I'm currently in the airport in Costa Rica, on my way back to Ontario to meet up with my famjam and drive out to Halifax where they're going to visit for a week.
I thought I'd make a few posts about the bat conference - and there's 2 hours until my plane leaves... so here we go!
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Trying to leave - up and downtown for the 520am bus:
Showed up to the airport. United airlines cancelled my flight the night before and I had to call them to get them to reschedule it. They scheduled me on an earlier flight with Aircanada. I went through all the security and customs stuff, and about 10 minutes before they boarded the plane they called my name and told me that United booked me on an already full flight, and that I couldn't get on unless someone didn't show up. Of course everyone showed up, and so they brought me back to the front desk and I was told there were no more flights leaving that day. They booked me on a flight the next day, and I had to leave the house at 5am to make it again. Showed up to the airport again, plane was delayed and I would miss the connecting flight, so they rebooked me on another flight at noon. But then I finally left and arrived in Costa Rica around 9pm, and met up with some wonderful folks from Couchsurfing.
I arrived, and they brought me to their vegetarian friends house where they made a huge vegan meal! it was rad, and they were all sweet and told me great stories.
Because I showed up two days late, I didn't get to go to see volcanoes with my couchsurfing hosts, and had to leave the next morning for the conference.
The largest bat conference that's ever happened... The 16th International Bat Research Conference and 43rd North American Symposium on Bat Research combined. 650 bat researchers from around the world.
And the fancy hotel where it was held.
The conference was great. I met a lot of bat researchers that were really awesome, and I had the opportunity to talk to people who actually research social behaviour! I was able to see some folks from last years conference which was rad! I met someone who did a similar analysis using the same program I use, so that was super helpful! And then I was able to speak with someone who studies the social behaviour of vampire bats! It was great! Makes me want to keep working with bats!
I signed up for a post-conference tour. I was supposed to go to Tortuguero and Sarapique, catch bats, see turtles and go whitewater rafting... unfortunately the person organizing the tours told me that the pickup time for my tour was 7am. I showed up for then, and I was informed my tour was at 5am.. and that I had missed it and that it was my fault. Only after 20 minutes of talking to this person, having them deny that they ever told me to meet at 7am, and that I completely missed the tour, did they remember that they had told me the wrong time over email, started to apologize, and then said my only choice was to go on another tour - to a volcano and a cloud forest, which was cool but not what I wanted to do, it was very low key, geared towards a more relaxing/older generation, and also had someone on the tour that I did not want to be around.
I was not meant to travel. Photos of the tour coming soon.
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