Thursday, September 3, 2009

flog part ii, and vlog (that's video log)

so, we entered the jungle. as treacherous as it was beautiful, the hike up to cerro chato was full of new sights and sounds, and the costa rican paradox wherein you sweat profusely, even when there is no sun and it's probably only 60 degrees.


after another hour of mud, roots, and each step being the verticle equivalent of four on an average staircase, we finally heard the sweet sound of lapping water, though until we almost died on the sharpest descent in history, we couldn't actually see the lake, because we had climbed right down into a cloud.

rather than causing us any apprehension, the three feet of visibility somehow made it seem even more perfect to completely disrobe and dive in to this volcanic crater.


the following video, taken in the only 3 minute interval where the clouds parted, may help to do some justice to this truly beautiful place:

not far from cerro chatto lies the la fortuna waterfall, which we hiked out to the next day. my quadriceps were so angry with me, it took me no fewer than 30 minutes to walk the last 400 m downhill to get there. but again, very much worth the agony (this is a recurring theme on this trip).
david proceeded to hop into one of the pools, directly in a school of large fish, to take a dip.
the rest of these photos are hopelessly out of chronological order, but after loading them for the past four hours, i've got no patience left to correct that. bear with me...they'll still tell the story!


the magnificent creature pictured above is the mighty quetzal. to see this bird in costa rica is a privilege. to photograph is is pretty extraordinary. our camera battery died while photographing it, so we didn't get the gorgeous red belly. but this at least provides an idea.

one of the many jungle creatures we became friendly with (doesn't bite).

this cute guy is a howler monkey. while we spent the whole trip waking up to their 4am roaring, we could never quite catch a glimpse until we got up in the canopy in monteverde. apparently, the trick is to see them from above. you will be able to listen to their impressive bellowing in a video posted near the end. 



we spent a day in monteverde on the ziplines...toursity, but a novel look at the landscape if nothing else. our guide was kind enough to video one of his ziplines so you can see for yourself--posted below and i can't move it up here!



also at monteverde, a clever little set up where wannabe national geographic photographers can be totally inundated with priceless closeups of hundreds of humming birds. there are feeders set up all over this tiny patio, so we got a little camera crazy.




more pics from monteverde...it is impossible to select the best pictures of all the enormous and spectacular trees there. perhaps one of the best parts about monteverde was the ability to wear long sleeves again and not have heatrash and sunburn.


that's actually the size of my hand, for reference.




the perfect avocados (that sell for maybe twenty cents each) among all the other amazing produce has been one of the most sorely missed aspects of cr...
now the pictures get really out of order!

david and i toasting the end of our volunteer tenure in manuel antonio national park in nearby quepos.

our volunteer housing in manuel antonio...just like being at camp!

this sign on our bathroom door translates as "close the door so that the frogs and crabs don't come in" a legitimate concern. there were crabs all over our dorm.

david and i had the prettiest beds:  dinosaurs, and fairy princess ice cream cupcake.


one afternoon, david disappeared after lunch for an extended period. at least an hour. i finally found him staked out in front of a tree where a three toed sloth had, probably over the course of one year, descended low enough to get a really good look. david had to wait a full hour for the sloth to finish turning it's head 20 degrees to face the camera, but i think this shot is worth it.

manuel antonio is full of white faced capucins, maybe the most famous monkey in hollywood. also david's favorite.

this is the adorable little mono titi, or squirrel monkey. they move so fast this is the only picture we have that isn't blurry. they used to overrun manuel antonio, but have recently dropped to endangered status due to the prevalance of power lines. they mistake the lines for branches, and you can figure out what happens...


one of many ridiculous vistas on the manuel antonio trails.
an agouti...we seemed to see one at the start of every morning hike. they're like a giant rat that moves like a rabbit.

playa manuel antonio, heading into the park.

and now, a totally disjointed account of our serious jungle excursion, corcovado:
anteater-so cool! we saw this on our walk out of the park. we really lucked out on our animal sightings there.


above two shots are at a famous point in the hike called "salsipuedes," or "get out if you can." looks harmless enough, but we learned the hard way what a big difference a few minutes of tide can make...


