¡Hola a todos! This week I will be writing about my trip to Manuel Antonio and more updates on my projects at Establishment Labs.

Highlights:

• The tropical storm not hitting us
• The beaches at Manuel Antonio
• Being able to see monkeys in the wild
• Cowboy caviar

Lowlights:

• Almost being stranded in Manuel Antonio

Manuel Antonio

On Sunday Laurel, Jhalak, Katy, and I took a trip down to Manuel Antonio. I woke up extremely early (~4am) to catch the bus that leaves at 6am. The bus ride took around 4 hours, and in between it made a stop at a small rest stop where I was able to buy and eat the best empanada that I’ve had so far in Costa Rica. Once we got to Manuel Antonio, we first ate breakfast at a restaurant called Caja Buru. We then headed to the entrance of Manuel Antonio National Park, which was within walking distance from the bus station which was really convenient. Manuel Antonio has around 10 different hiking trails, and we were able to hike through most of them. Our first trail that we hiked was the catarata trail, or the waterfall trail. The waterfall ended up being kind of underwhelming, however, on our hike back we were able to see a troupe of squirrel monkeys hanging out in the trees! Although we weren’t able to see them, we were also able to hear howler monkeys in the park as well. We took some nice pictures at Playa Gemelas, the smaller beach in the park, and then we headed toward Manuel Antonio Beach. The beach itself was beautiful, the water was a nice shade of light blue, and it was far prettier than Jaco. We spent a good couple of hours there. Finally, we ended our day at the park with some gelato.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The way back from the park was quite chaotic. When we left the park gates, several merchants came up to us to aggressively sell coconut water and other trinkets. We also came across some monkeys stealing food from a parked pickup truck. Everyone was mesmerized by them until a young girl came and started yelling at them. The startled monkeys ran away by crawling across the power lines above the street. Immediately after I saw a stray cat sitting on top of a sign at a nearby restaurant and then a dog also came walking out from around the corner. Seeing all of these animals show up was very surreal. Since we were hungry, we ordered some patacones from Caja Buru, however, we didn’t get the food until 15 minutes before the bus left! We rushed over to the bus station where it was then that I realized that I had been kicked out from the app that had my bus ticket. I hurriedly tried to log in, but it refused and we had less than 10 minutes to board the bus! The bus driver also told us that food wasn’t allowed on the bus, so we had to quickly stuff our faces with the patacones we had bought. Thankfully I was able to buy an extra bus ticket from the bus driver after Katy told him that I actually had a seat on the bus. The bus started moving as soon as I sat down in my seat, a very close call. Despite the stressful ending, we all had a very fulfilling trip to Manuel Antonio.

Establishment Labs

For our joint project, this week Vanessa and I met with the design team to discuss the feasibility of our brainstormed solutions from a manufacturing perspective. We then also met with the legal team again to discuss the legal feasibility of our solutions. From these discussions, we have decided to move forward with 3 of our solutions. Next week we will be taking a trip to Tips, a kitchen utensil store, to get some inspiration for our prototypes. Ideally we would be able to find already made products that are similar to the solutions we’ve generated, so that we could quickly create a proof-of-concept of our solutions. Next week, Vanessa and I will also work on the lab report for the experiment that we conducted last week involving the different sleeve coatings. For my IoT project, I made further progress on my company detail document, and I also made further progress on my IoT technologies document. Due to a minor change in the scope of the project, my research has shifted a little from IoT technology to biosensor technology instead. My goal for next week with this project is to finish my company detail document and biosensor document, and start brainstorming a list of potential features for the new IoT chip. 

That sums it up for this week. This weekend, our cohort will be taking a trip to Irazu volcano. Tune in next week for more updates on my projects and fun trips!