The Other Stuff

David: My parents arrived in Costa Rica on October 6th. Before we hit the road for adventures in the rain and rivers we spent some time here at QERC, in the rain. I believe that at the time it was welcomed rain. My parents seemed to really enjoy be trapped inside with nothing to do but sleep, read, eat, and watch The Office. We didn’t mind it much either except for that I had planned on working, with the help of my parents, on the native orchid and bromeliad portion of the garden outside. The rain kept us from that work outside, so we shifted our attention inside to work on a few projects in the museum, which was great. We mainly worked with some framing for pictures, a terrarium, and a cork board we are going to use for local kids to display their art and pictures of nature.

On my parent’s last full day at QERC we finally did have a break in the weather and we saw some sunshine early in the morning. We decided to take a chance on it and we took off to hike Los Robles, a longer trail through the mature cloud forest. It’s a gorgeous trail. Our goal was to enjoy the trail and collect orchids and bromeliads that had fallen from the trees as a result from the rain and wind. Luckily, we had plenty of specimens to collect. The trail was littered with debris from the trees. It is a long way to fall for these epiphytes because many of these Quercus oak trees are over 100 feet tall. Epiphytes, by the way, literally means “air lovers.” They are plants that like to grow up in the trees. Their roots do not sink into the ground but form root mats that cling onto the tree trunks and branches. They are not parasites. They do not directly get their nutrients from their host tree, but from debris on the outside of the tree or water. Their presence makes the canopies of the cloud forest appear full of life. Anyway, the hike was great and we collected more than we should have been carrying. We should have had our hands free to help us fall more graciously. The trails were really slippery. And at one point the trail completely disappeared. A huge “tree fall” covered the trail at one point and even though I’ve been on this trail many times, it was very disorientating. It took me bush-whacking for a few minutes before I could actually find the direction the trail was going. Nevertheless, we found the trail and made it down the mountain in one piece and completely soaked. Believe it or not, it started raining before the hike was over.

Jumping forward in time to after Sarah wrote about all the rains, we finished up the time with Dad and Mom Hille in the area of Arenal Volcano. We chose to stay at the Arenal Observatory Lodge which is an impressively 1.3 miles from the base of the volcano. Needless to say, we had a good view. Two fairly impressive events happened while we were there. One of them happened in the middle of the night and it was so grand that all four of us woke up immediately. It was an explosion that sounded like a car backfiring in our room. The employees at the lodge said that it was the most significant explosion in four years. And then the next morning we happen to be outside when the volcano emitted a huge plume of smoke. It was putting on a show for us. So we enjoyed a beautiful morning of volcano and bird watching. This is a picture of a Blue-throated Goldentail that Dad was able to snap. It was the favorite hummingbird of the morning.

Raindrops keep falling on my head...

Sarah: The last two weeks we had David’s parents here visiting. They had planned on coming back to Costa Rica to see some nesting sea turtles, so David had planned a killer trip for them. HOWEVER…though the trip was still killer, absolutely nothing went as we had planned. Key words that were used: “Wow that’s a lot of rain”, “Can you believe how much rain there is?”, “Will it ever stop raining?” “You are kidding me, ANOTHER tropical storm is hitting Costa Rica??” With that said, here are some stories from the trip:

After spending time at QERC, we headed over to the pacific coast to a small town called Mal Pais. It rained ALL DAY for 2 days straight, and we spent almost the entire time sitting around our cabins marveling at the amount of rain we were getting. Our cabins were made up of 1 solid wall, and 3 walls of screen walls – a little more advanced than camping. :) There wasn’t much do in the town so we went to a small town called Montezuma, close to Mal Pais. (At one point it took an hour and a half to travel about 6 miles – and there were no other cars on the roads. They roads were that bad, due to large potholes the size of small ponds in the way.) In Montezuma we had so much rain that the roads were all flooded and even the locals were amazed and outside watching the torrential rains keep coming. We were able to enjoy about an hour of beach time with a little bit of sun one morning! After leaving Montezuma, on our way to our next destination, we stopped by the Curu National Wildlife Refuge, where we saw monkeys, a white-tailed deer, a coatimundi, and some scarlet macaws!

From there we headed up north, to a small town called Nosara - about 10 kilometers down the road from Ostional. David wanted to take his parents to Ostional to see some turtles, so we arranged transportation for one afternoon. 10 kilometers, no biggie, right? Riiiiight. What was normally a road had turned into 2 major rivers flowing across the road, making it impassable by car. AND there were many, many smaller rivers that the cars just plow through, along with TONS of potholes, causing the cars to drive about 5-10 miles an hour at best. So one truck took us to the first major river and we walked across a foot bridge to another truck waiting for us to take us along the next stretch. He took us to the second major river, and we got out and walked across another foot bridge and the rest of the way into the small town of Ostional.

