Traveling Around
I'm heading out into the field soon, so this blog post will be incomplete and lacking photos for the time being.
The second half of last week has been incredibly busy, and this week is only getting busier. From Thursday's hike, Friday's gravimetry fieldwork, this weekend's trip to Quepos/Manuel Antonio, and now our upcoming 3 days in the field with Krista, I've feel like I've been bouncing all over the place and haven't had much of a chance to sit down and write. Our time in Costa Rica is (sadly) quickly wrapping up, and the list of things to do is piling up, but I'm looking forward to making the most of my remaining time here.
On Friday, I had the opportunity to tag along with Oscar, Param, and Jon to help with their gravimetry studies in the Talamancas. We drove out at 7:30 in the morning and began to take our measurements in 5 km intervals along the gravity anomaly in the south. At each site, we set up the GNSS GPS altimeter to begin taking latitude, longitude, and altitude measurements of the site and began taking gravity measurements using Oscar's (more or less) automatic gravimeter. This took a lot less time and dial-turning than taking measurements using the manual gravimeters we used at Irazu and Cartago. While the day was long, we managed to take measurements at over ten locations and got to see many beautiful views.
Figuring we'd been in Costa Rica for over 3 weeks and still hadn't gone to the beach, we we took a 3 hour bus ride from San Jose to Quepos on Saturday. We arrived to our Airbnb in the evening (which turned out to be somewhat in the middle of the jungle and had 2 beds less than promised). The next morning, we headed to Manuel Antonio, a nice beach on the Pacific side of CR. This was my and Sarai's first time seeing the Pacific Ocean, and we were pretty stoked. The rest of the day was spent swimming in the waves, avoiding the incredibly forward vendors on the beach, and getting slightly sunburnt.
Today, Jesus and I are heading to the field with Krista for the next 3 days. Over the course of these 3 days, we will visit ~7 seismic stations, learn about their installation and maintenance, and practice retrieving data. This is our first time in the field on our own project, so I'm excited to learn about the machines which are responsible for collecting our data.