strange monkey fact: When capuchin babies nurse, they gently massage their mom's other nipple with their hand as they are drinking. All the babies do it and its funny to watch. Every single monkey group has a pregnant female in it right now! I can't wait for baby season!

ok that's it! i'll try to do another blog post later tonight if i have time.
xox
Dayna

Tayras!

I saw the tayras again today! i'm almost positive it was the same three ones as last time. They were eating figs in a big tree this morning and I snuk up on them. At first, they ran away... but they must have wanted those figs really badly because after a few minutes, they came back. They hissed at me the whole time they ate, but I stood really still and managed to get some video!

Look at the fun tayra movie I made!! When I add music, it totally looks like they are dancing for me instead of threatening me! hehe




xoxox
Dayna

:P

Here is a photo of a little dude from LV - I think it might be Mousse, but its hard to tell from this photo. Also, I don't know the young monkeys very well at all cause I don't have to gather data on them.
Anyway, monkeys make this face a lot when its really hot. I love it.
<3




P.S. What i really want is to get a monkey temper tantrum on video. They are loud and hilarious. >.<

Randoms

Just a few quick randoms cause BH kicked my butt today.

• Today I was at the monkey tree (after walking for half an hour) at 5:10am, but BH had already decided to leave. It was still dark outside and it took an hour of searching before I found them. little jerks.
  
  
• I spent the entire day climbing up and down hills. Today was one of the most physical days I have had since I arrived in Costa Rica. I am so unbelievably tired.
  
  
• I nearly lost the monkeys a few times, but managed to follow them till sunset (I was worried about that).
  
  
• I think one of the tick bites on my ankle is infected. It is really red and sore. And it looks pretty nasty.
  
  
• If I find a new baby in this group I want to name it Pimms. (if you haven't tried Pimms, you should. Its yummeh.)
  
  
• I would give anything for a foot massage right now (anything except my first born that is... I already traded it away for a foot massage a while ago)
  
  
• Today I had to make a new hole in my belt cause my pants were falling down. woo!
  

ok. that's it.
i'll blog better tomorrow on my day off.
xox
Day

Bosque humido

So today I got to go to a brand new part of the forest and learn a new monkey group! The name of the group is BH which stands for bosque humido (humid forest). These monkeys all have the names of alcohols... Guaro, Campari, Sangria, Guinness, etc, etc. They live in undisturbed forest which means that the trees in their home range are HUGE! Its awesome. Their area is also super hilly and many of the trails have ropes to help you climb up and down. Im gonna get buns of steel walking up and down those trails. hehe This group is the most difficult group to follow... in fact, the PHD student is getting me to learn them because the other field assistant hasn't been able to complete a whole day without losing them. I guess I must be doing a good job here cause he is making me go out with them all alone tomorrow - and I have only had one day to learn who is who. I really hope I don't lose them...or mess up the IDs!!!

The BH group of monkeys is interesting to watch. This afternoon a bunch of them came down to the ground and dug holes in the side of a hill. Then they crawled into the holes and only their bums and tails were sticking out. They sat like that with the other monkeys watching from beside the holes for about 10 minutes. The PHD student doesn't know why they do this...and no other groups do it either. Weird!

One other cool thing about this group os that two of the females (Daiquiri and Skyy) are pregnant! I hope I get to find a baby!

Anyway, I have to be up at 4am tomorrow and need to be at the monkey tree by 5. So i'm going to go lie down. I'll try to get some photos of my new monkey friends soon!

xoxox
Dayna


P.S. Today is my little sister's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY LINDS! LOVE YOU!

wasp tree

So here is another little video of a tree-hive that I found the other day. This tree trunk was filled with tiny little wasps (they were probably less than 1cm long). I was able to get right in there for a few seconds cause little wasps are no match for me! muahahaha! When they noticed me getting all up in their grill, a few of them flew out to defend the hive. Three wasps flew into my hair on the back of my head. Well, the joke was on them. My hair and neck were so sweaty that they got stuck. I was able to pull them out and squish them with my fingers before I got stung.

Oh, the things I will do for a blog post. Gotta keep the fans happy after all. heh.



p.s. I would not get this close to a big wasp hive. The big ones have painful stings that burn for days.

cicadas are loud

So around the start of March, I began hearing this really strange sound at sunset. It sounded like a tinny-sounding siren and always seemed to come from a nearby location which I couldn't quite pinpoint. One day, I asked one of the other researchers what was up with the siren - and was really surprised at their answer. Cicadas are the ones making all the racket! I knew cicadas were loud, but didn't really realize that that is what they sounded like (we don't have cicadas in Alberta).

What is a cicada you ask? This is.

They are one of the most beautiful insects in my opinion - they are big, have long clear wings, and gigantic eyes. Plus, they are hemipterans - which means that their mouthparts are specialized for sucking the juices out of plants (aka - they don't have the ability to bite or sting). I found this cicada while I was searching for monkeys yesterday. It was lying on the road, half-dead. I picked it up with the stick, did a little photo shoot, and then set it safely on a leaf.

