Crocodile Hunter

Okay, obviously I can't finish this trip with us getting a better room at the Best Western.  That would be the most anti-climactic and whiny ending to a trip ever.  The new room served to put us in a good mood and helped us to have one of my favorite days of the trip.  First, we went to Manuel Antonio Park.  Being a trip advisor-aholic, I learned that this park gets swamped with visitors and it is best to go early, so we did.  Turns out, that was great advice:

People coming into the park as we left

The beaches were SO beautiful!  

Even though I hadn't intended to swim (why?) I jumped in anyway because sometimes a woman just cannot help herself.  Yes, this made for an interesting walk back, but it was worth it.  I bought a coconut on the way which made me feel extremely happy and tropical:

Spontaneous jumping in the ocean doesn't do a lot for your hair

After drying me off, we went to Cafe Milagro where some lovely people roast their own coffee beans and make wonderful lunches.  

I had this incredible wrap with lime chicken, cabbage and a cilantro avocado dressing.  I'll let you know when I perfect the recipe.  We had so much fun at this place we went two days in a row.  

Even though this in itself would be a wonderful day, the best was yet to come: a night tour through the mangrove forest!  This was so cool!  It started off with a traditional Costa Rican dinner which I photographed very poorly so it will not be pictured here.  Then we drove to the boat where we met a "reformed crocodile poacher turned naturalist" (Sam and I have doubts about the level of reform) named Macha:

Macha holding a fish he caught with his bare hands

Macha was not our guide.  We had a very smart young entrepreneur named Mario who told us all about the animals we saw.  But it turns out, Macha was definitely the entertainer.  His wife Rosa was driving the boat and even though I don't speak Spanish, the back and forth between them as she ran Macha into bushes and laughed at his antics was priceless.  Macha is pretty much scared of nothing.  His goal for the night was to catch a small crocodile for us to take our picture with.  This meant that any time he saw crocodile eyes shining in the water he jumped out of the boat into water teaming with crocodiles large and small, armed only with his flashlight to wrestle the beast.  

At first we were floating in sandy water for a long time on the hunt.  This picture captures the mood better than any I took with a flash.

Macha at the front of the boat, shining the light to look for crocodiles

Macha was not successful.  He jumped out many times and came back empty handed, so we headed into the mangrove forest where we started to spot amazing creatures, which will probably remain nameless for the most part.

How cool is this!?!

This frog did not look quite this possessed in person

One of my favorite creatures that Macha found was this Jesus Christ Lizard (so named because it walks on water):

Soon after being caught, he played dead:

When Macha threw him out of the boat he lived up to his name and walked right across the water, which Mario said no one ever gets to see on a night tour.  It was awesome!

We also got to see a cayman, which belongs to the crocodile family.

Macha was not content.  As we left the mangrove forest he was determined to give crocodile hunting another try.  He once again jumped out of the boat and wandered further and further away, his little light shining out in the distance.  The boat was really quiet.  Far off you could hear the sound of the waves pounding against the beach.  Every now and then unidentified animals screamed from the mangrove forest.  Then we could hear Macha singing.  Mario sent out another light as Macha marched victorious toward the boat:

Sam got to hold him first, and did an admirable job.

However, I'm the natural crocodile hunter in the family:

Step aside Discovery Channel, there's a new kid in town

A Room With a View

Sam says that every great adventures needs a little bit of adversity.  Throughout our time in Monte Verde, we encountered no adversity whatsoever.  So it stands to reason, we were due.  Our trip to the coast began well. Getting down the mountain was a lot easier than getting up it, and I thought to myself that perhaps this time, going from one place to another wouldn't be so difficult.  Nope.

It seems that in Costa Rica there are only directional signs on one side of the road.  So, for example, if you are going north and wanted to take an exit to the beach, you might see a sign, but the southbound person will have no sign and will need to go to the next town past his exit before realizing his mistake.  Thus, we saw much more of the scenery than we intended.  Happily, it was very nice scenery.

The next difficulty I have no good explanation for.  At lunch I drank the water.  That's right, I drank the water.  Even though new born babies in the hospital know not to drink the water in Central America and I've known it since I was a new born, still I drank the water.  We could ask ourselves why I did this all day long--maybe I was crazed with thirst from being the navigator all day, maybe I wasn't thinking clearly; it doesn't matter.  It happened.  Unlike popular belief, you do not spontaneously combust when you drink the water.  What happens is that you get to see many gas station bathrooms between the restaurant and your destination, which, not surprisingly, are quite comparable to U.S. gas station bathrooms in enjoyability.

Sam at the gas station 

Again, I loved the scenery.  I don't think I've ever driven through so many miles of coconut and pineapple groves and I felt I'd truly landed in paradise.  To distract myself, I took many pictures of the groves out the car window.

So you can understand that by the time we arrived at our destination, I was a little tired and (forgive me Dad!) whiny.  Our receptionist at the Best Western was not so excited to see us.  We weren't on her little paper and that did not make her happy.  Even worse, we had a discounted rate from booking online.  In my opinion (which may be colored by earlier events) she took out her revenge by giving us a room (and for your information this is a motel across from the ocean with a great pool) with this view:

What?  You might be saying to yourself.  Is that actually a folding chair and a concrete wall?  Let's get in for a closer look:

Yep.  It's a blank wall all right.  I tried to reign myself in.  Obviously, I was lucky enough to be in paradise and there were great benefits to this room.  It had air conditioning, it had a t.v. with some channels in English.  I laid down on the bed and practiced radical acceptance of my tummy troubles, the pulsating music coming from directly below us, the dingy walls, and the lack of view.  After I while, I felt better and we went to dinner, which was lovely, and headed to bed.

