Two Unfortunate Journeys by Sam

A few days ago we took two unfortunate but exciting journeys. One is to the Nosara Beach Hotel (which is currently abandoned and is off limits to the public), and the other is on a rainforest hike.

The Nosara Beach Hotel:
 
We were walking on the path between Playa Guiones and Playa Pelada, when we noticed a path leading to the hotel. Jet and I decided to investigate (bringing cameras). There was a staircase straight out of a movie, with spiderwebs and dead trees lining the edges. At the top of the stairs, we came upon what appeared to be the main courtyard, with stairs leading to different parts of the hotel, and a huge pool in the middle (it was at least 10 times bigger than ours!). There was algae in the pool with dragonflies buzzing everywhere. A bush with branches hanging with red flowers was right beside one of the staircases.

The walls were white with tons of green mold growing on them and wasp nests hanging from the ceiling. In the first building we peered into there was a painting that looked to be broken and fire burned. It was blackened. We were starting to head up the main tower, when we heard distant voices. We thought we would be able to go up, when suddenly the voices got louder, and loud barking started! We  broke our speed record sprinting out of there.

The Rainforest Hike: (We didn't take a camera on the hike because we needed both hands, but here is a picture from the top of the path, by our house.)

There is a path leading from our house into the rainforest, where you have to scramble down a series of waterfalls, with insects and spiders guarding the path. It eventually comes out in a clearing with vines hanging down, right by the centre of Guiones (the most touristy part of town.) I have tried it three times before, but never without an adult. This time however, Jet and I tried it out by ourselves.

We set out into the rainforest carrying sticks (for spiderwebs). You have to be quiet for about a minute, because we go onto the neighbours property to get to the creek. Starting out, we saw three big centipedes about two inches long. About halfway through the trip, we were starting to get a bit worried, because it was getting dark and we heard thunder rumbling in the distance! We hurried along, splashing ourselves up to our waists getting very wet and dirty. It didn't rain and we didn't see a Brazilian Wandering Spider (they come out at night as they are nocturnal and night was approaching!). That would have been terrible.

We managed to get to the clearing. We were about 30 minutes late and there was no one there to pick us up like we'd arranged. Dad had walked up the path to meet us but somehow our paths didn't cross.  We waited for about 5 minutes to be picked up and then walked to the main part of town to try to check time but the security guard at the cafe kept just saying "Cafe Closed, Cafe Closed". In the end, Mom and Patti picked us up and then we met up with Dad and then we had an enormous, delicious dinner. Also on the plus side, we spotted 7 Golden Orb spiders, which weave a really strong web.

Ant Invasion!

by Dan

Crazy things happen in the tropics, apparently. Like you get to live in a 'high-end' architecturally designed house with a leaky roof and no vent (!) on the main plumbing stack.  Or you go out for an hour, and when you get back, there is an INSTANT ANT INVASION in your kitchen!

I mean, we always had a few ants in the kitchen, but this was a little different in scale:

There were distinct types of ants that invaded together.  There were light coloured largish ones, whose job seemed to be holding onto their white larvae/eggs.  There were largish black ones, which were reported to bite.  And there were tiny black ones, whose speciality was milling about very rapidly in circles.

I'm generally a no-insecticide kind of guy, but without a shop vac, I was forced to suggest taking the road more travelled, even if it does lead to eventual doom and destruction.  Now our kitchen has been unusually ant-free for a couple of days!  Chemicals are indeed our friends, even though this sunny relationship is bound to deteriorate rapidly.

Journey to the Sea: A story by Maeve and Zaylie

Journey to the Sea

by Maeve and Zaylie

Once upon a time there was a mother turtle that was waddling up a beach called Playa Ostional.Finally she thought she found the right place to lay her eggs so she stopped and started digging her nest. She was exhausted but she kept digging. After a while, she decided that it was deep enough. So she laid her 100 eggs. She used the sand around her to bury her eggs back up .then she started her long journey back to the ocean.

