Favourite moments - Costa Rican Adventure Part 7

When mum first proposed a holiday together I was a bit stumped. I had no 'bucket list' of things I wanted to do or places I wanted to go; I never imagined having the money to travel so had not thought much about it. When I mentioned going to the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam I think she was a bit disappointed. The plan emerged quite gradually, mum's only request was being able to use her spanish. Neither of us was interested in lounging on a beach or sipping cocktails. The travel agent's initial plan entailed hotels and rented cars. I didn't want to have someone else decide everything so we politely rejected her itinerary in favour of doing our own arrangements. Mum reckoned it cost about half what it would have done if we had gone with the original plans.

The thing we agreed on was the principle of experiencing the rainforest. We didn't go 'off the beaten track', but we really did go into the wild forest.

In terms of 'adventure' the second day was my favourite: the flight on the tiny plane and the collectivo bus ride and the walk along the beach were all part of feeling that we were remote from civilization, that we were seeing a part of the world so different from the one we knew.

La Leona gave us a tiny taste of paradise, without it feeling luxurious or self-indulgent. The Pacific Ocean was 30 metres in front and the rainforest was 30 metres behind us. 

Most magical moment was our first encounter with wildlife. The first morning we set off up the self-guided trail in the private La Leona reserve. At the top of the hill we came upon two tapirs asleep in the undergrowth. They were just there, minding their own business, having a nap. I think it was the first time I have seen such a large wild animal that wasn't under some kind of control by human beings:

The encounter with the family of coati was another of my favourites. What I was astonished to find was that the animals were not afraid of humans (except the Tayra that we also saw this day but did not stick around to be photographed). I had assumed that if they noticed us they would run away and all we would get was a fleeting glimpse, but on the contrary, they were utterly unperturbed and carried on regardless:

Jim was another highlight of our stay at La Leona. Here he is communing with the coati. He knew so much stuff about the rainforest and I learned so much from him. Our hikes never felt like preplanned tours to see the sights; everything we encountered was spontaneous and unexpected. He is a lepidopterist by inclination and has his own species that he discovered and documented.

The black vultures became my favourite birds; we saw them everywhere, often circling:

And look, we found a place where chocolate grows on trees:

The only scary moment for me was that first walk at La Leona. We were enjoying watching a line of red army ants that were alongside the path then I stepped over the roots of a tree to find that we had discovered the nest and the entire path was swarming with ants. I could not avoid treading on them so I panicked and retreated. We had to do a quick hop-skip-jump over the swarm hoping they would not mind too much and decide to gang up on us.  This is the nest below the tree roots, it is a couple of metres square in area

Last night at La Leona we had a real pacific storm; Jim lit the candles in the garden when we were waiting for dinner to be served, and they did survive the first few minutes of rain. In a short space of time the paths were mini streams, and then the thunder and lightening started. We sat in the dining room and just watched the spectacle:

Taken seconds after the one above, the lightening did not flash across but lit up the entire sky. It was a fantastic dramatic end to our stay on the coast:

But just being in the rainforest was the best thing. The forest does not smell as I expected. it felt as if you were breathing pure oxygen, the cleanest air imaginable. I worried that it was naive to expect to feel like an explorer rather than a tourist but we did, and I loved the feeling of being surrounded by untamed nature; there are few places in Britain where you can find this:

and you never knew what you were about to come across:

If the definition of an adventure is "an unusual and exciting or daring experience" then I think that it certainly lived up to expectations.

The human impact - Costa Rican Adventure Part 6

The beach of the Pacific Ocean was as wild and remote as you could hope for. You really get a sense of being on the edge of something vast. There is no gentle lapping of waves, they crash in relentlessly whatever the weather, the distance between the low and high tides being merely 50 metres or so. The forest comes right down to the beach where the coconut palms drop their fruit onto the sand and hermit crabs scuttle by the thousand amongst the driftwood. 

