Forest Challenge and mud blood and beer

The next morning it was a beautiful fresh morning and we ate a very huge breakfast of rice and beans with eggs and fried plantains, far more than I mornally ate, perhaps the staff new something we didn’t about the walk we were going to be undertaking. Once again as we climbed the mountain sweating and gasping for breath I was only wearing shorts and a shirt with my walking boots, the mud was deep from the overnight rain and we were watching the monkeys watching us and it was a perfect morning to be doing this walk, I personally wasn’t expecting anything to arduous as the caving was hard work and I needed a rest, we were aiming for some waterfalls that are mineral rich and make these strange formations like small basins that overflow and I had seen something like this before in Turkey many years ago, at Pamukkala, next to the ancient Greek city of Heriopolis. The basins were huge and were more like baths and the water was hot from the springs, it was better than taking a bath and quite unforgettable. So I was interested to see if these falls were like the Turkish ones. The walk was hard and very slippery and I was happy for having some good boots as girl had come with some silly make believe boots that were actually shoes and the sole fell off and she was basically hopping along with the sole tied on with a piece of string, I was laughing my ass off, but we got to the river after about 2 hours of walking and I was feeling worn out and not ready for going on, we crossed the river and found the falls about 400 meters further on,

they were nice but I wasn’t too excited about it and the group had already headed off to gawd knows where and the rain was starting to come down again. We carried on walking but when we got to a part of the path that was actually the river bed I said I have had enough so Jenny and myself went back,


I don’t normally give up but the walk had exhausted me, the hills and rain had just gotten me down.


We stopped about half way back to sit and eat our packed lunch of egg fried rice and drink a little , we actually saw some mosquitoes that were iridescent blue, now how can that be, pretty mosquitoes, they are just trying to stop us from killing them, we caught a few and yes the body was really iridescent. This country is crazy, we carried on and the sun finally came out again and the walk was starting to feel nice as we were heading downhill slowly and watching more monkeys and birds and beautiful butterflies, the forest was alive with butterflies including many of the extra special Morpho,


They are big, about 5 inches across and fly pretty quickly and because they are iridescent to, shine like comets flying through the trees. Having monkeys around the forest makes this type of holiday so special for me, so out of the ordinary and remarkable even, its just a pity that so many people here in Costa Rica are struggling to live they have no appreciation of its beauty. We arrived back at the cabins and got showered and waited for the rest of the group, that night we had a good few beers at the bar and laughed our asses off at the horrible muddy paths and the horrible frightening caving and miserable weather. The bar owner then showed around his new cabins he had just built, all out of local wood, which was probably felled illegally and a pool with a sunken bar, this region is so far out of the tourist areas that he has no chance of making any money from it but he was a nice guy, and this was over the wooden bridge he had built and all this after we were stinking drunk, he will never know why we were laughing. Another night of being bitten to death and I even had another great sleep, this is what roughing it is all about, we had 6 adults sharing a room , girls and boys and everyone was doing there own thing and not caring the least bit, this is because in a country where large families are the norm, 7-8-9 children sharing is typical and so nobody even battered an eye lid. We drove back to San Jose with a glow from the hard work and the wetness of my feet and a little sadness with leaving all these nice people behind, almost like scout camp. I got home with only 2 days to get packed and ready for travelling to Peru for another rotation and never thinking that we were going to go house hunting, but that is the next episode tomorrow of Dave in crazyland

Caving and Mud and Bats and Mosquitoes

The next morning we got back into the car to set off to find a flat tyre again, I was mortified as we were quite remote and I wasn’t sure that we could get the tyre fixed and the roads are so bad you really need a good spare, we went about 5 miles up the road to the gas station and he told us that the garage next door would fix it, it was a $2 repair. So we drove about 1 hour back into the mountainous inner of Costa Rica and to the university based in San Isidro. We were looking for a lecturer who was director of some local organisation that was trying to reforest the higher reaches of the local watershed and was needing some expert help in using satellite photography to determine where the most effort needed putting in, so anyway enough of the detail, we found this woman and she directed Jenny to a thesis completed by some students the previous year on the watershed and we were allowed to copy the CD of the material, I am not sure if you are really allowed to do this but we did and basically it was the whole of the material Jenny needed for her thesis, she can steal all the graphs and maps and anything else she needs and resubmit it via her own department, but as she is such an honest person I doubt she will just do that, when I carried out my final year design project, I lied about all the references and made up lots of material just to get it completed well ahead of schedule. It what using your brain is all about. So we found lots of good material for Jenny and she will be able to put her considerable geography knowledge to work for this project for the thesis eventually, and with that final happy note we set off back to home in San Jose. It is a long drive over those mountains again, with horrible broken roads and speeding trucks and the weather started pouring rain again. We were travelling about 30 mph all the way and missing all the holes this time
And we arrived back in out house safe and sound at 5pm, only to start packing for the field trip the next morning in the north of Costa Rica at a reserve called Barra Honda. We had to get up at 5am to drive to the university to catch the bus which was driving us to the reserve. It was nice for once to be not driving and I was able to watch the mountains and rivers go by and feel relaxed about it all, the area is a limestone area and we were going to do a survey on a cave system, my first ever proper caving, ropes and ladders and harnesses, all very sexy. But to get to the cave was about a 2 hour walk