We got the goods seats by the giant fish

Have you ever had a smell wake you in the middle of the night?  Before this room, I hadn't.  Half asleep, I tried to shake it off, but it wove its way into my dreams.  Then the herds of gamblers being released from the casino below started screaming and laughing on the street below and I woke up enough for the smell to really bother me.  I went through the whole place, trying to figure out where it came from.  I smelled the curtains, the bathroom, the bedclothes, even Sam (sorry, honey).  When I couldn't find the source I tried to wake up Sam and ask him if he smelled it.  Sadly, I trained Sam to be a hard sleeper since for several months now I've been trying to counsel him in my sleep.  I ask him about his feelings and how he is doing all night long, so now he just ignores me.  It was a long night.

At last morning came.  By then my nose was numb.  We went to breakfast, and when we came back the smell practically knocked me over.  I talked to the same cheerfulness-challenged lady at reception and she sent a maid to determine if the smell was bad enough to move us.  The maid walked halfway in the door, turned around and directly took us to another room with a wonderful poolside view.  While I hate that some little creature had to die (for certainly there could be no other reason for that smell) in order for us to have a better room, I am grateful for its sacrifice.

Our new room happiness

Night in the Cloud Forest

We burned a lot of calories during our morning hike, and by the afternoon, we were burned out.



Luckily, we had our coffee class the day before, where we learned that it is recommended to drink 4-5 cups of coffee a day for health and energy, so the problem was quickly solved.

I chose the traditional Costa Rican method of brewing coffee.  It was excellent.

Sam chose the iced and sugared version, which was amazing.  Don't you love how they did the layers?

after

We needed our strength, because after our day hike, we were going for a night hike.  This time we went with instructors, so we were sure to see many amazing animals, and perhaps even know what they were.
 
For some reason, most of the people on the tour were pretty psyched about seeing sloths.  I am neutral on the sloth front.  Our guide promised us that we would most certainly see them.  In my version of what happened, we ended up running around in circles in the forest in the dark looking at tiny patches of brown about 60 or 70 feet up in the trees, which the guide assured us were sloths.  We would be heading down one trail, and then someone would radio us from the other side of the forest saying that had spotted a sloth and we would run over the mountain to see the little brown patch. 

More exciting to me were these creatures that I felt much more able to identify:

A highly dangerous viper!

A blurry, long tailed, sleeping, something-or-other

Walking Stick Bug

The second largest tarantula in Costa Rica--she's only dangerous to her boyfriends.

A male tarantula--a.k.a dinner

We also saw an ant highway which was pretty great.  You can see all these little pieces of leaves moving along the ground, walking back to the main city.  In the end, we had a very healthy day.  We got in our recommended amount of coffee and a LOT of walking.  I slept well.

Morning in the Cloud Forest

Sam and I were up at the crack of dawn to hit the cloud forest our second day in Monte Verde.  The temperature was in the seventies (I forgot to mention how happy I was about the temperature shift when we got to Monte Verde!) and the forest was alive with bird calls like I had never heard before.  You have to look up, up, up to get to the top of the giant ficus trees--beautiful!

At first we took pictures about every five feet.  The plants and flowers beg to be photographed.

I can't capture the scale of the forest in these pictures, but here are a few of Sam and I to give you an idea.

 

Our hike took us to a lookout where we got to see the continental divide.  The caretakers of the forest have done an incredible job with the trails and the gentle ascent was a pleasure to travel.

Next we got to cross this hanging bridge.  The limit is 10 people and I counted people the whole way across.  I was a little nervous.  We were very high--eye to eye with bird's nests.

After that we went to a waterfall where we saw our first wildlife (no doubt we were surrounded the whole time, but this is the first time we noticed anything except the bugs we had learned about in our tour the day before).

At first what we saw something monkey-ish in the trees (I know, I'm such a naturalist).  I'm not going to insult you with my picture of that.  Next, as we walked along the trail, a little animal practically fell on to the trail in front of us (we need things to be that obvious).  We got quiet and tip toed up on it.  It could have cared less.  It was hunting a mouse and was not to be distracted by us.  This was my moment!  And I was out of batteries.  I had taken so many pictures that my camera was done.  I tried the old turn it on and turn it off again trick.  In the end I got about four pictures of the animal's hind end.  Every time he turned around, my camera died.  I started talking to him, pleading with him to pay me any attention at all, but he was not moved.  This is the best of the bunch.

You may be wondering what this animal is.  I, too, wonder.

Butterflies and Bugs

You might have thought the coffee tour took the whole day--after all, it was a whole days worth of goodness.  Believe it or not, even MORE great things were to happen on that magical day.  Once we got back to town, we stopped at Taco Taco for a great lunch.

Then we headed to the butterfly garden.  While it had a humble exterior, the exhibits were great and our guide from the eastern most part of Russia was fantastic.  She did a stand up comedy routine about bugs that cracked us up and used English in the most wonderful way.  She often used the word "casually" instead of "accidentally" or "unfortunately" as in, "and then the female tarantula casually eats her mate".  She loved bugs and her enthusiasm was infectious.

I "casually" took this abstract photo of her

We saw walking stick bugs and this bug that looks like moss:

We saw the owl butterfly and the national butterfly of Costa Rica, the Blue Morphos:

Please enjoy these pictures.  Without a guide to hold animals down, I photograph them like I do kids and bikes.

And of course, who could forget the Hercules Beetle, the strongest animal on the planet? 

This bad boy can carry a watermelon with that schnoz

We ended up referencing what we learned on this tour all over the parks of Costa Rica. 

As if all this wasn't enough, Sam managed to find ice cream on our way back to the hostel.

Sam pausing to really taste the flavors

And I found my favorite sign of the trip so far.