Rachel here! Well, I just got done taking a nice, hot
shower, complete with a 2” cockroach peeping Tom perched atop the shower
curtain rod, voyeuristically staring down at me for the duration of said
shower. I actually smiled after noticing him up there…9 days in the jungle and
I think I am officially cracking up. Anyway, I will take a few minutes to catch
up our faithful readers (a.k.a. our moms?) on the high points of the last two
days.
Monday was our first wedding anniversary, and to celebrate,
we had our second and final day off from work here at the sloth sanctuary. We
slept in for as long as we possibly could, relishing every minute in bed beyond
5:30 AM, and then left the sanctuary in the early afternoon to take the bus
into Puerto Viejo. While we were waiting for our bus, an amazing critter
suddenly appeared on the ground in between Paul’s feet. We have seen countless
weird and exotic looking insect species here in CR, but I feel that this guy
deserves his own special picture:
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| This handsome guy was about the length of my index finger |
He looks like a rubber party favor toy, does he not?!
Speaking of pictures, the reason we don’t upload very many to the blog is that,
on average, they take between 5-8 minutes apiece to upload. The wifi connection
here gets the job done, but it isn’t great. And did I mention we are sitting
outside, at night, while we are waiting for stuff to upload? You get the
picture (no pun intended).
ANYWAY. Puerto Viejo. Our anniversary. We spent a few
minutes wandering around town, where we made a feeble attempt at doing a little
bit of shopping. Sadly (or maybe gladly, if you ask my husband), nothing really
struck my fancy. Many of the stores and restaurants were closed, as we learned
that Monday in PV is the equivalent of Sunday in the states; lots of businesses
are closed for the day. The restaurant we had intended on trying was
unfortunately included in this category, so we had to scrap our intended lunch
plans. As luck would have it, we wandered into an “eclectic” restaurant called
El Dorado for lunch, which actually ended up being very enjoyable. We both
ended up ordering Tex Mex style dishes, and I have to say, everything was every
bit as good as I would have wanted it to be back home. The only real oddity was
the use of shredded mozzarella cheese atop both of our dishes, and while it was
a diversion from what you would expect, it actually worked very well! Before we
headed back to the sanctuary, we stopped off for gelato…yes, Costa Rican
gelato. It was actually delicious, even though I was heartbroken to discover
that they were sold out of the cinnamon flavor I had so desperately wanted to
try, after watching a fellow volunteer order some on our outing the other
night. We hopped a bus back to the sanctuary before dark (along with an
unsmiling man who was wielding a machete- no, I am not making this up…yeesh,
and I was worried about whether the bus driver would let me on with an ice
cream cone…) and spent a nice, lazy evening back in sloth country with the rest
of the volunteer crew. In conclusion, it was a nice little day, amidst an amazing
trip, and I am not sure how any of our future anniversaries will ever be able
to top this one.
On to Tuesday!
Today was a day of change. Our assembly of sanctuary volunteers has been
rapidly expanding over the course of the past several days, having inherited a
couple from Spain, a guy from Austria, and another guy from Israel. As a
result, in order to accommodate all of the new folks, some “shuffling” has
taken place regarding our sloth assignments. Basically, I was informed that I
would be taken out of my section and moved to a different section, effectively
losing “my” sloths, that is, the gang I have been caring for over the course of
the past 9 days. There were logical reasons for doing this that I will not get
into right now because they are somewhat logistical and boring, but in any
event, I was still a little bit bummed upon hearing the news. As I have
previously stated, it was ridiculous how quickly I became attached to all of
the sloths in my section, and how quickly I had come to know their individual
personalities. Anyway, I have been moved into a section that features something
like sixteen 3-toed sloths, and four 2-toed sloths. I spent the morning
learning how to care for the 3-toeds, as they have a completely different
maintenance regiment than their 2-toed cousins. Even their diet is completely
different! They do not get veggies, like the 2-toeds- they strictly eat the
leaves and flowers of the cecropia tree. Despite my initial feelings regarding
the switch, I am still certain that this is going to turn out to be a really
great experience for a number of reasons. First, the 3-toed sloths have
extremely different temperaments compared to the 2-toeds; they are far more
sociable, and really seem to enjoy being around people. Many of them routinely
ask to be picked up, and they seem to genuinely enjoy being held (case in
point: Buttercup is a 3-toed sloth). In contrast, you cannot safely pick up an
adult 2-toed sloth. I am also excited that I will be sharing this section with
my new friend Yvette, from Australia.
