It seems strange writing from the comfort of my bed in the land of warm showers and delivery pizza. While the change of scenery has its amenities, I did not anticipate an almost immediate sense of nostalgia. I miss Nicaragua. I miss being able to call a tropical rainforest my backyard. I even miss my muddy clothes; they told the story of my day, of a tumble at the difficult canyon ascent on the orange trail or a crawl in the leaf litter after some unknown insect.

I began my journey with a search for answers. While I may have romanticized the novel scientific question, I did come back with some exciting discoveries. I can now say that I speak fluent bromeliad. What I mean to say is that after three weeks of sifting through the innards of these plants I have an understanding of the complexity of my biological system. It is profound how integral bromeliads are in many different trophic levels; capuchins eat them, geckos hunt in them, rodents defecate in them, and much, much more.   I’ve also come back knowing a lot more about myself. I am confident that the life of a field biologist is something that I could become quite accustomed to. To stand at the precipice of discovery (and hopefully cross it) with your feet planted in the wild earth is incomparable in my opinion. I also learned a lot from my colleagues and my friends. They challenged me to try new foods (I already miss miel de chayote), to improvise with the materials I had in front of me rather than what I had left behind (cut to Tinh’s ant arena, or Tinh’s tethered bullet ant, or Tinh’s pseudo-bird cutout), to appreciate the small things about my day that I would have otherwise overlooked.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that this was one of the most incredible things I have ever done. My first time outside of the country also became my first time sitting at the mouth of a cave during dusk bat emergence, my first time pulling a coconut from the top of a palm, my first time having to dodge monkey projectiles, and so it goes.  Some of my favorite moments of the trip were the smallest things. I’ll never forget being stranded under the trunk of a large tree when the large storms hit, or racing back down the Río San Juan in order to beat the setting sun, or even the indescribable call of the Montezuma’s Oropendola—underwater slot machines? While it’s sad leaving, being back at home means I have more questions to explore. Namely, will all of the hard work that I put into data collection yield anything extraordinary?

Until Next Time,

Joseph Nikko Curti