(no subject)

Mar 16, 2008 16:35

oh hay.


So, last month, I went to Costa Rica with my parents, little sister, and my dad's parents. We stayed at the eco-lodge Bosque del Cabo (lol check out those angry monkeys of the front page)
THIS PLACE IS AWESOME. GO THERE. It might not be everyone's cup of tea--there's a lot of hiking, solar power only, outside shower, huge spiders, general undeveloped-ness and you're dirty and sweaty most of the time. But it was so fun. Also, the food was amazing.

Sooo we left at like 4:30 in the morning and took a flight to San Jose. Then we took this tiny little plane to Puerto Jimenez, probably the most ghetto village I've ever been to. And there were stray dogs EVERYWHERE. It was really depressing. And a ton of cows, like, the floppy eared kind with humps. nedm

Ok then we all got into a jeep and a guy started driving us to the lodge, about 45 minutes away. The road was ridiculous, holy crap. It was SO bumpy we were flying around the jeep the whole time. But then we got a break, because the jeep broke down halfway! Here I got the opportunity to use my high school spanish skills (luckily, I've learned how to say "fig tree" and "measles" but not "what the fuck is wrong with the car"), but the driver just grunted angrily and tried to fix the car for half an hour before finally contacting someone to pick us up. Meanwhile, we're waiting in the middle of the rainforest and its getting dark. But eventually we were rescued!

The house we stayed in had a beautiful view of the ocean:



Unfortunately, we soon realized that we had to hike for half a mile up and down an extremely hilly, rocky and slippery path about three times a day in order to get to the main building where meals were served...this wasn't so great for my dad's parents, who are both about 80...they're in great shape though, and amazingly they didnt break their ankles hiking.

Soo we saw tons of monkeys. A family of spider monkeys lived in the trees right outside our house and we watched them eating breakfast every morning.







These monkeys were friggin crazy. They're always flinging themselves off branches, and then they grab onto some incredibly thin branch and bounce up and down on it. And the mommy monkeys do it with their little babies on their backs (giving my mom a heart attack every time she saw it). Or the mom monkeys would stretch themselves between two trees, making a bridge for the baby to walk across--so cuuuute

A bunch of howler monkeys apparently lived nearby too--we didn't see them, but we SURE HEARD THEM ALRIGHT. jesus those guys are loud. As soon as day breaks, they start screaming for everyone to get up--so yeah we woke up at 5:30 every morning. But we went to sleep at dark, like 8 pm, every night.

I was really excited about seeing anteaters, but I didn't see any...D: The waterfall repelling guy said that he'd been living there like 5 years, and he'd never seen a silky anteater or a giant anteater, though they're supposed to live there. The tour guy said he'd seen tamandua anteaters, kinkajous, peccaries, pumas and ocelots, but never tapirs...how can something so big be so elusive? He's worked there for like 8 years, too. Well, I didn't see any of those animals in the wild, sadtimes, but we did find a three toed sloth! According to the lodge people, there are tons of these guys around, but we only saw one. They're so slow, and they stay at the tops of the trees, so they're hard to spot.



national geographic, bitches.

So...some activities we did...waterfall repelling! Yes, it sounded like a good idea at the time. Obviously, since my sister is scared enough of planes to cry everytime she goes in one, she stayed behind with my grandparents.
I was shitting bricks trying to repel down the first little waterfall. It's much harder than you'd think. When you're hanging there with your feet on the wall, your instinct is to remain upright, not lean back. So at first, my mom and I kept slipping and smacking into the rocks with our limbs flailing everywhere. We got used to it a little...but then we got to the last waterfall, which was 100 feet tall.




