Day 53 - "Do it like they do on the Discovery Channel"

Costa Rican Word/phrase of the week: cool -- tuanis (and chiva)

bad -- pelis

I decided to do this because Costa Rican Spanish is much different than any other country, just like with English (like comparing the US to England to Australia, etc.).  And I thought it would be interesting for you all, too.  A little origin of the words: many believe that tuanis stemmed from "too nice", but that is not right.  Sometime in history, the higher class of Costa Rica wanted to be able to talk to one another without the lower class understanding, so they made up some words by substituting letters out (this happened/happens in English as well, even if it's just some kids making their own language, ha).  The stem is actually from buena (meaning "good"), but the b was changed to t, e to a, and a to i, keeping the u and n the same, with an s added at the end for tuanis.  The same was done from mala (the counterpart for "bad"), which was changed to pelis.  For you Spanish speakers, you can use it as an adjective like, "Estas cosas son tuanis", but you do not make it plural in any case (tuanises is wrong).  The most common usage is just, "Que tuanis", when referring to something.  And it can pretty much be anything.  I'm not sure the root of chiva, but in Mexican Spanish, it means goat.  This is also used as an adjective, but is made plural.  Goes to show how different vocabularies can be.  

Percent complete: 28%

Okay, no more Spanish lessons.  On to the past week.  First off, KU cannot keep doing this whole overtime thing.  I am going to pass out/have a heart attack one of these times, and my host family probably doesn't appreciate these late games that keep getting extended because I'm probably not very quiet, although I try to be.  It's been a crazy Big 12 race this season.  And on the topic of KU, I hope you are all enjoying the snow and these days off because it's not going to happen again, probably ever.

Last week (maybe two weeks ago?, but I forgot to mention it) we took a dance class and learned the merengue, salsa, and form of Tico dance called el swing (creative, I know) that is specific to cumbia music.  It was really fun, so hopefully I can test it out when we go out next.  Ticos love to dance... It was a great cultural experience too!  And some of you have been asking what San Jose is like (setting, dynamic, etc.), so here is a really cool video that someone made called "San Jose from the sky".  As you will see, San Jose is not like a typical big city with a huge skyline and buildings all over and everything.  It has more of a feel of a bunch of small little neighborhoods all put together.  It's very different from anywhere I have been, because it has the dynamic of a small town but there is a third of the country's population that lives in San Jose and the metro area.  Also to take note of: how many buses and motorcyclists you can see, how many churches are everywhere, and the sunset I get to see over the mountains at night.  At the 1:32 mark, you will see the National Stadium, 2:11 mark is the National Theatre, and 4:53 mark is the roundabout infront of the San Pedro Mall, which is only a few blocks from the UCR campus that we have been to a lot.  I tried to buy a football (American) there a couple of weeks back, but it was $200, so I decided not to.  Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umi5y-eGJ-E

(Sorry for the "Sims" building-mode-esque music, but I didn't pick it.  Mom, we played that game enough that you should get the reference)

Other than that, we have our official orientation for La U (common short name for the University of Costa Rica) tomorrow for 8 hours (joy), and then meetings for enrollment on Thursday, Friday and Monday.  Unfortunately, since these meetings have to happen, we had to cancel our final Grupo trip to La Fortuna which is an area close to Volcán Arenal, the most popular volcano in the country.  There are some more waterfalls there (that people can swim in the pools) and hot springs, and I think some zip-lining.  We are going to try to reschedule for later in the semester, but I am also going there with my family during Semana Santa (Holy Week) since we get the whole week off of classes.  So there's that at least.

Okay, caught up yet?  Tuanis.  (also going to try to use the Costa Rican Word of the Week in the posts, so you can see how they apply)  Last weekend we went to Punta Leona which is the reason for the title of this post (actually it's lyrics to a song from the Bloodhound Gang, but it kind of applied because we listened to it on the way there too.  The message in the song is somewhat different though).  I honestly felt like I was living in a giant zoo or something for the whole weekend.  We stayed at an incredible resort and had these little villas we stayed in, 2 people each.  It was pretty much all inclusive and was a great experience.  I'll narrate with pictures.  And for part of the trip, I decided to set my camera down (for once) and just soak in the experience, so I didn't capture everything that there was from the weekend but still got quite a bit.  One note before I start: all of these animals are completely wild, no program to put these species of animals in this habitat or something.  I think that was the most incredible part because I normally only see this stuff in a zoo or exhibit or something.

The trip started off by passing over a river infested with crocodiles.  There wasn't much action, but it was still interesting to see these things in the wild.  They are really just like looking at dinosaurs, it was pretty cool.

This guy had his mouth open for a while and there was a bird that walked right by him that I was hoping he would take a jab at, but it didn't happen.  That would have been some serious Discovery Channel material.

The restaurant (which was incredible, by the way--three meals a day, all delicious) was open air, like many places here.  The advantage to that is getting to eat with a bunch of coatis and monkeys each day.  The disadvantage?  Getting your food stolen because you are eating with a bunch of coatis and monkeys each day.  This is a white-nosed coati, much like the one we saw at Volcán Irazú (see previous blog post from January 21). 

