Hi, I'm Dilly Hoyt from Llanelli, Wales. Welcome to my blog; here you will read all about my adventures as I study at UWC Costa Rica, representing the UK.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Project Week

This week, I travelled along with twenty eight other people to Monteverde cloud forest, located in the North of Costa Rica.
We left at 5am monday morning, and travelled around five hours, jumping from minibuses and taxis to public buses.  After all of this travelling, we were dropped off at the beginning of the trail, which we followed by foot until we reached our accommodation for the week.
The walk was absolutely beautiful-it was one of the first times that I had explored a cloud forest.  Throughout the two hour hike, I saw many creatures: monkeys, lizards, frogs and birds.  Some of them I filmed, like the spider monkeys, (although it's refusing to upload!)
Each day, we worked from 8am until 11.45am maintaining the paths weaving through the forests.  Lunch was at 12pm, which should I mention, was delicious!  After lunch, we'd then go out and work again until 4pm.
Maintaining the path involved widening it,  which required many shovels, pickaxes and rakes.  the majority of us ended up with blisters and sores on our hands from all of the hard work, but it was definitely worth it!  The difference between the path before and after was incredible!



Whilst working on the path, we came across many creatures..

We had hundreds of moths each night visit us on the balcony.  The diversity of species that lived in Monteverde was incredible!


This project week was perfect, as not only did we give to the community, but we also had plenty of time to ourselves, which enabled me to read- a thing that I hadn't done since arriving here six months ago!
Each morning I'd get up to sit on the hammock and read my book, whilst occasionally watching the cloud's shadows pass by on volcano Aronal.
It became quite chilly at night, which was a lovely change from the radiating sunshine and still, humid air back on campus.  It amazed me, the contrast between the environment there, and a few miles away up the path.  Mark, a scientist who worked to protect El Bosque Eterno los niños, spoke to us about how different the biodiversity is from one side of a mountain in Monteverde to another.  The difference between biodiversity was so vast that you could have easily assumed that he was talking about another country when looking at the species list of both areas.
Mark gave an interesting presentation about the mysterious decline of amphibians in the 1980's (not only in Costa Rica, but around the world!)  We discussed several possibilities of factors that could have affected the amphibians, and came to the conclusion that it was not only one factor that affected them, that many factors had played an active role in the declination of amphibians.  These being things like climate change, the depletion of the ozone and disease.
He then gave interesting statistics about Monteverde.  It turns out that although Monteverde is 0.0048% of the Earth's surface, there are over 100 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, and 1,200 species of amphibians and reptiles living within its bounds.  It's one of the few remaining habitats that support all six species of the cat family- jaguars, ocelots, pumas, oncillas, margays and jaguarundis-as well as the endangered three-wattled bellbird and resplendent quetzal.
Overall, I had an absolutely incredible time with awesome people-many of whom I got to know a lot better.  I hope to do many more activities like this over the next year and a half, as it has just made me realise that there is so much more of Costa Rica to see that I haven't explored.. YET!





Keep Reading! 
       Dilly x











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