Day 5 - Horseback Riding and Cafe Campesino
Day five started bright and early with breakfast at 7, and the first of two groups heading out to horseback ride at 7:30 and the second group leaving at 8:45. After Bukky braided everyone's hair we were ready to hit the trails.
The started down a long line of eucalyptus trees. The bark had green and orange stripes and looked like it was painted and peeling like a paper birch tree peels.
Lex and Lolo both rode the same mule. The mule moved better for Lolo than for Lexi. Lex and her mule were so far behind that she wondered if the ride would ever end.
We saw blue morpho butterflies, wild hogs and picked fresh grapefruit for one of the groups to use for their research. Karlee, Jesse, Wendy and Lucas, from Texas, read a journal article about ants avoiding grapefruit. They want to see if leaf cutter ants will also avoid grapefruit, especially the leaves and rind to see if they can come up with a low cost way to keep leaf cutter ants from eating the Cacao leaves (plant who's bean is used to make chocolate). We had fish for lunch w salad, beans and rice. We had awesome chocolate cake at lunch and sang to Garrett for his 17th birthday!
For dinner we went to the home of Aracelly. She got a loan to build a large roofed outdoor cooking area called Cafe Campecino where she instructs groups on how to make a traditional meal. We divided into 3 groups. One group learned to make tortillas, another cerviche, and the last made a salad. The salad group learned how to cut tomatoes to look like roses.
She served chicken that had such an amazing flavor. Jackson was a master flipping tortillas.
Ellie helped make the salty lime juice used for the cerviche.
They had little glasses we used to try the lime-salt mix to see how tangy it was. It mad our eyes close and we all laughed. Eddie, or driver taught us a traditional toast when we drank the lime juice of the cerviche.
We sang happy birthday to Garrett, Zach and Jaime at dinner. We all sang songs together using Alejandra's speaker. Alejandra is Aracelly's daughter. It thundered and poured down rain all around the cooking building we were in.
Group photo at Aracelly's
Disclaimer:
Photos to come. It takes a long time to upload them on the wifi while all the students are using laptops for their research. Thanks for being patient with the blog.
The started down a long line of eucalyptus trees. The bark had green and orange stripes and looked like it was painted and peeling like a paper birch tree peels.
Lex and Lolo both rode the same mule. The mule moved better for Lolo than for Lexi. Lex and her mule were so far behind that she wondered if the ride would ever end.
We saw blue morpho butterflies, wild hogs and picked fresh grapefruit for one of the groups to use for their research. Karlee, Jesse, Wendy and Lucas, from Texas, read a journal article about ants avoiding grapefruit. They want to see if leaf cutter ants will also avoid grapefruit, especially the leaves and rind to see if they can come up with a low cost way to keep leaf cutter ants from eating the Cacao leaves (plant who's bean is used to make chocolate). We had fish for lunch w salad, beans and rice. We had awesome chocolate cake at lunch and sang to Garrett for his 17th birthday!
We worked until dinner on our science research. It rained on and off, go figure in the rain forest. The last 2 days we learned how to cultivate bacteria off off different surfaces to see if our hypotheses were correct on which surface out of the ones we chose would have the most bacteria. One group swabbed light builds others swabbed the dogs that live outside. Tires were swabbed as well as hands and dirt. The soil and the tires had the most bacteria colonies that grew on the petri dishes. The light bulbs had the least. We also cultivated a fungus called escovopsis. Escovopsis attacks the fungus our leaf cutter ants farm. We have also learned the proper sections to put in our presentations. This part was a review for the ASR students and the new to the non ASR students. Students (Seth, Bukky, Lana & Anna) that wanted to learn gram-staining for their projects got time for that instruction with Ibrahim.. Ibrahim and Allan are Dr. Pinto's graduate assistants. They help each of the groups through the scientific process.
For dinner we went to the home of Aracelly. She got a loan to build a large roofed outdoor cooking area called Cafe Campecino where she instructs groups on how to make a traditional meal. We divided into 3 groups. One group learned to make tortillas, another cerviche, and the last made a salad. The salad group learned how to cut tomatoes to look like roses.
This is our friend Clarita from Texas.
Ellie helped make the salty lime juice used for the cerviche.
They had little glasses we used to try the lime-salt mix to see how tangy it was. It mad our eyes close and we all laughed. Eddie, or driver taught us a traditional toast when we drank the lime juice of the cerviche.
We sang happy birthday to Garrett, Zach and Jaime at dinner. We all sang songs together using Alejandra's speaker. Alejandra is Aracelly's daughter. It thundered and poured down rain all around the cooking building we were in.
Group photo at Aracelly's
Disclaimer:
Photos to come. It takes a long time to upload them on the wifi while all the students are using laptops for their research. Thanks for being patient with the blog.
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