Around Costa Rica in 20 days

David: Our December expeditions have continued and the goal of reaching every corner of Costa Rica in one month is not far off. That really is not our goal and even if it was we wouldn’t be close, but, it sure seems like we have been traversing back and forth across the country and enjoying almost every minute of it.

On December 15^th we set out with Dad Hille, Mom Hille, and little sis Jenna to breathe in the fresh air of the Orosi Valley and pickup up some national history along the way. We visited “las ruinas” (the ruins) and Our Lady of Angels Basilica in Cartago, as well as the ruins of the first church in Costa Rica in Ujarras. The end of the driving tour left us with miles of driving through sugar cane fields to get to our night destination, Turrialba. From Turrialba we enjoyed great views of Irazu and Turrialba Volcanoes.

The volcanoes were not what lured us to Turrialba, it was the world class white water rafting that did. On the morning of the 16^th we embarked upon a world-class challenge led by our friends at Tico River Adventures. Our destination was the town of Siquirres down on the Caribbean slope and the only thing between us were the breathtaking and gut dropping class III and IV rapids of the Pacuare River. The Pacuare River is ranked in the top five for the most beautiful rivers in the world. It lived up to its hype. It was about 5 hours of virgin rainforest. When we weren’t loving the scenery we were holding on for dear life and getting drenched by pleasantly warm rapids. It was awesome and a huge thrill.

After a few mishaps and “advice” from the locals we ended up staying in a small little community called Parismina down on the Caribbean ocean. We thought we were just going to stay at a hotel at the river port city of Cano Blanco, but when we got there they said the only place to stay was about 5 minutes down the river by boat. So, in complete darkness we cruised down this river only to be dropped off in a quaint little town with no cars and all of their streets were sand. Lodging, dinner, and even where we were was all a little bit unknown, but when we left the next morning to head back to Cano Blanco, Parismina had won us over.

We met up with the Evergreen Lodge in Cano Blanco and we boarded another boat that took us 1 ½ hours into Tortuguero National Park for 3 days and 2 nights of a sweet and raw jungle experience. Tortuguero is an area that most tourists don’t get to experience and it is fantastic. Our time at Evergreen Lodge, where our cabins were situated back in the tropical jungle, included three official tours on the boat and much more time just in transit as well. We spent a lot of time on the river with our guide Willis. We saw a ton of wildlife including hundreds of water birds, a Three-toed Sloth, Howler Monkeys, White-faced Capuchins, Spider Monkeys (which are the most endangered monkey species in Costa Rica due to habitat loss), an American Crocodile, and Speckled Caimans. The mosquitoes were plentiful and viscous as well. And at the end of the day we were serenaded to sleep by the sounds of a very active jungle.

Our time in Tortuguero was definitely a highlight but it had to end for a very good reason. We needed to get back into San Jose to pickup Jordan (big sis), Rusty, and the two little whipper snappers, Gracelyn and Gabriel. We had one more little adventure in the city before we picked up the rest of the Hille fam the next morning. The five of us caught a taxi out to Tibas and had dinner with my host family from when I was a student. It turned out to be a wonderful evening and very special for me to have two different worlds collide.

The 20^th brought new destinations and new life with the Roth foursome gracing Costa Rica with their presence. We picked them up and headed straight to Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. The roads were in hecka bad condition but the drive was “Sound of Music” worthy. The Monteverde cloud forest is one of the better-known cloud forests in the country, but it is very different from where we are at QERC. We had a good hike the next morning and after lunch set off for the second highlight of the expedition, Arenal Volcano. We enjoyed 2 nights at hotel Montana de Fuego and had an up close and personal view of the most picturesque volcano in Costa Rica. Arenal is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. We were treated to a beautiful showing of lava flowing on the volcano early in the morning of the 22^nd and the rest of the day we had spectacular views as we hiked in the national park.

On the 23^rd we returned to QERC to celebrate my mom’s birthday. It was good to be home and to share our home with the whole family. For my mom’s birthday we asked Liseth to fix a traditional Costa Rican meal along with the scrumptious Tres Leches cake. It was a surprise to my mom, and Liseth, Rigo, and Jeanette joined us for dinner.

Changes

Sarah: Well, for our last full day with our friends, we planned a trip to head to one of the highest peaks in Costa Rica, Cerro de la Muerte (Death Hill), and hike from that point all the way down to QERC. We spent the night before discussing possible animals we might see and were getting really excited for the hike. We got a ride up early morning to the top of the hill, but unfortunately, it was all cloudy up top. From that high point, we can possibly see both coasts on a clear day, but no such luck for us on Monday. Still, we began the trek down and it was fun to go through the different ecosystems. At the top is paramo, which was very tundra-like. Then we reached the elfin forest, which is a stunted forest with dwarfed trees. Finally, we reached the primary growth forest that had huge oak trees. By this point we arrived to the point where the trail connected up to a trail on our property. It was a beautiful hike; however, less than halfway through it started raining and never let up. So, we didn’t see any of the animals we were excited to see, and we ended up hiking the trail a lot faster than anticipated because of the pouring rain. As a result, we were all tired and sore the next day!

On Tuesday we got up early and packed up, and headed back toward the city. We made a short trip out of the way in hopes of seeing Irazu Volcano, but again it was very cloudy and once we got there we decided to turn around. At that point it was a sad time, as we had to take Stacie to the airport and say our goodbyes to her. It was really great for me to have a good friend here, and super fun to explore and travel with her—Stacie gets excited over EVERYTHING. :) After dropping her off, we had to say our goodbyes to Micah and Kevin and Paul. They are now off on their own traveling around the country in their own rented car. We also had a great time with them, and really it was just great for David and me to have familiar friends around to hang out with.

Tuesday afternoon we ran some errands around the city, and then our adventures continued because we went back to the airport to pick up David’s parents and younger sister Jenna. It was really great to see them and spend the evening together. Today we got up and walked around the city for a while, and eventually hit up the grocery store and made it back to QERC. It was a pretty low-key day, which was great for us all since we are all tired from traveling. It’s been a lot of fun to show family a bit of our life here and around our home in Costa Rica!