Sixty days later, the first turtle of that same nest poked his head out of the ground and breathed in the fresh air. He started digging his way up to the light. Just as he was about to climb out and say “Phew” to himself, something poked his butt. He looked down and saw another little head poking out. When that head finally came out, she was really clumsy and knocked his brother back down. Then, he finally flapped his flipper onto his sister’s head and pushed himself onto firm ground.

When he looked up he saw lots of round thingamajigs staring down on him and making screeching noises. Then he thought to himself, “What are those things?” He wasn’t sure if they were dangerous or not but he figured he better be on the safe side and not just leap into their arms. Somehow he knew what arms were.  He knew he had to get to that big, blue, glinty, sparkly, wet thing. So off he went.

It turned out that those two-legged things that made screeching noises were actually helping him. He realized that they were chasing away the soft black feathered, wrinkled bald fierce creatures that had long sharp things sticking out of their faces that didn’t look so promising. Also, they used their spindly flippers to clear away a path to the blue thing. They are really strong because they can knock down the mountains and fill in the craters. Those were big obstacles for the baby turtle. They missed one of them and he fell into one of the craters! He fell on his back. Then the most exciting thing in the whole of his short life happened. One of the two legged creatures came along and picked him up out of the crater and put him on his belly on the flat space again.

When the sky got a little lighter, the baby turtle saw what turned out to be a crab. It was oval shaped with long pointy claw-like legs that waved about. It walked sideways for heavens sake! It came towards  over the hole to cover it. He loves, loves, loves those two-leggeds! Otherwise, he might have lost his head.

Finally, he was really, really close to the sparkly blue thing. Then suddenly, one of the big, tumbly, crashy things that turn white and come from the blue thing came toward him. It slowed down a bit when it came toward him but it covered over him. It tumbled over him but then it was so gentle when it came toward him that he let go. He had to adjust to using his flippers to swim instead of propel him along the sand. It was awesome and scary at the same time! But he felt ready for this next adventure. Would the two leggeds join him?

The End

Notes: On her blog, Zaylie’s mom Patti wrote about her experience with our turtle patrol. You can read it here. By the way, the two-leggeds in this story are us, Maeve and Zaylie. The mother turtles dig by curling their flippers up just like we curl our hands up and dig the sand up in the same kind of motion that we use, scooping and throwing. The front flippers clear away and the back flippers go into the hole and scoop out the sand. The bald feathered creatures are vultures. There are many mysteries about sea turtles that even scientists don’t know yet (like what they do for most of the time in the water, where they go, how they mate etc.)

My First Day Snorkeling by Sam

First I am sorry that we don't have any pictures from this AWESOME day we had yesterday. We had the camera all right, but it turns out we left the battery back home charging!! I am really sad we didn't get pictures but without the camera I had hands free to snorkel and explore. The pictures I posted on here are ones I found online.

San Juanillo, Costa Rica

When we arrived at San Juanillo (the snorkeling beach), I was very excited to do my first snorkeling trip. We were a little cramped in the car which was not meant for 8 passengers, so we all piled out quickly. The beach itself was in a small cove separated from another beach cove with land shaped like a whale's tail. The land was covered with trees, bushes and vines in the middle and rocks and tide pools surrounding the edge. There was a big rock in between the trees and the tide pools on which people were climbing and looking out to the ocean with their binoculars. San Juanillo is a small fishing village so there were mostly local people there (more than gringos).

This is the closest picture I could find looking like what we saw.

I was really excited but a bit more nervous when I went out to snorkel. At first, I only did the goggles and went out on a body board, just sticking my face in the water to see the fish. It seemed a little scary to be in the ocean where I couldn't touch and then I started getting used to it. It was so nice to know that Patti was right beside me. I spotted tiny bright blue fish that were darting in and out of the rocks. I also saw an angel fish that looked almost translucent with black bands around its body.

On my second trip, I went out with Dad without the body board and I tried the snorkel. It worked really great and didn't take long to get used to. It clips on to the mask and I had to keep one hand holding it to keep it above the waves with the other hand paddling. We saw some big beige fish. They were harder to spot and were about as long as my foot. One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a bigger version of the bright blue fish only this time it had a round yellow spot right above its fin.

