Day 59 - Vacation life almost over... sort of

Costa Rican Word of the week: dude/man -- mae (mah-eh, but one syllable)

Quite possibly the most overused word in Costa Rican Spanish, and very well might be the first word of 75% of the population.  Pretty self-explanatory definition and use, but I don't have a cool background of the word like last week.  Just know that if you want to sound Tico, add this word to your vocabulary. 

¿Qué tal, mae?

Percent complete: 31%

With the two month mark coming tomorrow, I am almost officially 1/3 done with my time here.  And it's been a pretty incredible 31% so far.  Classes from this month (history, writing and culture) end this week, and our final appointments for enrollment were today.  One class that I wanted to take, Spanish Grammar, is completely full right now so unless some Tico students drop it, I won't be able to take it.  There is another class that will transfer for the same credit so it's not a huge deal... considering the horror stories that I have heard from previous students from enrollment here, I would consider it a win thus far.  Hopefully it stays that way.  I titled this post what I did since semester classes start in one week.  I have been plenty busy studying so far (really), but my workload is going to increase when the school year starts here.  Hopefully that doesn't mean I won't be able to travel though, because now that I cannot take Spanish Grammar and might take another in its place, I could have a Tuesday to Thursday schedule which would be even better for weekend.. studying.  This weekend we are going to Puerto Viejo to get away before classes start, but I'm not sure if I will take my big camera or not since I plan on spending the majority of my time surfing, and Limon is slightly more "sketchy", although Puerto Viejo is plenty touristy.

My family is coming to visit in 19 days and I couldn't be more excited to show them what my life has been like the last 2 months.  This weekend, a group of us rented a car and went to one of the two places that my family and I will be visiting during Semana Santa (Holy Week): La Fortuna, right by Volcán Arenal.  We also went to Monteverde which is a very famous national park and for good reason.  I don't have too much time this week in the midst of enrollment and my "finals" for this month's classes, but I will post some pictures to share the weekend.  Much better than reading a ton, anyway.  Also, the car rental and road trip were a blast, despite getting lost leaving San Jose (there are literally zero street markings/signs/ navigational tools), but I'm not sure if I will do it again... slightly more expensive too.  Glad I got the "road trip in Costa Rica" experience though!

The weekend started out in La Fortuna, where I will be going with my family.  We went to some hot springs Friday night (heated by magma from Arenal, below) and met some people from around the world including a guy from Argentina who is in the picture here with me, along two girls who were on the trip with us.  Meeting people at places like these and hostels has been one of my favorite parts about my experience in Costa Rica.  I had a couple of beers with four Scottish biologists on Saturday night, so that was really fun as well.

This is Volcán Arenal, the most popular volcano in Costa Rica.  It is still active so if someone is lucky they can see lava at the top at night, but we did not.  Maybe in 3 weeks when my family is here.  This is the first volcano that we have been to that actually looks like a volcano, too.  There's not much vegetation towards the top, and it stands alone as one would imagine.   The picture below gives you a good idea.

The only thing we did in La Fortuna itself was go to the hot springs on Friday night.  The hostel we stayed at there was really awesome though; met some German guys and another guy from Australia, we think.  It's fun to play the "Guess the Accent Game" before we ask where they are from.  Saturday we woke up and drove to nearby Monteverde, which is a very popular national park with tons of stuff to do.  On the way, we stopped by the Viento Fresco Waterfalls.  There were 3 total, all in the middle of the rainforest.  Here are two of them, because somehow, even after my leg slipping knee deep into water trying to get to a good vantage point by crossing the river, and then stepping ankle deep in mud once I got across, I didn't get a picture that I liked of the second waterfall.  Learning experience, photography is fun.









Here is the highest one, 260 feet.  The water was freezing, so I didn't swim in it, but it was quite the sight to see.

Leaving the waterfalls, we came across a very interesting bug that looked like the largest wasp I had ever seen.  It had a blue body and orange wings.  More on this in a second.






