Saturday, September 29, 2012

Corcovado National Park


Rivaling the trip I took to Chirripó was a trip I took to Corcovado National Park in July. It was amazing-and reminded me yet again why so many people visit Costa Rica. I took advantage of the two week mid school year break to visit the park, as well as visit my friend Barton R., his host family, and his site. I stayed at his house a few days before we went to the park, and stayed two days afterward as well. It was super interesting visiting his host family-his host parents raise chickens-so the whole house smells of chicken poop-and right next to the sink where one brushes his teeth-they might be de-feathering and cleaning dead chickens. Because it was vacation-there was all sorts of family in and out of the house-add in five Peace Corps volunteers and it was pretty crazy.

I was lucky to visit the park with five amazing guys-Barton and Kyle from my TEFL group, and Elliot, Andrew, and Jonathan from the Community Economic Development group that formed the other half of Tico 21-my Peace Corps training group. Our trip to the park was three long days of action. We were up at 4:30 am the first day for an hour and a half ride into the park in Barton's host uncle's beat up pick up truck. Out of the truck, backpacks on, and we hit the beach. Corcovado National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet-and maybe the most biodiverse in the Americas. In order to protect this-much of the trail to and from the ranger stations and the campsite are along the beach. We hiked all day-I want to say something like 21 K, arrived at the ranger station, got our tents set up, changed out of our shoes-and headed to the beach in hopes of spotting a bull shark or otters. Barton and Kyle saw the bull shark, I was too slow to follow their lead and spot it. We spent the second day making two different hikes in the trails surrounding the ranger station-as well as napping and relaxing. One of these hikes was at the break of dawn-as that's the best time to see animals. The third day we were up well before light again-made a quick breakfast-and were off to hike the 21 K back to the park entrance-where Barton's host uncle picked up back up.

Our packs weren't crazy heavy during the trip-and much lighter on the way out. At the ranger station there are rooms-but they were full-and we opted for the floor anyways. There is a large covered area where you can pitch tents-the park provides foam mattresses. We just brought mosquito nets and rope-which is pretty much a tent-just that everyone can see in! Along with that-we brought in all our food for the trip and packed out all our trash. Barton had a camp stove, so we could cook our breakfasts and dinners. We had oatmeal for breakfast, PB&Js for lunch, oranges, apples, granola bars, and trail mix for snacks, and spaghetti for dinner.

The main point of visiting Corcovado National Park is to see wildlife. We had great success. It has primary and secondary lowland tropical rainforest, which is pretty awesome to walk through and check out on its own-but the plethora of animals makes it a real treat. It's hard to take pictures of monkeys-as they move a lot between leaves and branches. Actually, this is true for most animals-so, I elected to take videos of some of the animals we saw. There are five of them, but most are short, and some even feature informative narration! Along with these animals, we also saw an anteater, squirrel monkeys, white faced capuchins, howler monkeys, a sea turtle (above), tinamou, great curassow, scarlet macaw, and all sorts of birds, lizards, and insects (lots of spider webs).
A video showing some of the ants we saw on the trip. Did you know the mass of all the ants on earth combined is about equal to the mass of all the humans?

It was crazy how close we could get to the coatis before they would scurry away. 

Monkeys are awesome. Many times the rest of the group had to get me going, because I could just stand and watch and take videos of them all afternoon. 
Corcovado National Park is full of hermit crabs. I couldn't not take a video. 
This is kind of the grand-daddy of the animals to see in the park (besides jaguars that no one sees), as there are only four species of tapir in the world, and the Baird's is the only one in Central America-and Corcovado National Park is by far the best place in Costa Rica to spot one. We saw a guide stopped ahead on the trail-he held his hand up to quiet us-and then we saw this tapir-super close-just going about its business eating vegetation. 


