San Jose

Sarah: You all know that I now go into the city for 2 nights a week to receive extra Spanish tutoring and to work part-time for the Latin American Studies Program (LASP). Here is what that looks like: every Tuesday morning David drives me up to the bus stop, about 45 minutes away, where I catch the bus heading into San Jose. Once the bus reaches the city, I get off and take a taxi into work. I stay with a family nearby on Tuesday nights and Wednesday nights, and then after work on Thursday I catch the bus back out to the valley and David picks me up at the top of the hill. Often it works out for David to join me for part of the week as he uses the time to run errands in the city, and I always enjoy that!

My family that I live with is wonderful. They are a Nicaraguan family, and they live relatively close to the office. It’s only about a 20 minute walk for me every morning and afternoon. Aminta is my mother, and I have a brother, Sergio, and a sister, Claudia. AND a really great dog, Ramon. We usually sit around and do homework in the evenings while watching TV, both in Spanish and English. They are a super laid-back family. Aminta works incredibly hard (she works for the Nicaraguan Embassy here in CR), and she’s up before all of us cooking and usually goes to bed fairly late as well. Almost every single day, after she gets home from a long day of work, she goes to put on her red sweatpants. And almost every day, she receives a bit of mocking by her children for wearing those red sweatpants! Claudia just about had a cow one evening when she went grocery shopping in her red sweatpants! They are a very loving family, and they pick on each other a lot and laugh a lot. The dog provides for a lot of entertainment as well – he seems to think he owns the bean bag chair, and will push anyone off that tries to sit on it. He has a great personality and is a really fun-loving dog.

The Spanish tutoring has been such a great experience. I meet with two different teachers, once a week with each of them. Harold and I meet Wednesday morning, and we go through some Spanish exercises using pictures or situations to get me using new vocabulary or a certain tense in Spanish. Harold keeps a sheet of paper in front of him, and every time I make a mistake, he is quick to write it down for me to see. :) Eli and I meet Thursday mornings. I always have homework waiting for me when I get into the city on Tuesday – some reading about politics, religion, or other topics – and then we use the time Thursday morning to discuss it. Both teachers draw different trouble areas out of me, and I only wish that I could meet with them every day of the week!

Work has also been going well. I work in the afternoons Tuesday – Thursday, and it’s been really great to work with the LASP staff. And I have found that I also really enjoy working on “administrative tasks”. It’s also fun being in the city. I’ve had some interesting taxi rides – most taxi drivers don’t say hardly a word, but some are fairly entertaining and seem to want to have a full conversation. One taxi driver ended up talking about how he loves languages, Portuguese in particular. I told him that I had spent some time in Brazil, and that was enough encouragement for him to speak in Portuguese to me the rest of the ride. I tried my best to respond in Portuguese, though most of what came out was Spanish with a Portuguese word thrown in here and there. He even went so far as to start singing Christian praise songs for me in Portuguese! Another taxi driver and I had a conversation about politics, languages, and economics on our ride. He actually told me he thought I was Russian…I’m not sure what that says about my Spanish accent!

Weekend Normalcy

David: Around here the weekends can easily slip into the oblivion with the rest of the week without being recognized. We don’t have anyone that makes sure we show up for work on Monday morning and stay ‘til five but in the same line of thinking there are many times that work is required of us on weekend days. For that matter, working on projects on Saturday and Sunday just doesn’t seem different from working on Monday – Friday.

Because of this, Sarah and I do our best to make a weekend for ourselves whenever we can. We sleep in, which isn’t hard. We work on whatever sounds appealing to work on. We watch movies and football and read books. On Sundays we do our best to listen to an Ipod sermon from Faith Community Church, the church we attended in Santa Cruz, CA. It is our little church service.

One of our more consistent events on the weekends is visiting the Cottage Bakery ran by Laura Saborio, our Canadian friend who is married to a tico here in the valley. They have a daughter, Erika. Laura makes world class pastries that we indulge ourselves in every weekend. She has a deck that she has turned into a sitting area that creates a neat little coffee house feeling. We always enjoy great food, beverages, and conversation.

Happy Independence Day!

Sarah: Today we celebrated Costa Rica’s Independence Day. Ana, QERC’s housekeeper, had asked David yesterday if he wanted to ride horses up to the top of the valley to the highway and watch the passing of the torch. He asked if I could come too, and her response was “Well…it’s a long way up there…”. However, I decided to brave the long horse ride and go along. The passing of the torch is a really neat tradition. A couple days ago the official torch was lit up in the Guanacaste area of Costa Rica and people have been traveling around the country, passing the torch off to different towns and cities along the way to take it to the next destination. A group of runners left this morning from Cartago at 1:00 am and the plan was to make it to the top of our valley at 7:00 am for the next handoff.

