Hasta Luego Monteverde

Sunday – June 17, 2007

Hello all- As this is probably my last journal entry from Monteverde, I should begin by apologizing for the poor correspondence rate of the past several months. Life has gotten much more hectic as I have tried to wrap up various projects, prepared for teaching my summer sustainable design course at the Monteverde Institute, and at the same time prepared to leave our home of the last year to return to the US. Norma also spent significant energy securing her new job with Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, where she will be the new alumni programs coordinator (beginning in August). Norma and Niall departed for California last weekend, and I have now moved from our little casita in Santa Elena into a big house in Monteverde where all of our course faculty are staying this summer. The house belongs to one of the Institute board members who is traveling with his family in the US for the next month & a half, and as it sleeps at least 4 comfortably, it is great for our teachers.

I’ve been very busy the past 3 weeks with my students, and we have all of our projects well under way, including most of the heavy construction of a pretty neat little bamboo structure in San Luis (see pics). We’ve also been out doing traffic counts and measuring roadways to facilitate designing sidewalks along the main road through town; in short, it’s been a very hectic time!

We’ve managed to take care of all our final logistics, including selling our car here, and then buying a new one over the internet in California. Norma is already driving around happily in our “new” used Toyota. The car sale here went fairly easily and we were very happy with our car experience as a whole, even though we were always grousing about the roads. Twice within the last month both Norma and I managed to nearly end up off the road, and both times we were lucky to be safely pulled back onto solid ground when one wheel slid into the ditch along the side of the typical muddy track that passes for a road here. Unfortunately for the car, the day after I sold it, the new owner was not so lucky. He managed to back it too close to the edge of a ravine, and when the rain softened banks gave way, the car slid down more than 10’ and rolled onto its roof! (see pics!!). At least no one was hurt—the driver and passenger (one of my faculty colleagues) both walked away with little more than a few scratches. Good thing it wasn’t raining—this creek looks like a raging torrent of whitewater in a thunderstorm. We’re all hoping the insurance coverage we had on the car (it was supposed to be in effect until August) will cover the damage, which looks to be extensive.

I now have just 10 days left here in Costa Rica, then it's on to southern California, and our big trip home across country. We’ve all enjoyed our time in Costa Rica immensely, and come to appreciate much about the place and the people. We will sadly leave many new friends and we’ll certainly miss our little house high on the hill at the edge of the cloud forest, where we spent many an evening with a glass of wine gazing out over the Gulf of Nicoya, watching the sun set spectacularly out over the Pacific. Life is much simpler here in Costa Rica, and if we’ve learned anything from this year, it is to take things a little less seriously and with a little more emphasis on the simple things we hold dear.

Looking forward to seeing all those we’ve let behind this year soon-

Hasta luego desde Monteverde, Costa Rica

Scott Shannon

Yet Another Reason to Wear Your Seatbelt!

Well, Niall and I had a little adventure today! First let me give you the background...it has been raining cats and dogs here so all the roads are amazingly bad (as opposed to just their normal awful). Yesterday when I drove home during a deluge there were waterfalls of muddy water plunging off the hillsides onto the road. Additionally drain pipes from all the homes that border the road were spewing water out like someone had turned so many giant water faucets. When it rains this hard the water all runs down the roads and into the stream beds...often eroding away the road and undercutting it where the water plunges down into the frothy rivers below.

So today it wasn't raining so hard, and I was driving home after a lovely lunch with a grandmother and her granddaughter who are taking my Spanish class with me. As I came up to the turnoff for our road, Niall's bus pulled up, so I pulled off the road at the intersection to wait for him.

Niall comes racing up and hops in the back of the our giant SUV which has pull down seats in the back. We're all of 500 yards from home up a steep, dirt road with a max possible speed of about 10 mph, so I'm not asking him to put his seat belt on. After he hops in, I pull out and to the right to turn up our steep road. Since I was already pulled off to the right side of the road, I'm a little off the road and the wheels are in a kind of a swale where the water flows down into the smallish stream that flows directly under the road I'm going up.