The other day, I was with the LV monkeys and me and Chutney were hanging out on this ridge near sunset time. Because I was high up, I could see a huge stretch of jungle below me, and the cicadas started calling way off in the distance. It seems like one will start to call, and then its neighbour will echo it, and that one's neighbour will echo it, and so on, and so on. The sound of their calls started off in the distance, and then the sound moved like a wave towards me. The whole forest was calling by the time the wave reached me. It was awesome. Then Chutney found a cicada and bit its head off. It was still calling when she ate it. nom nom nom.

Anyway, here is a little movie that I took the other day. The video is totally boring - its just a pan of the forest, but you can really hear the cicadas calling all around me.

*buzzzzzzzzz*
Dayna

bino-owl

The PHD student has this insane camera that makes me so jealous. One of the lenses that he has is as long as my forearm! With it, he is able to take a close-up photo of a monkey's face when it is 30 metres up in a tree. I feel totally inadequate when I look at my little point and shoot camera. If the light is not exactly perfectly perfect, my photos come out completely blurry when I try to use the zoom to capture something that's far away.

A little while ago, the british spider monkey chick told me that she takes far away photos by shooting them through her binoculars. Cool idea huh? the other day, I had a chance to try out her technique. It was the same day that I found all the cool guanacaste seeds. I was walking along in a good part of the forest, and this huge owl flew past me and perched in a tree right in front of me. It was pretty high up in the trees but it sat there for a really long time and stared at me. Here is the final result. Its no mega-super-extenda-lens photo like the phd student can take...but it'll do.

p.s. this is called a spectacled owl. I don't know why it was out in the daytime.



xox
Dayna

burn vine

So I was going to write about the evil plant Sloania... but i'll save that post for another day. I have a new evil plant to talk about. Burn vine. Burn vine is some kind of plant that grows in the forest. Apparently it is covered with little hairs, and when it touches your skin you develop a blister that feels like a burn. This is all what I have been told by other people who live here. I have never had the chance to examine burn vine up close and I don't even know what it looks like. However, I have been burned by burn vine multiple times.

The problem is that when burn vine initially touches me, it doesn't hurt at all. It just feels like any of the other hundred kinds of vine that brush against me as I walk through the woods. And the burning oozing blisters don't form until hours after I get home from the forest. So its really hard to pinpoint the exact moment that you get burned.

Anyway, yesterday some burn vine got me on the neck. Here is a picture of what it looked like last night. It was oozing and burning and red. Here is a photo of it today, now that it has started to scab over. Its way more noticeable now. Sexy, I know.

Hey - at least I didn't get razor vine on the neck. One touch from that stuff and it rips your skin right open. Thankfully I can recognize it and steer clear when I see it.

I must not pick at this burn on my neck. It will be difficult but i'll just have to focus all my attention on picking the multitude of tick bites on my ankles instead. ha.

*scratch* *scratch* *scratch*

phenology friday

So yeah. Yesterday's post was totally an April Fools thing. haha. As if I could quit my monkey blog - I love blogging! I think that this is one of the best ways for me to make lasting memories and it makes me happy that I'll always be able to come back and read about my different adventures - even after I go back to canada. Plus this way, when my friends and family ask me "omg so how is costa rica?!", I can just tell them to read the blog and I don't have to repeat myself a thousand times. :)

So, back to the business of blogging. Today we did phenology. I think the PHD student was impressed cause I got my trees all done quickly (usually it takes a couple full days). I love phenology days. I get to listen to music on my ipod while I walk, and I get to visit trails that I don't have a chance to go to very often on monkey days. Its cool to monitor the trees and to see how they are growing and changing each month. It makes me feel all in-tune with nature n stuff.

One of the best trees in the forest is the guanacaste tree. They get gigantic and they look really cool when they are fully mature. See? Before the british spider monkey chick left to go home, she showed me a guanacaste seed that she had found. They were so pretty that from that point on I always looked on the ground for fallen seeds when I came across a large guanacaste. Weeks and weeks I searched to no avail. There were no seeds to be found.

Well today I hit the jackpot. I was walking in my favorite part of the forest and I noticed a big guanacaste tree that had started to drop its fruits to the ground. I had always seen the fruits high up in the trees but hadn't gotten the chance to examine one up close. When I picked it up, I realized that it was a giant seed pod! (lightbulb) I broke it open and out fell a whole bunch of beautiful guanacaste seeds! I collected a bunch of them and filled up my pocket. I have decided to take them home and make them into beads. Then I am going to make my good friend who is a jewelery designer help me put them into a pretty necklace. I'll even make one for her too. Neat huh? I have a bunch of seeds so if I can figure out some cool looking jewelry, I will give them to my peeps as gifts! Yay!!

That's all for now. tomorrow i'll write about either: sloania - an evil species of tree in the forest, using my binoculars to take close up photos, or another bee tree that I found today (well, wasp actually). Which would you like to hear about first?

xoxo
Dayna

goodbye

So I have survived another month here in monkeyland. I am pretty impressed with myself that I have managed to keep up with the regular blog posts. March was my best month yet I think. 27 posts out of 31 - not bad!

I think I am running out of things to say though... and instead of just blah blah blahing about nothing, I have decided to retire my blog. I need to focus on my schoolwork and collecting as much data as possible while I am here anyway.

Its been a blast. thanks so much for reading!

bye
xox
Dayna