David and I met at Ana and her husband Felo’s house at 5:00 am this morning, had some coffee and a quick breakfast, and hopped on the horses. Apparently it’s an old tradition to ride all the way up the valley on horses (at least for the men to do so…part way up I realized I was the only female!), so there were about 20 of us total. The women drive up with the kids and lots of coffee and more breakfast foods. After an hour and a half ride up, we made it just in time for the torch to arrive. Along with it came the runners and a bus full of people traveling with the torch. It actually felt like Independence Day, with flags everywhere and the torch preceded by police cars waving flags and honking their horns.

In addition to the Costa Rican flags being flown, there were lots of signs and flags showing their position against TLC, which is the Spanish version of CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement). This has been a huge issue for Costa Rica ever since last year’s presidential elections, when one candidate was in support of ratifying the agreement and another candidate was against it. Costa Rica is the only Central American country who has not signed the agreement with the U.S. Oscar Arias won the election last year, and although he was in support of TLC, it has been such a huge debate in the country that it has been decided to go to an all-country vote. The vote will take place in October, and it will be the first countrywide vote since Costa Rica gained its Independence. Our valley is predominantly against TLC, since they are all small farmers and TLC would bring an influx of multi-national factory farms that would basically put them out of business.

At the passing of the torch ceremony this morning, a few people spoke about the tradition and some good patriotic stuff, we all greeted each other, and then the group left for the next town. All of us from the valley then hung around the cars and all the food the women had brought up. The ride down on the horse also took about 1 ½ hours. A couple of the kids got to ride along side-by-side or in the saddle with their fathers, including Carla, Ana and Felo’s youngest daughter. By the time we arrived back to the house, our buns had had enough of being in a saddle!

This evening we went to another celebration at the school in honor of Independence Day. We sang lots of patriotic songs and watched the school kids perform many typical Costa Rican dances. After the festivities we ate lots of typical Costa Rican foods. Last year at this time we had been in Costa Rica only a few days. We had gone to the school for the festivities, but the evening wasn’t nearly as extensive as this year’s, and we of course hardly knew anyone last year! It was such a great feeling to be a part of the passing of the torch and the school celebration this evening and feel like we are accepted members of the community here. Quite the difference one year has made!

Activity

David: We’ve had some activity out here at QERC, which is great news for the month of September. September is slow and rainy for everybody around here. But, against the normal trend, we had two groups staying with us this weekend.

The first group was seven LASP students who were simply here for a weekend to enjoy the cloud forest. Technically, that makes them tourists. But because we have such a close relationship with LASP we’ve taken the liberty to host them anyway. Nevertheless, they had a great weekend and enjoyed God’s creation.

The other group we had here was a Costa Rican married couple who are working on their PhD research. Juan and Melissa have been here in the past and will return again to complete their project. It is nice to continue a working relationship with them and see their project develop. They have chosen 3-4 communities in the Los Santos area to see if they can link forest conservation to a higher quality of living for those in the surrounding communities. It is an important idea because if well done research shows a correlation between a higher quality of living with conservation of natural environments, then communities can be encouraged to pursue conservation. Melissa works on the social aspect of the project in order to determine the quality of life within each community and Juan does the biological work to determine how much land is conserved while specifically looking at bird populations to determine disturbance of the natural environment. It is a 2-3 year project.

One of our overall goals is to make QERC an educationally interactive experience for anyone that walks onto our property whether they may be students, tourists, or neighbors. We feel like we’ve made some progress in doing this and it is a fun goal to have.

One of the projects we are hoping to have done before January is the native plant demonstration. Three sides of our building have flower beds with pretty ornamental flowers. What we are doing is tearing those out, cleaning up the beds, and replacing them with native plants that represent different areas of in the forest. The idea is that we will identify these plants, with the help of some botanists at The National Biodiversity Institute of Costa Rica, and put signs by the plants that have the family name, species name, and common name both in Spanish and English. We would love to see people walking around the building looking at the plants and learning a little at the same time. And when they hike in the forest the plants will catch their eyes and they will think to themselves with great satisfaction, “I know that plant. It is part of the Laladadabingbong family.”

Anyway, in the mornings we drive up into the forest and collect plants that fit into the overall scheme of our planting plan. It has been a lot of work along the way. We’ve had to redo much of the rock border and work around the rain. We just hope that all the plants make it.

