Blogs from Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 507

The name in Spanish is Oropel. The latin is Bothriechis schlegelii, the Eyelash Viper. We got one!!! Well, I took a morning off to go find one on the Watch Trail and low and behold, it was still there (S saw it yesterday afternoon, same spot). And what did I do? I brought it back. Yep, in a bag, in my backpack, I walked it back 5km to the cabins. Dangerous, probably. But totally cool. The plan is to take a lot of photos. My advisor is going to think this is cool too; they've never seen an eyelash viper here before. That's right, I rule. Tomorrow is the last day of June. Hard to believe a few entries ago I was feeling like it would never come. Just took out the viper again, and he ... read more

Okay, this was the best day so far. I´m so excited from our activities today. We started with the Selvatura bridge walk through Santa Elena Reserve. Basically, we hiked through the trees through bridges that connected one park to the other. Could have done without that one, but then we had the zipline tour. it is a definite must do here. its completely touristy, but who cares, i´m a tourist. its like repelling except there is no mountain/ face to swing off. We are dangling through the trees and really moving from one platform to another basically flying in the wind to the next platform. it was awesome. You know who, had so many negative comments about the event; i just had to ignore him. he once said, " my heart is racing because of the ... read more

We (yup, he made it, too). We had a comedy of errors yesterday with me forgetting my wallet in kayla´s car (luckily, she came back) and moises not having a ticket to board the plane. that took one hour to solve. Believe me, i was going to make sure he got on that plane; however, now, i´m reconsidering. lets say its been nothing but hell!!!!!!! We stayed at a hostel last night and i must admit it was fairly organized and clean, but its been a long time since i´ve stayed in a hostel. well, the positive is that we were able to go out last night in San jose to have a few beers. We rented our car and that was an ordeal, but we finally made it out with a few loud decibals on ... read more

People have to understand that I have some serious moist problems. This entire weekend I was moist! And by “moist problems” I mean, I have profound objections to feeling moist, especially for long periods of time. Good thing I´m probably in the moistest country in the world at this time! This weekend was crazy. Guanacaste has extremely bumpy terrain. We were bouncing in our tour bus all the way to the beach. And can you imagine how that would be like if you had to go to the bathroom? I had just that problem. Despite my discomfort, I would say this was one of my favorite weekends. Sunset at the beach, geysers, mudbaths, pushing the bus up and down muddy hills…yep, that was this weekend. It started raining…hard…when we were in the rainforest of the Volcán ... read more

My friend Randy asked in an email recently how I was dealing with communication issues here. In other words, how are we getting along given Beth and I don’t speak much Spanish (that’s a huge understatement!). Well, so far we have been getting by okay. What I try to do, right or wrong, is to listen for key words I understand like “trabajo” (work) or “precio” (price) or “bano” (bathroom!) and then haphazardly put together what a Tico is trying to explain to me. This method seems to work for me but it certainly isn’t enough to be a full time resident of Costa Rica. In fact, to become a citizen, you have to take a Spanish test. Okay, I’ll probably never become a citizen (not that I would ever give up my U.S. citizenship). I ... read more