Mom says "Describe the Scenery"

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She did request that. And I have been lazy at this blogging business, so I'm getting back into it. I hope the description pleases my mother.

I'll start at the place I'm staying. I know I've described it a bit, but here I'll go into laborious detail, just for the fun of it.

The main complex of cloudbridge has three buildings. The electricity comes from solar panels, the stove works on gas, and the water comes right out of a mountain stream. if we are cold at night, we can light a fire in a wood buring stove, over which we can also cook beans. (Dried beans, by the way, are very difficult to cook, and require pre-soaking for a few hours and then cooking for at least an hour. Then, they still aren't very good. The boys here eat them all the time, and I refuse, and buy the more expensive canned beans. Why not?). The walls of all of the houses are made of adobe. The wod supports can been seen throughout the inside of the house. Its actually quite beautiful, and mom, you would really love it. Well, it is, after all, the part time vacation home of a rich South African couple. The main house has a kitchen, bathroom with hot water, and front porch. Upstairs is another porch with a spectacular view, and two bedrooms, which have been taken over by the guys. Its too bad really because I miss that upstairs balcony. The house also has some interesting quirks. For example, some of the "windows" upstairs are made are actually reused doors, turned sideways. The doors have windows in them too, but you can open the door flat out for more air. It works because the doors are very skinny, probably only 2 ft across.

My house is just for me. Down stairs I have a little place to sit, and a bathroom. Upstairs is a desk and my bed. Its increadiably tiny, maybe 15ft by 15 ft. The bathroom has a natural stone floor, and part of one of the walls is a large natural stone which they just left in place when they built it. I put my shampoo and soap there.

The other building is for scientific equipment. It is where I am right now, as I am typing this blog. Interestingly enough, last week, this building was the scene of two dramas. the first occured after I was leaving the computer lab late at night (which here, means around 8 pm). As I locked one door behind me, I turned around in the second room to see two shining eyes staring at me, reflecting the light from my head lab. And there they sat, on the table next to the door I had to go through. Mind you, the eyes weren't huge - I'm not talking jaugar here - but I was thinking - "a rat?" I was disconcerted in its LACK of reaction to me. I started to consider the possibility that it was not actually a living thing, but some inanimate object simply reflecting the light. I got closer and realized that it was a spider. I giagantic spider. Maybe a tarantula, although it was awfully skinny for one. But, nonetheless, and spider of those proportions - like 5 inch proportions. It was happily munching away on some other huge insect, a 2 in cockroach or grasshopper, and in the process, excreting much more slime and mucus than I thought could possibliby be kept in that body (it was pretty skinny). It was disgusting. I got near it and considered my alternatives. Basically, I had to go through the door. I could try to get it to move away, or I could squeeze by. I want you to understand that the table and the door are so close to each other, that the corner has been cut out of the table so that the door can open. My ass brushes the table on the way out. If that would happen now, my arse would be within 10 inches (lunging distance?) of this spider/archnid demon. I tossed a pen at it. It did not move. It flipped over its meal and continued to excrete. I was horrified. Being closer, its eye glowed more strongly in the yellow orange light. Then, while my heart leapt into my throat, I flung open the door as wide as I could and jumped through onto slick stones in the dark and fell down. But I slammed the door shut, and by God, the thing didn't touch me. Here ends drama one. (And NO, I didn't not take a picture. EW.)

A couple of days later a perfectly beautiful and awesome humming bird got trapped in the room. He was so exhausted when I found him, that he didn't even have the energy to fly away and try to escape me. He was just panting in the window sill. I put my hands inside of my sleeves so I wouldn't touch him with my bare hands and lifted him out. Of course, that is when he got really excited and tried to fly away again, so he fell back into the window sill. We did this for about 15 minutes and I thought he would die of a heart attack. But eventually, I rescued his arse. he was silvery purple, and had a long, slender, curved beak. Neat!