Sea Cucumber

At the end when we were tide pooling we saw lots of interesting creatures, especially under the rocks when we lifted them. We found a large dead octopus that looked a very large fried egg with tentacles. Patti spotted a brittle star that had very thin arms but a huge body and as soon as she saw it it scuttled under a rock. We also saw many teeny, tiny hermit crabs and some larger ones but only about the size of your big toe. We saw greyish greenish chitons with their armored shells. There were a dozen or more brown, squishy sea cucumbers that looked like they were peeing.

 We did all of this but didn't even explore the other bay. Our plan for tomorrow is to go to Ostional to do the turtle patroling and then go straight to San Juanillo to do more exploring!!!

First Visitors!

Just as we were about to settle in to a boring rhythm of ocean wave jumping, pineapple munching, coati shooing, beach creature monitoring, car fixing... we received visitors! And, well, it's even better to share all of these things. A few photos from Dad and Tanya's visit are below. What I don't have is a photo of the two lizards that popped out of Tanya's suitcase upon their return to Canada! Actually, I'd rather have a photo of her expression when it happened. Thanks, to both of you, for being such enthusiastic, generous guests. We wish you were still here.

Why we were a little late picking up Grampy and Nana - a little cattle traffic.

Another day, another beach. This one was fun for watching local surfers, finding unusual shells, and had a waterfall.

Sam, trying out the jungle vines. They work!

Maeve, loving the rain.

Maeve, not loving that there were no turtles on the morning we took Grampy and Nana.

Large parts of the day were spent doing things like this...

... and this.

Saddling up!

For a ride through the forest and along Playa Pelada.

Dad, enjoying the sunset cocktails in the tower.

Fun Together (by Maeve and Zaylie)

This is post that Zaylie and I wrote together. Zaylie and Tayo and Jet and Patti and Rich have come to Costa Rica to stay with us for a few weeks!!!

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Every day we go to the beach and come home with at least 12,000 shells (that might be a little over the top.)  Usually they are limpets and trumpet shells and olives. Most of our time is spent in the waves which are GINORMOUS. We play over, under, through and we added a couple which are toes, cannonball, fish, and ride. It’ll take too long to explain what all of those are but you can use your imagination. It’s super fun to body board. I (Zaylie) just learned how to ride the waves all the wave back to the beach (and scrape my knees on the sand but it’s still really fun.) Also, we like to do sand acrobatics which means cartwheels, walkovers (front and back), handstands. Mommy (Patti) helped  us. We’ve seen amazing cool different types of animals at the beach like starfish (bright purple and we got to hold it!), anenomes, a black sea urchin town, sea cucumbers, and dorises (which are medium sized, squishy lumps on the rocks), crabs that waddle around with their giant eyes, big and small fish. Also at Playa Guiones there are these REALLY HOT tide pools that we call Tide Pool Hot Tubs and when you sit in them it feels super good. It was time to go right when we found them and we wouldn’t get out until they threatened to leave without us. 

Speaking of interesting creatures, in the jungle-ish, woods-ish trees around our house, there are other animals we’ve seen. There are the coatis (raccoon type creatures with their long snout like pig noses), the howler monkeys (with their little babies making a huge ooooooooooooooooooooooooo in the trees), variegated squirrels, scorpions, lots of awesomely colourful birds and butterflies (that look like flying handkerchiefs.) And now we will tell you about the events of the night before. There are grasshoppers longer than our faces. One came in while we were playing Sequence. All of the kids screamed and ran into the kitchen and shut the door tight (but we could still see everything because the door is glass.) What we saw was not to our liking. It landed on the glass door right by our faces. Patti came over and caught it with her bare hand and then threw it outside off the deck. It kept coming back all night. We’ve seen those grasshoppers mating, one small one and one big one. Also, the gecko pooed on me (Zaylie.)  

In the evenings and in our tiempo libre (free time) we play lots and lots of games together. These include Spot It, lots of normal card games, Sequence, Spoons, Can You Name Them All. Tonight we’re going to play Family Flux. Th e other game which is not really a game but is more like an exercise challenge is our Family Plank. We are working up to get from 20 seconds to 5 minutes. Yikes. To distract us, we sing ridiculous songs while doing it, like I Know A Song That Gets on Everybody’s Nerves, and The Titanic Song.