We got to Monteverde late afternoon and had another great hostel to stay at (the one where I talked to the Scots for a couple of hours).  Our Argentinian friend was there by chance as well, ha.  We decided to do a night tour of part of the national park in Monteverde, and it actually rained on us that night for the first time.  We saw lots of coatis and cousins of the raccoon, etc., to start off the tour.  Later on we saw more of what you would think to see in a rain forest.  I was disappointed because I never saw the
glow in the dark beetle that was apparently around, but oh well.  I did, however, see this orange knee tarantula, that, thanks to my zoom lens, I didn't have to get too close to (I make my mom kill spiders in the house, seriously).  Coincidentally, that bug above that we saw earlier in the day?  That is the tarantula hawk wasp and it actually eats these!  It also gets way bigger than any wasp ever should.  Very interesting, but also makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  At least for me.

We also saw some less terrifying things, like this sleeping emerald toucanet.  I really want to see one of these in the day time when it is not hiding under its wings because it's absolutely beautiful (check the hyperlink).  We learned that it sleeps with only one foot on the branch to conserve body heat at night.  Its leg has this weird locking-mechanism type thing, too, so it doesn't have to worry about falling off in the wind.  Also cool.

The best part about the tour was being able to see 6 sloths!  Most of them were high up in the trees (all of them were really big two-toed sloths, a little different from the three-toed sloth which I like more, but both are in Costa Rica depending on the region), until this mother came down 10 FEET from us with her baby.  The picture below is just out of focus, I'm blaming it on being dark and raining and me having to rush, but I've never been so mad at myself for missing a perfect photo op.  You can still make out the mom and baby though!

Along with all of this, the occasional monkey and some other stuff (didn't see any wild pigs, unfortunately), we saw some tropical frogs as well.  I don't think that this one is poisonous, but one thing we did learn (they told us not to touch any braches or leaves or vegetation for this reason) was about the golden poison dart frog which is in Costa Rica.  That little sucker can be fatal to humans and has enough poison, just by touching its surface, to kill 10,000 rats at the same time.  Glad I didn't meet him.  The night before, our guide also saw two green tree pit vipers that are the second most deadly snake in Costa Rica, behind the fer-de-lance viper.  They also have some coral snakes here that I believe are also deadly to humans.  Our guide explained what each type of venom did, whether it be neurological damage or whatever else, and that we pretty much have 8 hours to get anti-venom or you're a goner.  In any case, I will consider it a victory if I never see one of these here.


On Sunday, we went on a canopy tour early in the morning in Monteverde that was incredible.  Picture and video are below.  After that, we went to see a bat exhibit.  It was very interesting, as Costa Rica has more species of bats than they do birds.  Other than echolocation, which very well may be the coolest "sense" of any mammal, I found this to be interesting.  On the topic of the poisonous frog, certain types of bats that eat the frogs here have "taste buds" located on their chins to see if the frog is poisonous to eat or not.  If these "taste buds" have a certain reaction when they touch the frog (it happens extremely fast), they know that it is poisonous and don't eat it.  This way no poison enters the bat's mouth, and neither of them die.  Biology Andy enjoyed that, at least.  Oh, and I believe that this is a fruit bat above.

Here is a low quality picture (ha) from our tour company, but at least it is something.  The canopy tour lasted a couple of hours, and included multiple tree-to-tree lines, as well as two "Superman" lines.  These are ones where you are suspended laying down like Superman flying.  One of them is the longest line in Latin America, measuring a little more than one and a half kilometeres (about a mile).  I took a video of this one since my hands were free.  You can't tell how fast I was going in the video, but I would guess it was around 30 to 35 mph, and the wind that day was pretty bad so I was kind of scary.  Really awesome though.  Also, at the end of the tour was a "Mega Tarzan Swing"; a 130 foot rope swing that was super fun.  Here is the video with both:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsJN_iBlWug

That's about it from this week, I think I touched on about everything.  There were a few things left out I'm sure, but keep checking on my Facebook and Flickr for updates.

I also gave our seniors a standing ovation by myself in my room watching the game tonight.  I hope some of you were there so I could live vicariously through you.

I'll post next week about my trip this weekend, but I'm still unsure about my camera, so I'm sorry if the pictures are lower quality from my reliable PowerShot rather than the Rebel.  Either way, que Dios le acompaña y

¡Pura vida!