Fun in the sun

Sarah: To continue on…last Wednesday we left with our friends around midday to head south to the beach. On our way out we stopped to look at some quetzals, which are phenomenal birds. Absolutely gorgeous. We then traveled to a beach called Dominical, and arrived just as the sun was setting on the ocean. Micah has a friend who spent some time in Costa Rica, and she had a connection through a church in Dominical. We hooked up with the church and joined them for their time of worship that evening, enjoying both the Spanish and the English translations. Micah and Kevin and Paul decided to stay at the church to sleep, and David and Stacie and I opted for a super cheap hotel on the beach. We decided that we’d enjoy our time better if we had a bed to sleep in rather than on the hard tile floor of the church.

Thursday we got up and the 3 boys went surfing all morning, and Stacie and David and I headed into Hacienda Baru, a National Wildlife refuge, to do some hiking. We had a great time exploring the area, and some of the highlights were seeing a Tamandua (an anteater) sleeping in a tree, lots of basilisk lizards (commonly called the Jesus Christ lizard because they run across water), iguanas, lots of skinks, and David saw LOTS of birds. But the highlight of them all was when a 5-foot snake slithered across the trail and we got a good look at it. Stacie and I were convinced it was a pit viper, but David claims it wasn’t poisonous. Still, we got a big thrill out of seeing it so close! Thursday afternoon Stacie and David went out to try surfing with the other three boys. The water was so warm it almost wasn’t refreshing! Close to sunset we all drove back to the wildlife refuge to check out the anteater again and look for monkeys, but we missed the monkeys again.

Friday the boys got up to surf again, and we all took off late morning and headed south to Palmar Norte. There we showed up at Liseth’s in-laws again (remember when we went there a few months ago with Liseth and Rigo?). Vera was absolutely thrilled to have us all there and even had one of her daughters there to help make us a special lunch. Unfortunately, her idea of a special lunch wasn’t exactly what we would have requested to have—we ate liver!! Being the good guests that we were, we all choked it down and praised her for making such a great meal. We toured their farm again and it was great to be able to continue that relationship with them. On our way back up north we stopped at a beautiful beach—Ventanas. There was no one on the beach, and it was beautiful! There were a couple of caves that you could actually swim through, but Micah was the only one brave (or stupid) enough to try it and he came back scraped up and talking about a near-death experience. We made it to Manuel Antonio in time to find a super cheap hotel to stay in, and as we were checking out the hotel there was a group of about 30 squirrel monkeys hopping around on the roofs and trees all around us! Later that evening after we ate, we came across a 3-toed sloth crawling right above us from a telephone wire onto a tree. I’ve never seen a sloth so close, and it was great to see one active since they sleep for 20 hours a day!

Saturday we got up early and headed into the national park with dreams of seeing more animals and beautiful beaches. We weren’t disappointed! We hiked all over and swam in the warm ocean at one of the beautiful beaches inside the park, and saw lots of exciting things. The highlights were seeing howler monkeys, white-faced capuchins (monkeys) really really close to us, a raccoon stealing some food off a picnic table, lots of lizards, tons of hermit crabs, a group of about a dozen coatimundis crossing right in front of us, another active 3-toed sloth, and a few more agoutis. It was unbelievable! Right after lunch we decided that we’d already seen everything and hiked everywhere, so we headed back to QERC. We made it back here in time to make dinner (with a minor setback of having the power go out for about an hour) and get a good night sleep.

Today we woke up and went up to the church, where there was a mass and celebration of two young people having their first communion. One of those kids was Liseth's son Diego, who was looking very handsome all dresssed up. It was a fun service to go to, and Diego was both embarrassed and proud to have us there to support him. Following the service was lunch and Bingo, but we hadn't known about that in advance so we decided to head back home instead. We ate lunch and played a game of Carcassonne, and then Stacie and I headed off for the waterfall. It was a gorgeous walk, with clouds rolling in and out. The waterfall was still very powerful and flowing with lots of water. Tonight we had a big dinner and then sat around planning our adventure for tomorrow...

Week of Adventures

Sarah: Whew! What a week. I’ll try to summarize everything that’s happened in the past week, with the hopes that this doesn’t get TOO long. We started the week by traveling back into San Jose last Monday. We were able to visit the LASP office and even sit in on one of their guest speakers (a homosexual pastor, very interesting). That evening we went out to eat with Trevor and Laura, and more of the staff came along too—the intern Christina (who happens to be from Spokane), and Krystal. Trevor and Laura treated us all to a great Italian dinner and ice cream for dessert. We spent the night at Trevor and Laura’s—they live in a beautiful house on the edge of the city, and have 5 baby kittens to play with.

Tuesday we got up EARLY to leave for Nicaragua. After a long day of travel and meeting interesting people, we made it to the beach town of San Juan del Sur. For the next 2 days we spent chilling in the small town and hanging out on the beach. We met even more interesting people, and took a trip to a nearby beautiful beach known for good surfing. It was a major surf crowd, complete with the long hair. For us, it was great to be back in Nicaragua. Though it’s so close to Costa Rica, it’s a completely different country. In this particular small town, there were plenty of people living in poverty, and there were also tourists with lots of money, some who were already purchasing property to build big houses on. Friday morning we got up early to catch the Transnica bus back to Costa Rica. We even found some of the same people on our bus back, who had done the same thing by crossing into Nicaragua to renew their visas. We met people from all over—the couple from Israel, a couple from New Zealand, a couple from England, a guy from Quebec, lots of other Canadians, and a guy we named “old man crazy”. He was our most memorable travel buddy—from New Orleans, and very quirky.