Yes they are cacti, it has a 5 month dry spell in summer

It was nice when we started but it started raining and we were the last people into the cave and it was going to be dark after we got out, I wasn’t looking forward to walking through a tropical rainforest in the dark but I was in a big group and I didn’t want to appear a big girls blouse so I said nothing. The forest was new growth and no trees over 25-35 years old, but it was alive with monkeys, both the capuchin and the howler monkeys, I can say honestly that to see monkeys in the trees is almost heavenly, they were unafraid of us and would just eat and watch us walk by, maybe 4 to 6 groups in total. Not many other animals and few birds, a couple of hummingbirds fighting over the best spots for the flowers. The path was pretty muddy as it is rainy season and were getting pretty wet and muddy, we got to the cave entrance to find it basically like a pile of big rocks around a large hole in the ground, it was surrounded by a small fence and not looking like a tourist attraction, we put on the harnesses and attached a rope and waited our turn to go down, the mosquitoes were waitig for darkness and we could hundreds swarming around us especially me, a few bats flew out of the cave and then were eating the mosquitoes around us , it was a fantastic site , I had a bat take one from about a foot from my nose, I saw it perfectly swoop towards it and take it directly in my flashlight beam, that was great but I once again got bitten all over my bare arms. We were allowed to climb down the ladder, all 60 feet of it and the rope was just in case my fingers stopped squeezing the metal into submission, I was terrified I will admit. The ladder was covered in about 2 inches of mud and was very nasty to hold and the mud was getting all over your clothes as you went down the ladder and it was dripping onto your head and clothes, it was a nasty sight. When we got down to the bottom it was very rocky and the roof had caved in many times over the years and I was wondering what would happen if there was a small quake to shake the roof a bit, I think we would have all died very easily. So I tried to forget the dangers and looked around as the rest of the students and Jenny started plotting out the cave and measuring inclines and distances,


The cave was very large and the walls were all covered with mineral deposits in curtain type formations all very interesting,


I was then told to do the normal tourist thing and time how long it takes to go through the cave system, we had to climb down another small ladder into a lower chamber and it was dangerous as you couldn’t see where you were putting your feet when first getting on the ladder, I was wondering why on earth this place has been allowed to become a tourist destination, we then had to tiptoe along edges of fallen rocks and then scramble over other rocks and then squeeze through a small gap, my claustrophobia was getting bad, then walk through a small ant-chamber, it was all very nice but not worth the effort of putting myself into this danger, it took about 30 minutes in total, last year I went to a cavern system in Northern Virginia, called Luray Caverns and it has stairs going down about 250 and then all lit all through the cavers and all on concrete pathways, I didn’t get dirty at all, it was fantastic, but this wasn’t this was nice but very hazardous, nothing I would ever recommend to any tourist, and something nobody who was the slightest bit unfit could do, nobody over 50 and nobody fat, there was no rescue system and if you broke a leg you would be down there for about 3 days until they got some international help in to recover you. We spent about 2 hours down there and when we got out it was pouring with rain and it took about an hour for all to get out, so we left with about half the group and immediately got lost, we were wandering about the forest going in all directions, going back and forth over the paths trying to see if we could remember anything, we did get to the main path finally but it was worrying to think we may spend all night up on the mountain. We got back to the hut that 6 people were sharing and Jenny and myself got in the shower before anybody else and went to bed so exhausted I cant remember anyone else coming into the cabin. Once again I was eaten alive in the cabin, I am sweet meat to those goddam tropical mosquitoes. The next day was another adventure and another episode

