*Disclaimer: There are lots of pictures on this entry so I loaded them as the small size. To view them larger, click on them!
Sarah: David and I have been here almost 2 ½ years now and we had never taken a trip by ourselves anywhere in Costa Rica until about 2 weeks ago. This is due to the large amount of guests we’ve had down here, and the excuse to show off a bit of Costa Rica to family and friends who are visiting. There’s never been a real reason that we’ve felt we’ve needed to take a trip by ourselves, since we’ve been able to see quite a bit of this country with other people. Nor do we feel like we need a getaway, since we live in a very relaxed environment, high up in the paradisical cloud forest. However, upon evaluating our time here, we decided there were a couple places we’d like to make sure we visited while we had an opportunity to do so, before our time becomes overwhelmingly busy with students and groups and activities and lots of LIFE going on here at QERC.
So two weeks ago we set out on our own adventure. First stop: Ostional. Now Ostional is actually a place we’ve been to before, twice for me and three times for David. It is a place where we take the students on one of their traveling courses to study sea turtles, since it is a beach where olive ridley sea turtles commonly nest. Ostional also happens to be one of 8 or 9 beaches in the world where a phenomenon called an arribada takes place. It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, something that’s developed within the last 100 years or so. What it is, is a specific time each month according 
to the lunar cycle where hundreds of thousands of olive ridleys decide to lay their eggs all at the same time. Complete and utter chaos. There are theories as to why they come ashore in such great numbers at the same time, but nothing proven.
Because there are thousands laying their eggs all at once, they practically walk on top of each other as they make their way to and from the ocean. Those that get there first aren’t exactly the lucky ones – they are the ones that get their nests dug up by the next 
few hundred turtles that decide to lay their eggs in approximately the same spot. For this reason, the community within Ostional is allowed to collect all eggs within the first 36 hours of an arribada – to use for eating, selling, however they want. Those eggs in particular have almost no chance of survival, so harvesting the eggs is actually permitted. It’s actually the only place in the world where it IS permitted.
While an arribada is supposed to 
happen each month, the fall months are the busiest with the highest number of turtles coming up on the beach. Living so close (relatively) to this phenomenon, we decided we wanted to make sure to see an arribada while here in Costa Rica. David began calling the ranger station as soon as we thought it was about time for the November arribada to happen, and as soon as they said that it was in process, we packed our bags and headed north. We arrived after the mad rush of the first few days, after the community had gotten their share of eggs, but still in time to see this incredible event take place.
We were only in Ostional one night, so once we got there and had some dinner, we headed for the beach. The sea turtles typically start coming up on the beach to lay their eggs around 9:00pm, so around 8:00 or so we started walking on the beach. Within minutes we had counted 10 turtles – walking carefully, and using only our red lights so as not to disturb their nesting. Soon we heard a large rattling noise, which sounded larger than an olive ridley sea turtle, so I went over to check it out. Turns out it was a green sea turtle, which is about twice the size of an olive ridley, that had accidentally knocked into a garbage can and was making noise as it was frantically trying to turn itself around. We watched her for a while, and then continued on our trek. The closer to 9:00 it got, the more turtles we were seeing emerge from the water. We decided to call it a night around 9:30, and had seen around 100 at that point.
T
he next morning was the ultimate prize. We had called it an early night in order to get up before dawn and head back to the beach, with hopes of seeing a few turtles in the daylight. We were in for a surprise as we made our way down to the main beach and saw hundreds and hundreds of sea turtles spread out across the sand! We figure there had to be around 1,000 we saw, many of them heading back out to the ocean, but still many coming up on land. It was incredible to see the entire process in daylight of turtles coming from the ocean, digging a hole, laying their eggs, covering up their nests, and returning back to the ocean. We even saw two babies, which made the entire process feel complete! I never knew I enjoyed sea turtles so much, but that experience had to be one of my favorites in all of the time we’ve been here.
After a couple of hours of watching the turtles, we packed up our bags and headed a little more north, to Playa Grande. On our way there, we decided to take the road-less-traveled that went over a mountain range. The views were breathtaking, and we had a couple of encounters we wouldn’t have had on more traveled roads. David stopped at one point because he saw an enormous boa constrictor in front of the car. Naturally, David got out and got close enough to it to take some pictures, and since the snake was about 7 feet long, he went to the tail 
end of it and touched it. While he was crouched down snapping photos, an unusual looking animal started darting down the road right toward him. Lo and behold, a kinkajou was galloping down the middle of the road and veered off toward a stream on the side of the road right before he got to David.