Friday we got back after a long day of travel and headed back to Trevor and Laura’s to spend the night again. Saturday we got up and they had a big breakfast prepared, and Alex came to join us. Alex was a professor when we were students, and we hadn’t had a chance to catch up with him yet. He was one of our favorites—an Afro-Costa Rican who is one of the most suave guys ever. It was fun to reminisce about our semester, and to chat more with the staff from a staff prospective. We spent the rest of the day running errands in San Jose, waiting for our first guest to arrive. Stacie flew in late Saturday night, and it was so fun to see her! We went back to the sabbatical house and stayed up late talking and catching up. Sunday morning we got up to finish some Christmas shopping in the city, and then headed back out to the airport to pick up the rest of our guests.

Micah, Kevin, and a guy named Paul who is friends with the other two flew in midday on Sunday. We packed the Volvo completely full, squashed in, and set off to our first destination. We made it to La Selva, which is a biological research station on the Caribbean side, in time to take a hike before dinner. It was absolutely incredible there. The facilities are great, and the wildlife was unbelievable. After dinner we took another really fun hike in the dark—and being in the jungle at night was like being in the 100 Acre Woods with Winnie the Pooh, complete with all the jungle sounds. Monday we got to go on a guided hike with Max for 3 hours, which was really fun since we were all or are currently Naturalists to be in the reversed role. Monday it rained the entire time during our hike, but that made it even more adventurous. Overall, some of the highlights we saw were: blue jeans poison dart frogs, a 2-toed sloth, toucans, an agouti, iguanas that jump into the river, a white bat, a snake, leaf-cutter ants, lots of parrots, peccaries, and we heard howler monkeys off in the distance. The birders of the group were in paradise, since there are about 450 species of birds in that one area. Everyone loved being there and it was fun to experience it together.

We started to head back into San Jose after a good trip, and when we were about a half hour from the city, the Volvo all of a sudden quit working. It happened to be in a bad spot—right along the highway, and of course we didn’t have cell phone reception. A nice guy pulled over and David and I got a ride to the nearest restaurant, about 15 kilometers away, while the others stayed back with the car. We called Anthony, since it was his car, and he ended up driving out to pick us up and pull the Volvo back in. Unfortunately, we were planning on making it back to QERC that night, and we were delayed enough that we had to stay in San Jose for the night. The whole thing took hours, and we made it back to the sabbatical house late for a short night of sleep. Monday was a very long day!

Tuesday we got up early and headed back to QERC. We got here to find sunshine—we are now officially in the summer. After sleeping and being nice and lazy for a while, we took off for a hike late in the day. We made it to the top of the trail just as it was turning dark, and hiked down the trail in the dark. It was fun to do a night hike, and we even had a sparkle party (an activity from Mission Springs night hikes). It’s been good to have a home base and do laundry and catch up on sleep.

Today is Wednesday, and we are planning on taking off soon to spend a few days beach-hopping. We’ll keep you posted…

Weekend Report

Sarah: Here’s one last blog entry before we leave the country. Yesterday we had a group of LASP students come visit us. There was one student, Shawn, who is a student at SNU so he had wanted to come visit his campus here in Costa Rica. Trevor, who is a professor at LASP, and his wife Laura came and brought Shawn and 3 other students. We had met Laura last week (we took a day trip into San Jose to switch cars with Anthony), but it was great getting to meet Trevor and spending some time with the two of them. They have a big house in San Jose and have offered to let us stay in their guest room when we make our trips into the city. With the group we hiked to the waterfall in the morning when they arrived, and then came back to hang out at QERC and have lunch together. In the afternoon we actually hiked La Quebrada trail so they could see even more of the property and get a good feel for the cloud forest. It was really fun to host some students and it was great to take a break from working and get back out on the trails.

Today we got an invitation from Efrain and Caridad and Maria Elena to have dinner with them. It was perfect timing, because the next month will be pretty busy for us. And I would have to say that Caridad definitely outdid my meal. We got spinach and egg soup (it was really good) and cooked veggies and bread and even fresh cooked trout straight from the nearby trout ponds. It was such a great meal and it was neat to continue to build the relationship with them.

Tomorrow we leave to go back into the city, and then EARLY Tuesday morning we leave for Nicaragua (we’re talking 5:30 in the morning departure). Every three months we need to leave the country to renew our visas, so it’s coming up on that time and is really hard to believe we’ve been here that long already. We’ll be staying 3 nights at a small lazy surf town and we’re excited to do some relaxing in the sun.

Happy Thanksgiving!

David: Happy Thanksgiving! Sarah and I just celebrated our first Thanksgiving outside of the U.S. Needless to say, the pilgrims didn’t make it to Costa Rica, just the conquistadors and Spanish imperialism, so there wasn’t much of a holiday. We would have gone to the beach or something but we leave really soon for Nicaragua to renew our visas so it didn’t seem like we needed to. We’ll spend our time in Nicaragua at a beach town called San Juan Del Sur. It is a sleepy surf town.

Well, we think we might have just made the turn toward summer. Our days switched from cloudy and rainy all day to having a lot of sun in the morning and rain in the afternoons. We are still getting quite a bit of rain, but it is slowing down. The sun is warmer and the nights are cooler and those are two signs of summer.

One of the projects we have been motivated to work on since we got here has been the room that is suppose to be the natural history museum. We have some exciting plans for it and when we shared those with Efrain a while ago we could see that he was excited about them. Since QERC was built in 2001 it has been a desire of the community to have the museum for their kids to explore and for tourists to be able to look at it. Efrain wants it to be an educational tool for everyone. So, it is very exciting for us that this week one of our ideas was completed. Laura, the Canadian woman who lives in the valley, just finished building and installing a really cool shelf system. It is made out of cypress and it has a lot of character to it. It is just a shelf, but it already adds a lot to the room and it will give us the space to display all kinds of fun things.

Today we had Liseth and two of her kids, Diego and Jeanette, over for pizza (Sarah's pizza is getting really good). Diego and Jeanette both are characters. I found out that Diego knows quite a bit about birds. He cruised through the bird book showing me everything that he sees here and it was impressive.

