Leaving Arenal

After the excitment with all the monkeys and the volcanoes, I was pretty sure the rest of the trip was going to be a let down. But I'm happy to say that I was wrong. Monteverde was beautiful. It's located at a higher altitude and the weather cooled off a little! The ride to get there was interesting...we took a boat, then a 2 hour van drive on a road that's not paved for about an hour and a half. It was a little bumpy, but beautiful! We saw a ton of coffee plantations and a school that was raising money by having 2 kids hold a rope across the road and not let the vehicle pass until they donate some money! Hilarious! Must give them credit; they probably raise some money that way form all the tourists that pass through!
The town is quaint; it was founded by a bunch of Quakers ( I think) from Pennsylvania, so it has a very American connection. We arrived and relaxed for a bit. Our time in Monteverde was going to be spent at the Monteverde Institute which does research with the local environment, etc. We went to the institute to sit for our first talk, from Justin Welch who is in charge of water quality, and he was going to show us how they test if the water has little pollution or a lot. I guess it's okay to say that we didn't know we'd be performing the tests that day.
I'm not sure what possessed me to raise my hand, but when Justin asked, "Who wants to be the agitator?" I volunteered. Agitating something sounded like a good thing at the time. I wasn't aware that I'd be putting on waders and heading directly into the river! Walking in those waders was hard and I had to be very careful or my sized-too-big feet were going to send me tumbling. My job was to "agitate" any sort of living macro-organisms, and my partners were going to catch them in a net and we were going to see what they were. It was a bit gross at first, standing and reaching into the unknown water, and scraping rocks with moss all over them, but I bucked up and did what needed to be done. After all, it's in the name of science!

Holy crap!

Oh my god! Oh my god! I went for a hike today with some members of the group and we had a face off with some howler monkeys! And arenal erupted this morning when we were on it's slope! This is probably the greatest day ever!

We were walking over a suspension bridge and Mike was leading the way. He stopped us to show us that there was a monkey on the bridge. Well, it turns out there was a family of howlers that were crossing the bridge and coming right at us! Kathryn and Michelle were taking photos, I was, too, and I was trying to take video as well. They walked over the bridge and right overhead! I almost wet myself! There were 5 of them plus a baby! I wish I could post pictures right now! I got a video of the last monkey of the group coming over. Josephine kept saying, "keep your mouth closed!". It was amazing. We had a standoff with the monkeys and I think they respect us more now for holding our ground!

Arenal

Oh my goodness! We hiked up the arenal volcano today and it actually exploded when we were up there!! It was amazing to hear and see. We saw boulders falling to the side of the mountain (thank god!) and heard lots of rumbling.

I forgot to mention the other night how I got to catch and count turtle eggs falling into a nest. I gotta say, it was interesting. I had a glove on one hand and an egg counter in the other hand. As cool as it was, it felt a little...invasive, for the turtle. I could feel the chloaca opening and closing as the eggs were being dropped. I counted 102 eggs. As soon as Phoebe (we named her) started filling in sand we were up and away from her asap so we wouldn't get sand thrown at us! That night we also had encounters with Emily, Abby, and Annie ... I named them. We measured and tagged them as well.

We're just sitting down to lunch after our encounter with arenal and may go on a hike over a bunch of suspended bridges.

Arrival in Arenal

I'm sitting on the porch of our little cabin and watching Arenal, one of Costa Rica's most active volcanoes, and the coolest thing happened: I saw it light up and heard it rumble! So awesome! But I digress.
Torteguero was a ton of fun! I'm super exhausted today because I stayed up last night to do the last shift of tagging turtles. We had the option to go for a third day, an I figured I should do it since I'm here and may never get the opportunity again. I'm so hard core I volunteered for the 12-4am shift with Jeanne and Sandy. I knew I could sleep all day today because it was a travel day to get to Arenal.
Tagging turtles was a great experience. Every night I went out it rained! Crazy! It's hot so it sometimes feels good. My raincoat held up pretty good besides the amount of sand that is present. The pants too! However I'm still trying to get them dry. I hope it doesn't take the rest of the trip. I was covered in sand nearly every night but I really enjoyed my time on the beach. Did you know that where there are sea turtles there are sharks so none of the locals go swimming in the sea? It must be awful to live on a beach and not be able to go swimming! It's just too dangerous.

So after a day of travel and me being pretty crabby due to lack of sleep, we're finally at Arenal. And now I'm about ready to pass out while I'm watching the volcano from my front porch!