We got to the beach at Ostional and saw some newly hatched sea turtles making their way out to the ocean (pretty sweet), and then had some dinner to wait for a tour so we could see an adult nesting turtle. David had picked this beach specially, because during the month of October there is a phenomenon called an “arribada” that happens 2-3 times during that month. Each arribada lasts for a few days, and thousands and thousands of sea turtles all nest during those few days. Even when there is not an arribada, you can expect to see 10-20 sea turtles on any given night. So right before we were going to head out on a tour with our guide, the rains picked up hard, along with the wind. It felt like a true tropical storm. For two hours we walked along the beach looking for a turtle, while the rains crashed down on us. We saw hundreds of baby turtles on their trek to the ocean, and it was actually difficult not to step on them. As we were sadly about to give up on the adult turtles, we saw a mother just finishing laying her eggs and covering them up with sand. We followed her back to the ocean, and we came up to shore so we could head back to Nosara and our comfortable hotel with hot showers and a nice bed.

HOWEVER...one of the drivers had called and said that the smaller rivers had turned into semi-major rivers, becoming impassable, and there was no way for us to get back at night. We hadn't brought anything with us except cameras, so we only had the soaking-wet clothes we were wearing. We stayed in a very small, simple but clean hotel, and waited until morning to try to head back to Nosara. We were told by the locals that if it didn’t rain during the night, the rivers should be down enough that our drivers would again be able to transport us back. But…naturally, it rained hard all night because of that third tropical storm that had just hit CR. At that point, many people told us it could be days before we made it back to Nosara! (Not the kind of news we were wanting to hear at that time...) Thankfully, we contacted our drivers, who ended up saying as long as we were willing to walk a few extra kilometers than before, they'd be willing to pick us up at our pick-up points. We walked through some above knee-deep water, and our drivers drove through some large amounts of water, but we finally made it back.

As this entry has gotten quite lengthy, I’ll finish up about the rain and let David write more later about other details and stories about the trip.

When we got back to San Jose, we found out that we are experiencing more rain here in CR than they've seen in the last 30 years. We had 3 tropical storms in 2 weeks, 18 people have died due to the storms, and many areas are flooding and have landslides - it's crazy. The roads are in the worst condition we've seen, with huge potholes, some that look like they could be ponds, and mini-rivers crossing over the roads. After dropping off the Hilles at the airport, David and I headed back to QERC, and we found out that the main highway through CR that leads back to QERC was closed due to a huge landslide. We had to take about an hour detour through some rough roads and into another valley. I came back into the city on Monday and got to see it firsthand, that not only was it just a landslide, but it took the whole road with it. The buses took us partway, and at the point where there was no road, we got out and walked along a 30-foot stretch on a path about 2-3 feet wide. On the other side of the landslide was another bus, waiting to take us the rest of the way into San Jose.

Si or No, An Important Decision

David: The big day has come and gone. On September 7th Costa Rica had a nation wide vote to either accept or reject the Central American Free Trade agreement. Costa Rica is the last of the Central American countries to decide upon this agreement. Many Costa Ricans think that the other Central American countries hastily agreed to CAFTA without truly looking at the implications. Costa Rica took the opposite route and locked up the CAFTA vote in congress for four years and when it looked like the congress would never be able to decide the president decided to put it to a popular vote and let the people decide their own fate.

The referendum vote was set for September 7th and both sides started their campaigns to convince the people to vote either si or no. The “yes” side claims that CAFTA will create more jobs, further development, improve public services, etc. The “no” side says that there are too many parts of the agreement that do not put Costa Rica and the U.S. on the same playing field and the U.S. has many more benefits from it than Costa Rica would. The kind of development that CAFTA would bring is not the kind of development that will improve the lives of the people here, only the lives of those who are already rich. In the end, the CAFTA agreement pulls rank on a country’s constitution, just as NAFTA does. If Costa Rica ratified CAFTA they would essentially be allowing their sovereign national rights be 2nd place to the rights of a trade agreement.


So, the vote was this last Sunday and we happen to be in the city in the morning and back here in the valley in the afternoon. The patriotism was impressive. We saw si and no representatives all day. We thought we would document a little of the excitement with a few pictures.

At the end of the day CAFTA was passed by just a 3% margin which represents about 50,000 people. Now begins the process of implementing the agreement. To be honest, Sarah and I are disappointed because we feel that this agreement is not in the best interest of the majority of Costa Ricans. And it does not make easier the already difficult task of protecting the environment, God’s creation. CAFTA jeopardizes the rules and regulations Costa Rica’s government has in place to protect the land, air, and water. It will be interesting to see what changes will occur in the next decade and will they be considered positive or negative. We hope that Costa Ricans will continue to exhibit the behavior they are known for, pride in their land and their quality of lives. Hopefully they will always fight to maintain this pride.