Sustainability and the Environment: "The Road into the Lowlands"

Let's go back in time for a bit, into the last few weeks of April, 2016. The adventurers were halfway through their second field trip; having fled the old pirate stronghold of El Castillo, Nicaragua, they dipped into the Costa Rican lowlands with their treasures and took refuge in the forests of La Selva, on the property of an old reclusive explorer named Giovanni, where they knew that they'd be safe. If any of the pirate ghosts were to find their trail, they would never risk leaving their big fat cheeky ships behind to pursue the adventurers into the forests. 

The forests surrounding Giovanni's offered the adventurers a unique opportunity for insight into the biological diversity of this part of Costa Rica, as well as a chance to better understand the ways that humans interact with the natural world. To start things off, Adam decided to supplement the Nicaragua PSA farm lessons with a tour of a PSA farm here in Costa Rica. He took the adventurers to a man named Don Zorro's farm, and I know what you're thinking, but I really don't think he's like the actual Zorro, although he could be; I never tested his swordplay. 

Here's Adam and Zorro telling the adventurers about all the defferences between Costa PSAs and Nicaragua PSAs (some) 

Well the adventurers all managed to avoid the deadly poke of Zorro, and even convinced him to show them around his property a little bit, where they found good examples of selective logging, which is kind of a middle ground between random deforestation and hardcore conservation. If you're thinking that this little adventure would be a perfect opportunity for a group photo of the adventurers, then you and me think a lot alike. Here's that photo we were talking about:

Everyone seems happy and well fed 

Well the adventurers went to sleep for a few nights, and then they woke up and went on a lot of adventures, and then before they knew it, all of a sudden, it was CRNH Herp Day! Isn't that neat? You might be wondering what Herp Day is, so I'll tell you; it's basically the day that the adventurers get to go out and look for all sorts of snakes, lizards, frogs, all good stuff like that. Doesn't that sound fantastic?

The first thing that these adventurers did was to go out into the forest and measure transects, and then sample within those transects to see how many different species and individuals they could find in the given area. Here's a photo of Meg doing just that:

If you don't keep a close eye on the numbers, so much could go terribly wrong 

 When they'd done all the transect sampling, the adventurers headed back up to Giovanni's for a secret activity. See, the night before, Adam and Karen and Hector and all the TAs had gone out under cover of darkness looking for all the creepy crawlies they could find, and they put them in nice bags full of leaves and water and and hid them away. The next afternoon, Adam busted them out to show them off to all the adventurers and teach them all about Herps. 

Amanda seems pretty psyched and hopeful that this guy might turn into some sort of prince or something 

Aislyn and Sadia have to remember these aren't chocolate frogs like in Harry Potter

Julia is waiting to see if this guy is gonna try to hop right into Angela's mouth 

Meg is most likely getting peed on 

Aislyn looks like she wants to adopt this frog and carry it around with her for the rest of her years 

Emma looks like an interesting witch who just turned her enemy into this snake 

This guy looks like he's thinks he's some sort of Egyptian pharaoh or something, but he's just a tree boa

It was the perfect time for a Nature Fake photo session 

When all of the adventurers were all done looking at all the awesome Herps, they set them free back in their native jungle and had some dinner, and then when night fell they went out on their own beautiful night hike to see what sort of nocturnal creatures they could find. Spoiler alert: they totally found a bunch of awesome stuff. 

Dan and Aislyn are pretty stoked to get to look for lizards for school 

 The adventurers spent that night roaming around the forest looking for critters, and then when they had tuckered themselves all out, they went to sleep and tried their best to get some rest, because they knew they would need it for the next morning. After all, the next morning they were heading out to the old pineapple farm to learn about the difference between organic and traditional farming practices, the impact of this crop on the land, and the lives of the people who depend on pineapples for their livelihood. 

Their tour guide at the pineapple farm was the Costa Rican Terminator basically, and he showed the adventurers how to cut and serve a pineapple with a machete in less than ten seconds-- exactly the sort of things the parents were hoping these kids would learn on their semester abroad. 

He said to the pineapple, "Come with me if you want to live," and then promptly ate it 

The adventurers were sure to soak all of this good stuff in, because they knew that they would soon be leaving Giovanni's and lighting out into the lowland territories, maybe never to return to this particular place ever again. But they had learned much here, from snakes to pineapples, and that's really just about all that you can hope for in this life, isn't it? 

Their classroom is a sea of pineapple