Back in Business

David: If you are a faithful reader of our blog, and we do appreciate those of you who are, you either thought that the Quetzals had gone Alfred Hitchcock on us and Sarah and I have been fighting for our lives all boarded up inside QERC without communication, or you knew that we spent the month of July in the states visiting family and friends. I’m hoping it is the second because I would be very disappointed that no one tried to make a rescue attempt to save us from dive-bombing Quetzals.

Our time in the states was blessed with great fellowship with our families in Washington and Iowa. Spokane was hot and dry and it felt fantastic. We were able to enjoy the relaxing waters of Loon Lake while in Washington as well. Iowa was hot and humid and it too felt great. We were soaking up the heat every where we went. While in Iowa the family stepped away from the normal summer routine and took a road trip to the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. We finished up our time in the U.S. by spending a few days with biology faculty at SNU in Oklahoma. It was an encouraging time to meet and talk about the progress of QERC.

Alas, we are back at QERC in Costa Rica and ready for more great things here in the cloud forest.

Sarah: As soon as we flew back into Costa Rica, two things happened. First, everything was so familiar that it truly felt like we were coming home. Second, we were greeted with guests right away. A good friend from Mission Springs, Steph Cowell, came to Costa Rica with a couple of her friends. The following day we met up with 4 of our fellow alumni from our LASP (Latin American Studies Program) class of Spring 2002. Three of them brought a significant other, and all of us together spent the next week traveling around Costa Rica, and for us LASPers, reliving memories from our semester together here 5 ½ years ago.

We started off the week by bringing everyone here to QERC, and had a great time being able to relax and hike around on the trails. One of those days happened to correspond when a good friend from the states, Wayne Sneed, was also in Costa Rica. Wayne is the President of Orphanos Foundation, an organization through whom I traveled to Brasil a few times for mission work. He came for a night at QERC to see where we live and experience the cloud forest. That night was definitely a mix of my worlds all coming together, randomly in Costa Rica!

Our Mission Springs/LASP alumni group took off and spent a couple of days at Manuel Antonio, enjoying the beaches and the hiking trails. The major highlight for me, besides seeing three kinds of monkeys and a number of sloths, was seeing a poisonous snake! The eyelash viper was right off the trail, asleep and wrapped around a small branch of a tree. After Manuel Antonio we headed for a quick trip to Arenal Volcano, where we enjoyed a rainy evening by sitting in some really relaxing hot springs and took a short hike over the lava rocks by the volcano the following day. We were even fortunate to see lots of spitting red lava roll down the volcano at night!

After saying goodbye to Steph and her 2 friends, the rest of us LASP alumni and company headed back for a last night in the city. We were able to get together with a number of LASP staff, both from our semester and current staff, for a dinner catered by David’s Costa Rican host mom. It was a great last night for all of us, being back in the LASP building to reminisce about old times before everyone had to leave the next morning.

Now we are adjusting to our life back at QERC once again. We are right in the middle of our rainy season, which means it is possible for it to rain MANY hours of the day. Despite the rain, we are glad to be back to work and have many projects already underway. I have also taken on a couple more tasks during this slower season – starting in September, I will be receiving Spanish classes in San Jose. I am thrilled for the opportunity to refine my Spanish and hopefully become more fluent while the opportunity presents itself to do so. Because I will be in the city 3 days a week for tutoring, I have also agreed to work part-time for LASP doing some administrative tasks for them this semester.

Savegre Adventure Trek

David: QERC is located within Los Santos Forest Reserve. I didn’t realize how little I knew about Los Santos Forest Reserve until I just recently took a very enlightening and inspiring trek through the reserve with John Cossel. This all started because John is interested in developing a class for Freshmen biology majors at NNU that will give them an inspiring field experience in order for all biology majors (pre-med included) to have a true experience in God’s creation rather than just in the books.

His idea is to hike the students from 14,000 feet in the paramo of Cerro de la Muerte to the Pacific Ocean. This would take about 7 days, including lectures and educational field activities along the way, and would be an experience of a lifetime. So, our goal was to scout out the trail and figure out if it is possible. We hiked two days of the trail on our own because we already knew the way, and then we hired a guide for the rest of the way. That is where our adventure started.