This is the "Discovery Channel" aspect I am talking about.  Normal conversation, eating your food... BOOM, 20 monkeys overhead and all around.  Truly incredible and unlike anything I've ever experienced.  Meals usually took an hour just because they were so enjoyable.

Sitting on the stairs with a friend.  They were sitting...









...and hanging everywhere you looked, in the trees too.  This is the white-faced monkey, which is the most common, or at least the one we have seen the most.  We got to see a spider monkey from afar, but I didn't get a good picture of it.  Along with monkeys and coatis, there were also plenty of lizards, geckos, iguanas and even some Jesus Christ lizards, the ones that run across water.  I'm not kidding you, it was a zoo without being a zoo.

The trees and plants were incredible as well.  They covered the whole resort with huge canopies and were all extremely tall.  With that recipe, the life in the trees was quite exotic as well.  One morning, a few of us woke up at 6am to go on a bird watching tour (my dad would be proud) which ended up being completely worth it.  These are macaws on the left, and the tour guide told us that there were about 30 couples (yes, couples) on the property.  The coolest part about these was when we would be at the beach doing whatever, and just casually look up and see a couple of macaws flying overhead.  Can't exactly say that is normal.  Their wingspan is much larger than I had thought as well.  Maybe it's just the biology in me, but I can't express how awesome everything was.  Along with macaws and the birds below, there were also plenty of parrots, parakeets, hummingbirds, varieties of hawks, and I even saw a Baltimore oriole, which was, naturally, much brighter and bigger than you see in the States.

I forget the name of this bird, but I think that it is mostly specific to Costa Rica.  It has a really unique tail, almost like two guitar picks at the end of two wires.  It was a scissor-tailed something, but very vibrant and very beautiful.  I had to up the exposure of my camera because it was in kind of a dark area, so that's why the color looks flooded.  Not quite good enough to keep color quality and exposure, apparently...

This may have been the coolest part.  This, way off in the distance, is a chestnut-mandibled toucan, one of the 7 species of toucans in Costa Rica.  The fact that I was seeing this in the wild, again, was just beyond me.  Sorry for my excitement, but I hope you all can experience something like this one day.  One other toucan that we have seen (not on this trip, although they were around this area) is the keel-billed toucan, like the one from last week.

This apparently is one of the most rare toucans to spot in Costa Rica, and we found one in about 15 minutes on our tour (our guide's eyes were also unbelievable for being able to pick out birds.  Like, "Oh, look at that green parakeet in that green tree 200 yards away" unbelievable.  He had a great spotting scope as well once he found them).  This is the fiery-billed aracari and it was truly incredible.  It was also far away, like many of the birds (partly because they probably wanted to keep their distance, but also because the trees were so tall) but I still had a good zoom on my lens.  Fun fact about toucans: they are "evil birds", as our guide put it in his broken English.  They will eat the eggs of other birds, and even the babies sometimes, but it's part of population control, I guess.  Natural selection at its finest.  This was the third of the seven toucans that we have now seen in our time here.  My goal is to see all of them.



While taking a break from the wildlife/environment all around, we finally had a pool!  Not that the beach is bad, but it was nice to be able to relax in cool water (sometimes the ocean is too hot, seriously) without battling the surf.  I'm spoiled, I know.  They also had some sand volleyball courts that we played a couple of games on.  And a couple of pool side bars, of course.  Pool, beer, and country music.  Not bad.

I went on a photo excursion around a big rock point that was there and saw some cool stuff.  Lots of crabs and seagulls, as well as tide pools on the rock with mini ecosystems (biology nerd, again).  The picture at the right shows how clear the water was.






TONS of these guys covered parts of the rock, as well as in little caves I found as well.  Creepy little creatures if you ask me.

Below are some pictures of the beach and, of course, another sunset.  The water was incredible and the beach was very soft, white sand.  We played some 2v2 beach soccer too (it was an active weekend).  The water was super clear, and a few of us actually saw a little (11/2 to 2 foot) nerf shark in about 1 foot of water in the surf.  Pretty cool, but it disappeared quickly.  One note about the beaches: they are not like beaches in the US.  First off, the sand is always white and very soft.  The palm trees always have the perfect shape, size, stature and color, and the beaches have almost always been "out of nowhere".  By that, I mean there are usually mountains and rain forest surrounding all of the beaches with giant rocks and cliffs that will be the land boundary, but then between those are where you will find the beach itself.  It's as pretty too look at what is surrounding the beach as the beach itself.  Now I know why Hollywood always leaves the US to film tropical movies... simply can't find this anywhere else in the world.  And the sunset was great, but I tried to enjoy it more this time rather than taking almost 300 pictures of it.  We played some catch with the frisbee while watching it set, and it turned out to be something from The Lion King.

As always, more pictures on my Facebook and Flickr.

Sorry for the really long post this week, but I get really excited about biodiversity like this.  Hopefully it will work out to go to Parque Nacional Corcovado soon, which is home to something like 5% of the biodiversity in the world, and is the place where it's possible to see a jaguar in the wild that I had mentioned in a previous post.  Judging by the luck with the toucans, maybe the biodiversity God is on our side.

¡Pura vida!