Costa Rica I

Costa Rica trip was one of the best trips I had ever been to. I have my many first time experiences in this trip and I learned a lot. Here are some of the details and pictures of the trip. It is gonna be a long post.

This is the first time I ever got so "Tanned"

This picture was taken during the 7th day of the trip, so, you can imagine how tan I became at the end of the 13 days trip. I got sun burned and my skin peeled like snake skin. It hurts so badly. No more sun! One of my friends told me that my hair turn browner, hmm..the sun.

San Jose, Hotel Rincon de San Jose
We arrived in Costa Rica very late at around 8.45pm. So, we spent a night in the Capital city of Costa Rica, San Jose. The hotel is really really nice.

There is Nat, me and CL having our breakfast. It was funny that CL and I thought that we were staying for another night. After having our breakfast, we were shocked to see other students carrying their suitcase out to the bus. We turned to Nat and she said that, "Yea, we are leaving now." As blur as usual, CL and I have to rush back to our room, throw everything we could into our suitcase and rush out. Silly us. We learned to check the schedule everyday.

La Selva biological reserved station (2 nights)
We went for frogs and snakes searching on the first night. It was..scary but fun. Here's the frog mating picture.

I think these are tree frogs. Anyway, the bottom one is female and the top and smaller one is male. I was told that female is bigger because they need to carry the eggs around.

Breakfast time, at 7am. Sleepy.

That's CL, Nat, me, Katie and Christy, the older students. I know, my mouth was filled with food again. (That's what Cheryll and other students kept reminding me, cause they said I can't stop eating) -.-

The second day, we split into half and went for a hike with tourguides.
This is a picture of the tourguide and half of the students from the trip.

The tourguide is the one in light blue shirt squating in front of the picture.

This is the first time I ever got so close to a bat or actually saw a bat in the broad daylight and took a picture of them.

The quality of this picture wasn't good, I know. This white tent bats lived under a banana tree leaf. I have to actually carefully bent backward and took the picture. I tried not to zoom too much cause you know, if you zoom too much, the picture got blur very easily if you shake. The tourguide was worried cause I was getting really close to the bats and he worried that I might woke up the bats and they will attack me. I was safe afterall. By the way, the bats were found in the primary rain forest in La Selva biological station.

We also saw spider mating in La Selva and the tour guide said that this is the first time he saw it even though he had been living near this forest for 6 years. Aren't we lucky?

See the two spiders? The big one is female and the small tiny little red one is male. The tour guide also asked us why the spider face their butt toward the sun? After several guesses, I finally gave him the answer, "Spider function by using solar power and their butt need to face the sun to absord enough solar energy." Imagine his face after he heard that answer. ^-*

Besides these, the tour guide also told us about bullet ant (sorry, I don't have a picture, they move too fast and I am a bad photographer). He said that they were named bullet ant because if you got bitten by them, it feels like being shot by a bullet. Now, here comes Natalia's question, "Is labor pain more painful or the bite of the bullet ants?" (Remember, the guide is a man).

Beside spider mating, we also saw spider making a cross on the web. Weird huh? This is one of my first time too.

The tourguide said that when spider made a cross, means that they are desperate for sex? Or hungry? Sorry, bad memory.

Oh! Poison arrow frog!

Aren't they pretty? Blue and red, so sharp! They are very tiny though. They are about the size of a quarter? Or slightly bigger than that. The tourguide said that one poison arrow frog wont kill us. It is not that toxic yet.

We have an up-close and personal look at that lazy little sloth. I wasn't able to take a good picture but here is the picture took by Christy.

Jim said that this creature is very lazy. They can stay on one place for a long long time without moving and stuff can grow on them (don't remember what). Sometimes they look green because stuff grow on their skin.

We went to the market after we visited the banana plantation. We bought some mango and pastry.

Nat and I were checking out the mangoes.

The morning we were leaving. Going for breakfast first. Their breakfast start from 6.30am to 7.30am. We have to wake up for FOOD!

We stayed in Turtle Cabin (Cabina Tortuga). 5 students per room.

My roommates for La Selva. From left, Nat, Christy, Trish, Katie and me. (Yeah, food in the mouth again.)

