When I was getting ready to come to Costa Rica, I knew that there were 3 things I absolutely intended to see. #1 was a\u00a0Quetzal– a colorful bird that is resembled largely in the Mayan Culture. #2 was none other than\u00a0the sloth. #3 was a Tapir– a large mammal that\u00a0seems to possess the body of a pig and\u00a0has a snout that resembles an elephants trunk. I was able to cross two of those things off my list, but the\u00a0Tapir turned out to be a little bit more difficult to track down.
\nNonetheless, I was able to add things to my “hey I saw that thing” list. During one of\u00a0our famous night hike adventures, I\u00a0saw a carnivorous frog, a coral snake, a tarantula, and a bluejeans poison dart frog. Yesterday we were walking along the trail just looking for birds when the guide pointed out a plant with large leaves. The plant is known as the heliconias plant and\u00a0one of the leaves on the plant had been bent down the center of the\u00a0vein of the stem as to produce a tent.\u00a0A closer look underneath the tent showed that there were actually white bats sleeping inside.\u00a0I never would have noticed that on my own and I definitely had no idea that bats would\u00a0use a leaf in the forest to\u00a0create a sort of makeshift house. \u00a0Just the other day I looked\u00a0down from an overpass and saw a river full of crocodiles that were at least seven foot long. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a\u00a0crocodile, only alligators, and never one so large. I saw more toucans and macaws that I ever imagined I would see and heard\/saw more monkeys\u00a0than one could count.
\nBesides the animals that we saw, we also got the chance to learn a little bit of history and culture. We visited a Maleku village. The Maleku is an indigenous people of\u00a0Costa Rica and learning about their culture and listening to the indigenous language\u00a0being spoken was a great opportunity. Since I am part Cherokee Indian, I was able to pick up on some of the words that were spoken in the indigenous language, because the Maleku language seemed to be a mixture of old world spanish and shared some of the Native American words. The stories were quite familiar as well.
\nWith the diversity that Costa Rica, both biologically and culturally, anyone–bird lover or not– could go on this trip and learn alot from the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was getting ready to come to Costa Rica, I knew that there were 3 things I absolutely intended to see. #1 was a\u00a0Quetzal– a colorful bird that is resembled largely in the Mayan Culture. #2 was none other than\u00a0the sloth. #3 was a Tapir– a large mammal that\u00a0seems to possess the body of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33,35,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-biology","category-costa-rica","category-faculty-led","category-maymester"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/studyabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}