Day Twenty Three Part B

Day 13
After dinner, two other REU (research experience for under-grads) and I went to the swamp. We didn’t really plan it, but, well, it’s a long story.
So we were all walking back from dinner because we agreed that none of us liked walking back from dinner in the dark. When we got to the suspension bridge, I stopped for a moment and looked up at the stars. I grabbed their arms and told them to just look up. With all the light pollution by my house, I rarely see so many stars. It wasn’t even a super clear night, but to me it was incredible. So we spent about 20 minutes on the bridge laughing and looking for constellations. When none of us could find the big or little dipper we resorted to making up our own constellations. I saw a cat. I named it kitty. Dennis (one of the other people there) thought it should be called tiger while Jimena was on my side and liked kitty. Anyway after standing on the bridge for almost a half an hour, the topic of bioluminescent bacteria came up. (yes, I know. well what else are three self-classified nerds going to talk about?) Anywho, there had been some students claiming they had seen some in the woods nearby. (The bioluminescence can only be seen in the complete dark, with all flashlights turned off. How they “stumbled” upon some I'm not so sure of… I know the last thing that I would want is my flashlight turned off where bursting into the cafeteria saying you found a venomous snake doesn’t turn heads.) We decided that we wanted to go to the swamp and look for some. There is a marshey-esque body of water close to the river station. I agreed to come on the condition that they would walk me back to the lab afterwards. (There was no way I was doing that river station walk by myself again if I could avoid it.) So off we headed into the “bosque” to the “cantaranas”. We didn’t get very far. They suggested that I put on some closed toed shoes (I was wearing my flip-flops and that is a “no-no” when traversing the “bosque”. So I stopped in the cabin and changed into my Toms (Toms, for those of you who don’t know, are canvas shoes that are made by a company who donates one pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair they sell. One for one.) Anywho, they aren’t really mud-wear. Then we stopped at the Lab so the others could get their boots. I decided that I would run back to the cabin because, although my Toms have been “well loved” I didn’t want them covered in mud. Anyway I ran really fast because I thought that I was holding them up, but when I got back to the lab Jimena still wasn’t’ ready. It was nice not to be the last one back. Jimena is from here in Costa Rica and all of the Ticos (the Costa Ricans) are on “Tico-Time”. It makes me look like an early bird. I love it.
Anyway then we really headed off to the “cantaranas”. The word cantaranas in Spanish means swamp, but its origins are actually quite cute. It took me a while to make the connection, but now that I have I know that I won’t forget this word. Canta comes from the verb cantar which means to sing. Ranas is the Spanish word for frogs. Put those two together and you get the place where frogs sing. I thought it was quite lovely really. Anyway, neither my nor Jimena’s flashlight was really strong compared to the one that Dennis had, so we made him shine his beam was in front of us and then we got the stuff close by our feet. Originally it was Jimena then Dennis then me. But I kept getting freaked out by being at the back and so I made Dennis switch spots with me. After about 10 or 15 minutes of walking we arrived at the boardwalk that goes through the swamp. But it was filled with tourists. Which, inevitably meant that all of the cool frogs were long-gone. So we passed them up and kept walking. We stopped a couple of times looking for the bioluminescent bacteria but they were nowhere to be found. Right before we turned around to head home we turned off our flashlights one more time (by this time we already had the rule in place that once the flashlights were turned off no one was allowed to move lest I get confused and think them a snake). So we were all standing really still and suddenly Jimena screams LOOK LOOK LOOK scaring the rest of us quite badly. Anyway she had found some. We isolated where it was coming from and picked up a stick that was covered in it. It was SO cool. I had done transformations with it before in bio class, so I knew it existed, but to see it out in the forest on a decomposing log was just too cool. I wonder how the indigenous people explained that! Imagine seeing something glowing in the dark! How amazing.
Anyway on our way back we stopped at the cantaranas again. Unfortunately the tourists were still there but we made our way to an empty part of the bridge and looked for frogs. Now, saying we “looked” for frogs is completely misleading. There were so many there was really no looking involved. They were everywhere! We saw some really cool frogs though. The tourists were actually helpful. Jimena can speak French as well as Spanish and English and so she cozied up to the French tour guide and got him to show us two snakes. These were just babies and not poisonous, but it was still really neat. Then on our way out we saw an alligator. Well, no, it was technically a caiman. Dennis who lived in Florida was very quick to correct me of this grave mistake. It was not an alligator. It was a caiman. In fact I was informed that caiman are more closely related to crocodiles if you’re going to get picky. Apparently we were going to get picky. It was probably only about 5 feet long, but it was still quite cool. Then we walked back to the lab and I headed off to my cabina. It was quite a fun night.