On our way to Turrialba, we stopped at a tiny little coffee "hut". It was fun though, especially after sitting in the bumpy bus for such a long time. Most Costa Rica road are mountain road. It is gonna be tough on you if you are those who get car sick very easily.

That's me, CL and Nat, again.

Turrialba (2 nights)

First time in my life, swear to god, I have to flip through the dictionary for every single word in order to understand a single sentence. We were arranged to live with this Costa Rican family and I know ZERO Spanish, and they know ZERO English! Luckily I went with Katie, who speaks a little Spanish and that helps a little. I learned that sign language is useless! Different people have different sign language for eat, sleep and shower and they will misinterpret your sign language for other stuff. I still remember that we came home the second day and we have to have our dinner in their house. My hostmom came up to me and was asking me whether we are having our dinner in her house or we already ate. I don't really understand her and Katie was in the restroom, so, I tried to tell her by trying to use her sign language. Then, I walked into the room and told Katie "We might, or might not have dinner tonight because I don't know whether she understands me or not." Luckily, there were no misunderstanding and we were well fed.

My hostmom, Bresilia, her son, Alonso, Katie and Me outside her house.

His son is very funny. He taught me how to say fat (gordo) and skinny (flaka) and we end up calling each other Gordo and Flaka. It was quite funny though. When I left, instead of saying my name, he said "Adios, Flaka" and I ended up saying to him "Adios, Gordo". I had a great time there.
My hostmom also brought me to the school near her house. The school is quite big with swimming pool, football field, and many classrooms. One of the classrooms that I thought is the most interesting one is this one:
I don't know what class he was teaching but, it is really interesting with all the plants and it was outdoor. Kinda cool.
The colorful campus. PINK!!

Another cool thing is that most of the Costa Rican's house are very colorful. You can see red, green, yellow, blue, pink, orange and many other color houses everywhere. It makes you feel warm and happy. Its a colourful world!

In Turrialba, we went to visit CATIE (Tropical Agriculture Research and Higher Education Center). They grow many different kind of plants and some of them are endangered plants. We saw this flower and the tourguide said that this is the romantic flower.
When wind blows or when the weather turns cold, the male part of the flower will close and sort of cuddle and protect the female part of the flower. This flower is found on the Cannon tree. It was sort of hanging in the middle of the whole tree trunk. The tree is very tall. So, I can only take the picture from below.

I also saw and tasted Cola fruit. It taste like buah Ciku. Here's the picture.

What a big buah Ciku!

I also tasted coffee as well. You cannot bite the beans but you can eat the slimy stuff around the beans though.
The red one is the ripen one. We got the beans out from the red one.
Each coffee fruit have 2 beans like this. The slimy and watery part taste kind of sweet.

We also tasted Cocoa, not Coca. Cocoa fruit is good! Never knew that cocoa fruit is edible and is so good (Don't tell anyone I am Malaysian, shame on me).
Two crazy ladies posted for Cocoa eating picture. The one in my hand is cocoa fruit and the one in our mouth is the cocoa that we usually eat (I think!)

They also let us sample many other different fruit that they grow in CATIE. Unfortunately, they already finished all the durian and mangosteen, the best fruit of all.
Oh! The picture of the tourguides.

One of them is beside me and the other one is the young guy standing in the front with gray pants. The one beside me, we saw him again when we went for our lunch in the Cafeteria in Universidad of Costa Rica, he took off his shirt and changed into a singlet. Hmm..man, you can't judge a person by his look. He is a tattoosss guy. Unfortunately, I didn't dare to walk up to him to take another picture with him.

After lunch, we went to visit an archeological site, Guayabo. It was, quite boring to me. I really don't have any interest in history. I just wanted to get over it. They talked about how this city rise, and how people here built the road like, 3 thousand years ago? Or more. Anyway, the people back then was quite short, according to the length of their graveyard. Jim callled them "little" people. I was bored, alrite?
I was sat by an elephant. Pity me. :(
Bored me sitting on the ground waiting for others.

After saying goodbyes to our host family, we all went off to Savegre. We stopped in Cartago to see the biggest Church (Cathedral?) in Costa Rica.
Here is the inside of the Church. It is very elegant.
Believers kneel down and walk with their knees from the door to their god.