As I start to pull out into the road and go up, two tourist vans are coming down the road and a motorcycle is passing them, so I had to move over a bit. As I do this, I feel the slightest bump, and I'm thinking that my back wheel has just slipped back down into the swale.....but the car won't move forward. Because my attention is focused on avoiding the motorcycle, I'm not really aware that I'm actually over the stream now, not the swale. Anyway, I'm a little confused as to why the wheel is spining and since Niall is in the far back, I ask him to open up the back door and tell me what he sees. "Ah, Mom...all I see is stream!"

Only then do I realize that perhaps we're in some trouble and we get out of the car. When I go around the back I realize that the stream embankment has given way and my rear wheel is hanging out over an 8 foot drop down to the stream bed below! The car is perilously close to just tipping in and over!

Of course, my predicament at this fairly busy corner attracts a number of gawkers and, as luck would have it, our cheerful, handsome mechanic Arnoldo. My lucky day! In short order, Arnoldo has commandeered a big chain from one friend driving by and a cell phone from another and within 10 minutes he has summoned the giant road work back hoe to pull us out! I could have kissed him!

Of course I was sweating it as we've already taken a deposit on the car and we're just using it for the next two weeks. I could just imagine what Scott would say if he found the car upside down in the stream bed...or how Niall would have fared as we rolled over and down without his seatbelt on.

I have no doubt that Scott will hear of our little adventure even before he comes home tonight. Of course we were quite the "show" for a few minutes there, with everyone driving slowly by and shaking their heads. It was funny...all the women drove by slowly, but all the men, to a one, stopped, offered help and then proceeded to recount the last time that someone had overturned into that stream bed. Now that I can comprehend a fair bit of Spanish, their stories were getting me a little anxious, as the car looked like it was going to tip at any second!

I'm now sitting home safe and sound, and very thankful. Niall has taken great glee in reminding me that he told me we were in a really bad spot before I asked him to, "Just open the back door and take a look."

Pigs, Sloths, Bulls and Houses!

We've had an interesting few weeks here in Monteverde. Lots of good animal sitings, and a fun day of house razing.

Last week, Niall hiked down to the biological Field Station at San Gerardo (owned by the Conservation League) with his third grade class. They spent the day hiking to a local waterfall and swatting biting flies. That night the class all slept in the station's bunk houses and hiked out the following morning. As is the norm, when we asked Niall how the trip was, and what happened...all we got was..., "It was OK." So, unfortunately, no great details to share!

Scott and I were in charge of meeting the class at the top of the trail head the following morning and helping to drive them back to school. When we arrived at the appointed hour, there was our antelope son, alone, except for a huge grin, in the parking lot. Hmmm....can you guess what his parents' reactions were? One parent was yelling at him, "What part of stay with the group don't you understand?" while the other parent was clapping him on his back saying, "Wow, son...great job! You beat everybody up the hill!" Aren't we great parents?

Niall's penance was to hike back down the trail with us to help the other kids. The trail to San Gerardo is punishing...straight down on the in bound hike...and straight up on the return. About 10 minutes down the trail we came across the first teacher with the rest of the class strung out over about a mile of trail. We helped by carrying backpacks, dishing out "afterbite" and cajoling tired kids up the trail. Just as we reached the end of the trail with the last of the kids, we were treated to a cool wildlife moment. lA large, hairy, collared peccary (wild pig) just wandered out onto the trail, snuffling along in the leaves and walked right past us.


We also had another cool wildlife sighting later in the week. Scott and I were out for our usual hike when our trusty dog, Chispita (the great squirrel tracker) started barking at something in a short tree. It turned out to be a very large sloth. We've seen any number of them, but this one was exceptionally low down in the tree...we could have touched it. On our return trip, we again stopped to check on the sloth, only to find him fully awake and dangling upside down..again within reach. He was big and much browner than the other sloths we've seen..and it soon became evident why...he wasn't the normal three toed sloth, but a rarer two toed one. These sloths usually stick to the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica, so his presence was somewhat abnormal.

