La Selva: The Most Humid Place on Earth*

*this is my guess, but I haven't been everywhere on earth.

 We spent the first week after Spring Break back with our homestay families in San Jose and we had lots of field trips to hospitals and labs and markets. It was a good week and it was nice to see my homestay family and to speak some Spanish. We came to La Selva, the hot, humid field station in the northwest of Costa Rica, on Saturday and we've been busy with classes and field trips all week.

The bridge crossing the river in La Selva. Every day, I walk across the bridge to get to class and see gigantic iguanas and sloths in the trees, plus lots of fish in the water below. I promise to bring my camera along more often.

 Our first trip was to visit a Dole banana plantation. I really enjoyed the trip because I really miss agriculture and because I'm obsessed with anything having to do with production lines. Seeing the bananas floating in the water conveyors to be cut and checked and labeled and packaged was so interesting. And don't worry, the water is recycled. We finished off the tour with a shot of banana liquor, which I actually really enjoyed (unlike most hard alcohol). It tasted a lot like bananas and only started burning once it reached my esophagus.
 On Wednesday, we went into a nearby shanty-town to interview people about their knowledge of Dengue fever and to look for mosquito breeding sites. Dengue is a mosquito-borne virus that causes no symptoms in some, a few days of really painful muscles and fever in some, or a hemorrhagic, life-threatening disease in others. We went door to door and asked people a few questions to gauge their knowledge about Dengue symptoms, transmission and control methods. Once we spoke with them, we asked if we could walk around their yards and gardens to look for bike tires and bricks and other little pools of stagnant water. We found a few nasty little puddles and took samples back to the field station to identify larvae. It was a great (hot, sweaty) day and I really enjoyed speaking Spanish and meeting people and learning more about a disease that has huge repercussions in the tropics.
 The last cool activity of the week was a scavenger hunt for medicinal plants. Our professor went into the jungle and marked some trees that may have fungicidal properties, and marked all the points on GPS units. This morning, we were given the GPS units and sent out to the collect samples. My group got lost (and walked 5km in the boiling heat) and ended up with only one sample, but it was a lot of fun and good exercise.
  That's it for now! I'll be back with more news next week.