Week 5 - Costa Rica

Dos Brazos del Rio Tigre, the village where we are staying, is nestled in the Reserva Forestal Golfo Dolce, a protected area that provides a buffer zone around the Parque Nacional Corcovado. It is formally a gold mining town, and the population grew exponentially back in its day as gold diggers came to claim their fortunes. Some locals still pan for gold in the streams and rivers, and we can hear them tuning over and smashing rocks in the river searching for the illusive vein of gold. There are a few locals who know exactly where to look, and travel further up the river close to the Parque Nacional Corcovado, coming home at the end of the day with thousands of dollars in gold. However most miners only find a few dollars worth at most. It is only legal to search for gold by hand or by sluice, without using any machinery of any kind. The local environment officers here, MINAET, keep a close eye on gold mining activities, and have been known to shoot anyone not doing the right thing!

The main road of Dos Brazos. The blue building is the school

One of the 3 shops in Dos Brazos - this is a small grocery store, there is another one that is similar, and there is a soda, a small eatery.

In the Henderson household this week, Saige is feeling a lot better, which is such a relief. It was very hard for her having to go through so much pain to use the toilet.

Its tax time back in Australia, and I had to complete my quarterly BAS, so I spent some time on Monday doing all the sums. As I have not registered to complete them online, I send through the figures to Mum and Dad back in Australia to fill in the forms and send them off.

The Minibeast Wildlife van back in Australia is sick. Its engine blew up last week just as one of our staff, Sue, was on her way to a school to run some presentations. Thankfully we have great staff in Victoria to sort it all out for us. It cost quite a bit to get it fixed, as is the way when cars break down, so thanks to Mum and Dad for a short-term loan!

On Wednesday Tayen, Saige and I caught the yellow bus into Puerto Jimenez to have lunch with Alan, Malcolm and Mylene (the film crew) and to do some grocery shopping. Our pneumatic trolley, which we will use to put the sets on, still have not arrived from San Jose, where it is sitting in customs waiting to be cleared. At the moment we are using the table from Malcolm and Mylene’s house!

Tayen and Saige on the bus

That night I head out with Carlos up to Bolita to do some bug hunting. We really need another Velvet worm, but unfortunately we were unable to find one. We did see lots of Army ants on their march through the rainforest, 3 Northern Cat-eyed snakes and a Granular Poison Arrow frog, the first one we’ve seen. On the way back down, there was a strange animal call coming from not too far away. At first I thought it was a frog, but Carlos told me it was a jaguar! I was sure that any minute it was about to emerge from the forest right in front of me, it sounded that close. Jaguars are rarely sighted in Costa Rica, and Carlos has only ever seen one in his 30-odd years living here.

I caught the Granular Poison Arrow frog to take some photos of it.

Alan's photo if the Granular Poison Arrow frog

When we left Australia, my mum gave be what should have been 4 months worth of Dutch licorice. It was all my favourites – herrings, salmiak balls, salmiak logs and giant diamonds. This week I finished the last of them, and I really don’t know how I’ll survive the next three months without any!!

Power outages are a common thing here; we have at least one power failure every week, and they can last from half an hour to several hours. We always have candles and torches around just in case. So it was no surprise when on Thursday night the power went out. What did surprise me was the severity of the storm. Power outages aren’t always a result of storms; sometimes there is no apparent reason for them. But this storm came up fast and was ferocious! The winds were so strong that our entire undercover porch was flooded as the rain was coming right in. And Alan was out in it! He had left the house to go bug hunting around half an hour before hand, and it wasn’t long before I saw him trudging up the steps leading up to the house – he was completely soaked, and couldn’t have been more wet if he had stepped straight out of the bath!

After the storm, Friday dawned bright and cheery (and hot!). After all that rain, Tayen and Saige’s pool had filled with water, and the Masked tree frogs that had been frequenting the pool to call each night had gone the extra step and laid eggs in the pool! So we now have hundreds of tadpoles swimming around in the pool, and we can’t empty it out!

Masked Frog tadpoles in the pool

That night I went out bug hunting with Carlos to a property that belongs to Steve’s brother. It has both secondary and primary rainforest on the property, so I was excited to see primary rainforest as most of the rainforest around Dos Brazos is secondary. We came back with quite a collection of invertebrates to use for filming, including a large male Red-rumped tarantula which I managed to catch myself. We also saw massive colonies of leaf cutter ants, glass frogs, and walked right beneath a tree of howler monkeys. In the darkness I wasn’t able to see them very well, apart from their wide yellow eyes reflecting in the torch light blinking down at me.

The weekend was taken up with building sets for next weeks shoot. We are going to be filming ambylpygids, which live on clay and rock walls in the rainforest. Alan had bought some large sheets of Polystyrene, so we were all helping out with creating realistic wall faces. It was a lot of messy fun! We also had to build some frames for orb-weaving spiders to build their webs on.

Carving into the polystyrene

Having fun!

The inevitable result!

The next step - gluing and throwing on sand and rocks

The finished product

Making the bases for the orb weaving spider frames

Saturday night we had our first production dinner, where we go out with all the people involved in the shoot. We went to a nice little restaurant on the beach with Steve, Mal and Mylene.

Sunset over Puerto Jimenez

And on the last night of this week, Sunday night, Alan went out bug hunting to Bolita on his own. He found a tericopello (fer-de-lance snake) sitting right on the path, ready to strike, and decided that he probably shouldn’t go so far again on his own, just in case!