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Published: June 12th 2009
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Posted by John
Time to catch everyone up on our travels again. It has been a while. Megan and I have been on a few trips since we last wrote in the blog.
Not long ago, we took a short trip to the Monte Verde area. This region in the northern part of Costa Rica is a popular tourist attraction for its zip-line tours and jungle canopy bridge tours. We decided to ride the zip-lines the afternoon we arrived because the chance of seeing more wildlife on the canopy bridges would be better in the morning. For those of you that have not ridden a zip-line, it basically consists of stringing a large cable across a valley and then riding over the valley in a harness connected to a pulley. Needless to say, one cable is never enough and every tour company is ever in the process of one-upping the other companies by adding additional, higher, and longer cables to entice the tourists to their tour. Our particular tour consisted of 13 cables the longest of which was a kilometer long. It sounds really exhilarating and is but for me, the real thrill was the walk through the jungle between
cables and seeing all of the jungle-forest in its true form. Truly amazing! The shades of green are too numerous to count and there is moss and fern growing on top of moss and fern. The lines of every tree almost blur with all of the texture and it is difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins. The next day we explored the forest from suspension bridges that stretch over and through the tops of the trees allowing a great perspective of the jungle from the treetops. I would highly recommend this to anyone who comes down this way. It is an incredible way to see the jungle. There were again, more types of fern, moss, and other growth than one could imagine
Our next trip was an afternoon trip to a volcano near to our house. The first volcano we have had an opportunity to see was Volcan Poas. Having lived in Costa Rica for 6 months at the time, I had no idea that we had been living so close to a volcano (less than 40km away). Fortunately, this one is mainly just blowing off steam. Its last big eruption was in the 70’s and
is not expected to erupt again anytime soon. But, how do they really know these things? Anyway, the crater was quite beautiful and the neighboring extinct crater lake was very Eden-like. More walks through the jungle and back to the car brought us to the end of a nice day trip. I think that it would be difficult to take a day trip in Texas that would bring you dividends similar to a volcano.
Our most recent trip was overnight to one of the biggest tourist draws in Costa Rica, Arenal Volcano. Ok, now this is a volcano! A large conical shape? Check. Smoke and spewing ash? Check. Glowing lava and tumbling rocks? Check. Megan and I had our friend Becca visiting in town so we rented a car to make the trip much shorter. As we were driving closer to the town of Arenal below the volcano, the views of the smoke pouring out of this conical mountain was almost surreal; definitely not something that a flatlander from the states is used to coming across. As you can see from the pictures, it is a constant part of the everyday life of the people that live in this area
of the country. We spent the day and a half exploring the area and seeing the volcano from numerous vantages and looking for the hot springs in the area. We found another suspension bridge tour and got to see another forest from a great viewpoint. This is such a beautiful country and we really recommend a visit by any that has the means to make it happen.
Other than that, we are doing fine here. Rainy season has started and it is teaching us what a real rainstorm is all about. I’ll just say that the gutters in town can be two or three feet deep to accommodate the daily torrents. We are also approaching the end of the semester and we have decided to not stay in Costa Rica to teach next semester. Megan and I are planning to head south and explore South America. Late in July we will head south for Panama and then on toward the lower half of this hemisphere to see what we can see. We have found some other opportunities along the way to help defer some of our costs. We’ll be in touch! I am thinking of putting some more photos up
on a photo hosting site like Flickr or Photo Bucket. Not sure which one to use. If anyone has any thoughts, let us know. I will let you know as things progress......
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Richard Kuhlman
non-member comment
Hello
Glad to see that you'all are doing well. Things are getting weird here at Habitat: Today, July 1, is the last volunteer work day until we start plating in late August..then we'll have a "blitz" building 6 homes starting in September. Lotsa construction-type changes also and some new efficiencies. We now are building our houses in 9 to twelve "volunteer days" and the rest of the work is done by the subcontractors. The 9 day buiilds are because many of the homes we're buiiding now are 80% brick so we don't have to spend lots of time installing siding. Anyway, just wanted to check in and am glad that Costa Rica is treating you well. Take Care. R. Kuhlman