Our final "wildlife" interaction came at the end of the week. Niall was invited by a local family to attend the annual fiesta in town and we agreed to come meet him later in the evening. The local fiesta is very modest by any standards. Consisting of a few food stands set up next to the bull ring, two carnival rides, loud, throbbing music and a makeshift dance floor. However, its modesty is offset by the locals, who flock to the fiesta in droves, ready to have a good time.

And a good time we had. The kids had an absolute blast cramming themselves onto a ride similar to the Disneyland teacups and making themselves entirely sick and dizzy. Next everyone got overly bright food stuffs ( U.S. food vendors at carnivals have NOTHING over Latin American stalls). Niall and I shared a batch of churros (fried dough sticks) covered in sticky pudding and thoroughly dressed with "chispas" or multicolored sprinkles. I'm a sucker for sprinkles...but entirely regretted my carvings by the following day!

Finally, we all made our way to the bull ring. I've passed the shabby, two storied, round, corrugated steel building hundreds of times, but have never been inside. On a Friday night, with a good portion of the town inside, throbbing music and kids running around under the stands...it's just the place to be! There are 4 levels of elevated seating around the circumference of the ring. The first eight feet of the ring are fenced off with strong, but beaten up wooden fencing. The fencing is interrupted by open vertical slats about every 15 feet or so. The wood around each opening being painted red.

For quite a long time, no one was in the ring and the action centered around three wooden gates (two small and one large) located directly under the announcers platform. Clearly here, you could see the caballeros (cowboys), mostly sitting on the fences, working to get a bull into a chute. A few minutes before the bull was released, brave young men (full of machismo and beer) climbed down from the stands, down the wooden fencing and into the ring. Then, out came two strong caballeros on their beautiful horses.

After much adjusting and fussing, the bull rider finally got a good seat on the bull in the chute and the gate was opened. As one would expect, the rider must stay on the bull for 8 seconds, with only one hand on the rope. All the riders that evening stayed on long past that cut off and showed great skill. What was unexpected was that the rider, once done with his ride, had to dismount the bull himself (if not already thrown off). In the U.S., the rider is often assisted off by cowboys who ride up next to the bull...but no such luck here! You're on your own...and it's dangerous. Two out of the three riders we saw were stepped on and almost gored when they dismounted.

Luckily for them, bulls that are ridden are de-horned...but still - ouch! Once clear of the bull, the young machismos come into play...taunting the bull and running around the ring to tempt the bull to chase them. The purpose of the open vertical slating became quite clear ....escape routes for those hombres being chased by the enraged bull! No wonder the openings are painted red.

Once the bull has been annoyed beyond the point of much interest in chasing beer guzzling Ticos, the caballeros move in to rope the bull. This is the best part as the beautiful horses and their skillful riders are put through their paces trying to rope the slippery bull. Once each rider has a line on the bull, one horseman rides to the exit chute and loops his rope over a large hook. At this point the bull is simply reeled in toward the exit chute and given an unceremonious shove in at the final moment.

After this exciting display, the music is cranked up and the caballeros show off the dancing prowess of their horses. Kind of a fast high step prance..in time to the music. Very impressive.

The final event of the evening, and clearly left until the end when everyone has had their fill of cerveza, was the release of the Toro de Gorro! This bull is usually the largest and comes complete with a full set of long, vicious looking horns. The bull is not ridden, but released into the ring which is now ringed with a complete compliment of Monteverde's finest. The young men compete with each other to see who can accomplish the most daring dash across the ring without being speared by the overwrought bull. The bull, a magnificent creature, seemed to take quite a delight in chasing the men, who scrambled up the fencing much like crabs before an advancing wave.

Scott and I had a good laugh when it was explained to us that any man daring and quick enough to touch the bull's horns would be granted free admission to the bull riding for the remainder of the week. Not what we'd call a great deal, given that admission was all of $2!

Niall took particular delight in this as one of the braver young men was on our side of the ring. Consequently the bull spent a fair bit of time directly in front of us and almost at eye level with Niall. I'm sure if we stayed here longer, Niall would happily participate in this local ritual of manhood!