To the Whale Bay and Cusinga Heaven

We spent only 3 days in Palmar Sur, there was no point spending any longer as we new we could find anything we wanted, so we drove up the pacific coast to a village called Punta Uvita, this is where Jenny had another University project. The project was to plot the springs where the town received its water from. The reason behind it was the fact that all the surrounding hills are now owned by Americans and they are worried that one day the rich foreigners may stop the water, which I doubt but they are worried anyhow, we had been booked into a small hotel that was so very attractive, it was in the forest and had lots of tropical heliconias in the gardens, they look like small banana plants. They also had lots of flowering bushes and these were alive with butterflies and small lizards hopping about chasing the insects. The rooms had no glass but screens to keep out the mosquitoes and help keep the rooms fresh. Surprisingly the temperature was very nice and at night it became very fresh with the sea breeze, but it did not work in keeping out the mosquitoes, I was being eaten alive every night we were there, I was starting to look like a spotty alien. The gardens were a magnet for the local bird life and one particular tree was a drug to a bird called locally the Cusinga, or Fiery billed aracari, now this bird had to have been created by an alien as it is the most fantastic colour and design, it is doubt the most spectacular bird in Costa Rica.


Not only did we have entire families coming to the trees but accompanied by the local Toucans also, what a fantastic sight, the town is part of the tropical rainforests of Costa Rica and the bird life in the town was some of the best I have seen ever. We were taken by the local community association up to the top of the mountain chain just behind the coast and we stopped at the top and saw some huge erosion landslides, perhaps half a mile of steep hillside had slid down the mountain and buried something out of sight. We were then asked to follow a couple of the guides, down through the jungle. Now this was my first time actually walking in virgin jungle and it was not a dense as I thought it would be but the incline was maybe 45°, so this was very steep and it started raining and it was slippy and humid and very hard work, I began to wonder if it was worth the effort, it took a long time to get to the bottom and as we got there it seemed like a hidden gem. The water coming from the springs was crystal clear and it was obvious there had been lots of water here recently as there were fallen trees and huge rocks there but all washed clean, not a sign of any dirt or any soil type material, I felt something sticky on my leg and looked down to see a small brown frog actually stuck on my leg, it had those sucker type toes and was pretending not to be there.

We spent maybe 30 minutes looking around and taking pictures and then we had to walk back up, which was twice as hard and very slippy. I never realised that many trees in the jungle have spines for defence including the palms and I slipped and grabbed a palm for support spiking my fingers and deeply inserting a couple of big thorns into my arm. By the time I had gotten to the top the spines in my arm had become inflamed and looking very nasty, and now 3 weeks later they are still lumpy. I think there must have generated some sort of allergic reaction no infection. we stayed 3 days in town taking in the beach and mangrove swamps that had some very interesting butterflies and a few more birds to my ever lengthening list. We walked the beach at low tide to walk out to the rock formation that gives the beach its name, Ballena Bay, the rocks form a whales tail at low tide, there are whales in the bay but it is difficult to find them and unless you have a big boat riding the sea is very very uncomfortable. We left for the town of San Isidro to see a university lecturer that was hopefully going to help Jenny with some more of her project work, that episode will follow.

The Vacation from Hell to Heaven and Back incuding Macaws

My first day at trying to get away on holiday was pretty hopeless, my sister in law had rang us and wanted a lift back to her home town which was pretty close to where we were heading. The problem was that the old lady who we get to look after the kids just never arrived until it was nearly dark and the roads in Costa Rica over the mountains are a pretty hazardous place. They are very twisty and full of heavy overloaded trucks and crazy locals intent on trying to die in a nasty crash and taking as many others with them. Speed is the big problem, they just want to die in a fireball as they fly off a mountain side at 100mph. So we set off late and the traffic was bad and it was raining and as it is the rainy season the roads deteriorate badly so you’re for ever manoeuvring around huge holes in the road. So 3 hours of this nerve wracking driving I hit a hole that could have hidden a VW beetle, it burst the tyre and buckled the wheel, it was dark and luckily I was only 100 yards from a side road that had a light, I pulled over and as I was taking the wheel off there was a very strong odour of cow shit in the air and realised that the side road lead to a farm and the cows must have been up and down and the place was inches deep in it, my hands got covered in shite and I was wearing my normal clothes which got splattered with the offending material, I wasn’t happy, I managed to whisper my complaints about the silly old women getting late to the house, hopefully Jenny doesn’t pay any attention to my muttering said in anger. We continued and had to go very slow to avoid some even more huge holes and at some places the road completely fell apart and was just broken totally and very dangerous. This happens every year they make very poor quality roads, just an inch of asphalt on top of dirt. The trucks just kill the roads. We pulled over in a roadside café and I managed to wash my hands of the shite and we ate some very nice barbecued chicken, it made me feel a little happier, the sister in law left us there as the bus which went to her town pulled in to the same café, so we went on to our cabin in the town of Palmar Sur, it was as quiet as I was hoping and our cabin was as rustic as I remembered and unfortunately the shower was broken so no hot water to shower with but as the air temp was about 80, a cold shower was quite refreshing in the morning. I awoke in the morning with a strange sensation all over my shoulders and found I had been eaten alive by mosquitos, I had about 50 bites dotting my more irritable spots. This is one thing you do have to be careful of on both coasts, I also have a fond disregard for repellent as I think it doesn’t work. But I seem to be very sensitive to a tiny bite and Jenny doesn’t ever show any marks at all. We went for a walk around the town after breakfast and saw to my amazement two scarlet macaws sat in a tree eating some fruits by the bank.

