We made it to the Osa Peninsula, in Costa Rica, after the usual hustle of prepping, testing, packing, homeland security dealings, wrestling over 400 pounds of equipment and luggage through customs, stuffing the Cessna, bouncing in the Land Rover, setting up the work stations.

My new snake boots are confidence-inspiring, lightweight, and offer great support, though I hope not to test them with an actual strike. The caretakers at our camp, Antonio and Carlos, had some recent reports of trouble, including one snakebite fatality, two westerner residents murdered in separate events last year, a 2-ton cocaine shipment intercepted on the beach here. This is the new Wild West.

Monkeys are now sleeping overhead in the growing heat after a raucous dawn howling session. Insect polyrhythms fill the midday languor. Word is there's a big puma prowling the neighborhood.

Editor’s note: Artists Charles Lindsay (DART December 8, 2011) and Catherine Chalmers (DART March 24, 2011) will be reporting from the Osa Peninsula for the next several weeks. They are working on independent projects that combine science and art. Catherine is completing her Ant Works and Charlie is recording wildlife and building musical instruments with bamboo, steel, and contact microphones.

Charles Lindsay is the SETI Institute’s Artist in Residence and a Guggenheim Fellow. His career path has been diverse, ranging from exploration geology in the Arctic to photojournalism in the jungles of Southeast Asia. In the last decade he has dedicated himself to CARBON, an immersive installation that includes unique carbon based still images, video, focused sound, and interactive sculpture built from salvaged space equipment. Lindsay is interested in the philosophical, environmental and aesthetic challenges we face as human biology increasingly merges with technology. His work has appeared in numerous international magazines and venues and has been profiled on NPR, CNN and NHK Japan. He has published seven books of photographs, plays electric cello, and loves to fish.

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