One project that we did over the first few days was Secret Notes from the Fairies and the Coatis. We were doing it to get Tayo to read. We made up the notes and tied embroidery notes to them and then we said that goblins would write her notes too but they wouldn’t have floss on them. We also made her a wand which was a stick that we covered in black and white embroidery floss and at the end we tied more floss on it to make it a wavy stringy fun thing. This was a good project and an awesome idea except instead of loving it (this is a quote from Tayo), “It was really annoying because they wouldn’t let me into the part of the house where they working and I felt excluded.” 

Tortillas!!! We have been eating tortillas non-stop with all our meals. There have been mouthwateringly delicious things to put inside such as mango salad, salsa and guac, egg things, beans and rice, lentil salad, cabbage/carrot slaw, and good ol’ peanut butter and jam. We also had the most amazing milkshake made with coconut milk, banana, and pineapple. It was delicioso. Today, we get to go to Robin’s where we get to have gelato but only if we finish this in time so gotta go, bye.

El Carro, Mal

by Dan

Our car with its snorkel, having made it through the hurricanes and floods and various other rigours of Central America, was recently defeated by Maeve and her visiting Nana (both very well meaning of course) washing the car with a hose.  After all, a black pipe is a logical thing to fill with water!  I now know how to take the air filter off and remove water, and I also know that the car will start again easily afterwards.  One for the skill set.

A week or two before that, the radiator developed a very dramatic hole, so that when refilled it sprayed out everywhere.  Although it meant a walk to the local mechanico, the kind of problem that's pretty easy to deal with. 

The other rigours of Nosara include very rough roads, though, and the next thing was not as easy to deal with... about half way to Liberia to meet our friends Patti and Rich and family, amid worsening rear end vibrations, all the wheel studs on the rear passenger side decided to break at once.  I had just removed the other rear tire to inspect it before we left... oops, wrong side. 

We learned how to say "tow truck" (and a few other things) in Spanish, with the help of a local/American guy and a tour van driver who stopped to help.  As you can see from the photos, it was raining, although we had thought the season over! We had the car towed to Nicoya, where Patty and I retrieved it a couple of days later after its pretty simple repair.  We hired the tour van driver to drive us to Liberia to meet our guests, and return us to Nosara.  Now the car is back in our driveway, and back to its normal state of generally but not all that urgently needing repair.  So all ends well!

Workin' on the House (as usual)

by Dan

We rented a house in Nosara that has a cool modern design, designed by an architect to maximize natural cooling.  There was the understanding that I'd do a bit of work in exchange for a lower monthly rent.  But given that the house doesn't appear to built in the, uh, most robust way for the Costa Rican climate, and that no one has ever lived here full time, I didn't realize the amount of work that would need to be done!  And the house was only about 75% furnished when we arrived.  In our first month, here's a few things I did:


- Flat roof over leaks pretty badly; unclog drain and apply waterproof coating
- Properly install under-cabinet kitchen lighting with new transformer
- Install kitchen microwave shelf and cutlery drawer; get compost and recycling bins
- No hot water at kitchen sink; install replacement hot water piping (old iron pipe rusted closed)
- Build cover for unguarded hole in kitchen floor with 10-foot drop
- Install guard wires on all staircase railings

- Reverse the swing on 3rd floor floor-level windows to eliminate risk of someone falling out
- Replace inoperable drain on outdoor bathtub
- Mount towel bars in both upstairs and downstairs bathrooms
- Service air conditioner to unclog drain and prevent condensate dripping into room
- Repair rotted stair treads and stair landing leading to downstairs bedroom
- Clean out, remove large poisonous snake from, and set up shelving in storage area under parking
- Remove broken wood bars from exterior door in downstairs bedroom, repair and trim bottom of door so it will close

- Purchase television, toaster, reclining deck chairs, office chair

Fortunately, I am familiar with this pace of house maintenance work, from doing a year's worth of maintenance in a month or two in New Brunswick!  The pace should slow down considerably from now on...

DURING...

DONE!