Videos from Costa Rica

Now that I'm home I'm able to post the videos.

Here are the leaf-cutter ants:

Here's Joyce taking off on a zip line:

Here's Joyce landing on a zip line:

And here's Josh landing on a zip line:

Thursday, January 2

On our last day we began by driving to the La Paz Waterfall Gardens and Wildlife Refuge.  This is an enormous privately owned park, and the “Wildlife Refuge” is a zoo with local animals very well displayed, but a zoo nonetheless.  It is well embedded into the hills of the area and allowed us to see some wildlife of Costa Rica which is otherwise very hard to get to view as a tourist.  There is a giant bird area enclosed with netting, but so giant that you think you’re in an open valley.  One of the toucans there is very tame:

The butterfly garden is wonderful and allowed us to get up close to the very special Blue Morpho which we had seen in the wild but had trouble getting close to:

Mammals in cages are the worst part of a zoo, and despite the fact that the animals looked well cared for and had lots of room, it’s still troublesome to me.  Here’s a baby ocelot:

I have lots more mammal photos, but I see no need to send them. There's an oxcart painted as the locals do, with a brace of oxen:

Part of the attraction here is a series of waterfalls with extremely well-done very long paths and stairs to them:

After lunch at La Paz, we drove to a coffee plantation and had a walking tour of the farm and the processing plant; more than Josh really wanted to know about coffee, but we found it interesting.  Here’s how the coffee cherries are picked by hand, a tedious job done mostly by Nicaraguan immigrants, as the Costa Ricans don’t want to do such terrible farm work for very low wages.  Sound familiar?

Josh very much enjoyed a delicious mocha:

Well, that’s it.  We arrived late afternoon at the San Jose Marriott, and we are scheduled to fly home tomorrow.  We’ll see how that goes, as there’s a big cold storm in the northeast!  Thanks for reading our adventure with Josh.

Wednesday, January 1

Well, as anticipated, this was a remarkable day.  We drove about 45 minutes up and up and up to the base of a gondola lift on the side of the Arenal Volcano.  From there we took a gondola up much further to the first platform which led to a series of eight cables for zip-lining ranging in length from 200 to 750 meters (600+ feet to 2250+ feet or over ½ mile).  This is one of the longest zip lines in the world!  Many of the lines bridged deep ravines of 600 feet or more, so we were really flying!  Speed on the lines is 50 mph at maximum.  Here’s a map of the lines:

The weather is amazing—from fully sunny to torrential downpours in a flash and back again.  Josh had declined to bring his rain jacket (it was sunny when we left) but when we experienced the first completely torrential downpour which occurred as we arrived at the zip line, we bought him a poncho at the gift shop.  After signing our lives away on a disclaimer that says if anyone dies it’s not their fault, we were fitted for our harnesses and helmets:

The first two lines are very short as practice, and also there’s an escape after the second line for those who choose to take the gondola back down after trying the two short lines.  No one in our small group backed out, but we were told that in most groups someone does.  The take-off is done semi-reclining with the harness holding you by your low back and thighs, arms are straight up to the handles on the line.  Legs are in front of you with knees bent and ankles crossed.  As you approach the end and the platform is in view, you are supposed to wiggle the handle back and forth laterally (NOT up and down) which brakes you, then spread your legs as you get close.  There is a big rope which catches you and creates an abrupt deceleration, and a very large vertical rubber mattress in case you don’t stop properly.  Here’s Josh taking off:

Here’s Joyce ready to go and taking off:

 Here’s the view from the first platform:

 Here’s Josh coming in:

Here’s Joyce coming in:

Now I’ll try to embed a couple of videos, but I’m not optimistic.  I may have to send them from home when we get back.

Wouldn't upload.

In any case, we all found it exhilarating, beyond our expectations.  Josh was very proud of his grandma for doing this!  He’d been waiting months to see it happen, and she was wonderful. 

The outfit we were with is here:

http://www.skyadventures.travel/Arenal_En/Sky_Trek.html

Tomorrow we drive back to San Jose, stopping for hikes on the way.  We’ll overnight in San Jose and come home on Friday.

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.