A picture says more than a thousand words: the first few days

The Current location: UNA, Heredia, Costa Rica 9°59’55’’N 84°6’35’’ W

As I arrived to the airport in Costa Rica I was picked right away to be taken into the wilderness of Costa Rica. At least so I thought. Having heard horrifying stories from my friends Ludvig and Fredrik about monstrous insects that penetrate every visible area of skin, I was all dressed up ready to be attacked: I was wearing the for biologists so typical pants and a quick dry button-down shirt and a pair of heavy hiking boots. "You look awfully biological" was the first thing my thesis advisor said to me as he saw me walk out with my old-school hiking backpack. I instantly felt a little stupid. Our first day was spent driving. A lot. I am guestimating that maybe 6 hours was spent in the car that day. The first stop included a visit to a roundabout. One of the passengers in the car was sick and had been given diuretic medications, and he promptly needed to go to the bathroom. Now. So the bushes by the roundabout had to do, and the car stopped in the middle of the roundabout. The second stop, which was originally planned to be the first, was the Tárcoles river. One of the most contaminated rivers in Latin America, that oddly enough have a lot of crocodiles in it. At one of the bridges the crocodiles are plenty due to tourists feeding them, and that’s where we stopped. The crocodiles were big. A little too big for comfort, but luckily they don’t jump very high so I felt save looking down at them from the bridge. The following day we visited the playa Bahia Ballena in the Pacific. It was beautiful, and Mother Nature put on quite a show with heavy rains coming in. But as the title suggests, a few pictures will say more than a thousand words, so I will let them speak mostly for themselves:

Proof that I am actually here looking at crocodiles. In about a month I will be down by the sand bank stealing her eggs... Am I a little worried that I might loose a limb or two? Yes.

The research team on a scenic walk exploring the area

#crocodiles #costarica #beach #firstday #driving