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Costa Rica's Best Holiday

Since I last posted I've returned from Nicaragua and gone to the official close of service conference-which is a conference that Peace Corps volunteers go to three months before we officially end our service. But-as some people leave early-it's the last time my training group was all together in one room. In the middle of coming back from Nicaragua and going to the conference, was Costa Rican Independence day. I posted briefly about it last year, but this year was able to participate in activities at the elementary school and take my camera down to the parade. I went to the parade in downtown Limón-the port city 20 minutes away from my town. Sadly, my elementary school nor high school had marching bands-so they weren't in the parade.
(the raising of the lanterns)
(raising my lantern)
First, a brief note on the history. Due to both Spain being embroiled in a war with Napoleon (the Peninsular War) and growing tension between Mexican born and Spanish born citizens, Mexico fought a war of independence against Spain from 1810 to 1821. Taking advantage of a Spanish state troubled by the Peninsular War and much weakened in the Americas by the Mexican war, the Central American provinces-all ruled from Guatemala, drew up independence papers and declared themselves independent on September 15, 1821. So, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica all celebrate their independence day that day. One of the independence day activities is a torch run, which represents the original riders riding by torchlight to bring news of independence from Guatemala to the other countries.
(1st-3rd graders perform a traditional dance)
My host parents went to Heredia (a big city in the Central Valley) to spend the holiday with their kids and other relatives that live there, but there were some complications with an in-law, so there wasn't really space for me to go. But my host mom left me something important: a very well done lantern that my host brother had made the year before. This was important because last year, I was busy taking my pre-all night party nap and didn't get to to go to the lantern activity. 'Faroles' as they call them here are an important part of the independence day celebrations-especially in the elementary schools. Somewhat  like Paul Revere's ride, a women in Antigua Guatemala ran around, using her lantern, telling her neighbors of the great news of independence. So, elementary school kids make and decorate lanterns, then after an assembly and then singing the national anthem at six p.m., light their lanterns and raise them to celebrate independence. Because my host mom dusted off and showed me the lantern, I got to participate with the kids! I was also pretty excited that the national anthem was played with a slideshow-featuring pictures of Costa Rica-but having the lyrics at the bottom. Sadly, I haven't memorized the lyrics yet-but the slide show saved me!

As I said above, the next day-independence day itself-I went down to Limón Centro to catch the parade. I had been told it would start at ten, so went to catch a bus around 9:30. After seeing three buses pass by completely full (apparently everyone was going to the parade) , I got into a bus that was operating as a bus taxi with about 15 other people. I was worried I would have missed most of the parade when I arrived. Yet, true to Costa Rican form, despite arriving at 10:30, I was able to Limón's corpulent mayor lead off the parade. The parade was great-the bands here only play percussion instruments-which gives the parade a pretty amped up feeling. It was super hot-but I'll take that over rain. Lots of the kids had their hair pretty done up-both guys and girls. My favorite high schools were the ones where all the teachers helping with the parade (read: giving kids water) had coordinated outfits with the school's color. I grabbed two patty (spicy meat pastries) and a coke from my favorite patty place, as well as a Gatorade later-but after two hours baking in the sun and feeling the parade was about done-I grabbed the bus home. I've seen every holiday in Costa Rica, and independence day is by far the one they do best. More pictures at this link.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Quick update

I'm currently on vacation in Nicaragua with three friends from my training group. Soon after we return to Costa Rica we'll all attend the Close of Service Conference. Although I don't finish service officially until December 17, we meet three months in advance to start all the end of service paperwork. This is a government agency funded by you, the taxpayer, so there's plenty of it. As of the last email, it looks 38 of the original 46 volunteers that flew to Costa Rica on October 4, 2010 will be attending the conference. It will be great to see the whole group together, for the first time since our mid-service training in January.

Fun and interesting things have been happening (every once in a while-at least), and there will be plenty more posts to put up after my trip in Nicaragua, and I promise to get to that eventually, but for the meantime, my tumblr picture blog will update every day (moving its way through my service chronologically), so click on over there and check out those pictures.

http://kferr027.tumblr.com/