Tuesday, December 31

Our overnight in the cloud forest was at an actual working dairy ranch, and the first activity of the day was milking.  This is not something Josh had ever done before, and he was not very successful.  I think he was too gentle, but he only got a few small squirts into the pail from a very full udder:

Our next stop was at a one-room school which is partially supported by the travel company we’re with, Classic Journeys:

The school serves children from first to sixth grades and has a maximum enrollment of twenty, although currently there are only seven children attending.  The materials are very basic; here are the teaching materials for the six grades, and, strangely, a baseball:

All children in Costa Rica get free breakfast and lunch at school; this makes going to school very desirable for children from very poor families.  Here’s the school kitchen:

We then drove to a wonderful organic farm where we had a terrific guide walk us among all the plants and describe them with tastes when appropriate.  Josh has been absolutely wonderful about ordering things he’s never had before at our meals. He wants to experience it all, and he wanted to taste everything offered.  That can get him into trouble, as he jumped to be the first to taste a fruit called nani, which tasted (he said) like vomit:

Harvesting casaba tubers is hard work!  The stem of the plant is cut, and the remainder of the plant is literally pulled out of the ground:

At some point along the way we were offered a green somewhat frothy drink; Josh was the first to try it, but this time he enjoyed the surprise taste:

Chocolate is grown in Costa Rica—the fruit grows on a stem right off of the trunk or major branch of the tree:

We then came to a mound of material on the ground.  Our guide called Josh forward, put some on his finger, and painted a mustache and beard on Josh, only then telling him it was monkey droppings! 

Turns out that was a joke and the material was charred sugar cane stalks used as fertilizer.  Finally we came to a machine which crushes the sugar cane and produces cane juice.  It took lots of muscle power to crush the cane:

We then drove to an absolutely lovely resort on the side of the Arenal volcano where we have a room with a very large hot tub right in our room! 

There’s music tonight starting at 10:00, and fireworks at midnight.  We’ll see who makes it.  We need our rest for zip-lining in the canopy tomorrow.

Happy New Year to all.

Rafting Photos

I've been able to transfer the rafting photos to my computer.  Here are a few.  It really was like that!

Monday, December 30

Today after breakfast we drove up and up into the central highlands of Costa Rica into the Los Angeles Cloud Forest. We got to our hotel, the Villa Blanca in time for lunch.  The place is lovely, on a mountain top, and was built by a former president of the county, and, unusually, the sun was shining! 

On check in they gave us a sweet fruit drink, and for the adults, one of the reception crew “freshened” our drinks with liquor locally made from cane sugar.  Joyce enjoyed hers!

Each room has a fireplace as the nights are so cool; we’re at an altitude of about 5000 feet and there’s no air conditioning!  What a relief from the intense heat we’ve been having.  On the grounds is a lovely small church the former president built for his wife as a 50^th anniversary gift.

We went for a nature walk in the dense forest with a naturalist who pointed out the special things about a tropical cloud forest, most of which had to do with the profusion of plant life and the special way things grow in a cool climate with 100% humidity most of the time.  There is a large population of many different species of hummingbirds; we saw dozens:

 The woods are incredibly dense—it looks like it would be impossible to try to walk through:

There’s a poisonous spider who builds a net instead of a web.  Apparently some of the bugs fall off of the trunk of the tree right into the net; the spider waits alongside and then poisons the critter to death. 

There’s lots of wild ginger:

Here’s an amazing philodendron which has a one-way stem; no leaf eaters are going to climb to it:

We saw leaves with amazingly symmetrical holes in them:

The explanation is that they initially grow rolled up and bugs eat them when they’re rolled up and then when they unroll the holes are so very symmetrical.  

We came on a giant leaf cutter mound:

I’ll try to embed the short video of leaf cutters at work here:

It won't go!  Sigh.

There’s an amazing selection of butterflies; here’s one:

And finally here’s something called a rose banana!

We’re having a great time with Josh and I think he’s enjoying being with us.  More tomorrow.

Sunday, December 29

Today was devoted to white-water rafting, something Josh had never done, and Joyce and I had only done once many years ago.  It was amazing.

We began by taking our van to the headquarters (?) of the rafting company, not a place to engender confidence, but they were highly recommended.  There we changed to their vehicle, sort of a four-wheel drive truck cum passenger compartment.  

On our way our rafting guide made crickets from the local grasses:

We stopped along the road and picked and tasted fresh lemon grass and cinnamon bark.  The mountains are very beautiful, and we climbed for an hour up along the river valley:

We were missing some necessaries—water shoes for Josh and, highly recommended, sunglass holders to keep our glasses on our necks when the force of the water swept them off of our faces.  We stopped at a market along the way and bought fake $6 Crocs for Josh and shoelaces to tie on our sunglasses:

Finally we got to the takeoff point, and were fitted with life vests and helmets:

I had my camera in a plastic bag and took photos through the bag of the first, very mild rapids and the stopping point for a swim:

After this, however, the guide strongly recommended that I give him the camera to put in his “dry bag” and was he ever right!  We went seven miles downstream through multiple level 2 and level 3 rapids.  These were amazingly strong and made for great excitement!  Our group had two rafts, and three people fell out of the other raft, but we all stayed in ours, although we were soaked for the whole seven miles.  There were two kayakers with cameras in dry bags traveling with us, and they went ahead and took photos of us from the riverbank at places where the current and rapids were especially strong.  I have a CD of photos they then sold us, but I have no way to transfer photos from the CD to this blog at this time.  We stopped along the way at a beautiful waterfall, and I did take the camera out and took these:

Tomorrow we leave for the cloud forest.  More then.

Saturday, December 28

We had a full day!  We had to get up early and out on the van by 7:30 to beat the heat and the holiday crowds to Manuel Antonio Park, a true gem.  We had a naturalist join us who was absolutely incredible; he was able to spot things which no one in our group could see!  Once he saw things, he could point us to them, but it took us all a long while to see what he saw in an instant.

The park has a very long path through it, and the variety of plants, birds and animals is astonishing.  Here are sample of some of the things I was able to capture in photos:

Here’s a video of leaf cutter ants who carry enormous pieces of leaves back to their den where the leaves grow a fungus which is what the ants live on.  It’s a cooperative venture with long lines of ants going to and fro:

Sorry, the video won't upload.  Later!

There’s an amazing variety of lizards; this one changes color like a chameleon, but is not a chameleon (I forget its name):

Groups of Howler monkeys are in the trees; we saw a number of families:

The spiders are phenomenal.  Here’s one about five inches long in its web:

We saw both two-toed and three-toed sloths; guess which one this is:

Our hike ended at the Manuel Antonio beach one of the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever seen.  The water is warm and very clear and the swimming is great.  We spent about 1 ½ hours at the beach:

There is a population of thieves at the beach: White-faced or Capuchin Monkeys.  They’re everywhere and they steal anything that’s not tied down looking for food.  If what they steal has no food, they simply toss it away.  This applies to cameras, fanny packs, etc.  We had to be careful!:

Finally we had a lovely lunch and came back to the hotel for R&R at the pool:

That's Josh making a big splash off of the slide.

We arrived at our room to shower and get ready for dinner and found a group of whiteface monkeys on the roof of the room below us, just in front of our balcony.  They were picking unripe coconuts (easy to open) and eating the fruit as well as drinking the coconut milk just a few feet from us:

From 4-6 PM is happy hour; Pina Colladas are 2 for 1.  (Josh’s are “virgin” Pina Colladas) and we enjoyed them as we watched the sun set over the Pacific. Dinner was fresh mahi-mahi, truly yummy.

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