settling in at San Luis

Well, I said I was looking for a furry roommate...



In addition to my first encounter with a tarantula, on Monday, I watched a gecko dine on various small insects, saw a cockroach almost as long as my hand, and ran into a praying mantis that I'm pretty sure did some stunt doubling work as a Cardassian warship once upon a time. There's plenty more mundane fauna all around here in San Luis**, from the horses at the stable just down the road to plenty of cows and dogs, and the rather large iguana hanging out at the tourist stop along the Pan-American Highway also deserves a special mention. This morning, a rather spectacular purplish-blue hummingbird was flitting around a bush on my way back to the faculty cabin.

We arrived here yesterday at the San Luis Research Station in time for lunch, after a 4 1/2 hour drive up from San José -- mostly on the one-lane Pan-American Highway that is the backbone of transportation through Latin America, then turning off for the last 30km or so on unpaved roads through the Tilarán mountains, just on the Pacific side of the continental divide. The stunning views of the lush mountainside, with the clouds sometimes below the peaks, and the occasional glimpse of the Gulf of Nicoya, left the grime and congestion of the capital far, far behind. (As one student gasped, "Wow! It looks just like the brochure!")

Classes start later today, so yesterday, we got to settle in and get our first tour of the campus, which we are sharing at the moment with some TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) students from our University, biology programs from Hendrix College, and miscellaneous other biological researchers, plus the dedicated support staff. Our students live on campus through Saturday, at which point they'll meet their homestay families, with whom they'll live for most of the rest of the program. The faculty, on the other hand, are sharing a rather nice cabin - the other two professors on our program are sharing the very large bedroom, while I have the small one to myself.


* since I wrote this, the cleaning staff has come to our cabin, & mi nuevo amigo, la tarantula, has gone to a better place.
** To clarify my earlier posts: we are actually in San Luis, a village of 380 people, sitting about 6-8 kilometers away from each of Santa Elena and Monteverde, neither of which is especially large but both of which at least make it onto maps of Costa Rica.