Speaking of manhood, this weekend we participated in a house razing for our friends, the Sales. About 100 locals all gathered at their farm to erect a timber frame house. The huge timbers had all been harvested about a year ago off the land of the Institute where Scott works. This type of construction is not at all a local tradition, but was brought here by some guys from Vermont who do this in the States and have realized they can come here during the winters when things are slow at home.

We started the day with three, absolutely huge, two story "bents" or sections, lying on the ground. I can only imagine what they weighed! The crew from Vermont, along with a number of Tico workers (who are learning how to do this type of construction) spent a good couple of hours mortise and tenoning some of the last minute pieces together. The "helpers" were all given pegs to shave down. These were later used to secure the mortise and tenon joints. No nails allowed!

Then they rigged lines up through neighboring trees (climbing around like monkeys). Once the lines were rigged through the nearby trees (which were used as fulcrums), the group was split in half...pretty much the men to lift the bent and the women and children to pull the ropes (along with a mule!). It was amazing, and, kind of scary! I was glad to be the videographer and get to be out of the way. On the count of three, the guys all heaved up the bent, while the rope pullers pulled. When the bent was up above their heads, they grabbed long boards and pushed with those. Once the bent hit the 45 degree point, the pullers took over and heaved the bent up to a full 90 degrees.

It was way amazing!! It took all afternoon, but the three bents went up without a hitch and our friends had the frame of their new house.

The kids all had a blast too. Our friends had already built a big pond on the property with a big zip line strung across it. The kids could climb up an old burnt out tree, grab the zip line and fly across the pond, plunging into the middle of it. At one point, Niall tied his blue towel around his shoulders, the better to achieve the superman vibe!

Of course, afterward we had a huge potluck lunch and the men traded stories of their feats! I was just impressed that it got done without anyone getting hurt! The only near miss of the day was when one of the Tico guys was using his machete near us lost his grip...the machete flew through the air and landed about a foot from Andy, the woman I was standing next too. She took it in good humor, laughing and saying how ironic it would have been to have survived her recent cancer, to be taken out by a freak machete accident!

At the end of the day, we all piled into our trusty Galloper for the drive home. We were all tired and ready for what we jokingly call a "Tico Massage" - that's when the road is so steep and bumpy that your entire body gets a good limb loosening as you drive along.

Ziiiiip-lines!

Saturday, 14 April

Back again very quickly for once, but with a short fun update. Today, as Norma is in New York, I treated Niall to a major male-bonding thing for the week— a canopy tour on “zip-lines” at SkyTrek. Zip-line tours are something of a specialty of adventure tourism here in Costa Rica, and there are dozens of places that have them around the country. Here in Monteverde we actually have 6 different canopy tour operators! So… what’s a zip-line tour? It is a series of steel cables strung in the forest canopy from platform to platform that one traverses while dangling in a rock-climbing harness from a pulley. The pictures are pretty self-explanatory! Now it’s really cool to be up in the tree canopy and all, but frankly, zip-line tours are not really about nature or ecotourism—they are sort of the equivalent of a low-tech rollercoaster that just happens to be set in the rainforest. It’s all about the thrill… and Niall was thrilled! Most of the lines were a couple hundred meters long and 30-50 high, but the biggest one was over a kilometer in length, and at least 100 meters up in the air. I don’t recommend zip-lines for the faint of heart, or those with acrophobia, but it was a lot of fun otherwise ;-)

Nicaragua or bust

Friday, 13 April

Hello all- we are back here in Monteverde after Semana Santa in Nicaragua. Quite a trip! Tops all our border crossing stories to date ;-) …but then I’m getting a bit ahead of myself- I’ll get to that eventually. Lots has been happening here and for a while it is just Niall and I, as Norma is actually back in New York for a job interview. Our return to a more “normal” life in the states is beginning to loom larger and gather a bit more tangible sense of approaching reality. One tends to live pretty much day to day here (as the Ticos say, pura vida – es muy tranquilo!), but picking up to come back home to Cazenovia and our alternate lives there requires more than a little planning!