Most days I get up around 5:30 and get ready as soon as possible, and head out to look for monkeys. The sun come up around 5:45. The mornings are the only time we get good sunlight. Cloud come in (at ground level) around noon, and stay for the rest of the day.

The Giddy's own about 700 acres down here. Its a wide mix of different eco-types. At the bottom of most trials is grassland. It used to be all forest, but when the town was founded around 70 years ago, people come through and cut it all down for pasture. Not that it worked. I guess if you go 10 miles more down the mountain, than your return rate on acreage and raising cows goes up by about 10 fold. So up here, its almost a point of no return. But the moved in anyway, and also ate all the forest animals. So, everything is still recovering, and some of the grassland remains, although it hasn't been used for years now. Part of the project here is to reforest these parts. In some parts of the reserve they have put a lot of effort into it.

Walking beyond this, further up the hill, I sometimes run into pine forests. Its strange actually, it seems almost like something I would see in minnesota. A stand of pines with lots of ferns and grasses growing under them. They even have wild blackberry and raspberry bushes you can eat from - just like midwest forests. (I do have to say though, the berries are VERY sour). I like this part of the forest. If the sun is out, it filters down and makes everything warm and happy. And it keeps the mosquitos away.

But the monkeys don't like that part of the forest.

Going farther up, one runs into secondary forest - that is, forest that is regrowing after having recently been chopped down. Most of the grassland areas will eventually look like this. This part is really really dense, and the trees are not so large and tall. Its dark and I always feel like I'm steathily creeping through a tunnel. Beyond that is the primary forest. This is where I find the monkeys. Its like the secondary forest, except everything is stretched out - thre trees are taller and the undergrowth is less thick.

I dont know how to describe it. Sometimes it seems spectacular to me, and sometimes it doesn't really seem like the glossy "rainforest" pictures I've grown up with. It is very very very green. Every surface is covvered with things that are living. The branches and trunks of trees are covered in moss, lichens, and ephiphytes. Lots of the leaves are thick and glossy and dark green. But there are also tree ferns - the likes of which I have only seen in conservatories. There aren't many large colorful flowers - but there are plenty of little ones - and lots in red. There aren't any big toucans, but there are little miniature versions called toucanettes - that come in both yellow/black and green varieties.

I've been getting more and more lucking finding the monkeys. I hope that actually reflects some "getting better" at it too. Its really fun to find them, and after all of the hard work to get there, its very rewarding. Yesterday, I little infant got within 15 feet of me. he hung upside down and swung around like a moron just far enough away so that I wouldn't do anything to him. I guess he was teasing me. I wish I had my camcorder with me then!

I guess the most notable aspect of the forest is the water. It rains almost an inch a night. A large river passed through the valley in front of the house, but the hills are riddled with little streamlets. The ground is always soft and spongy, and I slip and fall constantly in it. At the end of a day, I am very very dirty. Chiggers live on every surface in the ever present water. Sometimes I walk through the forest and I am soaking up to my thighs - just because everything is so wet. But its also really clean water. The forest has this very characteristic smell - that I think I can only describe as clean water. Imagine yourself in a large room full of little streams of clean water, steaming itself into the air all around you. It smells like that all the time.

I haven't seen any frogs though.

Yesterday was a big day. Another volunteer showed up and there are now four of us staying here. It makes it a little less lonely. We celebrated by having cheese, crackers, wine, and beer. So fancy.

A fun thing that I should mention. The brand of the cheese - and of many many products here - is dos pinos, or two pines. The logo is of two pines trees inside a circle. This is also the logo of circle pines, my home town. Just before I left for here, I read the history of this symbol. Apparently, circle pines was started as a communist/socialist experimental city. All the utilities were meant to come from inside the city itself, so that it wouldn't be dependent on outside sources. The two pine trees in a circle have long been a socialist symbol of internal self-reliance. I don't know if dos pinos had something similar in mind. They are however, probably the largest corporation in Costa Rica... and capitalist.

They days go by. I look for monkeys. So it goes.
Peace,
Kelly

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Photos

San Gerado
The closest "city"