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Getting there June 11, 2015

May 26, 2015

As I stood in the Customs line last night at the airport, I had started to relax. I felt that the hard part of my trip was over once I hauled my bags off the carousel. I’m not sure whether that’s another sign of repetition or a symptom of last year’s problematic return flight(s). Getting to my hotel, from the hotel to the bus depot in Alajuela, from Alajuela to Bagaces, and from Bagaces to the field station seemed simple enough compared to the vagaries of airlines. So once the bus pulled out of the depot, I started looking forward to Palo Verde. I got even more excited when I realized just how much traffic and wasted time I’d avoided by boarding at the depot in Alajuela (west of San José), rather than taking a taxi into San José and boarding at the very beginning of the line.

I got less excited once I was in a taxi heading from Bagaces to Palo Verde and I saw how dry it was. All the plants were a dusty brown except for the irrigated green of sugar cane and the yellow flowers of Tabueia trees. I have nothing against Tabebuia flowers themselves—they are large, bright gold, trumpet-shaped, and generally attractive. The problem is that Tabebuia trees bloom in the dry season. The wet season at Palo Verde is supposed to start in late April or early May. I haven’t seen Tabebuia flowers since 2012, when I came here in January.

The closer I got to the station, the worse things looked. By the time I was unloading my bags, I was comparing the landscape to the one right before the climax of Disney’s “The Lion King”. This isn’t totally ridiculous; both dry forests and savannas aren’t incredibly wet at any time, but a drought makes them look like they’ve been reduced to sticks and tinder.