The Rain Forest
July 19, 2008
Hello, everyone! Another wonderful excursion yesterday! I went on an aerial tram in the rainforest next to the Braulio Carrillo National Park. I am not really “nature girl” by any stretch of the imagination, but I was awed by everything I saw.
When we arrived, they weeded out those of us who spoke English and had us watch a short movie. Shauna (school buddy) and I kinda wanted to go with the Spanish group because we mostly understand what we hear (mas o menos) but we figured that there may be things that aren’t safe for us if we don’t follow directions and I would hate to get attacked by a poison dart frog because I didn’t comprehend a warning. I’m kinda glad we did take the wimpy way out and go with the English movie and English-speaking guide. I can often multi-task, but translating requires my full attention. I would have missed most of the pictures I took because I would have been concentrating too hard on what was being said during the tour.
Oh! Before we saw the movie, the tour guide pointed out a sloth waaaaaay up in the trees. He was, of course, not moving, so it was difficult to see him at first. My camera has a 12x zoom on it, but it still couldn’t completely catch the critter. The Costa Ricans call the sloth perezoso, which means lazy. Technically, in Spanish, it’s a perica, but I guess perezoso is kind of the unofficial name.
After the movie, we went on the aerial tram, which is kinda like a larger version of one of those amusement park thingys that take you from one side of the park to the other. It was on a cable and one side took you through the understory and forest floor levels of the rain forest and the return trip took you up into the canopy (and in one point above the canopy).
At one point we were 150 feet up in the air…or was it 150 meters up in the air? I dunno…I’m getting used to hearing “meters” with everything so I don’t really remember which one was actually said. Let’s just say that it was REALLY high and if the cable broke, I woulda been toast. Crumbled, smashed toast.
Anyway, we learned all sorts of interesting things about the trees and the things that grow on the trees (forgot what they are called) and the stuff hanging from the trees (forgot that, too) and the few flowers that are there, like bromeliads and “hot lips” flowers (Ha! Remembered something!). I gotta warn ya - if you don’t like pictures of trees, you are gonna be fairly bored with my pictures. It was, after all, the rain forest, so there was pretty much nothing to photograph except trees. Except a few things during the walking tour.
These trees are called broccoli trees (I wonder why!) and there are many in the emergent layer of the rainforest.
Oh! Forgot to mention that about a third of the way through the hour-long tram ride, it started to rain. Hard. And thunder. Which means lightening. While we were up in the sky in a metal gondola on a metal cable strung between tall, metal poles among tall trees. Joy! I calmed myself by remembering that in this area of the country, they have two seasons - rainy and rainier. So they must have grounded the gondolas and the other equipment or taken some sort of precautionary measures since it nearly always rains. Yeah. That’s it. That’s the ticket!
So I’m in the front of the gondola, which was a good seat for taking pictures, but a bad seat if you don’t like heights (I don’t) or getting wet. I was kinda resigned to getting wet that day, it being the rainforest and all. However, I wasn’t quite prepared for the lapful of icy water that splooshed into my lap when we got to the turnabout thingy and the gondola tipped forward a bit to swing out into the open air again. That was fun. I was wearing jeans, too, and you know how quickly they dry out. But it didn’t stay cold for too long and I was too excited (scared!) about being up really high to be that concerned. The return trip was the one where we went above the canopy, so I had a smidge of anxiety. Just a smidge, though. Really. The idiot man behind me started talking about rocking the gondola. I was trying to calculate the best way to smash him in the head to render him unconscious without breaking my camera. Fortunately his wife told him in so many words that if he valued his life, he wouldn’t do anything stupid.
The rain was coming down hard...I forgot to wipe the camera lens off!!
Thank goodness for waterproof cameras. My regular camera was hanging from my neck behind me where it was pretty dry and I used the waterproof camera to take pictures after the rain started to pour. It was really coming down for a while. I was getting totally soaked up front. It was kinda fun, actually. My 13-year old boots that I sprayed with waterproof stuff before I came here held up wonderfully. My socks were totally dry when I got back to the house. Kudos to the water repellant spray people!! And kudos to the Deep Woods Off people. They redeemed themselves from the two mosquito bites I got last week. I didn’t get any yesterday and the forest was teeming with little flying things waiting to bite me.