Finally, we made it to Play Grande. Our purpose for going to that beach was two-fold. One, it’s a good beach to potentially see leatherback sea turtles. We’d already seen one leatherback about a year and a half ago on the Caribbean coast, but thought we’d try our luck at seeing another one. Two, we have a friend named Randall who works for the national park there. He used to work 
here in the valley, and we had become good friends with him before he moved away and took a new job. He still comes to visit and do some work with plants in our valley, so we took the opportunity to visit him while we were in the area.
Randall showed us around the different beaches within the national park, and we had a good time catching up with him. The following morning the three of us rented canoes and went out in the estuaries for a few hours in search of new birds for David. And also because we like exploring mangrove systems.
One of our nights in Playa Grande we signed up for a leatherback tour. The tours are run differently there, because the leatherbacks are so endangered. They have guides and volunteers who walk the beach every night looking for leatherbacks, and once one is found, the on-site guide is notified and he can take 30 people out to look at the turtle. If another turtle is found, the next 30 people can go out looking at that turtle. Unfortunately, no turtles came out to nest the night we had signed up for a tour, so we were unable to see a leatherback on this trip. However, it was great to be up in the Guanacaste area of the country, visit Randall, and explore the mangroves in canoes.
Our 3rd stop was to Palo Verde National Park, a dry forest and wetland ecosystem. Here we went in search of more birds for David, and also to explore a new area of the country we’d never experienced before. The land was beautiful, and very different than anything I’ve seen in Costa Rica. Right around dusk we sat at the end of a long boardwalk overlooking some marshy areas. There were birds everywhere! We also saw one of the most beautiful sunsets we’ve ever seen.
The next morning we went on a guided hike with a local biologist, who also happened to be a bird-enthusiast. He took us on a trail that ended up on a large rock, high up, that overlooked the whole valley. It was a beautiful view. One of the neatest things we saw up there were 2 pairs of scarlet macaws fly by, almost at eye-level. After the rock, our guide took us down a road in search of the elusive jabiru, the largest stork in the world that stands about 5 feet tall. We spent a long time looking for it, with no such luck. Finally David and I went back for lunch, and packed up our things to head back into San Jose. On our drive out of the national park, David suddenly stopped the car and off in the distance we saw the jabiru standing tall. It was so large that we entered into a 
discussion of whether or not it could eat our head if we were close enough to it. Pretty cool bird.
We arrived in San Jose just in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with some good friends of ours, Trevor and Laura, and a mix of other friends and new friends. We all gathered up at Trevor and Laura’s house, went around and said what we were thankful for, and enjoyed a feast of food including chicken (turkeys are WAY too expensive here!), mashe
d potatoes and gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, roles, and pies. It truly felt like Thanksgiving, and we appreciated being able to celebrate with friends. After Thanksgiving, Trevor and Laura joined us out at QERC for a night along with Laura’s mom and her friend, in order to show them the cloud forest. We had a nice relaxing evening and a good walk in beautiful weather the next morning before they headed back into San Jose.
with us for 6 months at QERC. Peter Bosch is a recent graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While Peter graduated with a Spanish degree, he also took all of the pre-requisites for medical school and has already been accepted into medical school at the University of Michigan for the fall of 2009. During his year off, Peter was looking for an opportunity to serve in Latin America with a focus on international and sustainable development. With a little encouragement from a professor at Calvin who has a long history at QERC, Peter approached SNU with the idea of volunteering here for about 6 months.
Peter has chosen to work in the QERC Restoration Nursery to further develop it and make it available to the community. He has already spent many hours identifying plants that would be good additions to the nursery. Peter is concentrating on plants that fall into 4 categories: erosion control, ornamental, reforestation, and those that produce fruits that quetzals and other birds eat. All plants are native to this valley and should be appealing to the community for many reasons.
known throughout the community and available for them to take. He will create a flyer to pass out to the 130-150 people who live here and explain what types of plants are available to them and the benefits they have. Peter will also serve as a consultant to the community members who want to take advantage of these free plants.
the extra hands and together the two of them have done a lot of maintenance that was much needed. Peter has also been a big help in getting things ready and organized for the semester program to begin, and we look forward to his help as the program gets underway in the beginning of January. In addition, Peter has taken on the task of teaching English to members of the community twice a week. It’s great to see extra activity going on here and people doing good things as representatives of QERC.