As Norma’s job at the Syracuse Housing Authority has looked less and less certain over the past 6 months or so (the cuts in federal HUD funding are going right to the bone and then some), she’s been starting to look into other opportunities. As luck would happen, she got a plane ticket back to interview for one of the positions she applied for. She also dragged a BUNCH of stuff home that we won’t now need to drag with us later in our grand foray across the US (more on that later too). Both Niall and I will look forward to having her back soon!

Norma left for the US when we dropped her at the airport in Liberia on our way home from Nicaragua, so that’s where we’ll begin with our description of the trip. Ordinarily, we would NOT chose to cross an international border in Latin America during the run up to Semana Santa. That’s sort of like deciding to drive across Los Angeles at rush hour, just for kicks. But we needed to go because our 90 day visas were about to run out, and we had to spend at least 3 nights outside Costa Rica to reset our visas, and we needed to coordinate that with Niall’s school schedule. The end result was needing to cross the boarder on the weekend before the big Easter holiday week – Semana Santa.

Semana Santa’s significance here in Latin America far transcends it’s religious roots, and really has become something more akin to combining Easter (big religious holiday), with Thanksgiving (it is traditional to spend the week with family), and Labor Day (it’s near the end of the local “summer,” so everyone heads to the beach or wherever to party). The other complicating factor is, similar to the US and Mexico, hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans live quasi legally in Costa Rica for higher paying jobs (typically lots of agricultural and construction labor). So on the weekend before Semana Santa, tens of thousands of Nicaraguans try to return home to spend the holiday with their families. And that is what we found at the border…!!

We knew it was going to be difficult, but we had no idea just how crazy things could be. We’ve waited for hours on occasion at the Canadian border after visiting Ottawa or Niagara Falls, but that’s still pretty orderly. The Costa Rica-Nicaragua border is chaotic even in the best of times, but… geeeez! When we arrived at the border at about 9:00am, we expected we would beat much of the traffic. What we found was traffic, mostly buses and trucks, backed up about ½ mile from the actual frontier, will thousands of pedestrians walking toward the customs building. If we had any choice, we would have just turned around at this point, but we were pretty much committed due to our visa staus. So I got out and started jogging toward the border while Norma waited and tried to creep the car forward. Upon arriving at the customs building, I found a line that would have put Disneyland on the 4^th of July to shame. There were at least 1500 people winding out the door of the building and then snaking back and forth all around the parking area. Which might have seemed almost orderly if the parking area had not been filled with cars, trucks, and buses, all parked at odd angles so that even the main road was at virtual grid lock. Unbelievable! I decided this might be a good time to use one of the expeditors or “gavillanos,” who for a small fee (usually about $20), will guide you to the front of the line by paying the various guards to look the other way. Sort an un-official Easy-Pass. After inquiring around, I was taken to the exit side of the building and given instructions on how to go “in the out door” and in about 20 minutes, I actually had our passports stamped and ready to go. Another 20 minutes, and I got the car’s paperwork all sorted out too! This was looking easier and easier… if a little pricey. But then I needed to find Norma and the car, and get them to the Nicaraguan customs. As luck would have it, Norma had managed to get within about 100 meters of the customs building and we just had to weave through the maze of parked trucks and buses. As we passed though the final check point to the Nicaraguan side, one of the immigration police commented to me, “In Europe they have been doing this for 1500 years, here in Costa Rica-- barely 500; in another 1000 years, we will have figured out how to do this as well as the Europeans and then it will be easy!”

After another hour, we managed to get through the Nicaraguan customs too. Fortunately the Nicaraguans have separate lines for those with cars (almost no one), from those in trucks, buses, and pedestrians (a zillion). Otherwise we would have been out at least another $20! All I could think of was how long would it take all those poor folks standing in line to finally get through, particularly as most had less than $20 in their pockets, with none to spare for convenience sake? Who knows!

