White Faced Monkey!

Here's a little white faced monkey. They are pretty common, but that said they are also hard to find. I guess they are just hard to find when you are looking for them. Sometimes they are noisy and you can't miss them. Other times you'll look up in a tree and see some branches rustling and there's a whole group moving through the forest canopy.

Some Random Activities...

The sight of a car seat (a safety feature) is a vehicle like this seems like an oxymoron. If you could see what and how people drive here you would realize how funny this picture is.

I think I've mentioned one of our evening activities is sitting inside and watching the amazing show the bugs put on at night. We see tons of moths, bettles, stick bugs and other flying living things. One night I went out and then saw what we look like from the outside. Pretty scary!

Here's Oren on the trail of something...He loves to listen to the birds and then try to track them down in the trees. He knows the calls of several birds.

This is a volunteer activity that happened over the course of three days. An elevated sidewalk was carved out of the side of the road and built along a very busy stretch of the main road. You can barely see the bridge in the lower left corner.
Some things never change. Ethan has become quite the master of the tortilla and cheese. We are making a lot of bread and rolls too. Lots of fun in la cucina!

Oren and Jesse and some more school pictures

Here are a bunch of the kids in Oren's class with their teacher, Jesse. You can sort of see Oren's raccoon tail (on his backpack) on the far left of the group. They hang out before dismissal.

Here's Oren and Jesse! Jesse teaches 6th grade. He is from Minnisota. This is his third year at the Creativa, as they call it here. He also writes music and plays the guitar. He also is a masseuse! Many people have many jobs around here to make a living. Jesse is married and his wife is expecting a baby on Halloween!
These are some of the kids from Oren's class. Jesse saw what they were doing and said, "Don't hurt the plants!" He was sort of kidding, the kids put their friend down without hurting the plants or the person.

This is the library at the school. It is run by volunteers. The children go once a week and pick out a book. There are books in English and Spanish.

This is Ethan's class at the end of the day. Each student has a desk. They all have a cubby in the room and a hook outside. They leave their shoes, coat and backpack outside. They have indoor schoes, or just wear thier socks. Everyone brings their own snack and their lunch. School starts at 8:00. They have a morning recess and recess after lunch. Sometimes if the weather is good they go out right before the buses leave! Ethan has a great view out the window into the forest. He sees a lot of animals right from his classroom!

The Cloud Forest School or Centro Educational Creativa

Here are a bunch of photos from school. The school is on the slope of a hill.
There are buildings spread out all over with about 2 or 3 classrooms in each building.
Since the weather is pretty nice here (at least it never gets cold) there are a lot of "outside" spaces like porches and decks. The main offices of the school are in the building with the big covered porch, where a lot of meetings take place!


This is the walkway to the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms and the library. There are bathrooms at each end of the building.
The children eat their snack and lunch outside. During recess they can walk through the forest to a soccer field and basketball court or run down the hill to the playground.

This is a (bad) picture of the garden. There is an organic vegetable garden and a little nursery where plants, trees, etc. are started from seeds and cuttings.
Almost all of the students come to school on the bus. Here is the Costa Rican flag and a view of the buses below.

Hank's 50something birthday pool party bash!

Here we have Hank enjoying his delicious cake, made by his talented wife Carol. Cooking chocolate is really hard to come by down here so this was a super treat. The icing was made with brown sugar, which was sort of like caramel. It was really good!











Hank invited all of the “foreign” families from school to come to his 50something birthday party. He had the party at a local hotel called Poco A Poco, which is one of the few places with a pool. Note the “swim up bar” in the background. It was used more as a jumping platform while everyone played keep away (kids vs. adults).















Hank and Zenobia, his younger daughter.
What a fun party.



















Ethan enjoying some of the delicious cake.

Nature, and plenty of it

We are seeing so many different animals and plants each day, it's amazing. Here are some of our latest finds. Not all have been identified yet.

This is a bug that we found crawling on the side of our house. REALLY long antennae, huh?




Oh, I have one rule.
Animals, outside.
People, inside.



This is a photo of a katydid. Oren found this on a leaf near our house. Pretty good camouflage I'd say.
Most katydids are nocturnal. They make noises like birds by rubbing their two front wings together. They can be identified by their song, just like birds.








