Week 11 - Costa Rica

Monday morning we woke up semi-refreshed. We only had a little way to travel today, as we were planning on staying at Montezuma for the night. After breakfast we started off towards our destination. Alan randomly stoped on the side of the road to look for bugs, and we were pleasantly surprised to find Mantled Howler monkeys in the trees above us. This was the first time we’d seen them in daylight, and we were very excited! Especially Tayen, as she wanted to see these monkeys since first arriving in Costa Rica. We hear them calling nearly every morning and night at our house, and both Alan and I have seen their eye shine at night, but this was the first time seeing them up close.

Mantled Howler Monkeys high in the tree

Coming down for a closer look

 We hurriedly got Tayen and Saige out of the car, and unfortunately Tayen and Saige stood right on top of a fire ant nest. Alan noticed the ants moving on Tayen’s legs before they stung her, and he grabbed Saige and yelled at me to grab Tayen. That’s when Tayen started screaming, and I started yelling, and Saige started crying, and it’s bedlam! Alan, by the way, just rolls his eyes at us all and tells me to settle down! We made such a racket trying to get the fire ants off us that a farmer living up the road came out to see what all the hullabaloo is. Thankfully the howler monkeys were not perturbed by this (after all, they are howler monkeys!) and just looked down at us curiously. Once we had all settled down, the howler monkeys started to come down for a closer look at us. There were around 9 of them, and they came out of their tree and conveniently walked across the electricity cables to another tree to settle for the day.

Crossing the cables

We continued to drive to Montezuma, and along the way saw some bizarre fences – the Ticos planted trees along their boundary lines, and then attached them with barbed wire. Once the trees get to a suitable height, they are chopped and pruned to form posts. Many of the trees keep sprouting leaves though, so the fence lines look a little strange!

Living fence posts

We found a place to stay. Montezuma is a beach town, and very touristy. It’s not really the place we would usually come to for collecting, but we were told that the habitat was quite different from the Osa. The Cabo Blanco National park is nearby, so we’re hoping this will be our saving grace! We grabbed a bite to eat and head out to suss out some collection sites for the night. As we drove out of the driveway and on to the road, Alan realised there was something wrong with the car. “Flat tyre” he said, and got out. I really couldn’t believe it, but sure enough, the front passenger side tyre was flat as a tack. How did I not notice this when I got in the car??!! So we got organised to change the tyre, and a local man stopped to help us out. We were starting to wonder what else could go wrong on this trip!!

Flat as can be!

Our helping hand!

With the tyre changed, we ventured out on the road to Cabuyo and found that it was quite bushy and a potentially good site for bug collection.

As we are at the beach, the kids have been asking to have a play in the sand. So we stopped at Montezuma beach before lunch. We checked out a few other potential collection sites before heading back to our cabina for a bit of a rest. Both Tayen and Saige have colds from our recent flights, so they are not feeling the best, and are wearing Alan and I out too.

Montezuma Beach

Saige having fun

Us!

Bug hunting that night was mildly successful. We found a few species of crab that we could use, and a few unique katydids and spiders we hadn’t seen before, but overall we were really disappointed about the diversity of invertebrate life here. According to the locals, animal diversity has dropped dramatically in the last 5 years, and even this year has seen less species turning up at light sheets.

So that was Monday!

Tuesday was taken up with the ferry ride and the long drive back to Dos Brazos. We arrived home to a newly manicured garden and clean house, which was very nice (although the plants at the front of the property had been completely cut down). Also, the orb weaving spiders that we had set up in the guest house had been removed and cleaned out! We had yet to use them on set, so it was a bit disappointing to find them gone.

Tayen's photo of Saige and I on the ferry

 Alan and I were starting to get homesick, and missing things like non-sweet bread, full cream milk, good internet connection, lack of power outages and the ability to flush toilet paper!

Our first froglet emerged this week! We have been rasing these Masked Tree Frog tadpoles for around 5 weeks, feeding them on frozen lettuce. The kids have had an active role in helping to feed and clean them, so it was exciting for them to see the first little froglet emerge.

Our first little Masked tree frog!

On Wednesday we catch up on emails, setting up our new animals and sorting out our species list for the next half of the shoot. We have a power outage (of course!) for 9 hours from 4pm till around 1:30am.

The first day of the second half of the shoot is on Thursday. As luck would have it, both Alan and I have now come down with a cold – bloody planes!! Good news though – the first of the AFL finals was on Thursday night our time, so we had worked out that we sleep over at the studio (where the internet connection was faster and more reliable). We skype my parents back in Australia for the sole purpose of sitting the camera in front of the television, and watching the game that way. Alan had tried nearly everything else to be able to watch the game live over the internet, but Costa Rica doesn’t have the rights to play AFL games, so we’re stuck with skype. It also means that to watch the game live, we need to be up at 3:15am! But it was all worth it as Geelong won! (I have to admit, I slept through most of it!)

Our sleeping arrangements at the studio

Our 'skype TV' on the laptop (there's the famous internet key!!)

The weekend brings Alan’s first day of working on a Saturday. This is to try and make up for a bit of lost time when we had to leave the country. We’ve been on the lookout for Army Ants, as we need to finish a story we started in the first 2 weeks of filming, and we needed some footage of Army Ants in the wild. So on his early morning walk, Alan found some up at the house next door to us, which is vacant at the moment, and the house that we were originally going to be staying in. So Mal and Mylene come up to shoot half a day here, but unfortunately the ants are not in raiding mode, and are not interested in eating anything.

On Sunday we take a drive up Matapalo, though it is raining the entire time, so we don’t find much out an about. The river crossings to get there though are very interesting!

The road at Matapalo