It was really cold this weekend.....

Hello all! I had yet another fieldtrip this past weekend. This one was radically different from past weekends, however. We traveled to Cerro de la Muerte, which is a mountain in the center of the country, about two hours south of San Jose. We stayed at a biological field station for one night, and it was freezing! It felt strange to be bundled up in so many layers. The elevation of the mountain is above 9,000 feet, so the temperature drops dramatically at night. As you can imagine, the vegetation is also very different from the rest of the country. It actually reminded me quite a bit of Washington. For our project (since technically this is a class and I have to do some sort of school work), we did a survey of the vegetation at three different altitudes, which was really interesting. From the top of the mountain it is also possible to see both oceans. Unfortunately the Caribbean side was clouded over, so we couldn't see it, but we had some beautiful views of the Pacific. It was quite an experience.
(pictures from the top: the view of the pacific; the view south; part of the trail we hiked; the cabin at the field station; the group of us)