Most nights we enjoy looking out the window, or actually just looking at what's flying around on the outside of the window. This particular night we had the porch light on and the boys noticed these HUGE moths outside. We went out to investigate and the animals didn't seem to mind our poking and prodding at all. I'm working on their I.D. but for now I'm not even sure if they are butterflies or moths.





Oren learned how to gently slip this fingers under this animal to pick it up without really disturbing it!
Pretty cool..










Last Saturday we took a walk with a few friends. We found this amazing wasps’ nest in a cliff along the side of the road. It looked like the nest was made of mud.
If you look closely at the photo there is a small entry hole near the bottom of the nest. These wasps are called Synoeca wasps. They are metallic blue black in color. When they feel threatened or annoyed they scrape their abdomens across the ripples on the nest to create a raspy noise that will hopefully scare off their attacker. If that doesn’t work they just do it in a more agitated way that begins to sound like a locomotive chugging down the tracks. Their last defense is to take flight and attack. Luckily for us, we must not have looked threatening because they totally ignored us.

Fill'er up mi amigo

Here are my “spy pictures” of the “gas station” .
We went to get gas today in the pouring rain so most of the pictures look like they were taken secretly through the windshield, which is actually exactly what happened.
Please note: the 2L Coke bottle funnel, the large plastic containers, and the fire extinguisher (my personal favorite).

See a flat, blue plastic container above the spigots? That’s the cash register where they keep the money. We bought about 20 liters. The gas cost 775 colones a liter. It converts to about $6. a gallon. As Artie said, “Well, gas costs $7. per gallon in Denmark”. Always lookin’ on the bright side, that Artie.

There are two spigots, one for diesel and one for unleaded.

The red liquid that he is pouring in the tank is regular, unleaded gas.


Note: Seats available for spectators.




In this photo you can see the fire extinguisher, the plastic containers and the coke bottles (upside down). Oh, and the writing on the truck...something about flammable materials...whatever...

A happy outcome

Here's a picture of the satisfied crew. No trips to the clinica means a successful effort. I wouldn't want to spend every day pulling a car out of a ditch but it was a pretty fun morning!

AAA at work

Here's a picture of the progress. Raoul, Fred and Humberto secured the front of the car to a large tree using a "come along" and some ropes. Raoul had a great technique of sticking a small stick into the knot so that it would come apart easily when they were finished. Artie attached the metal cable from the back of the car to the front of our car and PULLED. It took several attempts and some rearranging of ropes and cables.

No need for AAA here!

We had a fun adventure today helping to pull a friend's car out of a muddy ditch. This is what it looked like when we started. The car belongs to our friend Humberto. Fred, who lives in la cabina (in the background) called Raoul and then located another friend who had a long cable we could borrow. Lots of coffee was consumed and a lot of ideas were exchanged before we set to work. Artie used our car, the Galloper, a 4WD car to help.

Climbing the Strangler Fig Tree

Oren, Ethan and I went to the Community lunch at the Quaker Friends Meeting today. It's a big potluck meal after the meeting. We saw a lot of people we have met so far. All of the kids ran off to play in the woods. Several of them started to climb up the inside of this Strangler Fig. A Strangler Fig is a tree that sort of takes over another tree. The Strangle part is that the Fig grows around the original, or host tree, and then slowly kills it. When the tree dies it leaves a really cool hollowed out space. This tree was really great for climbing and a few of the kids were able to get up about 30' off the ground.

Swimming at the San Luis waterfall

We hiked 1.2K up to the waterfall. The youngest hiker was only 5 years old. We walked through coffee and banana fields before we started going up. We crossed back and forth over the river as we got closer to the waterfall. It was wet and slippery. When we got to the waterfall we had lunch and a few people had their bathing suits. The water was really clear and cold.

Birds in San Luis

Yesterday, August 2, we went for a long hike to a waterfall in San Luis. We piled 10 people, 5 kids and 5 adults, into our car (luckily seat belt laws are casually observed and police are a rare sight) and drove down into a valley to a town called San Luis. We parked at the trail head and saw these two beautiful birds feeding. We think they are a male and female Yellow-Crowned Euphonia.

