Yesterday we had back to back ‘field trips’ and had to get up at 5am
in order to make it to breakfast and get to our classes on time (it was a bit
of a walk from our dorm). We separated in three groups: Ethnobotanical gardens,
Periurban (urban gardening), and organic farming. Me, Kellee, Sean, and Shaun
signed up for the ethnobotanical gardens today and will be attending a
Periurban workday on Saturday. The ethnobotanical gardens consisted of
primarily medicinal plants that can be used for a variety of ailments and
treatments.
But first we had to check out our gear and tools which consisted
of a giant machete in an intensely decorated and tassled sheath, a curved saw,
large clippers, and small clippers. We took our materials to the garden which
was a paradise in itself. We met the class we would be working with. I talked
to a girl named Kaylee from the Bahamas who taught me how to prune various medicinal trees.
For example, we began our first task by examining a tree called
the None (pronounced no-knee) which bore strange cactus-pinecone hybrid-looking
fruit that turned white when ripe. The pulp and the seeds can be ingested to
treat diabetes, arthritis, and is an anti-inflammatory. Then, intense, shoulder
breaking, sweaty pruning and branch gathering/occurring took place for the next
3 hours. We took pineapple breaks where students and the garden keeper used
machetes to cut rounds of pineapples for us.
Afterwards we cleaned up the
pruning-aftermath and checked out some jesus lizards and toured the rest of the
ethnobotanical garden with the head gardener. We tried everything from fresh
sugarcane, rosemary, oregano, basil, mint, to the miracle berry that makes
everything you eat taste sweet after you consume it, cacti that give you
energy, grasses that cure insanity, give you energy, leaves you press against
your forehead for headaches, and pretty much any plant with leaves can be used
for tea to cure any discomfort, cough, cramp, or sore when ingested. I can’t
begin to name most of the plants we learned about unfortunately but they were
all equally fascinating.
After a quick lunch and nap (we had been working from 6-11) we
went straight to our next class where we learned about different forest
ecosystems and biomes for ~30min before taking a bus to a forest reserve on
campus, our first trek into the tropical rain forest. Luckily for us there are rain forest reserves on EARTH grounds so we took a short bus ride and before we knew it we were walking through the rain forest. Previous EARTH students had laid down cement puzzle-like blocks as a path through the reserve. Almost as soon as we entered the forest we saw a family of spider monkeys moving around the canopy and lots of rustling. Apparently they were welcoming our arrival by throwing vegetative debris in our general direction. Cool.
We also saw a eyelash viper, blue jean frog, spiders, and a weird translucent slug that got squashed, and many 'social fly catchers' (a common bird here in CR). I also at one point took a short trip to use the forest facilities and ended up peeing on a large spider.
After we returned and had dinner, a few of us went to the pool and watched a large fruit bat fly in an '8' pattern very close to the water's edge to pick up insects for about 15 minutes. It was pretty cool.
More to come about the largest organic pineapple farm in the world!
Diana.
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