Dinner, connections, and beautiful birds

Sarah: We sure have had a couple of exciting days around here! Yesterday afternoon we spent putting things away and cleaning up some of our projects because Efrain and his wife, Caridad, and their daughter Maria Elena were going to come over for dinner. So, I have to admit I was a little stressed out with the idea of them coming to eat with us because I knew that the entire conversation would have to be in Spanish, and we would be entertaining them. But, out of respect we wanted to have Efrain over first before we invited any of his kids and their families over. So they arrived at 6:30 on the dot, and even brought me flowers! The whole evening was a success. We chatted for a bit while I was finishing putting everything on the table, and then sat down for a nice dinner. There were only a few times that the silence was long enough for David and I to rack our brains, trying to come up with another question, but overall it was great to have them here. After dinner we showed them some of the changes and progress we’ve made, and explained our vision for the museum, which we know is important to the community. They were very complimentary toward everything here. We feel like this was a big step in reaching out to the community and making more personal connections with the Chacones.

Today was another great day. We finally took advantage of having a car, and took off this morning to visit another biological research station nearby. We first drove to the top of Cerro de la Muerte (Mountain of Death), and put David’s driving skills and the 4WD car to the test. Both passed, but we did get quite the ride out of it—the “road” isn’t the easiest to drive on! At the top of Cerro de la Muerte there is a point where on a clear day you can actually see both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Today, however, we were engulfed by clouds. It was still beautiful—a completely different ecosystem. Soon we plan on starting at the top and hiking down, which ends up connecting to one of our trails here in the valley.

We reached the Cerro de la Muerte research station and met the owner, Fredrico. He showed us around their small facility—very rustic and only for the hardcore biologists. It was so cold there even midday! Fredrico actually lives in San Jose (I don’t blame him) and they don’t have groups during this time of year (I don’t blame them, either). However, their property is beautiful and they get a variety of animals—he’s even seen a puma and plenty of tapirs, plus some other mammals that I’d never heard of! Fredrico even told a story that he was hiking on his trails and a tapir was in the way so he hit it on the butt to move so he could continue hiking. David and I decided we definitely want to do some hiking there in the future!

Here are some neat things about Fredrico that show what a small world this is—he has a son who lives in Polk City, Iowa and attended Iowa State University, so he’s been to Des Moines many times. This son was just offered a job through Pioneer, the company David worked at when he lived in Iowa before we were married. Fredrico also has a brother who lived in San Jose, California, for about 50 years—so he’s very familiar with the Santa Cruz area, where we lived and worked the last two years. And to make things even better, when he found out David was from Washington, Fredrico found more common ground with David by voicing his interest in Sasquatch. They proceeded to discuss folklore, stories, and tales of sightings of Sasquatch, the Chupacabra, and the Viejo del Monte. It was great to meet him and we look forward to pursuing that relationship in the future.

After we left that research station, we headed down the road to another biological station that used to be owned by Fredrico until he sold it to new owners. We briefly met with Carlos, one of the owners, who gave us a tour and explained how their field station operates. He actually lives there, and on their land they have both a farm that they live off of, and also a lot of land that they work to conserve. Their property is very simple and a bit rustic as well, but very comfortable and we really enjoyed it.

Finally, as we headed down into our own valley, we stopped at a place that has piqued our interest before. We have noticed this small restaurant that often has tourist vans parked in front with lots of people stopping by. So we stopped and met the couple that lives there, and they serve typical Costa Rican food, which attracts lots of tourists. But one of the main attractions is the fact that they have an aguacatillo tree right behind their house that many quetzals feed off of. The tree has already begun to fruit, which none of ours have farther down in the valley. So, we saw a couple quetzals super close! I was thrilled. We also saw some toucanets, another beautiful bird. This couple lays out food for the birds and they know all kinds of different whistling calls, and many birds come and eat and hang out around their property. It was great to meet them and make that connection, so in the future we can stop by and hopefully see more quetzals up close and personal!

Upward and Onward

David : We never seem to run out of projects to be working on here at QERC. Sarah has been hard at work organizing and scanning the research papers written here from the past 20 years. The goal is to have digital copies of all papers so they can be accessed on the new and improved (and still uncreated) QERC website so students and researchers can view the work that has been done here. It will be a good online resource. Sarah has also been painting. Check out her handiwork on this sign that was already here but fairly unnoticeable. It looks much better now and as people come onto our property they will get a little better greeting than before.
I have been working on a smattering of projects. I have been working on my green thumb by sprucing up the landscaping on the grounds, hanging up newly acquired pictures, dry erase boards, and clocks (which is not easy because all of the wall are concrete), and starting the organization of the natural history museum. Sometimes a smattering of projects can be a problem for me. I see so many things I want to work on. I get many of them started and then there is a big mess of many uncompleted projects. My parents know all about this special characteristic of mine. Cassie, at Mission Springs, probably has an idea of it as well. The good news is that the projects always get finished. We have about three weeks to finish many of the small projects that we would like to get done and then the pace here at QERC is going to be changing drastically.
The month of December is going to full of friends and family visitors and then in January QERC is going to come to life with students. Southern Nazarene University is going to be sending 8-10 biology students down for the entire semester to work on research projects and take classes on this extension of their campus. Sarah and I are very excited and are happy that we have been able to be a part of making this happen. Because of our connection with LASP we have been able to help create a semester trial run of a LASP/SNU hybrid program. There is not much hope that it will continue how it will happen this next semester, but it is a good experiment to see in what capacity having students here will be the most successful. Needless to say, we are thrilled to be working with LASP as they are helping us at SNU out with this endeavor. It is going to be a victorious day for SNU when those students arrive and it marks a new era of usage of this facility. Everything is still in the works, of course, and we will see how all of it pans out, but for now there is a lot of excitement of what this means for QERC. All of our hard work so far is going to pay off big time. God has a unique way of bringing these types of things together.
It is still raining here for many hours throughout the day. But, we are still able to get out and find beautiful vistas, enchanting forests, and interesting critters. I thought we should share a few pictures of some these cool animals.

