Monteverde Adventures

“Blessed be the LORD, who daily bears us up.”

            ~ Psalm 68:19

Time in home-stay has been nice because we have had more free time.  It’s a little hard for me to believe, considering how packed they usually have our schedules, but I have had time to run, hike, write letters, climb trees and even zipline!  Here are some pictures from our adventures.

Morning hike with Heather

Mot-mot!

Monteverde is apparently the place to zip-line.  So we decided to give it our best shot!

Heather, me, Matt, and Sarah ready to go!

Matt and I practicing

Heather getting in the spirit!

Matt zip-lining like a pro

Heather and I having way too much fun!

Matt ready to Tarzan swing

Sarah ready to Superman

Heather is superwoman

Such a fun day with friends!

A few days ago we had an off afternoon and decided we should go climb the Ficus tree.  Ficus, or strangler figs, are pretty neat trees.  They are hemi-epiphytes, and begin their life as an epiphyte in the forest canopy.  Once they have gotten large enough they begin sending down tap roots from their perch in the host tree to the ground.  Once they make contact with the ground, more roots are sent down and they begin to enlarge, eventually ‘strangling’ and completely engulfing the host.  The host tree eventually dies and decomposes under the force of the Ficus, leaving a hollow cavity in the Ficus that is eventually filled in as the roots continue to expand to form a trunk of a canopy tree.  Because of this unique life, Ficus make AWESOME climbing trees.  Roots twist and turn creating hand and foot holds that make scaling these giants very easy.  A model tree exists in Monteverde, completely hollow and forming a tunnel that is easily accessed and traversed.  The opening brings you 30m into the forest canopy (according to Maricela), where you can look down at the tiny people waiting below for their turn to climb.  We were lucky (I guess) and were joined by a troop of white-faced capuchins swinging and jumping from branch to branch in the very tree I was perched atop of.

Ficus!

A view of the climbing tunnel!

On top of the Ficus

Sarah emerges from the tunnel

Cebus capucinus! Maybe a little too close for comfort...

Friends all matching in pink :)

And a beautiful gift from God on our way home!

Panama

“I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

            ~ Luke 19:40

Ok time to finish up the recount of field trip number 2 so that I can move on to more recent adventures.  And since I am currently in a procrastination mood and relatively on top of my work, I am choosing to blog.  It is a blustery morning, a little misty, unusual for a morning in the cloud forest, but if I close my eyes and lift my face to the sun I can almost pretend like it is fall and that I am actually closer to home than the equator. 

Anyway, the final week of our field trip we spent in Bocas del Toro, Panama.  This is a very popular snorkeling site, and also a great place to just hang out on the beach!  The water was so incredibly warm and clear, and class consisted of beach walks and snorkeling expeditions at 5 or 6 different reefs.  Here are some pictures of the adventure!

Directions are always a good thing

The beach!

This picture reminds me of fall,
though the scorching sun did not!

Carludovica palmata

The above plant is in the Cyclanthaceae family.  Look familiar to anyone?  The new shoots (in the foreground of the picture) are the “palms” used around the world for Palm Sunday!  It’s a little funny because this is not actually a palm (palms are in the Arecaceae family), but I still thought it was really cool to see this plant in the wild after all those years of waving it in church!

After our typical species walk we all got on a boat and took to the sea to observe a bird rookery.  We found lots of tropical birds!  But I was fooling myself to think that I could look through binoculars on a boat in the ocean and not get sick…  I resolved to just look with my eyes, and we were still close enough that I don’t think I missed too much.

Brown Pelican

Brown Booby with a chick

Magnificent Frigatebird

Red-billed Tropicbird

Me and Sarah on the boat!

The following day was Marine Diversity Day and consisted of snorkeling pretty much the whole day.  This was our one cloudy/rainy day, which made some of the boat rides a little chilly, but probably saved us all a bit of sunburn.  My favorite part of snorkeling was finding five squid!  They are very social animals, and I chased them around for a good ten minutes.  They could cue off one another, and moved in a line or strange formation almost all the time.  Here are some cool pictures I was able to get with my underwater camera!

Echinoderm

Jellyfish!

Sea cucumber

Rhizophera mangle above the water

Rhizophera mangle below the water

Ctenophore (they change colors!)

The boat

Giant sea urchin

Coral!

Our stop for lunch
You could jump right off the deck into the water!

The water is so clear...

Hemidactylus frenatus

Fish!

Nurse shark

Our final day in Panama we went into town to explore a little and spend some more time on the beach.  It was probably the most touristy area we have been too, which was kind of nice as more people spoke English.  One they way back from town we stopped at a bat cave.  The first cave we went to have hundreds of bats!  The second cave had fewer bats, but was more of an adventure caving experience.  We were wading in water sometimes almost to my hips, and in the first 10 feet past the entrance we found a very nice sized whip scorpion…  At that point I was a little freaked out, and was glad we didn’t see the wolf spiders (they are huge!) till we were exiting.  We also found some vampire bat guano, as well as some sort of blind snake in the farthest corners of the cave. 

My favorite boat

The cave

The entrance to the cave (I didn't get any pictures inside of it)

Our final night in Panama we had a talent show.  To that I will say what happens in Panama, stays in Panama…  It was a great night of laughter and fun!