After the border we were off to parts unknown. I’ve been to Nicaragua twice now, but I still haven’t gotten to see all that much of the country, and we decided to try a place at the beach. We were hoping to find something no too expensive, but still nice, but it being Semana Santa, we we’re boosted up into the what can we find that is left that is nice, which translated as pretty expensive by local standards. We ended up at a small beachfront hotel called the VistaMar in Pochomil. The beach was fairly nice, with good waves and pretty good sand. The place had a great pool with a restaurant overlooking it, and our room was a few steps away—it fit Norma’s beachfront trifecta (room, pool, restaurant, beach all within 50 meters), so everyone was happy! We spent 3 nights at the beach, rotating from lounging by the pool, to taking a dip, to walking on the sand, to getting a cold drink, and then starting over again. Kinda nice after all…

We then spent a morning driving to our favorite Latin American city, Granada. On the way we passed through village after village filled with different handy-craft stores; one selling bamboo furniture, the next hammocks, the next filled with plant nurseries, etc. Along with many facinating sights, the drive along small highways can also be sort of disconcerting. Nicaragua, is of course, a developing country, but it also has some wonderful architecture and very livable cities, like Grandada. That said, along some of the rual roads, the degree of poverty can be startling, as housing ranges from adequate to barely qualifiable as shelter. It definitely makes you feel thankful for being as lucky as to be born in the US in the circumstances that we have been.

After driving for several hours, we stopped for lunch and some shopping in the colonial city of Masaya, which is renowned for its central crafts marketplace. The market is situated in an old restored fortress in the center of town, and there are several hundred. Niall was rewarded for his patience with his first pocket knife, as Norma shopped ‘til she dropped looking for stuff to take to friends in New York. Eventually we loaded up and settled into our old favorite hotel in Granada, the Patio del Malinche. The hotel is located about two blocks off the main square and is absolutely wonderful- beautiful Spanish colonial architecture, nice rooms, nice staff, a pool for Niall, and close to everything.

After 3 nights in Granada wandering around and feeling urban again, we headed back for Costa Rica, resigned to braving chaos at the border again. As we we’re traveling on Good Friday, my hope was that everyone would stay home with their family until at lest Sunday afternoon before flooding the road back to border. Someone was watching over us that day, as that is exactly what happened. There wasn’t a sole at either border crossing point, and we breezed through in 15 minutes combined for both customs checks. Go figure! We spent the night just outside Liberia at another of our favorite hotels, El Posada el Encuentro at the foot of Rincon de la Vieja volcano. After Norma frantically stuffed all the goodies into her three bags, we relaxed the rest of the afternoon looking over a canyon with the sun setting in the distance. As we were only 20 minutes from the airport, getting Norma there for her 8:00am flight the next day went smoothly, and Niall and I have been batching it here in Monteverde during the week since.

Highlights this week included the return of the wet season, with three days of scattered afternoon showers (yes, real, measurable vertical rain), the first here since early December. The other big news is the Ministry of Public works and Transportation is almost finished paving the main street in Monteverde. We have real asphalt surface for about 2 miles of road, and it is amazingly smooth. And on the home front, I made my first ever pizza in a toaster oven—from scratch mind you—made my own dough & everything! Niall pronounced it the best, so it couldn’t have been too bad. It’s amazing what you can cook in a toaster over when inspiration strikes.

That’s about it then for now from the cloud forest. Norma will be back next week, and I’ll be in the field staking walks & foundations for the park I designed last fall, so it will be pretty much back to normal by midweek. Hasta Luego!

Blogging again...

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Well here we are in the middle of March, and I must admit, I’ve been a terrible blogger this year. I suppose this is partly a good thing, as clearly both Norma and I are more than busy enough to keep us from blogging as much as we did back in August or September. Part of this is the weather, as we are in the middle of the dry season, and the weather is more like southern California than the Coast Rica I’ve typically experienced when teaching here in June or July (and one never leaves the house without a raincoat!). Since we’ve returned to CR in early January, it has rained twice, with little accumulation either time. It is still green here at the top of the mountain, as we do get a cloudy mist most nights and early mornings, but it is just enough to keep the trees and other plants from going brown. Lower down the mountain, and particularly to the north of here, it is desert brown. All the trees actually drop their leaves, not unlike the trees do in winter where we live in New York. It is almost surreal when driving through a landscape that is clearly heavily forested, dead brown, and the temperature is 95F!