San Jose again

Sarah: Well we made it back from San Jose. Let me recap our trip. We got in fairly early on Wednesday and did some shopping with Dennis that he wanted to do before returning to the states, and then we made it out to PriceSmart (like Costco) to do some shopping ourselves too. I also need to mention that we now can stay at the sabbatical house that LASP owns anytime we come into the city. So, we enjoyed a free place to stay this time, and we really liked being so close to the LASP office.

Thursday was our day of errands. We had a long list of items to buy again, so we made the rounds to our normal places—a home store, a hardware store, and some random places downtown. We were even able to do some Christmas/birthday shopping! It was a joy to ride busses and taxis all over the city—always a cultural experience. We even made a stop to the National Museum to talk to a guy in the herbarium. There is a tree here in the valley that the quetzals are eating right now, and no one knows what kind of tree it is. There are only 2 trees in the valley of this species. David identified the genus and we went looking for help with the species. This statue was just built in San Jose about a couple months ago, and we saw many, many ticos stopping to take pictures of it.

Since we got most of our errands done on Thursday, Friday and Saturday was spent with people. Friday we went to the doctor. As many of you know, David was diagnosed with thyroiditis before we came down here to Costa Rica. Because of that, he’s not on medication but needs to get blood tests done every 6-8 weeks. The doctor that we saw is also the one that QERC has been using for a number of years, so we set up an appointment to chat with him and also to get David checked up. The doc sounded positive about David, and we’ll get the results of the blood tests in the next few weeks. For lunch we met Anthony Chamberlain (director of LASP). It was intended to be a casual get-to-know you lunch, since we don’t know him well, but we ended up talking about business for the most part. It was great to spend time with him and bounce ideas off him. We went to the University of Costa Rica (UCR) in the afternoon to meet with a professor who is looking to do some research here at QERC in the spring. It was exciting to get to know him and hear of his hopeful plans—he is waiting to see if he has received some grant money to do the research here, which would be catching quetzals and DNA testing them. He would also possibly put radio trackers on them to figure out their migrating habits. Finally on Friday night, we went to have dinner with David’s Costa Rican family. His sister Sophia had her boyfriend and another friend over to eat with us as well. The boyfriend, Pablo, was someone David knew and really liked while he studied here. They were all about our age, so it was fun to eat with them and share a lot of laughter. They will be fun to get together with in the future! It was great to have David’s tican mom cook for us too—she’s a professional chef.

Saturday we went to InBio, a National Biodiversity Institute. It had animal displays (a butterfly garden, snake tanks, frog tanks, etc.), and paths to walk through examples of the different ecosystems found here in Costa Rica. It was beautiful and we saw lots of neat wildlife—both in cages and in the wild (like this wild spider)! And Saturday evening we went out with Luis and Gabi, the couple that was out here at QERC a few weeks ago and who helps us out a lot with business and simple Costa Rican questions. We went to the bookstore where Gabi works, and then went to the mall to do some Christmas shopping with them. We ended the evening by going to a movie, which was a real treat. (We saw The Guardian, a very good movie.)

Sunday we got up and packed up and took off…driving a car! Anthony actually has a car that he’s fixing up and getting ready to sell soon, so while they have an extra car they are letting us borrow one of theirs for a cheap price for November and December. We are extremely grateful! After stopping at our Hipermas to do our monthly grocery shopping, we made it back safely to our home in the valley. We now have plenty of work to do, after a few key purchases and with some items that Dennis brought down and are excited to get back to work.

Routine

Sarah: I guess you can say we’ve settled into a routine, since I’m having a hard time thinking of what we’ve done for the past number of days! A bit of exciting news, we got our rain gauge set up so it’s fun right now to check every morning and see how much rain we got from the day before. Other than that, we’ve done lots of data entering and continuing work on past research projects.

A professor from Southern Nazarene University (SNU), Dennis Siegfried, has been in Costa Rica for the past two weeks at a conference and came out to QERC on Sunday. He brought lots of goodies for us from the states—a laminator, new CR and USA flags, some books we had left, hand warmers, bread yeast, and other random things. Here is the neat connection with Dennis—besides now being a co-worker at SNU, he did the LASP program like David and I did, so he knows some of the same professors. And, to make things even more connected, he studied in the program the same year as Scott and Dawn Smithson, so he knows them fairly well. Scott was our boss while we worked in California the past two years, and he and Dawn became good friends of ours.

Monday we all got up early and hiked Los Robles trail, the only trail I hadn’t done before. It was a long hike, and even longer since David and Dennis enjoyed stopping for every bird and insect along the way. (Take note of the interesting fly we came across.) We had great weather—it only misted a little bit—and Los Robles takes you across one of the ridges so we had great views. The old oak trees on the trail are incredible. They are so big; it reminded me a little bit of being back in the redwoods in California.

Today we visited the family Dennis stayed with when he was a student here, and they were super nice. They were very welcoming to David and I, and we’re excited to get to know them better in the future. The father, Gerardo, told us about a tree that’s fruiting up in the orchards that attracts quetzals, so we drove up in the orchards to check it out. We ended up seeing 4 quetzals up there! What a gorgeous bird. It’s been fun to be able to show someone some of the work that we’ve been doing, and Dennis has been helping with more ideas for the future and taking care of some technical issues we’ve had with the computers. Tomorrow we head back into San Jose for the rest of the week to meet with some people at the University of Costa Rica (UCR), make a few more purchases for our home and the building, and also to do our monthly grocery shopping.

Patience is a virtue

Sarah: It seems to me that whenever I pray for patience, all of a sudden I’m faced with a number of situations that tests that so-called patience I was wanting. So in all honesty I don’t like to pray for patience. But, it we’ve been faced with some interesting situations here in the valley lately that has tested the patience I haven’t prayed for, and thus caused me to pray for patience to come quickly. The first has to do with our first group that came last week. They had only been here a few hours and were getting ready for Efrain Chacon (the patriarch of the family) to come be a guest lecturer, when our power went out. Now, this has happened before, but only lasted a matter of minutes. This time it was getting closer and closer to dusk, and closer to the time Efrain was going to speak. So David and I scrounged up some candles and spread them all around the room. Thankfully, the power came back just as Efrain was finishing up, so we didn’t have to worry about what to do for the group for the rest of the evening.

