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Published: June 24th 2008
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Poison Dart Frog
This little frog was out in large numbers after the morning rain storm. They secrete a neurotoxin from their skin. Hi all!
It has been 2 days since I've written because yo estoy muy ocupado (I have been very busy)! So, let me try and catch you up!!
On Saturday I had an amazing day! I went to the Biological Garden in Puerto Viejo which was a nice sized tropical fruit garden. They had all the tropical fruits I knew and some I had never heard of. I walked about 15 minutes north on the main road north out of town and then another 5 minutes off the main drag to the garden. As I arrived a bus of tourists were loading up and leaving. So that put me as the only patron at the garden, which was a real luxury. The tour was self-guided and the brochures were really informative. I ended up wandering through the garden for hours. The garden sustains itself with guided tours for large groups and grows Black Pepper as its cash crop. My favorite part was the area where they grew the peppers. No one could answer my question there: What do you call a collection of pepper trees? An orchard, a grove, a copse, what?
It was so quiet except for
Pepper Plant
This is how the Black Pepper looks before it is harvested. They pick it green, then dry it and the green skin on it becomes black. the sounds of nature: birds and poison frogs, etc. Most of the garden was under some jungle canopy and the cool shade was exactly what I needed after the hot hike to the place. The workers were there to get me started and pointed out some poisonous frogs in the bromeliad section and then I took the run of the whole place. Afterwards they answered all my questions and gave me juice from the garden as well as samples of sugar cane, roasted cacao beans (chocolate!). Then it started to pour while I was talking to one of the workers, but we continued to talk under the reception shed until it stopped. It had rained 2 times that day -- they don't call it the rain forest for nothing.
Later I went back to the hotel and ran into Judith, Assa and Kika and we all went to the beach for a quick dip. It had to be quick for me since the rain had cooled the ocean significantly. We then went back to the hotel and changed and Judith and I went to a Japanese place and let the girls do their own thing. At about 9 we
Frogs and Blogs
This frog looks like a little toy I found in the rain forest. went back to the hotel and I started to pack. I was just getting relaxed and sleepy and Judith knocked on my room and told me that she was really worried about the girls because she went to the place that they said they would be and they were not there. So I spend an hour with her cruising the bars looking for the teenagers. We finally found them after 3 passes through the whole town and Judith calmed down. She ended up staying at the bar and getting a drink while letting the girls stay in her sight until 11. I went back to the hotel to try to get some sleep.
On Sunday morning I took the 7:30 am bus back to San Jose so that I could be there early so that I could meet with the field school workers. On the bus a girl told me that she and her friend were celebrating their last night in Puerto Viejo at 1 am and someone in the bar fired off 3 shots from a gun! Everyone in the bar got down on the floor. I haven't had a chance to confirm this in the paper, but
Shampoo Ginger
Could have used some of this when I got caught in the rain storm! I was glad to be cruising out of that tiny town. I might call it a one-horse town except for the fact that there were always at least a couple of horses and a burrow freely roaming where ever they wanted in town, even up to the bars.
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