2019 FFT Fellow - Costa Rica

I left Monteverde on an Interbus to San Joaquin Flores, Heredia. I received a great "Costa Rican Massage" on the bus ride. A previous bus driver had described the benefits of riding a bus in their country and said he gave great Costa Rican massages. The roads around Costa Rica are not always of the highest quality. Coming down the mountain was extremely rocky and filled with huge bumps and ruts. Therefore I received a bum massage as I jiggled and bounced along the way. Ha, ha!   I am staying with Elsa in an upper apartment that has my own bathroom! It’s the little things that often make life great. She lives in San Joaquin Flores which is a 10-minute walk from CPI. She is the cook at CPI. Elsa lives next to many of her extended family members. Her two daughters, two granddaughters, two brothers, an uncle, and their families live in the surrounding houses. My apartment has a great view of the mountains surrounding the area.   The noise level is quite high here...

To live a life untamed and unafraid it the gift I’ve been given, and so my journey begins . — Catwoman Even though my journey to Costa Rica started three weeks ago, I still feel this quote fits perfectly. Start each day fresh and ready to learn from your adventures. Always keep learning and exploring.   The Selvatura Tour was a fantastic way to top off my visit in Monteverde. I started the morning with a fabulous hike across eight different hanging bridges. These bridges were not the rickety bridges that require a death grip and a prayer to cross. Rather, they were metal suspension bridges of various lengths. The longest bridge was 515 feet across. The highest was 34 meters above the ground. Three people could walk side-by-side (a width of 1.5 m). Walking across the bridges was actually fun. It was as if I were walking across a trampoline with a little sway and a bounce. Several people walking near each other at the same time would make it a bit more challenging to w...

On Friday night, a group of six women and one seven-year-old boy from CPI went on a two-hour night walk together. The Monteverde Night Tour is on a private reserve in a transitional forest only 1.5 km below the cloud forest. The transitional forest was a different world, one where epiphytes and moss did not cover the trees and the precipitation was less. Much of flora and fauna were different. The lack of epiphytes surprised me the most.   We walked on dirt trails that crisscrossed and meandered throughout the lush woods. Some of the trails were marked only with letters and numbers. There were three different guided groups that went out on the night walk at the same time each with their own guide. The guides had walkie talkies and would announce if they saw a particular creature in the woods. When a guide announced their group could see a sloth, we retraced our steps to go back and see it. We were able to see it, but the third group arrived too late and was not able to ...

On a rainy Thursday afternoon, I walked about 15 minutes to the Bat Jungle. I did a self-guided tour and discovered some amazing facts about bats. Yes, I know bats eat a lot, but I did not appreciate the vast amount they eat daily. At the Bat Jungle, there were three different scales I could step on. The scales showed how much I would have to eat, as a human-sized bat, in order to survive, depending on whether I ate fruit, insects, or nectar. If I were a fruit bat, I would have to eat 475 pounds of chopped bananas a day! If I consumed insects, I would have to go through a 3.75-gallon bucket of bugs. If I drank nectar, I would need to down 180 liters (47.5 gallons) every 24 hours.   Just think about having to drink 90 two-liter bottles of sweet nectar each day! A person my weight should drink 80 ounces of water a day, which is about 2 1/3 liters. Sometimes drinking even that much seems like a lot. The photo shows what my ears might look like if I were a bat. I could definite...

As my last week at CPI comes to a close, I am very wistful. I truly love it here. I love the people. I love the landscape. Returning to Monteverde in the future is definitely in my plans. I feel a part of the community in just the two weeks I have been here.   Monteverde means Green Mountain. The landscape is lush, green, and beautiful. The view across from campus changes by the minute, but it is always breathtaking. On clearer days, I can see the Pacific Ocean. Other times, the clouds dance through the trees or come rolling in above the mountains.   Monteverde was originally settled by Costa Rican farmers. In the 1950s, a group of Quakers from Fairhope, Alabama, settled here. They left the U.S. to avoid being drafted into the Korean War and to avoid paying taxes that support the war. They selected Costa Rica because it does not have an army. The Quakers were the first people to realize the importance of the cloud forest was and to preserve it. They donated the land ...

