Monday 29 August 2016

Finishing up

On the 18th of August the team went up to Skutch for the last time. This time Jen joined them for a night. Instead of only seeing the identification pictures she could now for herself see how confusing the IDing of the frogs is. Many of the frogs we catch have characteristics of two different species according to the identification book that we use (Savage, 2002). It is hard to tell what the reason for this is. It could be that the two species are hybridising or that this is a yet undescribed subspecies of Eleutherodactylus. To find out it would be very interesting to do some DNA tests with these frogs. Hopefully this will be possible for Cloudbridge in the near future.
On the 20th we all arrived back at basecamp again and it was time to pack all our equipment. The next day Kristina was the first one to leave Cloudbridge again after spending 4 weeks here. The rest will stay in Costa Rica for another week and enjoy some more of its wildlife. Today Alex and Louise went up to Cerro Chirripo, which is Costa Rica's highest mountain at 3820m. A very exciting challenge to celebrate the end of a successful expedition.


After 6 weeks of hard work at Cloudbridge Nature Reserve this expedition has eventually come to an end. We have had an amazing time here in Costa Rica and gained so much more experience that we can benefit from for the rest of our lives. We hope everyone has enjoyed reading this blog and maybe even inspired people to set up a similar expedition. It is now our job to focus on finishing the final report and edit the film about not only our expedition but also about the rest that is being done at Cloudbridge.
Once again we would like to thank all the people that supported and sponsored us to make this expedition such a success and ofcourse Cloudbridge Nature Reserve for hosting us. A special thanks to the following organisations who have sponsored a big part of this project:

- Royal Geographical Society with IBG
- Gilchrist Educational Trust
- The Lord Mayor's 800th Anniversary Awards Trust


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