We started at Providencia, where we drove to, and hiked three days into and out of the reserve. Our guide’s name was Rafael, who goes by Rafa, and with him we hiked between 9 to 13 miles a day. The scenery was gorgeous and we came across a lot of wildlife and many signs of wildlife. There were numerous tapir tracks and at one point we could hear and smell a good number of peccaries. We saw a lot of birds. In fact, I saw 11 bird species I’ve never seen before. And because John was looking, we saw many herps. There were some pretty cool frogs and lizards and we saw 4 different snakes. And then at the end of day we stayed with families in the middle of nowhere with no road access on their small sustaining farms. It was a pretty sweet experience. One of the coolest parts of the experience is the network of families that live within the reserve who make up COOPESAVGRE. It is a cooperation in order to help these families make a living. There are stiff rules that no one can cut down trees or alter the land within the reserve and this applies to families that had already been living there. The penalty is jail time. Most of the families survive on the subsistence farming that they already had in place, which is mostly organic.

This co-op is developing the idea of rural adventure tourism. They have created hiking routes, have local guides from their families, and have a system of home stays to supply housing as you are trekking across the reserve. They explain it as way in which they can conserve the biodiversity of the forest and still make a living. They have a lot of pride in this project and one of the things they are most proud of is that they are supplying a form of tourism that is very meaningful. Those that spend time on these trekking trails will get to know the people who live on the land and see how they live. It is their desire that there is equal sharing going on of language and culture as they have visitors travel through the wild lands they call home. If you want to check it out you can go to their website at http://www.coopesavegre.com/

Our trip was a major success. Hopefully John will now have all the information and experience he needs to put together his potential class. And I hope that we can support the families of COOPESAVEGRE in the future. It is a model of conservation that just might actually make sense and find the balance of the conservation of both natural resources and human lives. We will see, I suppose.

Franas and Monsters

David: In some circles of people Costa Rica is very well known for it’s abundance of beautiful frogs that can be found throughout the country. In other circles some do not even know that frogs are amphibians. I’m going to hope that you are in a circle somewhere in the middle. Frogs are amphibians and a biologist who specializes in amphibians and reptiles is a herpetologist. And if you are our niece Gracelyn, you mix Spanish and English and call them “franas.”

Sarah and I had the privilege of joining the Cossel family on their Caribbean quest for herps (amphibians and reptiles). We spent three nights with them on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica; I say nights because the night time is the right time for many spectacular herps. Two of our three nights were homeruns. The other just involved barking dogs, roosters crowing, and hot humid air.

One of our nights was spent at the Costa Rican Amphibian Research Center. We received a private tour from one of Costa Rican’s leading frog experts. It was a five hour night hike from 9 pm to 2 am. All together we saw 11 frog species, 1 salamander, and 1 snake. Alas, it wasn’t a poisonous snake like Sarah was hoping for, it was one called a Cat-eyed Snake. The pictures here are of the Red-eyed Tree Frog, Dwarf Glass Frog, Lemur Leaf Frog, and Strawberry Poison Dart Frog. It was an exhausting yet extremely rewarding night.

Our other night of high adventure that ended in a huge success was a night searching the beaches of Gandoca looking for nesting Leatherback turtles. These turtles are the ones that can be as big as a VW Bug and are EXTREMELY endangered. Most biologists believe that they will go extinct within a decade. We found ourselves a 45 minute boat ride into the southern parts of Manzanillo-Gandoca National Wildlife Refuge and we set up for the night at a tiny little motel at the only restaurant in Gandoca. This stretch of beach is a hot spot for nesting Leatherbacks at this time of the year. So, at 8 pm we took off with a local guide with high hopes of seeing one of these prehistoric monsters instinctively carrying out nesting behavior that has been happening for many, many years. The anticipation didn’t have to build long because 30 minutes into walking along the beach we found one who was already digging her hole. She was about five feet long and four feet in width. Impressive. We stayed with her and watched the entire process. One thing that impressed me was how skillful she was with the tip of her three-foot long back flippers in digging deep the small hole she would deposit her eggs. The hole had to have been at least three feet deep. One of the highlights had to be been walking back with her to the ocean and being right next to her as she scooted into the waves. The experience was awesome. John, the herpetologist, was in herp heaven, and his family was very impressed and excited. His youngest daughter was so impacted that the first thing she did upon returning to QERC was to start writing letters to her state representatives to share her experience and urge them to take action in changing fishing practices that are needlessly killing these monstrous creations before we lose them all together. Now that is a cool story.

Another worthy story is that of Sarah being attacked by and conquering the wild world of icky biting bugs. Throughout our hiking and beach combing Sarah accumulated over 150 ticks on her body in one hour, that she then picked off for the next 12 hours, and 175 sand flea bites on just one leg. She looked those ticks and fleas in their microscopic eyes and told them where they could go and how they could get there.