Along with my typical work at the Institute, Norma and I are continuing to walk as much as we can, though that has slowed the last couple of weeks as Norma managed to break a toe (she stubbed it on one of our beds!). That’s almost healed now, but it has slowed us down for a while. Before that, we had our long visit with my folks, which was a lot of fun. They flew in from Riverside (CA), and spent a week here in Monteverde, and then we traveled for a week during Niall’s “winter” break week off school. Here in Monteverde, they did the usual things like visiting the orchid garden and the butterfly garden and such, as well as hiking with a guide in the Monteverde Reserve. There we had the good luck to see not only a sloth and howler monkeys, but a fantastic sighting of 6 quetzals, with the 3 males performing their courtship display (they fly around in circles and up a down chortling like a chicken!) We had a great trip, visiting Arenal Volcano (where we had fairly clear viewing on two nights of lava flowing down the mountain), then we spent three nights in a small inn at Rincon de La Vieja National Park, where we hiked to see fumeroles and mudpots very similar to Yellowstone in the US. We also took a wonderful horseback ride to a waterfall that left all of us hot, exhausted, sore, and very satisfied ;-) The waterfall was one of those pictured in all the tourist brochures, dropping about 40meters from the top of a cliff into a deeply shaded canyon with a beautiful deep jade green pool of water beneath. We all went swimming in the cool water, and jumped from a ledge on the cliff about 5 meters above the water, and had a great time cooling off. Even so, it was a pretty strenuous day, as most of us hadn’t been on a horse for at least 30 years, and it was 50 years for my mom & dad. For a while I thought both my parents were going walk a little funny for the rest of their lives, but eventually they recovered enough to enjoy our last couple of days at the beach in Playa Hermosa. There we did lots of poolside resting & reading, as well as some snorkeling along the reefs near our hotel, and plenty of walking on the beach and playing in the waves.

The most exciting part of the trip was on one of our hikes in Rincon de La Vieja park. We were all spread along a narrow trial running though thick but fairly dry forest, and Norma was last in our group about 20 meters behind the rest of us. We all heard her scream, and then come running up to us, where we found she had been “attacked” by a crazy ground squirrel. It had come running up to her and jumped onto her leg and held on as she frantically shook it off. It then scampered back into the woods like nothing had happened… Luckily, she had not been bitten but we were still concerned about the potential of Rabies, and we spent a significant amount of time (including a visit to a doctor in Liberia) over the next several days ruling that possibility out. Never a dull moment from the fearless wandering Shannon family ;-)

Since the big trip, we have been very busy with various projects. I’m working on several design projects that are nearing construction, so I’ve been doing a lot of field measuring, and drawing little details, and figuring out how to build things that would mean one short trip to Home Depot or a lumber yard in the US to buy a $2.00 metal bracket, but here means going to three small hardware stores, then trying to explain with poor Spanish and lots of little cartoons what I’m trying to find (and which never exists here), and then ending up at a local welding shop getting something custom made. Even so, it still costs only $2.00 (except for the 4 hours of running around on my part!).

Our other big event recently was helping out with the annual fundraiser at Niall’s School. In the past, they have held a sort of “walk-a-thon,” but this year it was decided to try running a 10K running race instead. Both Norma and I have been involved from the initial organizing this year, so we helped with all sorts of things, from designing the t-shirts and entry forms, to helping figure out logistics and race routes, to brainstorming peripheral fundraising venues for the race day. Last Saturday we ran the race—the Carrera Creative (named for the Centro de Educacion Creativa) and all went very well. One of the teachers at the School, Kevin Spradlin did a great job with the actual race logistics, and the event made a fair bit of money for here in Costa Rica (over US$2000). We spent much of the day with our blender making frappucinos, and contributed over $75 just from that! I also drove volunteers all over the course, distributing water and other goodies, as well as acting as the sag wagon for slow folks. Even though 10K isn’t very far (just 6.25 miles), the course was VERY challenging (it crossed the continental divide twice!) and had well over 1500’ of elevation change on rough and rocky dirt roads. It was really more akin to a cross-country race than a road race;-) In the end, it was a lot of fun, and a great fundraiser for a good cause.

