August 17, 2009: Puerto Viejo

Owen: What a day! After an especially slow, difficult waking up time, we made our way to the bus around 7 o’clock. Sean started to feel a bit achy in the stomach and made frequent trips to the bathroom all night. As we piled in the van, somebody stepped in a pile of dog logs, and it stunk up the whole bus. This day was off to a terrible start! As we made our way to meet our nature guide, we stopped at a breakfast place and ordered some food. I was ready to eat! When the plates came out, there were only two measly eggs, and three slices of toast… I am a growing boy, so this felt like I ate only a piece of tissue and was supposed to feel satisfied with it. Tummy grumbling, we met up with Ricky, our Reggae-Rasta nature guide. He was the man! He knew so much about the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. As we were hiking we saw lemon grass, cocoa plants, banana plants (which we are not supposed to call trees because they aren’t trees I guess), Manzanillo trees, and several other cool plants. The coolest part though, was the wildlife!

It was AMAZING!!! The first thing we saw was a ginormus spider. Like, HUGE. It was a friendly spider, it wouldn’t bite, so Ricky let it crawl on his arms and face and then, on us. The web this mammoth, colossal spider (honestly, I bet most of you haven’t seen bigger, I hadn’t) spins is super strong. So strong indeed, that they use it to make bulletproof vests. After seeing a giant moth, several hundred spiky-backed caterpillars, and a wasp nest, we spotted some howler monkeys. I got some great pictures! After gawking and the monkeys for a while, we moved along. We stopped very, very often to behold at a new spectacle of the forest.

Several birds (my favorites were the green macaw, the parrots or the giant pelicans) passed overhead, then we discovered some bats under a palm leaf. Rickey was amazing at spotting the flora and fauna. We soon saw a grey male sloth chilling in a tree way up high. Next, we spotted a bigger brown female sloth, also very high up. To top off this sloth finding adventure, we stumbled upon a low hanging grey sloth, which was moving about the trees.

After that, more monkeys, and then, two yellow eyelash vipers, separated by a few hundred meters. This snake slithers around in the trees, never coming down to the ground. They call it an “eyelash viper” because if one was hiking, maybe not paying attention, possibly looking at the ground or something of that extent, the serpent hanging at eyelash level, will strike the weary and unlucky hiker, right in the eyeball, or so they say and also because the snake has eyelashes. After a long photo-op for the snakes, we started looking around from frogs.

I found a red poison dart frog, and moments later; Liam one-upped me by coming across an incredibly rare and extremely cool, black and yellow poison dart frog. Finishing up the long hike, we saw a few more monkeys, another sloth (bringing the sloth count to four), a brightly colored caterpillar, a massive colony of leaf-cutter ants, bullet ants, cicadas, Jesus Christ lizards, Locusts, more spiders, blue crabs, and hermit crabs. Which brought us to the coolest, most rare creature of all, the helmet head iguana.

After all that, it was about 3 o’clock, and every single person was famished. We said our goodbyes to Rickey and thanked him, and rushed to get food. Sean, Liam and I hustled to a near by restaurant, which has been my favorite thus far. It was a beach shack with a reggae feel, and made divine tacos! We finished up, paid, and headed for the beach. After a long swim, it started to get dark, so Sean headed into town to get water, and Liam and myself returned to the room to shower up. Now, I am lying in bed, typing and listening to the chirp chirping of barking geckos. We are about to go eat dinner with the group soon, so Sean and Liam will let you know how that goes. Ciao!

Liam: After our measly breakfast, Ricky led us down a beach path. The first stop we made was to see some locusts, Sean held one and we got a picture of it, I never realized how massive they are. Soon after spotting the locusts, Sean saw some basilisks, also known as the Jesus Christ lizard, on the side of the road. We ventured forth into the jungle and found many large Golden Web spiders, the biggest spiders I have ever seen. The spider that we all held was about the size of my palm! As we walked through the jungle we saw many different types of animals. When Ricky saw a eyelash viper sitting on a stump, when people were taking pictures I walked back to the path. As I was walking I saw a really cool looking frog and Ricky told us it was very rare, I thought that was pretty cool. One of the last things we saw as we were leaving the jungle was a helmet head iguana, it is related to chameleons, and like their relatives they take the color of their surroundings.

After the tour everyone was exhausted, so we got food and went for a swim. Around 7 o’clock Sean, Owen, and I met most of the people in our group to go out for dinner. We decided to go to a pizza restaurant and we all ate for a while. We got back to our bungalow around 9 ish, where we packed up and got ready for a early morning tomorrow.

Sean: Well the boys have done a really nice job of summarizing our day! All in all, it was an amazing day. Once again we got super lucky with the weather and took full advantage with a long hike in a national park. In all I would guess we hiked about 5 km and the entire way was packed with wildlife. I took the opportunity to share some of my knowledge with my brothers and loved every creature I was aloud to touch and/or grab!

Everyone was dragging at the end of the hike because we went several hours over the estimated time and people did not pack enough snacks and water. Several people in our group (the brits in particular) seemed quite upset by the end of the adventure. Us Americans on the other hand, we were feeling great after some water and food. Also, it is difficult to describe how nice the ocean felt after such a long, HOT, and steamy day. It was so refreshing I think it reenergized all of us for the evening. Pizza with our group was fun. I think people are starting to become comfortable with one another as the conversation is now flowing much more naturally.