SOS

Sarah: Monday I went into the city to meet up with friends from Orphanos Foundation. Grace Fragoso, Wayne Sneed, and a new staff member that I had not met, Sandi Langley, came to meet up with an organization called Viva Network here in Costa Rica. Together, the two organizations trained 7 students who were about to embark on a 2 month Summer of Service experience. I had gone with Orphanos 6 years ago to Brasil for a summer to live and work in a children’s home. Two of these students will also be going to Brasil for the summer, 4 of them will be going to 2 different children’s homes in Mexico, and 1 will be staying here in Costa Rica to work in a very poor neighborhood made up of mainly Nicaraguans.

I had a really great time being reacquainted with friends, and it was such a blessing to be a part of this training of new students who will be having a similar experience that impacted my own life so much. I had a chance to share with them about my experiences one night, and it was great to recap such a great summer. We also traveled around to a few different missions located here in Costa Rica, which could possibly serve as contacts for me in the future.

David stayed here for most of the week, and did a lot of work and spent time with the Cossels. He and John Cossel took a hike from here all the way to Providencia, a nearby valley, and were picked up by John’s wife in that town. David was able to come into the city on Thursday night and stay with some of our friends, so that he could spend a short time visiting with Orphanos friends as well and bring me back out to the valley today.

Visitors

Sarah: This has been a week of visitors. Last weekend Dr. John Cossel arrived with his wife, Ronda, and 3 kids. They are going to be here for the entire month of June. John is a herpetologist and has been hiking on the trails in search of all amphibians and reptiles. So far he has found a number of frogs, tadpoles, and a salamander—which is quite rare. Soon he’ll be heading down past the waterfall, to a lower elevation, and the possibility of finding snakes.

We also had a friend, Nicola, who we worked with at Mission Springs come visit with two of her friends from med school. They are traveling around Costa Rica for a few weeks, and decided to spend a few days hanging out with us. We had fun hiking around with them, and playing games while it was raining.

David has continued to work on landscaping around QERC and watching the quetzals fly across our lawn, and this week I have been frantically scrapbooking, in hopes of finishing this entire year’s book so any of you who are interested in seeing an organized scrapbook of our first year in Costa Rica, it will be ready for you.

Tomorrow I am heading into the city to stay for the week. I’ll be hooking up with friends from Orphanos Foundation, the organization through whom I traveled to Brasil and Mexico. They are in Costa Rica giving an orientation to this summer’s SOSers (Summer Of Service), and I am able to be with them for the majority of the week. I am thrilled for the opportunity and am excited to see some more friends.

News

Sarah: Well we keep plugging away at projects here at QERC. I have been writing postcards to all of the biology departments within the CCCU (Council for Christian Colleges and University) trying to promote QERC a bit, and David has been working outside landscaping during the mornings while it isn't raining. He is switching out all of the non-native ornamental plants for native plants--so as to give a good representation of the plants that grow here in the valley. His hope is to make signs for the different plants, allowing for anyone who shows up at QERC (students, researchers, and even passing tourists) to have and educational experience just by walking around outside the building.

While David has been working outside, he has been fortunate to see many Quetzals fly back and forth right in front of him. The other day he actually saw a juvenile Quetzal with its father. He witnessed the father teaching its baby how to fly into the aguacatillo trees and eat some of the fruit off the tree. Pretty spectacular.

We also have a new neighbor here in the valley. For many months now we have been watching a house go up across the river from where we live and had heard that a gringo was going to be moving in. Harlan showed up at our place last weekend to introduce himself, and since he's been so happy to find someone who he can speak English with, we've talked every day since then! He is an early-retired man who is looking to spend half the year living and saving money in Costa Rica, and the other half the year traveling around the world. Harlan most recently lived in Los Angeles and worked doing documentary voice-overs for different shows including E-Hollywood Story, Pioneers of Primetime, and Modern Marvels. We had him over for dinner last night and had a good time getting to know him better.

And for some not-so-happy news, Lizeth (our housekeeper) told us today that she is putting in her two-weeks notice. It has been a long time coming, but we were still shocked with how soon she'll be leaving. Her husband is currently living with his parents a few hours south of us and is working on building them a house on his parents' property so he can better care for them and their land. Lizeth and the rest of her family have been deciding when to join him, and she finally decided that she wanted some time at home with her kids right now as they begin packing up and getting ready to move. We are really sad about the loss of Lizeth, and a bit overwhelmed as we need to find someone to replace her already next week so she can be trained by Lizeth.