Oren, Ariel and the snake

Our friend Fred was working outside next door at la cabina and he came across a small Hoffman's Earth Snake. He put it in his pocket and came over to show us. Oren and his classmate from school, Ariel, took turns holding it while Fred looked through the snake book to identify it. The longer Oren held it the calmer the snake became!

Our friendly Coati

This is the coati that hangs out at our house. He seems to be very curious and friendly. We need to be careful not to let him in the house. We take our compost into the woods and I'm sure he finds that very agreeable. We don't have a name for him yet.

Kiera's Birthday party

Our friend, Kiera, had the first birthday of the school year. She turned 6 last week. She invited all of the foreign families that are new to the school. Most of the families are from the US. One family is English but they have been living in Spain for 6 years.

The first day of school!

Oren and Ethan are going to the Cloud Forest School in Monteverde. They take the bus each morning and afternoon. It's about a 20 minute walk to the bus stop and the bus leaves at 7:20 in the morning! It's about a 20 minute trip to school on the bus. More about school soon.
See www.cloudforestschool.org for information about their school.

Ethan relaxing at home

After an exhausting day of hiking and looking for animals Ethan relaxes in the big window seat.

Our house in the clouds

This is a view looking back up the mountain as we walk down to the bus stop. Our house is so far up it is almost always cloudy. It can be hot and sunny and a totally different weather condition just 3K away! We live at about 1600 meters, or about 1 mile high.

A small shoe or a huge millipede

We see these millipedes on our driveway all the time. They are huge! They have colorful hard shells. Sometimes they curl up if you bother them enough.

Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, teeny frog

When we were coming home from our wet walk in the Reserva our friend Tallallah found the smallest frog we've seen, so far. Can you believe how TINY it is? A frog is called a rano in Espanol.

A Steely-vented Hummingbird

We're not sure if we got the species right but this is a hummingbird that we saw near the Reserva. There is a special viewing spot where you can see many many hummingbirds feeding.

A Tarantula Wasp

We went on a beautiful hike in the Childrens Cloud Forest with a bunch of friends. It was a very steep trail with a beautiful "mirador" or overlook. We stopped to enjoy the view and a snack. While we were there we found this beautiful and dangerous wasp. It is called a Tarantula Wasp because it finds a tarantula and lays its eggs on the spider. When the eggs hatch they eat the tarantula. We also saw a beautiful green lizard but it hid in a log before we could take a picture. We heard lots of Bellbirds in the woods but it was really hard to see them!

Oren's handy umbrella leaf

We took a really long, wet hike in the Reserva last Monday. It was a school holiday! We hiked about 3 hours and came home to dry out!

Shopping at the Feria, Farmer's Market

We have been happy to enjoy the local community farmer's market. It happens once a week and we have been there each week, so far, to stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables. We have tried lychee or mamon which is an interesting fruit. The variety they grow here is about the size of a golf ball, reddish brown and covered with short soft spikes. It's not a very inviting treat but once you know how to break them open it's quite delicious. We also buy fresh, homemade tortillas, tamales, bread and empanadas.

Our Trusty Steed

Well, it turns out it's been quite handy to have a car here in Monteverde. First of all, we live far away and up a steep hill. But that's relative. Everything here is hilly. By far away I just mean it's a 10 minute drive instead of a 45 minute walk. We have been happy to have the car recently, for a few reasons. Artie is outside right now, helping to pull a friend's car back onto the road. It's pouring rain and quite bleak outside. The boys went to help, or observe. Our car is 4WD and hopefully Artie can pull Umberto's car back up!
We took a carload+, 10 people total on a drive this morning to the trail head so that we could hike to a beautiful waterfall. Luckily, traffic laws are either unknown or not enforced.
Yesterday we had another exciting adventure involving the car. Artie and I had just walked back from taking the boys to the bus stop, a pleasant, early morning 20 minute walk. Our landlord knocked on the door and told us that Alfredo, the man who cuts the "grass" had fallen and cut himself on his machete sharpening tool. (There another story here too, but anyway.) Artie jumped in the car with Fred and Alfredo and drove to the clinica.
We try not to rely on the car too much but as you can see it has come in pretty handy. Here's a little photo of our trusty steed, as we are loading our fresh food from the feria, or Farmer's Market.