Mom, close your eyes for the first part of this blog. I will tell you when it is safe to open them again. I visited Herpetarium Adventures right in Saint Elena on Sunday afternoon. I was the only person on the guided tour and learned about snakes, frogs, lizards, and turtles. I can now visually identify if a snake is venomous or not. That is, if I stuck around long enough to look closely at the snake.   There are many snakes in Costa Rica. The Fer de Lance is probably their most infamous snake since it is so deadly. My guide told me that if a person was bitten by one particular Fer de Lance and administered the antidote immediately, he would have about a 20 percent chance of surviving. Not great odds. The Eyelash Pit Vipers were kind of pretty in a weird snake way. They were different colors and had a variety of markings. They have little extensions above their eyes which is why they have eyelash as part of their name. They only had two tanks of the poisonous frogs whi...

What an interesting hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve! I took too many great photos to share on this blog but will include a few that I think were really interesting. We stopped to look at so many things that it took us over 3 hours to walk only two miles. We hiked on a trail to a beautiful waterfall. Nature is truly a wonder.   I thought it was raining the entire morning, but it was essentially just the moisture dripping from overhead. Approximately two miles from Santa Elena, it is actually a different world. There were many different types of vegetation and the climate in the cloud forest which is different than in Santa Elena. It was cooler. The area receives more rain - typically about 2 1/2 to 3 m (8-10 feet) of rain per year! Compare that to the amount of annual precipitation in the Mojave Desert. We typically receive about only ten inches annually.   In the cloud forest, there are numerous examples of epiphytes. Epiphytes grow on other...

After school on Friday, I went on El Trapiché Tour. On this guided tour, we learned about the process of sugarcane, coffee, and chocolate on a small five acre Costa Rican family farm. This was another great excursion with a lot of extras thrown in.   First, we walked to an exhibit showing how coffee beans grow. Seeds are scattered on top of the soil. They do not need to be pushed down into the soil. The seedlings grow for about two months before they are individually planted in plastic bags with nutritious soil. They grow in these plastic bags for about eight months before they are planted in rows in the fields.   Coffee grows throughout Costa Rica both in the flat lands and in the mountainous areas. Costa Rica only allows Arabica Coffee to be grown in their country to keep quality and consistency high. Coffee beans are handpicked typically by Nicaraguan and Panamanian immigrants. They make about $2 per 13 kg (28.67 pounds) box of coffee beans picked. The workers are...

Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah Zip-A-Dee-A Wonderful feeling Wonderful Day James Basket What a wonderful day! On Wednesday, I went on The Original Canopy Tour . This was the first canopy tour offered anywhere around the world and was started back in 1994. I was able to view the canopy level of the rain forest in an amazing manner. - via zip lines. This adventure included zip lines, rappelling, the Tarzan swing, and a hollow tree climb.   I couldn’t find anyone else from CPI to go with me, so I decided to go alone. Knowing my husband would worry if he knew I was going on this tour, I didn’t tell him. He will learn about my adventure as he reads this! At least I opted for the tour that was not as extreme as several others. This was a great place to START zip lining.   I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to go on the tour as it began raining just as I arrived and they were worried about lightning in the area. Obviously, if there is lightning, they cannot run the excursio...

There is nothing better than a friend. Unless it is a friend with chocolate . — Linda Grayson We have been working on present, past, and future tenses. Oh, my goodness! I am getting a bit frustrated that there seem to be so many exceptions and differences which makes learning Spanish confusing. I now can relate more to some of my students who struggle with what I am teaching. I have to remind myself that I have been on this journey to learn Spanish a short time. I am definitely progressing. I just wish it would come along a lot more quickly. I also know that English has so many more exceptions and words that do not make any sense when we change tenses. At least the spelling of words in Spanish is pretty straight forward.   After classes on Tuesday, I decided to go on the Caburé Chocolate Tour. Unfortunately, they needed more people to attend the tour to make it happen, but I walked to the restaurant, ate lunch, and was given an abbreviated tour by Bob for a discounted ...

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference . — Robert Frost I love it here in Monteverde. It is much more walkable and for some reason it doesn’t seem so isolated. It also abounds in the lush green flora and fauna that I love. I thought all along that Monteverde was the name of the town I was going to. However, I learned today that Monteverde isn't a town at all. It is actually the area composed of several small towns. My new home is in the town of Santa Elena and is near the city center. Houses seem to be built on terraces cut into the side of the mountain. I am living in the top house shown here. There is actually another house right above us. The house below belongs to the eldest daughter, her husband, and their daughter, Mia, who is an absolute delight. I am trying to take the various roads around here and explore. I want to show you the roads. You can see how steep they are. This isn’t the steepest ...