Not only are they huge they are just an unbelievable colour. We drove into the neighbourhood where we were hoping to find a house or plot for sale but we found only very run down houses, probably 50 years old all wooden and in very poor condition. There was one plot for sale but it bordered a canal and it was only 10 feet above sea level and after hurricane Katrina I am not interested in that. We looked all over but the town is so small and the housing market is tiny and very few houses for sale, we felt totally deflated, so that night we went out and got drunk. The next day Jenny had an appointment with the Dole pineapple plantation people as she wanted to carry out some reseach in forest fragmentation involving their network of farms, but they showed her some forests they have planted and then kindlt smiled and showed her the door and said “not interested”, she was devastated as she had planned her whole thesis around it, we sat in the car and wondered what could happen next to our trip, the next episode tomorrow.

The Wanderer Returns to Peru with Bats and House Tales

I had a hectic time getting to the airport yesterday to make my return, I had to go to a meeting to see if my offer of payment would be acceptable to the owner of the house I found. We had spent the previous day getting a tour by a very well connected property dealer, he had a top of the range Range Rover, very expensive but this guy deals in the top end of the housing market in Costa Rica, working with the US and European buyers. Jenny had made a comment about wanting a pool in a condo, so this guy dragged us around some very bad looking places as they had pools and only when I was very tired and said that a pool is not necessary then this guy drove us to a small gated residential neighbourhood and inside we drove into a gated Condo and very secure it was. The houses were perfectly put together and they looked large and the price was no more than the others we had seen. Once inside I found a huge paradise of all those little things that you need, like cupboards everywhere, a door into the laundry area for dirty boots and umbrellas, a huge master bedroom for the bamboo chairs and plenty of space to swing the cat. All the woodwork was very nice quality and well put together. It had 3 major bedrooms and a small guest room complete with small bathroom, there were two more complete bathrooms, and a understairs toilet, it was fantastic, the only thing was we don’t really have the money for it yet, I have been saving for 2 years and we have the major part of the deposit, but I said I have to have it and I will do anything to make sure we get it, it was the house of my dreams other than it has no garden and is very expensive by Costa Rican standards. So yesterday morning before I flew to Peru I had to have a meeting with the owner who is a Cuban exile living in Miami with relatives doing his property developing business in Costa Rica for him. He told me sadly that the hurricane Wilmer had knocked the shit out of his house in Miami, but I didn’t feel sorry for him. He was actually a very nice person and we got along fine, I said I could pay 30% now and 30% over the next 6 months and at the end of 6 months pay the rest. He seemed happy but we are not allowed to move in until we pay all of the money. I am happy that I get the house but would love to move in straight away, life is such. So I had to drive like crazy home get changed and have lunch and then go to the airport. Everything seemed slow but I did get business class this time only because it was only $15 more so I paid the difference myself. I got a nice meal and drank nearly a full bottle of wine myself. It was very nice and didn’t make me feel that drunk, I got to the Hotel feeling happy and excited, this is bad as I didn’t feel sleepy at all, by midnight I was getting desperate and took a valium, I did sleep OK but felt like shit when I got up, not enough sleep by far. So today when I arrive I find 98 e-mails to be answered and demands for documentation waiting for me, so I had 4 crazy hours trying to get up to speed with the project and see what I can find out about the last months operation. Of course I wanted to have a look at the moths and butterflies and anything else I could find on the plant. Unfortunately I found a tiny bat that was wrapped in a spiders web

This is hard to believe that a bat can be the victim of a spider but this Bat was only as big as my thumb end, perhaps just over an inch long, it looked very fresh so it was last nights victim, its hea is so small that it is impossible to see its eyes.the place was alive with moths as usual and some very interesting butterflies also, some new species to me, I have found out that I have also got to coordinate a major shutdown coming soon and will need maybe 20 guys to do a major overhaul of the turbine combustion system, I don’t know where they are all going to sleep, but they will squeeze them in somewhere. Sounds like fun. I will give you a full account of my month long break including caving and beaches and anything else that pops into my head along the way.

