What are we doing in Costa Rica?

 A slideshow for your viewing pleasure. Apologies for not having the best quality here. It’s hard to take great photos with a baby on your front grabbing at the camera!

… To Puerto Viejo! I have some photos that need sharing.

First of all, here’s Charla the spider. She lived at the top of the stairs for our last two weeks or so. Graham was very fond of her.

Next up, this stick bug was the biggest we — or our hosts — had ever seen. It crawled across the living room floor one morning, up the door frame, and then hung out until we went to bed. In the morning it had vanished. 

And finally, here’s a visual of why we were desperate to leave early. Happily, he is healing.

Last Friday was Mother’s Day in Costa Rica. I didn’t think much about it at first, but after being wished “feliz dia de madre!” by a few Ticos, I was quite into enjoying my special day — I’m so easily influenced! 

In the morning I took the boys hiking in the Santa Elena Cloud Forrest Reserve while Zach worked. It was a perfect outing. They have a 1.4 km youth trail that was just long and challenging enough to be fun. Graham led the way with boundless enthusiasm; carrying Dean in the Ergo, I lagged behind just a bit. It was so indescribably beautiful. The pictures I’m posting don’t begin to do it justice. After the first trail, we took a break at the reception area, got something to drink, and the boys talked me into some stuffed monkeys. Then we hiked some more! 

In the afternoon we visited the used bookstore/cafe/laundromat in town, then picked up some Japanese food for dinner. I finished up the evening with a trashy novel and some chocolate-covered macadamias while a massive storm thundered all around us. It was a perfect day! 

Photos from the forrest. Our interwebs here are too slow for me to post individually, so here’s a slideshow. 

Belated Feliz Dia de Madre to all my beloved mamas out there!

The good news is, we love Monteverde! There is a ton of fun stuff to do with the kids, the cool mountain air feels really good, and nothing is trying to eat us!

The bad news is, some food-borne parasite has been making a mosh pit in Elizabeth’s guts, so we’re house-bound until they move their party elsewhere.

With a midwife bat to help! The boys and I learned that and other interesting facts about bats this morning at the Monteverde Bat Jungle. We saw hundreds of bats eating, flying, drinking, and grooming on the tour, followed by a kids’ movie about bats. It was so much fun!

I’m sorry there’s been a post about poop at the top of the blog for a week! We’ve been busy! 

We’re now in Monteverde, a charming town perched high in the mountains. There are a few mosquitos, but nothing to write home (or blog) about. For that reason alone I would be happy to be here, but there’s also a fair amount of interesting sights for the whole family, as well as wonderful, cool, non-humid weather. Ah! 

We decided last week that we needed to get out of Puerto Viejo a week earlier than planned. The air was saturated with mosquitos. Graham’s bitten legs were beyond horrifying. We could. not. escape. That plus a desire to see more of this interesting country led to a flurry of last-minute plan making. Here’s a quick run-down of the past few days:
Friday: Book rental car. Start packing up entire house.
Saturday: Collect car, make hotel reservations for Alajuela (stopover on Sunday night) and Monteverde. Pack a lot more.
Sunday: Finish packing. Leave. Drive for 5+ hours. Spend night in Alajuela. Elizabeth comes down with food-poisoning-like illness. 
Monday: Zach, too, is afflicted. We load up on Immodium and drive to Monteverde. (Last hour is on a BUMPY road. Whoo hoo!).  Feeling better. 
Tuesday: Elizabeth comes down with mystery fever in the night, perhaps related to earlier woes. Spends day in bed feeling rotten. Zach wrangles children, secures rental house for the week, and locates an episode of Gilmore Girls on the TV for Elizabeth. Wins husband of the year award.
Wednesday: We move into cool, quirky tree house in Monteverde. Our nice landlady rents us the top, two-bedroom apartment and throws in a lower, one-room one for free for the kids to play in. Score! We settle in. Takes a long time to get internet access up and running, but this is finally achieved. 

Our plan is to stay here for a week and then spend our last 4-5 nights in the country in the Central Valley. After that, it’s home, sweet home. Nice as Monteverde is, we can’t wait for Texas.

Poop of unknown (but clearly small animal) origin. Oh my.

I keep meaning to post pictures of some of our favorite signs/packaging. Consider this part one in a series.

Just kidding — we like nature!

This blog has focused disproportionately on bugs, or rather the bites the inflict, so I thought you might enjoy hearing about one of our more interesting insect encounters.

The kids were asleep one night last week, and Zach and I were enjoying an actual adult conversation. (Remember those? They’re nice!) As I was making an erudite observation, or perhaps drawing a breath before expounding upon my theories of the universe, I looked up and saw something.  

“What is that?!?” I squawked. 

We stared at it. From down on the sofa, it looked a little like a white bat. Or an alien. It was kind of gross. Maybe it was there to eat our faces? 

Because I’m scientifically minded, I climbed up on a chair to try for a closer look. Also, I needed blog fodder, so I wanted to take a picture. I know how much our friends and families love to be grossed out! 

We bandied about some theories as to just what the heck this thing was. Zach was sure pretty quickly that it was an insect, and for a few minutes we thought we had interrupted an intimate moment between two bugs. But why was the one we could see clearly so oogy? And why were they such different shapes? Was this an unholy union? And would one or both bugs seek bloody revenge for the interruptus? Only time — and a handy flashlight — would tell. 

We continued our examination. The creature had grasshopper-like legs, but its wings were floppy and wet looking, and its body was shrimp-like. Finally, Zach had a brilliant insight. “It’s shedding!” he cried. I ran to the computer and started googling to confirm. And indeed, that was what we were witnessing.  (You can witness it too!)

Unfortunately, all our pictures are from several feet away at an odd angle. But other people have gotten better shots. For example: here and here and here. This one is the most like what we saw. We continued to check in with our little friend for the next couple of hours. As we retired for the evening, he was eating his discarded skin. Bon appetit! 

Speaking of eating, here’s a bonus pic for the squeamish. The kids and I saw this at the botanical garden the other day.

Even spiders have to eat, you know!