on the walk into corcovado, the terrain was hilly, rooty, and all thick, red, wet clay that looked like chicken tikka masala. the combination of slippery and jagged led to our guide, royer, breaking his ankle...too bad for all of us.
the final of four monkey species in cr (actually the first kind we saw there), spider. these guys are everywhere and they seem to be in a state of perpetual pissiness, literally and figuratively. they're aggressive, territorial, and if you walk under their tree, they'll do everything in their power to relieve themselves on you. fortunately none of us got baptized with monkey excrement, but in a moment of carelessness, i did get a branch thrown at my head.

our first lunch stop on the way in- royer is purifying water for us to drink from this creek. in one of the most ironic parts of the trip, i drank jungle water for a week with god knows what kind of parasites and feces in it without so much as a tummy grumble, and the only place i ever got sick in costa rica, manuel antonio, also happened to be the only place (including our house in san pedro) with a functioning clothes dryer. don't underestimate the danger of non-refrigerated rice.
our trusty steeds that took us safely into the periphery of the park, and left david hoping his one remaining kidney hadn't been jostled to disfunction...
the above photo may look like nothing special, but is actually our prized possession from the trip. in that blurry mess of leaves and twigs is "our" puma.
the beach at the end of the sirena runway, our homebase at corcovado.
the runway
jungle foot
one fat cocodrilo...scary how well they blend in. can't tell you how happy we were that we spotted this on the opposite bank of the river or one of us might have walked right into it.

as the tides rose on our walk out, there was a loooooooot of taking shoes off and on to walk through deep tide pools. on a 20k hike when your life literally depends on your speed (to beat the tides), this process gets incredibly annoying. eventually and maybe for the best, i finally got caught up in a huge wave that drenched me, which pretty much took care of the "keeping feet dry" issue.
i really think this shot is just beautiful.
sirena, the beating human heart of corcovado. if you're a lost fan, you'll appreciate the eerie resemblance to the old dharma initiative baracks.

leaf cutter ants...don't sit down next to those guys.

baby coati, not suprisingly in the raccoon family. these guys are really, really cute.
on our walk out of corcovado, we stumbled upon a cemetary for a tiny population that lived there about 50 years ago. the whole place was blooming with gorgeous hibiscus flowers.

fresh puma tracks on the beach.  as we mentioned in a previous blog, one of the greatest and scariest part about being in the jungle is just how far down the food chain you are...these animals can see you, but you really can't see them.  it's completely outside your jurisdiction whether you get eaten or not.  this puma probably left right as it heard us coming, but we'd never know it...
fresh tapir tracks on the beach (the only animal we didn't see, which was very unepected!  that was one animal that i was apparently overly cocky about.  typically, they're much more commonly spotted than cats).

royer and i on our long walk out on the beach.  in contrast to the walk in, the walk out is flat and mostly on long stretches of just totally pristine, untouched, uninhabited black sand tropical beach.  that sounds a lot more charming than it is!  it is HOT with absolutely no shade from the sun, but you're sweating too much to cover yourself with clothes and sunscreen just disintegrates on contact.  the side of my body facing the sun was so burned halfway through the day that we had to chop some big a** leaves off a plant to use a parasol.  

here is a really cool video david took at the sirena station of a little plane landing. the planes bring some food and water, but mostly people rich enough to afford being jetted in and out of the park. the local response to that is similar to what sherpas on everest feel about the tourism...it's like being helicoptered to basecamp. you get a bunch of people there who have no business being there based on their physical ability, their money goes to their pilot and guides rather than the park and its' staff, they come in, tromp around, leave their garbage (how easy do you think it is to secure trash removal when you're 20k from the nearest auto accesible road?!), take some pictures and go. kind of sucks.
but regardless, it made for an awesome surpise video...if you hold out to the end, you can hear (hopefully) the howlers going crazy because, not suprisingly, the plane is very upsetting to them:
and here is the zipline at monteverde:

whew! that's plenty for now...it seems that every time i work on this blog i wrap up never wanting to sign into it again...

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