Behind the church, they have this holy water. They said that if you wash your hands and legs with the holy water, it will cure all your problems. Amazing huh?

I am not a believer of this kind of stuff though. I did give it a try by only washing my hands. Some believer even drink the water. To me, it is too scary. You don't know what is in that water. Someone might pee in it before. I am very rational when come to the safety of the stuff that I am gonna put into my mouth. So, sorry, no holy water for my stomach.

After that, we went to a market. It was very crowded but fun. I kinda miss the market back home.
That's Nat in the market. She was the big sister who helped us to negotiate price and protect us all the time. She speaks great Spanish, well, she is an Argentinian afterall.
Huge and loooong SAUSAGES!!
Lottery is everywhere, my friend. Just like Malaysia. ^-*
I also saw people selling flowers and newspaper when we were stopping for the red light. I felt like I was in Thailand at that time. Hahaha..

Savegre Mountain Lodge (2 nights)

Now, we came to a cooler place. Luckily we were all informed and most of us brought a fleece jacket.
I was very excited and was freezing. Finally we were back to some sort of Iowa weather now. Phew~

The afternoon we reached Savegre, we went for our first hike. It was fun because it was raining, and the road was so muddy and slippery. The hike was very interesting. Very steep and narrow. It was, really fun.
Half way there..
Kathryn, Nicole, Katie and Jim. They were trying to pretend that they are strong. Blah..

Booo...
From us. Cheryll was trying to pretend that she doesn't know us. Cheryll, it is not working. ^-*
From this hike, we learned that when Cindy, Jim's wife, is not coming with him for certain hike, we should not follow him as well.
You can see how crazy this hike was. It was fun though. The first time we heard Cheryll said "Freaking". Hahaha..So much for the professor who complained about our foul mouth. 

The second day, we went for bird watching and of course, more hiking. I learned that bird watching can be fun. We saw a bird, Quetzal, which Jim said that some people waited for their lifetime to see this bird. ^-^

Isn't he pretty? I saw him fly and it was perttier than this but I missed the chance to take pictures. Jim said that it is the mating season, thus, they have those two long feathers on their tail to attract female. (Yeah, every single creature is desperate for mating when we were there). We are really lucky because the tour guide said that sometimes other tourists waited for several days and still can't spot any quetzal.

This is also the first time I saw a wood pecker besides the one in Disney cartoon, or Warner Bros.? Anyway, here's the picture.

They are small, aren't they? The cartoon is really misleading. Maybe there are big one that I just didn't know. Nevermind.

We also saw some Trogon, quite a pretty little bird.

This one should be the Elegant Trogon. There are many other different type of Trogon.

Bird watching, with a good leica telescope. Most of these bird pictures were taken through the telescope. That's why you see the round circle around the picture.
I also learn that some lizard can change sex.

The tourguide said that during mating season, if there are too much female around, this lizard can change its sex to male. Wonder how it would be if human can do that too..

I saw the first red mushroom in my life.
Sorry for the blur picture. I am not a good photographer afterall.

We went hiking after the bird watching. It was quite a fun and tough hike. I realized that I like hiking. Hehehe..Surprised?

This is not the toughest one. There was one spot where we have to climb down a whole huge rock to see this waterfall, it was quite challenging but I like it. Many people jumped into the waterfall, but of course, not me.
This is not one of the greatest waterfall, there is another better one coming right up.

I almost fell into this waterfall. I didn't take much picture because the water was so strong and the water drop kept splashing on my camera. The view is magnificent. We sat there for a while before we head back. I wish I could just live there. This waterfall also reminds me of the Chinese Kungfu novel where the main character sat under the waterfall to train his inner strength.

The roses outside the Savegre hotel.
Hummingbirds.
They just can't stop eating.
Cute little bird, aren't they?
Breakfast in Savegre. We were so spoiled.
Leaving Savegre... No more cold weather..back to the heat.

Ok. That's half of the trip. Will update the other half when I have time. It took me 3 days to update this half, so, it might take me another 3 days or so to update the other half. Please also take into account my laziness. ^o^