Two weeks going wild in the Wild of Costa Rica

I have had a hectic time of it lately, i have been house hunting unsuccessfully in the south, been beach combing on the Pacific and Caving in the north. I saw what ramkpant rich Americans can do to a country, if you are thinking of buying property in Costa Rica then please dont throw your money about, i have heard that land can be bought for less than $200 a hectar but on the pacific coast where it is particularly beautiful, Some Americans are offering $200,000 a Hectar, this is corrupting the whole country and bringing resentment, so if you need to give away your money then give it to me and let me buy your farms for you, also be careful where you buy as i saw some plots on 70 degree inclines, this in a rainy country is a recipe for a washed away house so just think about it. the caving was great and saw a great many bats and saw them crapping into the boots left outside the cabina as it was their favourite roosting site, i will give you much more detail when i get back to Peru as i will have a good rest to fill you all in










Besides the Pacific coast is really hot and sweaty it is much better up in the mountains with far less pèople.

Barbecue Latin Style and Rainy Season Antics

Here in Costa Rica it is the rainy season and it has been a deluge of long storms and there has been some devastating storms that have washed away homes on the pacific coast. So being able to get out and enjoy myself has been hard. We had a small barbecue on the Saturday after I arrived and had all the neighbours and their children so in all 10 adults and I was the meat cook. It was a very strange atmosphere as we had to sit under the garage as it was pounding with rain on and off all day and in between the rain we would be surrounded by heavy fog all very strange and it did remind me of the UK a lot. The day turned into a typical Latin barbecue, we started with meats and a few beers and after 4 hours of light drinking of beer in which I had to drive to the supermarket to get a refill of beers, one neighbour brought out the rum and another fetched the Tequila, this was the beginning of the end. The eldest daughter of one neighbour, a university student of 25, made all of us take shots of Tequila and we also drank a few Rum and Gingers, and I warmed up the last of the 12 pounds of meats and put that out and we drank a few more beers, all the mature people were happily drunk but the eldest daughter was looking miserable and started telling us all that she had had a miscarriage and was unhappy, she started balling her eyes out and we all had another beer, we were all made to drink more Tequila and do the salt and lemon sucking routine, pretty nasty, I preferred the rum, so by 8 o’clock everyone was very drunk and laughing there asses off apart from the miserable crying daughter of the neighbour, one neighbour had to do the supermarket run for more tequila as we had we had drunk everything and eaten everything, so by 9 o’clock it was time to go to bed, I was drunker than I had for a long time but a great day was had by all and my Spanish was improved a little also.
We did take a small trip to a local national park just outside of San Jose the Capitol, it is called Ta Panti and it is up in the mountains that surround the central valley. It is pretty high and very steep sided valley and it was fully forested. When we got out at the car park I saw a butterfly that was bigger than anything I have seen in Peru and it was the iridescent blue Morpho, what fantastic site it was, but amongst the green trees and plants it stood out like a lighthouse. It is a pretty rainy area up in the mountains and the trees were festooned with long trailing moss and the branches were alive with orchids and many other plants that can live on the branches and extract the nutrients from the air and without attacking the tree, the only problem is that as the plants and mosses grow in size and number they become too heavy and break off branches and fall to the ground.

I was tempted to pick up some of the branches and take them home to adorn the garden but it is a criminal offence to remove anything from the park but the plants only die and are buried under the grasses and other things on the ground but I didn’t want a fine for taking something that had virtually no value other than being a nice plant or flowering plant.


This weekend we have a trip organised to go house hunting in the south, we have a race on now, we need to find a house to rent before Christmas and then we are also looking at places to buy but that is going to take more time as it is a small town and limited houses so we think we will be easier to build than buy. The old lady is coming Sunday to look after the kids again and I am looking forward to getting to the beach without the kids and taking it easy in the sunnier and drier pacific coast. Perhaps I can get invited to another latino style barbecue, I will tell you all about it.