If you'd like to see more photos and a first person account by someone who ran the race check out this link: http://sanjose.cafeabroad.com/Content/View/News/381.html

Our next big trip comes up in a couple of weeks when Niall next gets his week off of school for “Semana Santa” (Easter Week). We’re planning to head back to Nicaragua for our final “visacation” to renew our tourist visas for the last 90 days here in Costa Rica. With luck, I’ll find the time to tell you about that soon! Hasta luego ;-)

Blue Skies & Sunshine

Sunday, 11 February

Hello all! I guess it’s time to finally start updating the blog again, now that we’re firmly re-entrenched in our Monteverde routine. Now that it is mid-February, the routine has changed a bit, as it is now well into the dry season. Dry season, or summer (el verano) as the locals identify it, is pretty sharply contrasted with the rainy season, even the very mild one we got this past 6 months. Since we’ve been back in Costa Rica (a month now), it has yet to rain with anything intensity more than a bit of mist, as a cloud drifts through over the mountain tops. The past week or so, we’ve hardly even gotten the typical cloud forest mist! Every day seems unbelievably bright and clear, with deep blue cloudless skies and temps in the high 70’s & low 80’s F.

If there is any real drawback to all this “perfect” weather, it is the ever increasing dustiness of the roads. Each car or truck or motorcycle further loosens the hard-packed mix of silt, clay, and stone and sends up a thick cloud of dust, which can make walking the roads a challenge on some days. Since we’ve gotten back, we’ve made it a morning ritual to walk for at least two hours right after we’ve dropped off Niall at school. Most days we can cover at least 10km, and on occasion we’ve managed close to 20km in a long morning. When we started walking last fall, we often slogged along in mud and drizzle fully outfitted in rain gear—now it’s just shorts & t-shirts!

This past weekend we also had the chance to take advantage of the local volcanic origins of our home. Almost the entirety of Costa Rica has underlying volcanic geology, and aside from the occasional fairly minor earthquake, one of the most obvious signs of this is the large number of hot springs around the country. Most are just small seeps or springs that no one really pays much attention to, aside from the large number of place names like Agua Caliente. But a fair number have been built up into little rustic resorts, principally frequented by locals. We visited some of the closer ones, about an hour down slope toward the Pacific, in Las Juntas. We drove down with two other gringo families from the Institute, so we had a gaggle of 7-10 year olds who all had a ball.

The resort consisted of a very nice lodge, along with a traditional swimming pool at air temperature (about +/-85F), a small, very hot (+/-105F) pool with Jacuzzi type jets in it, and another small pool with moderately warm (95F) water downstream from the hot pool. We all alternated between different pools and different temperatures, and migrated between sun and shade as we all relaxed with a cold beer or margarita. It was VERY relaxing… The only blemish on the day was that after reaching relaxation nirvana, we all had to pile into cars and jounce our way up the mountain on one of the rockiest stretches of highway in Costa Rica. Even so, a great time was had by all!

This weekend we took a long walk in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. This is the main attraction for real ecologically minded visitors to Monteverde, and we actually haven’t visited all that often as it is both at the other side of town, and right on the highest part of the mountain, so often up in the clouds and mist. This time of year, however, it’s even warm, dry and clear up in the Reserve. We hiked all the way up to the continental divide, where you have a fantastic view out to the Pacific, and well out over the plain toward the Atlantic. Unfortunately, it is just a bit too far to see any ocean on the Atlantic side. While walking on a huge (100+meters long) suspension bridge built over a ravine, we were able to watch a small troop of howler monkeys eating fruit in the treetops only a dozen or so meters from our reach. One of the monkeys (see pics) had a really interesting white foot—sort of a birth-mark I guess… Really amazing!

Well, that’s all for now, and I’ll try to keep up with something closer to weekly entries a bit more often from this point on. Next week, Mom & Pop Shannon arrive, so we should have lots of interesting stories to tell about their visit!

Hasta luego-