But if you look closer at the dark grey volcanic sand, along the high tide line this is what you find:

While this is not strictly 'microplastic' is marks one stage in the process. Plastic waste that is dumped in the oceans gradually breaks down due to degradation by sunlight and the action of waves, and it becomes these tiny pieces of plastic that now exist everywhere in the world's oceans. Other forms of microplastic are abrasives and exfoliants deliberately manufactured as tiny pieces (and entering the oceans via the water cycle) and microscopic pieces from artificial fibres. The bacteria in the sea that break down organic substances cannot deal with plastics. While it is well known that large pieces of plastic are a danger to marine life and seabirds, who consume it or get tangled in it, these pieces of plastic are so small that they can then enter the food chain, with currently poorly understood consequences for animal and human health. The 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' is not actually a floating island of plastic, but an area of concentration of microplastic, brought about by currents that keep them concentrated in a specific area.

On our way back from one of our hikes mum and I litter picked the few hundred yards of beach leading back to the lodge. In a way I was surprised by how little there was. Because the place was deserted there was no dropped litter, this is entirely plastic that has been washed up on the tide. It felt like a small thing we could do to contribute, though quite literally a drop in the ocean.

Wild and Reckless - Costa Rican Adventure Part 5

On our penultimate night we went for dinner at The Treehouse in Monteverde, though it was raining when we walked over to eat so they were not seating anyone under the tree as it is in the open.

For our last day in Costa Rica we took a hike to the San Luis Waterfall (or catarata, a word we became very familiar with in chatting to various people along the way). It seemed straightforward. Take the early bus to the cloudforest but get off at the turning to San Luis, walk downhill 7 km until you find it. It turned out that Jovan probably hadn't ever been to the San Luis Waterfall (but it was the only time they let us down).

Another of my best photos, a green spiny lizard on the walk down the hill:

So we walked and we walked. It was downhill all the way. Past the school:

Past the health centre (these buildings were sprawled randomly down the hillside, seemingly nowhere near where anyone lived):

We saw plenty of birds, and then a very camera-shy squirrel:

We were very hot, very tired when we reached the bottom of the valley and the village of San Luis, having descended several thousand feet. There was no sign of the waterfall. I insisted that we walk out the other side of the village, where we finally encountered a man who told us it was back up the hill. Mum then knocked on someone's door and after a long chat established that we had to go back up past the school and take a turning. This was 3km ... back up the hill. In the scorching, midday, heat. We stopped by the river for a drink and to reapply suncream. Someone had thoughtfully dammed the river and created a deep luscious pool. Although just behind us the road crossed the river on a little metal bridge no vehicles had come past us in over an hour and there was no one about. 

It was irresistible:

Having been cooled and refreshed I was all set to march back up the hill. Mum was a bit more the worse for wear so the walk back up was done in tiny stints between patches of shade and included a welcome sit-down at the cemetery. Having got off the bus around 8am it was 1.30pm by the time we arrived at the entrance to the waterfall. From there it was another 1km to the fall itself. The perk was it was through the rainforest along the river.

I am trying to upload the video of the final stretch and the waterfall itself, but am not sure it is working. (Gave up on the video, in fact the two short films that I put together with these photos at the end wouldn't even load to Flickr). You can go to the 'Search for the San Luis Waterfall' album on Flickr and see the little videos of us making the final trek (actually, go to just this one, the first one has not loaded properly either). 

The water was take-your-breath-away cold but very exhilarating. It was so beautiful and we sat and watched a flock of swift type birds swooping in and out of their nests in the rocks around the valley and up above the waterfall. We had hoped to be there for the middle part of the day when the valley is a sun trap, to sit on the rocks and read and have our lunch. The perk of being late was that we had the place to ourselves, but the sun had moved around and it was cooling off down in the valley, so we only stayed about an hour, allowing plenty of time to walk back and call the taxi. We waited half an hour for it to arrive, admiring the fruit in the garden of the people who ran the little cafe and trying (and failing) to capture more hummingbird photos. 

The final one of my wildlife photos, and probably the best. This is a Glasswinged butterfly:

At 6am on the 23rd we said our goodbyes to Pension Santa Elena and caught the bus back to San José.

We left San José just after 5pm. As we flew away we briefly had the sunset through the window and then about eight hours later were awoken with the sunrise on the other side of the world.