On a brighter note, it was really great to be able to play host and hostess for the group. They were a group of college students from the States, studying down here at the Center for Sustainable Development Studies. It was fun to get to talk to a number of them. David was a guest speaker for their group in the evening, and he did a great job. He received many encouraging comments afterward, and there were quite a few adults and students interested in what we have going on here at QERC. So, who knows where that will lead in the future! The group got up early to do a field exercise looking at the relationship between hummingbird feeders causing lack of pollination. They even used mist nets to capture some hummingbirds, which was fascinating to see.

Ok back to patience. Last Friday our phone lines went out and didn’t come back until Tuesday morning. Talk about isolation! We weren’t even able to get on the internet, so we were without any communication both within the country and out of the country for days. The only way to talk to anyone here was venturing out in the middle of pouring rain to find someone to talk to. We even lost all power for a good number of hours again on Saturday.

Finally, tonight was another time we really needed to practice patience. We had been planning on having each of the families in the valley over for dinner, to reach out to the community and establish better relationships with them. Today I went to visit Efrain and his wife Caridad to see if they would be our first guests. They were delighted and were planning on coming to dinner around 7:00. So we spent all day getting ready—cleaning, straightening up, preparing topics of discussion, etc. It was almost 6:00 and I had already made the bread, the brownies, the fresh juice, and the salad stuff was ready to go. 10 minutes earlier I had put the rice in the rice cooker, and the chicken was cooking on the stove. When…oh yes, the power went out again. We had no idea what to do! Efrain called shortly after and said it was ok to reschedule for another evening, but we felt awful. We invited them to eat at the restaurant with us, but after Efrain called the restaurant, he said that there were so few guests and no lights that they weren’t prepared for us to eat there. David and I were bummed our meal was ruined—and theirs too. We lit candles and figured the power wouldn’t be back until tomorrow morning, but alas, 20 minutes later, the power came back on. We were putting our meal back together and I called back Efrain. His daughter who lives with them answered (who was also going to come for dinner) said that once the lights went out, Efrain and Caridad turned in for the night! So a simple power outage for 20 minutes caused our entire evening to be changed. Such is life here in the valley! And thanks to whomever of you is praying for patience for us…I think we have a good handle on it. :)

Here Comes The Rain, Rain Rain on My Face, Singing the Rain

David: Think of every song title containing the word rain, then arrange them as a “Rainy Day” play list on your itunes and play them all back to back and they length of the play time would not out last the length of time it has been raining here. We are finally getting some typical October weather in the Talamanca Mountains and that means that it rains hard and long. It can rain in the morning, afternoon, and night. The rain has no consideration in keeping a schedule. It actually kind of feels like winter even though everything is green. We have had some life around QERC the past few days which. Anthony Chamberlain, the director of the Latin American Studies Program, and his family stayed a night here. Their oldest son was with a youth group retreat at a Christian adventure campground here in the valley and he decided that he wanted to baptized in the Savegre River, brrrr. So the Chamberlains came to see the baptismal service. It was great to have some guests here, even though they were not here to use the facility in a scientific way. We enjoyed getting to know the Chamberlains better and witnessing a baptism service.

The day the Chamberlains left a professor from New Hampshire who is in Costa Rica on sabbatical stopped by to check out our facilities. He is collecting aquatic plants for InBio in an attempt to make an aquatic plant field guide of Cost Rica. It was a pleasure to talk with him and about his work. He also is a professor with Au Sable.

And finally, we have our first real group coming in today. It is a very last minute contact that worked out perfectly. We have been getting ready for them and are excited to have this place being used.

Besides the spike in personal contact with people, this week has marked the beginning of some new projects. I have been working outside on a few things including making some stairs that will make access to the river easier so that water quality testing is doable from our property. Sarah continues to grow more confident in her cooking. She is doing a fantastic job. She also has made very good headway on organizing the research papers that are here and in need of order so that future researchers and members of the community can have easy access to the work that has been done. Once they are organized we will scan than to make a digital library and have them bound in hard back and work on a visual presentation that will summarize the larger projects so that the people in the valley can come in and see what has been accomplished here. This is one of the more important goals for us; for the community to have a connection to what is happening at QERC. Of course, filling the hummingbird feeders is one of the more taxing duties that I have throughout the week.

Taxi rides, friends and families, and a dead guy

The past few days we have spent in San Jose. This past weekend, some new friends from San Jose came to visit us—Luis and his wife Gabi. They have worked with QERC in the past, so they came to meet us and while they were here, they took over our kitchen and cooked all our meals for us. It was great to get to know them and they are a great contact and resource for us here in Costa Rica. When they went back home on Sunday, we rode into the city with them.

Since David and I spent most of our time in the city when we were here as students, we really felt like we were at home in San Jose. We had a great time running errands, shopping for QERC, and meeting up with people. We had lots of purchases to make for the reception area, the laboratory, the snack bar, and some things for our apartment. We got to ride taxis all over the city and visit lots of different stores.

One of our errands was to stop by the University of Costa Rica (UCR). We met with a professor of entomology (insects, for those non-biology majors like myself), who is helping us with our own insect collection at QERC. It was fun to be on a college campus, and we hope to make more connections there in the future and host student groups and professors who utilize our facility for education and research.

Our first night we stayed at a hotel right near the downtown area, and it was pretty nice and quaint—with the exception of a bunch of parakeets squawking outside the window and taxis honking at 5:30 in the morning. We had wanted to check out a few hotels in the area. When we woke up in the morning, we went to a market downtown to do some bargaining. When we returned, we were walking back to our room and David saw two policemen standing outside one of the rooms. He glanced in as we walked past, and exclaimed “there’s a dead guy in there!” So later I went back to check it out as well, and sure enough, I saw his legs also. The rest of him was covered up with a blanket. A hotel worked we asked said that he was old and died in his sleep. At this point there were lots of people swarming around the room, and since we had already discussed checking out another hotel, we decided that was a good time to check out. :) So we walked across the street and checked into another one. We liked this one even better and stayed there the next two nights.