Arrival in San Jose and torteguero

It's already been fun! Arrived in San Jose with minimal trouble, and met most of the people that we're traveling with. A few from last years group are with us again. Me, Karla, Susie...then there's Kathryn, Dorothy, and Sharon. Everyone else is new. There is Mike from North Carolina, Allie from Florida, Kirk, Michelle from Texas, Tammy, Sandy, Paulo our guide, Josephine, Al from NSTA, Jeanne from New Hampshire. The group is comprised of mostly older people. The first day of a new trip is always fun; meeting new people and catching up with the ones you know.

We had a lecture the first night from Paulo about Costa Rican biodiversity and the history of science. It was interesting but after being up since 430am, I just wasn't into it.

We left yesterday morning to head to Torteguero, which is where the sea turtles nest. It's a very long drive. We were on the west side of the continental divide and had to go to the east side of the country on the Caribbean. We had two choices: we could drive and hour and a half and then get on a boat for 5 hours OR we could drive for 4 hours (half of which was on a gravel road) and get on a boat for 2 hours. Somehow we elected to drive for 4 hours! It was a long bumpy drive. I took a nap and took in the scenery on the trip. We arrived at torteguero national park by about 3 o'clock. We had left at 9!! It was a long day. Then we had to get trained on sea turtle tagging.

There were two shifts; the first was from 8-12am and the 2nd was from 12-4am. Kathryn and I were on the first shift last night. We went out with mike and Dorothy in our group and Kasia was our liaison. It was sooo dark when we first when onto the beach. We couldn't see a thing. It was crazy. We can't use flashlights because it scares the turtles, the only light we had was from little red lights on head lamps. So off we walked up the beach trying to avoid driftwood and tourists hopin to get a glance of a sea turtle so we could do our tagging.

It was pitch-black with no moon because there was a storm coming. Much lightning and some thunder so we were nervous it would rain. We finally started to see some tracks and finally got to see a green turtle. I can't believe how big they are! They're about 3 feet long! So we went to measure it and there were a ton of tourists around and their guide was nice enough to let us do our work. It was our first one! Mike and I got down ready to measure and I turned on my headlamp, then the turtle started flapping and when that happens you want to get out of the way because sand flies everywhere! So I backed off and tried to turn off my headlamp, but I ended up turning the white light on! Yikes, this was bad, so I turned away from the turtle, but it had already started to leave! Then the tour guide yelled at our guide for scaring her off, but they said it happens all the time. I felt horrible.

Throughout the night we saw many more turtles and as we continued, it got much easier...until the rain came! I was recording this time, Kathryn was measuring, and it started raining hard. So we all got wet, thenvthe turtle started flapping and we got sand everywhere. It was in hair, face, eyes, etc. We got dirty! Mike got flipper burn while he was trying to measure and the rest of us were just soaked and sandy! What a great night!

We tagged and measured about 6 turtles and at midnight we headed back to the station for a much needed shower and passed the info we had learned onto the next group.

I really wish one of the pictures of me with all my sand everywhere would've turned out. I hope tonight is just as exciting.

This morning we went to visit the primary school in Torteguero. It's so basic but the kids were so cute. They were 1st graders and I actually understood a lot of their science lesson. I could understand that they were learning the 3 states of matter; solido, liquido...it was great. There are no computers; no technology at all!

When we exited the school, we walked about 10 steps to the beach; YES, it's that close! So cool. Now we could actually see what the beach looked like in the sun. The sand was black! Coastline is absolutely beautiful but no one was swimming! Paulo said that there are sharks in the water that could actually bite humans so we elected to just walk on the beach.

At lunch there was an encounter with some white faced monkeys. If they show their teeth, you'd better watch out; that means it's preparing to jump at you!

Prepping for departure

I think I'm all packed, and now I'm too wired to sleep! Flight leaves at 7:40am which doesn't sound bad, but I have to be at the airport at 6, so sleeping in is not an option! Thank goodness I have a wonderful sister who will wake up early to take me to the airport.
Can't wait to see the turtles, and be back in Costa Rica. Should be hot and humid in the rainforest, but it may be cooler in the mountains. I'll keep updating as much as possible...Pura Vida!

REUNION...partially

I'm at the NSTA conference this weekend, and I've met up with a bunch of people for our Costa Rica trip...I met up with Kelly, Paulo, Marylin, and Dorothy was there at the end! It was great to talk to everyone, and to try to encourage others to take part in another NSTA Costa Rica trip. I loved meeting with them, and reliving the fabulous and life-changing trip we had!