Biodiversity rules ok - Costa Rican Adventure Part 4

This is too big a topic to write about in such a small space, and I have become distracted reading about the geology and background of Costa Rica, so I'm sorry if this post takes a circuitous route to the subject in hand. It was sparked by an interesting comment that Jim (our guide at La Leona) made; Costa Rica had no dinosaurs. This is because (obvious to anyone with interest in such things but it never occurred to me before) the central american land bridge between the continents was formed a mere 15-20 million years ago by tectonic plate movements and volcanic activity (see here). But the real distraction started when thinking about the current concern with the rate of species extinction caused by human interference. Alongside the normal very gradual process of extinction there have been what are termed the big five 'extinction events' in the course of the existence of our planet. During each of these a huge proportion of the species on the planet died off. I had became curious as to how long this process took. The most recent of these extinctions, which happened 66 million years ago and famously killed off the dinosaurs as well as up to 75% of all plant and animal species, is referred to as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. It was caused (at least in part, there is of course much debate on the subject) by the impact of an asteroid. This quote comes from the wiki page where it describes the effects of the impact:

"Such an impact would have inhibited photosynthesis by generating a dust cloud that blocked sunlight for a year or less, and by injecting sulphuric acid aerosols into the stratosphere, which would have reduced the sunlight reaching the Earth's surface by 10-20%. It would take at least ten years for those aerosols to dissipate, which would account for the extinction of plants and phytoplankton, and of organisms dependent on them (including predatory animals as well as herbivores). Small creatures whose food chains were based on detritus would have had a reasonable chance of survival. The consequences of reentry of ejecta into the Earth's atmosphere would include a brief (hours long) but intense pulse of infrared radiation, killing exposed organisms. Global firestorms likely resulted from the heat pulse and the fall back to earth of incendiary fragments from the blast. Recent research indicates that the global debris layer deposited by the impact contained enough soot to suggest that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned." (my emphasis)

Isn't that mind boggling. Everything on the planet burned, and yet here we are. This extinction took place possibly in as little as 10-12 years. But each time evolution stepped in, plants and animals literally rushed to fill the gaps left by species that had gone and a whole new round of change and growth started. 

Doesn't it make human influence seem slightly irrelevant. But don't be fooled. Life can survive these catastrophes ... humans might not. The biodiversity of the planet is important because nature provides us with our food and water.  Nature is the expert at balance, and when we disrupt that balance we tamper with our own survival. As I pointed out in a previous post, strangler figs do not throttle all the trees in the rainforest, but Britain used to be an island entirely covered in forest, but thanks to human destruction nowadays a mere 12% of our land is forested, and even ancient woodland is controlled and managed by people.  It was the most striking thing about walking in the rainforest, that, apart from the cleared path, it was untouched. 

Pretty pictures now. The animals moved around too much, but the plants stayed still. I know pretty much nothing about plants. Mum however is very knowledgable. These are ferns, all photographed within a few feet of each other. Even I could see the variety in the species. Why? They all occupy the same space and the same niche, so why is there so much variety?

I am more of a fungus fan myself, though still know nothing. But some of them are strikingly beautiful.

Size is everything in the rainforest it seems. Things are huge. Trees are huge, leaves are huge, insects are huge. Or they are tiny.

This is the biggest termite nest we saw, it is about as big as me:

Inside the termite nest (and Jim got me to eat a termite ... they don't taste like chicken.)

Mum spotted this, it is the tiniest ants nest. It is about the size of my finger and the ants were like tiny black specks of dirt:

And beetles come in a mind-boggling variety. I didn't get a photo of the fabulous Hercules Beetle that Jim had as a pet and let me hold, or the phosphorescent click beetle that he caught on our night hike. This is a jewel beetle that landed on mum:

And then there were big ones:

and even bigger ones (probably a Longhorn Beetle); this poor thing appeared to have been half eaten, he had a front leg and half an antenna missing and he limped away up the path:

And a very large bee, that made mum walk swiftly away up the path while I followed it to get a photograph:

One of my favourite photos of the holiday. I don't object to the label 'tree-hugger', it implies a certain sentimentality about nature, but I prefer to think of it more as awe.