One outing that was really fun for us was visiting LASP (Latin American Studies Program), which is the program that we studied with 4 ½ years ago. We made our way to the building and surprised some of our old professors. Only two of the people we knew were there, but we got to meet Anthony Chamberlain who is the director of LASP, but was on sabbatical during our semester. The students are all in Nicaragua right now, along with the rest of the professors, but we had a great time catching up with don Gerardo (who was my professor of the literature concentration) and dona Jessica (who is the receptionist). Anthony will actually be coming out to stay at QERC this weekend, while his son is getting baptized at the Christian campground nearby. It felt like we were with old friends visiting with them, and they have offered for us to stay at the sabbatical house down the road from the LASP building anytime we are in San Jose in the future.

Another really fun outing was going to visit our families that we lived with while we were here as students. We first took a taxi to David’s house, and it happened to be absolutely POURING rain when we got there. We had just seen a teenage boy go into the house, and we even saw the TV turn on, but no one would answer the door when we knocked. But as it was pouring, we couldn’t even walk the 5 blocks or so to my house without getting drenched, so we waited for about 25 minutes under cover outside David’s house. Finally, I saw David’s mom peeking out the window, so after a minute or so, she let us in. She said she thought we were just a couple of gringos passing by, taking shelter from the rain! It was a neat homecoming for David and his family. His mom was so surprised, and she called up both his sisters and his dad and put David on the phone to surprise them. His sister Sophia came home right away and was thrilled to see us. We had a great time chatting with them, and right when we were leaving, his dad showed up. They gave each other big hugs! They all insisted that we call them up next time we are in town and we can go eat there for dinner.

Sophia then drove us to my parents’ house, and they were equally surprised. We were greeted with big hugs from my parents, and it felt great to be home again. My youngest sister was 10/11 when I was last there, and she is now 15! She has changed quite a bit, though my parents are exactly the same. We ended up eating dinner with them—soup, which happened to be one of my favorite things about Costa Rica as a student. My older sister is now married to a guy from Michigan, but she is coming to visit Costa Rica in a few weeks and we’ll get to see her then.

Another friend we met up with is a friend from my college, Meagan Anderson. She and I both did a Summer of Service at the children's home in Brasil, and got to know each other through that commonality. Meagan has been living in the San Jose area for just over a year, and it was really good to connect with her for breakfast before we left the city. And while it was nice and felt comfortable and welcoming to be in the city, I have to admit that it is nice to be back here in the valley and be able to wake up only to the sound of the river behind our house. :)

Down the Road

Sarah: Today was a really fun day for us. A man named Juan Carlos drives a van shuttle service, so we asked him to pick us up this morning. He arrived at 6:45 and drove us to the top of the road, where we began our journey down. Today we wanted to walk the entire road down into the valley (10km) and stop at all of the businesses and shops to meet people and introduce ourselves. First of all, it was a beautiful walk! Being so high up we had great views of the entire valley and cloud forest, so we spent a lot of time admiring God’s creation around us.

We started the day with a really great (and super cheap) breakfast at a Soda, owned by Elsa. She happens to be the mother of Michael, who is a friend of Rigo, Liseth’s husband. (Did you follow all that?) Michael went with us to Palmar Norte when we visited Rigo’s parents. So, we had a nice visit with Elsa, and she even offered to teach me how to make authentic Costa Rican bread sometime. We look forward to continuing a friendship with her and her family in the future.

Continuing down the road, we stopped at some more restaurants and lodges and met lots of new people. There really are not very many shops or pulperias (places that sell food like a mini-tiny grocery store) in this whole valley, we found out! We did go to a very classy art store that had beautiful woven baskets and jewelry and pieces of art from all over Latin America, but unfortunately it was out of our price range. The owner hails from Holland (yay Dutch!) and is married to a Colombian woman, and they travel all over Latin America to find artwork and then sell it in the valley. He is also a biologist and will be a great resource for us!

Have we ever talked about the rain here in Costa Rica? Right now we are in the rainy season, which basically means that it is supposed to rain a lot every day. It rarely starts before 11:00 am, and it can possibly rain on and off (or just on) until around 6:00 pm. The last week and a half have been wonderful days, with only short periods of rain throughout the day, but sunny for the most part. Today was more what one should expect during the rainy season. About halfway down the road (about 10:45) it started raining on us. And as I write this now at 5:30 pm, it is still raining. We still had a great time visiting with people, but our walking speed increased quite a bit and we were both huddled under one umbrella while heavy rain and thunder were all around us! During one of the heaviest times, we met a woman named Ercilia who invited us in to wait it out for a bit. She is a friend of Liseth’s and was really nice. Her 6-year old daughter, Monica, kept bringing out things to show us, like her brand new puppy (yay!) and some of her favorite school books.

Once we got closer to our home, maybe a couple kilometers away, it started raining hard again so we stopped for lunch at another lodge. David ordered trout, and as you can see by the picture, he got a whole trout. We left while it wasn’t raining quite as heavy, but not too far into our final descent, we got poured on again! It was an adventure, and a very fun day of meeting new people and exploring new places.