So after the aerial tram tour, we went on a short hike through the rainforest. Of course, there was a path, because walking through the untamed rainforest floor would have been extraordinarily difficult AND dangerous because of the venomous snakes and spiders. Oh! Speaking of spiders, there was a big, nasty black one on the bench outside of the gift store. Turns out this wonderful darling is poisonous. Let’s hear it for nature!! That pretty much kept me from sitting on anything but the gondola the whole time I was there. We also saw this monster sized cicada sitting on the tour guide's
clipboard. It was pretty in a monster-sized bug kind of way. I have no idea if the Maryland cicadas look that colorful, because I try not to get that close to them. But I don’t think they do. AND we saw a ginormous ant called a bullet ant walking on a railing. They grow to about 2.5 centimeters. The idiot who was sitting behind me on the gondola actually reached out to touch the thing and the ant raised up on its hind legs and I think touched his finger with its front legs. The guide told him, “Don’t touch that!” and he pulled his finger away. Turns out the bullet ant has one of the most painful stings in the animal kingdom. You feel excruciating pain for at least 24-hours after the bite. And that’s only if you don’t have an allergic reaction. I’m glad he didn’t get bitten, but I think it’s pretty stupid to go poking at animals in the rainforest when you don’t know exactly what they can do.
Anyhoo…the walking tour. To be honest, it was kinda unexciting compared to the tram. And it didn’t get really good until the end. But we saw a couple of interesting things. There was a clearing in the middle of all of that foliage.
Turns out it had been cleared out by some ants (I don’t know if they are the same bullet ants or not. I forgot what the guide said.). Apparently, the ants destroy the root systems of the trees when they make their nest and the trees and bushes above the nest die. Nature is a tough mistress!! We also saw some more hot lips flowers. The red parts of the plant are actually leaves that attract the birds to pollinate it. The flower part is in the middle and is normally white. However, the ones we saw had no flowers on them.
There was also a plant called “Sangre de Cristo” or Blood of Christ. It is said that this plant was growing at the base of the cross and that two drops of Christ’s blood fell and stained the leaves. The guide told us that in reality, the red on the leaves was there to attract the birds, just like the red leaves on the hot lips plant. Nice way to trample all over a religious legend! The plant was interesting, though.
At the end of the tour, I saw what I had been looking for. The path we had been walking on was called “Sendero Bocaracá” which means “path of the mean, nasty, venomous snake”. More or less. Anyway, we saw one of these critters as we were finishing the tour. It was curled up on a leaf not paying us a bit of attention. Some enterprising employee had draped yellow and black caution tape around the bush where the snake was sleeping/resting/plotting our deaths. I’m not gonna point out the inefficiency of putting three inch plastic ribbon around a bush where a very venomous snake is laying. I know the purpose is to warn the goofy humans away from the bush. But still… Anyway, in English, the snake is called an eyelash pit viper, so named because of the scales above its eyes that kinda look like long eyelashes. I thought the snake was kinda pretty and I was very fascinated by it. I used the 12x zoom lens to get a picture, though. I was fascinated, not suicidal.
As we were hopping back on the tour van, we noticed that the same sloth at the entrance was actually moving! He seemed to stretch or something. Must be hard to stay in the same position for hours and hours every day. Even cats move more than sloths do. Hmmm…spell checker doesn’t like the word “sloths”. Is this another one of those words that has a weird plural version? I dunno. Don’t really care, actually. You guys know what I mean.
The tour van dropped some of us off at the hanging bridge while they continued around on the path to pick us up on the other side. The hanging bridge went over the river and wasn’t really high up. In fact, when another guy on the tour (he was a Tico) and his 9-year old son started rocking the bridge, I didn’t get all that worried. The river was really low at this point - more of a stream, really - and the bridge was only a few feet above it. If we all fell off, it wouldn’t be likely to kill us.
The van met us on the other side and we hopped on and headed back to town. Shauna and I were dumped off in central San Jose where we were able to hop on a bus as soon as we reached the bus stop. Yay! I was fairly tired be this point, so I’m glad we didn’t have to wait. I had to bid adieu (I guess it should be adios) to Shauna, who was returning to the City of Angels today. I’ll miss ya, Shauna!! Thanks for being a good friend for the last two weeks!! (sniff…)
Anyway, that’s it for my rainforest adventure. I am really appreciating all of the beautiful things in this world that God created. Sad that we are messing it up so much. Next week I’m visiting another volcano and some waterfalls and taking a boat ride down the Sarapiquí River. I might get to see some crocs and monkeys. What fun!! And Mom, don’t worry. I haven’t heard of any crocodiles attacking a boat. Perfectly safe!!
Love and smooches to all!!
¡Adiós!
P.S. - Almost forgot - here is the link to the rest of the pictures. Lots and lots of trees...don't say I didn't warn ya!
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=13stamf2.6ly24gru&x=0&h=1&y=j6alcj&localeid=en_US