She is a riot, and we have really been
enjoying the company of her and her husband Phil on this trip. So, I think this
will be fun!
We had a fun “baby time” today, of course! Paul especially
enjoyed it, as he got to have his turn taking out Matty. As you may recall,
Matty is the tiiiiny “fuzzy starfish” baby 3-toed I took out a few days ago. I
will maintain my assertion from the other day: it is not possible to look at baby
Matty without smiling. I took out a 2-toed name Poko today, and while Poko and
I did not have any problems getting along, he was having a bit of a rough time
relating to his sloth friends on the jungle gym. Namely, he was chasing them
down and trying to bite them. Bully! Eventually, naughty Poko got the boot, and
he was transferred to a secondary, private jungle gym made from PVC piping.
This seemed to suit Poko just fine, as he didn’t seem to understand the big
deal about climbing in the first place. In fact, he took this opportunity to
lay down on the sidewalk and shimmy along the bottom rung of the jungle gym
while scooting his back along the concrete. I’m pretty sure that he thought he
was doing a very good job of convincing his onlookers that he was actually
getting some exercise. This may be the laziest sloth behavior I have seen to
date. It was really very funny.
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| Paul with baby Matty |
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| I mean, seriously. Are you kidding me? |
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| Naughty Poko, pretending to exercise. We're onto you, bud. |
Once we had finished up with our daily chores, Jeff- the
sanctuary owner’s grandson (around our age), who lives here and conducts tours
for guests- offered to take several of the volunteers out on a canoe trip. We
took him up on his offer, and our canoe adventure started out routinely enough.
We spotted all kinds of brightly colored birds (including teeny, tiny humming
birds), Jesus Christ lizards, blue crabs, bats, turtles, etc. After a while,
Jeff stopped off at a tiny island to cut down some coconuts for us so we could
have some coconut water. I thought it wasn’t bad…I don’t think Paul was a fan.
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| Coconut water, fresh from the source! |
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| Not a bad view |
Eventually, we made our way back to the dock, where another group of volunteers
were hanging out, waiting for us. I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow, a
canoe race was proposed. The other group put another canoe in the water, and we
set out on the most frenzied, mismatched boat race ever. Our group’s canoe was
powered by Jeff, who essentially does this for a living, and the other canoe
was powered by, well…the combined efforts of a bunch of people who are just
like us (essentially clueless). We quickly and predictably got so far ahead of
our friends that they were virtually out of sight. Unfortunately, somewhere in
the middle of the frenzy, our canoe drifted alongside the riverbank, and Jeff
asked us to give him a hand with “pushing off” from the shore. I stuck my hand
into the clumpy grass and shoved as hard as I could, and instantly, my hand,
wrist, and arm began to feel like they were on fire. I started to see stars,
and with a polite smile, I calmly asked Jeff, “so, is there poison ivy in the
rain forest?” Jeff enthusiastically responded, “Oh, yeah!” Within seconds, my
hand and forearm broke out into a series of maybe a dozen impressive welts. It
didn’t feel great. Jeff informed me that I had probably in fact touched poison
oak, and promised to give me something for it when we returned to the
sanctuary. True to his word, he gave me some kind of fantastic liquid
medication to put on the welts, and they almost immediately went down. They
haven’t really itched since. If I survive this trip with only one little poison
oak outbreak, and one little sloth bite (Wait. What? Did I not blog about that?
Don’t worry, it was a baby bite, and hardly worth mentioning…), well, I think I
will count myself lucky (you should see the bug bites on Paul’s legs. It’s not
pretty, folks).
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| Oops. |
Signing off,
Rachel
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