Inner Contents of a Cloud

David: Here is something interesting about living in a cloud forest; sometimes you are completely in the clouds. This afternoon Sarah and I were watching an episode of “Arrested Development” while taking a break from lab and storage duty as a cloud passed by our bedroom window. It was pretty cool to be inside a passing cloud. I told Sarah to get her head out of the clouds.
Sarah and I had a nice U.S. night last night. We ate hot dogs and French fries while watching the first game of the Yankees/Tigers series. Baseball and hotdogs! It was a good night.
Everyday life is passing fairly fast as we’ve been working on the organization and clean up of the laboratory and storage room. It doesn’t sound like much, but it sure has been. It is funny how rewarding it can be to see an area organized and ready to be used. And it can’t hurt to know what lab and field equipment is lurking on the shelves and in the plethora of storage trunks. We are really close to being done with both of those areas.
We were really glad for the fact that the mess we’ve made here is finally started to clear up when, today, Marino Chacon, who is the eldest of son of Efrain, came by leading a tour group of students from CATIE. CATIE is a university here in Costa Rica where students from all over Latin America come to study tropical agriculture and sustainable development. They came to San Gerardo de Dota to observe the sustainable development model that the Chacon family has set up using eco-tourism for income while protecting the environment. QERC is a part of that story and Marino wanted to share that with them too. It was so encouraging to see this group of ten students coming from all over Latin America because they want to learn how to take care of people and take care of the earth at the same time. It was also interesting to hear Marino share the story of the valley with these students. He shared all the successes of his family as well the downfalls of tourism. Downfalls such as trash production and the effects of the trout ponds on the once bountiful frog population have come along with the blessing of a sustainable business. Are there answers to these problems? Maybe, but sometimes the answers are not easy to put into action. We did just find out that the Hotel Savegre is starting a community recycling program and putting in a water reclamation system to clean wastewater. Those are perfect examples of how a community can show its dedication to conservation, and also earn its certification for as a sustainable eco-tourism business, which goes a long way for promotion here in Costa Rica.
The picture is of the study lounge that is located upstairs in the middle of the dormitory rooms. It is a favorite place of ours for reading because the sun warms the room up and the hanging chairs are really comfortable. We just relocated the library up there, so although you can't see in the picture, the room is one of our most recent accomplishments.

TGIF

Sarah: I can’t believe it’s already Friday! Seems like this week went by really fast. We went on another hike on Wednesday on a trail called La Cascada, and it was beautiful. It was pretty muddy and wet, but we walked along this creek for a while and through the jungle and then saw the beautiful cascades. Looks like a place we might be able to swim in the future! It’s also been a beautiful week as far as weather goes. We’re hoping that last year was a unique year and this year won’t be the same. All week long it hasn’t rained for more than 20 minutes at a time and it’s been really sunny and even warm. Liseth says it wasn’t like this at all last year; the rain actually picked up and rained all day and night during October and November. Today it’s back to the rain…so hopefully it’s not here to stay.

Once again, David’s been staying busy cleaning the lab. It’s been a big task and we’ll both be excited when everything here is clean and ready for guests. Then we’ll be able to get some projects going and be on the trails doing research. Hopefully you can see what a mess he’s created so far by tearing apart the lab! I’ve been able to help some, but with my lack of science experience, especially in labs, sometimes it’s best if I leave the organizing to David. I have read a couple of good books—The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini (one of my all-time favorites) and Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende. I’ve also spent a lot of time in the kitchen, trying to figure out this whole cooking thing.

Finally, the last picture is of Rambo. This is Liseth’s dog that often tags along when she comes to work, but today when Liseth went home, Rambo stayed behind. We’re not sure if it’s because he didn’t see her leave, or if it’s because he didn’t want to walk home in the rain. We’re also not sure if he’s planning on staying the weekend until Liseth comes back on Monday and he can follow her home then! He has already made himself at home, taking an afternoon nap on a mop. :) Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Back to Work

Sarah: Happy Monday everyone! Well here’s the story. Yesterday we took the day of rest to heart and pretty much did just that. We were able to download a podcast from Twin Lakes Church in Aptos, CA, which was one of the churches we attended while we were living near Santa Cruz. The church that we actually attended most frequently doesn’t have the capability for podcasts yet, but we were thankful for the message we got to hear. And after that, rest we did! David enjoyed a day full of watching football games, and I don’t think either one of us moved around much during the day.

So today being Monday, it was back to work for us. :) One of our tasks for being here is to obtain a satellite reading of each of the trails on GPS, so to start off our workday we went on a hike. It was beautiful! We went on the trail Las Cataratas (the waterfalls) and it was a great experience. The trails lead us through the forest in a way that it felt like we were new explorers finding our way. We crossed the river a few times, across logs and metal bridges that swayed slightly. And on the steep parts there were ropes for us to grab on. Finally we rounded a corner and saw the spectacular sight of the waterfall, and with all the rain we’ve been getting, it was quite a powerful sight. Enjoy the pics. And as a sidenote, I just realized that if you click on the pictures you can enlarge them--so you should go back and check out those macaws close up if you haven't already.

Palmar Norte

David says : “Mucho calor, si?” (translated as “It’s so hot my face is going to melt off, yes?”) That was the popular phrase of the past two days as we went on a short Thursday-Friday trip with Liseth, our housekeeper, and Rigo, her husband. Knowing that we do not have a means of transportation to leave the valley to seek out any heat, they invited us to visit Rigo’s parents with them. Rigo’s parents, Vera and Francisco (which is a fun name), are in there ‘60s and ‘70s and live outside of Palmar Norte, a small town on the south pacific lowlands about two hours from Panama. If you know anything about the topography and climate and Costa Rica, you know that the pacific lowlands are the quintessential humid jungles of the tropics. Here you experience the type of heat that makes your skin look and feel like fly tape. But don’t worry, it is gorgeous, and the short period of heat is very welcomed when you are coming from a cold mountain community.
Vera and Francisco live an almost completely sustainable life on their own up on a mountainside. They were very impressive, for their age and sadly with Francisco’s heart failing. They grow their own fruits and vegetables and raise cows, chickens, and pigs that provide their milk, eggs, and meat. I think the only thing they have to really buy is feed for their animals. What a life. We also gathered that they don’t get out much when Sarah and I told Vera that we were going to walk on the road towards the river and she had a horrified look of panic on her face that said we would maybe not return because of all the dangers lurking out there (granted there were crocodiles in the river). Their hospitality was incredible and was accompanied by a steady diet of rice, beans, meat, and coffee. Vera also found much pleasure in calling us by as many endearing child-like terms she could think of. We had a great time as we sweated it out. The scenery was beautiful as we could hear Howler Monkeys proclaiming their presence in the forest up the mountains and could see the incredible Scarlet Macaws flying over in small flocks. Wow!