Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Las Alturas

This past Saturday and Sunday, we left the Las Cruces Biological Station to trek up to the Las Alturas Biological Station. It is located in one of the biggest privately-owned reserves (apparently it's owned by some multi-billionaire software mogul who resides in Florida), which also contains a subsistence farm and a small town of less than 250 people total. All these are employees of either the farm or the reserve, but they live without electricity, and basically without contact with the outside world for a good majority of their lives. It was weird, but interesting.

At night on our first day there, we had a bonfire, complete with marshmallows and cookies, and told stories around the fire. It reminded me of camping when I was 10, but it was still fun.

I then fell asleep on the top bunk of a terrifying bunkbed, in a room that was not heated and therefore absolutely freezing cold. Ah, well. I needed my sleep because the next day we hiked for two hours up a mountain that changed about 600 feet in elevation in a very short distance (read: very steep and hard to climb, especially if you are out of shape, as I am). Was it worth it for this view?


The answer (which this picture does not do justice) is yes.

More pictures of all sorts of things on my flickr page!

1 comment:

  1. haha, we only did a half hour hike up a hill and it was a struggle. We obviously should have done more hiking while we were at Brown in prep.

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