Pura Vida! Day 6

Costa Rica

Day 6


Lilo (did I get that right?) led our horseback ride. He was also one of the dads for our homestay later that night. His horse had a funky ear.

I had the best horse, I think. It's name meant "bones," but it was a much less hardcore horse than its name suggested. It was very sensitive and attentive, not jumpy at all, my horse and I were both scared of Noreen's horse, haha, it kicked sideways at any horse that dared to stand next to it.

Monkey!!!! We finally saw un Mono Cappuchin!

Heading down towards the river.

A little lizard. A few days later, we saw an iguana at the beach that may have been at least 4 feet long!

These are pictures of the path between the cabinas and the central campus buildings. There was very thick, tall, green grass on both sides of the road. Walking alone at night time, I thought a lot about the pumas and jaguars, but I did not get eaten.







The picture above is focused on the stamen -- notice the shadow on the leaf below it, too. Below, I focused on the petals.


Coati sighting!

Jack and Jason. Jack liked the hammock chair and regular hammock even more if we were around: "Swing me, swing me!" I think he would have been content swinging 8 hours a day, every day. Can't blame him... it was a nice spot. Sitting in the hammock, you can hear the wind coming over the mountain, see clouds passing over the mountains, and feel a strong breeze, day and night.


The local school.


A flattened cane toad.



Check out the front porch... can you see the face?

Local graveyard with a small chapel.

Walking to the homestay.





We saw some baby ducks. Mama duck ran by, left the babies a few feet behind to fend for themselves, and they were running as hard as they could. I wanted to pick one up, but I didn't want it to have a heart attack... they seemed very panicked.

The ground is so fertile, they can take clippings of tree branches, stick them in the ground, and they will grow into another tree. This is how most people make fences. They nail barbed wire to the trees, which then grow around the wires.

The ducks again.

The home where Hunter and I stayed the night. This is the kitchen... notice a few things: they are very environmentally and energy conscious in Costa Rica (note the florescent bulb and skylight), all the brothers had photos of their recently deceased father in their homes -- this family had it in the living room and in the top right cabinet window (he was 94... they are very healthy and active, and tend to live very long), the oldest daughter's Quinceanera (15th birthday) cake top was on top of the cabinet, and they had a framed 18-wheeler on the wall (never got the story on that one).

This was the grandmother's house (recently widowed, 5 months ago, see note above) where all the her sons still come milk the cows every morning. All her sons have houses on the farm, and they help maintain "la otra finca" ("the other farm") which is about 2-3 hours away by foot or by horse (couldn't clarify that very well). Her grandson Fernando is kicking the soccer ball with Noreen. She made us coffee and gave us some homemade bread.

They improvise a lot, and they tend to get very creative, and they're very good at it. People make their own houses, with the help of other family members. Notice the bamboo antenna.

The little boy, Fernando, found us a frog.

The ground was wet and soft near their irrigation system, even though the ground elsewhere was very dry (it's the end of the dry season). The family tapped into springs way up the hills, created artificial and well-maintained creeks that zig-zag through the farms, and they even had tiered fishponds for freshwater talapia.

Fernando was very cool. He's 7, and did his best to explain every aspect of the farm... most of it was a little confusing, but no more than it would have been if an English-speaking 7-year-old tried to explain to me farm life.


The baby cows don't even need to be fenced because they will notstray from the mothers. All the cows on the farm where we stayed are milk cows. The beef cows are a la otra finca.


The baby cows were very jumpy until one of them was scratching its neck on a table and I scratched it for her... she decided I must be safe, since I'm so handy, and the other cows were a lot more comfortable around us. They would try to suck on your fingers, but I was way too grossed out -- especially by the constant streams of saliva and snot coming from their snouts.

But they were really cute.








Fernando wanted me to take pictures of him with a puppy.


And he wanted the dog to smile.

After this picture, he threw the dog in a bush (loud "yelp!") and ran off.




Hunter and I thought it was funny to see US weather on the news... I snapped this picture, not even noticing I captured the Friday night storms hitting Atlanta and the next day's tornadoes heading for our homes!