It felt like it took forever to get down that thing. At one point I make the mistake of looking down. BRICKS WERE SHAT. It wasn't really fun, it was just, like, an experience thing.
And you feel all proud of yourself afterwards.
Me: YOU GUYS YOU GUYS DID YOU SEE THAT WASNT I AWESOME
Instructor guy: *repels down the waterfall in two seconds*
Me: nyoro-n

I also found a lot of blue crayfish in the stream and I poked them a lot :O

Another life-threatening activity we did was zipline in the rainforest canopy! This would have been fun if I had not somehow turned myself backwards at the beginning, so I was struggling to turn around the whole time. My dad was even funnier though, because he had this really D: face the whole time, and then he stopped himself on the zipline too soon. His toe could just barely touch the side of the platform, and the zipline guy had to drag him on. lols

Actually, getting off the platform was the scary part, because it was like 5 stories high or something



My sister getting down ^ Lol she was screaming the whole time.



view from the platform

The best thing we did was go on a boat tour through the mangrove forest/marshes. It was so pretty, and we saw squirrel monkeys!! SO CUTE. We also spotted crocodiles swimming, and a big iguana, and a boa constrictor, and a lot of cool birds.



spoonbills


you can't really see it, but there's a little boa constrictor in there

Then, and this was like the highlight of my life, we went to an animal sanctuary on a remote part of the peninsula. The guy came out to greet us with a sleepy spider monkey wrapped around his neck. IT WAS SO CUTE. There were a bunch of monkeys roaming around there freeley, all capuchin, spider and howler monkeys. One of them was a really sweet female howler monkey who was born without a kneecap (this is apparently a common birth defect among howlet monkeys) so she can never be released into the wild. She came right up to me and fell asleep in my arms TT^TT Then she switched to my grandma for a while.



DREAMS REALLY DO COME TRUE U GUYZ (i have no life)


(with my little sister and grandma)



the spider monkey was playing with my little sister
these monkeys are REALLY STRONG. It grabbed her with its tail and was dragging her around.

Most of the animals there were either rescued from the pet trade, injured in fights or orphaned by their mothers. I learned that being a pet has an especially horrible effect on monkeys. Being part of a large social group is essential for monkeys. Many of them die from stress after becoming pets, or literally go insane. There was one capuchin monkey in a cage who had been a pet, and she just sits in the corner and rocks back and forth all day. Another spider monkey has to have a leash on her at all times or she'll freak out. She's totally messed up...if her leash becomes unfastened from her tree she'll just hold it up and scream. The sanctuary people tried to give her as much room as possible though, attaching all these pulleys and stuff to a tree in the sanctuary so that she can stay leashed.

Another spider monkey had been a "junkyard monkey"--like, instead of a guard dog, they used this monkey and trained it to be vicious. Whoever owned him abused him all the time, and even broke his leg, and by the time the animal rescue people found him he was too traumatized and he has to be kept alone in the sanctuary. He's so strong he ripped the sanctuary's toilet out of the floor and threw it like 10 feet WHAT

Most of the animals are going to be okay, though. The sanctuary guy showed us a pair of two-toed sloths. They were soo cute *w* Did you know their metabolisms are so slow that they only poop once a week? We also saw the kinkajou (I was flipping out)--it was the middle of the day though, so it was all sleepy and cranky ;w; There was a Tayra there too, which is a kind of big black weasel. It was friendly, but it can be super vicious--the guy told us about how it killed a fleur de lis (the most poisonous kind of snake in costa rica) through its cage and ate it.

There were also a pair of scarlet macaws in the trees, mating. Mating is apparently a very noisy business for macaws (then again, they're always noisy). owo;; The guy said that, since it was mating season they do it like 5 times a day.

I got to learn more about capuchin monkeys too...most of the ones there were kept in a cage, since they're so mischiveous. They stole and broke 5 of the guy's cell phones, and they're always bullying the other kinds of monkeys lol. They're really smart, so they're often used in movies (like pirates of the caribbean). But they're also the most aggressive of the monkeys in costa rica, and as humans steal more of their habitat, they end up getting shot because they try to steal people's food and stuff. They even steal cars...like, one monkey will distract the driver and then the others steal the key and run off with it. lol ;3; i love them
Here are some shots of capuchin monkeys we found while hiking:




They always look kinda angry.
"Stop taking my picture you asshole"



and...oh yeah and there was this male howler monkey who kept flicking his tongue out at my grandma. My grandma asked the guy what that meant and--apparently when howler monkeys do that, they're soliciting sex, ROFL D: lol grandma. We all stared at the monkey and he just gave us this huge grin back TwT
Me: he's showing his teeth...isn't that aggression?
Guy: no, he's just being a cheeky bastard. go away you

There was also a nedm toucan in a cage, and I asked why it wasn't let out like the macaws. The guy proceeded to explain why toucans are the most BADASS BIRDS EVER. When the sanctuary people try to release them, the toucans attack them, trying to stab their eyes out with their beaks. Their beaks are cerrated, so if they stab you, they'll rip your insides out too. jesus. The guy said he has a friend whose eye was put out by one, and the guy showed us like 6 scars on his head from them. Toucans are so evil, they don't make their own nests, they just find another bird's, kill it, and eat the babies. When males want to mate, they find a female, shove her out of the tree and FRIGGIN RAPE HER. RAPE BIRDS. FROOT LOOPS YOU GUYS.



still cute though.




There were also two ocelots and a jaguarundi there, but we couldn't see them. The cats have to be kept isolated from humans while their being rehabilitated, or else they'll look for humans after they're put back into the wild, and villagers shoot the cats whenever they see them. STUPID PEOPLE

After playing with the monkeys some more, we reluctantly left. On the way back, we saw DOLPHINSSSS
DOLPHINSSSS
ROLPHINSSS
DOLPHINSSSS
spotted dolphins and spinner dolphinsss *w* They were so cute and friendly and there were like 30 of them or something, so many! They were chasing sardines. You know how on like...Planet Earth and programs like that, they show how dolphins herd large schools of fish? that's what they were doing. You could see tons of little sardines leaping out of the water, trying to escape being eaten ;w; nedm dolphinsss

Ok so
now for funny costa rica anecdotes
One night I woke up to this weird clacking noise. I turned on the flashlight and saw about a dozen of these crawling around the room:


SUDDENLY, HALLOWEEN CRABS. HUNDREDS OF THEM.
They had invaded my parents' room too, and my mom was flipping out lol. See..the house didn't really have any windows, just big open window-like holes in the walls, and, since it was hot at night, we would keep the doors open...

I tried to shoo them out of our room, but they were very...territorial. If I came near, they would lift their claws and open their mouth like >:O Sometimes if I poked them enough, they'd scuttle off sideways and bump into things. so cute ;w; All I managed to do was chase them into corners, though, so I just gave up and in the morning they were gone. The next night, we had to put pillows against the doors to keep them from squeezing into our room through the cracks.

I asked the hiking guy about them later. I figured our house was in the way of their path to the beach or something, and they were on their way to mate? But no, apparently they just do that sometimes, so assert their dominance or something. During the day they live in holes in the ground...they don't live near the beach at all!

We also found several large geckos in the house


(QUALITY PHOTOS)
Apparently, coatis were often in the house, too, but I never caught them. There was a sign on the fridge to lock it at night, because the coatis will open the fridge and steal all the food. We couldn't lock the trashcan, though, so one morning we went into the kitchen and found trash all over the place owo;; oh coatinedms...they're kinda like tropical raccoons




Oh oh and
since there's pretty much no electricity left at night, we had to use candles, right. The second night, I went into my parents' room to say goodnight and the flame on their candle was like 6 FEET TALL, and the wind the blowing it towards some flammable-looking things on the WOODEN table.

Me: MOM! THATS REALLY DANGEROUS
Mom: it's fine, it's fine, I just wanted to make sure it lasted
Me: MOM STUFF'S GONNA CATCH ON FIRE
Dad: OH JESUS WHAT IS GOING ON
Mom: it's fine honey
Me: NO--DAD TRY TO PUT IT OUT
Dad: I CANT
Me: ILL GET SOME WATER
I threw water on it, which somehow made the flame bigger
Me: SHIT
Me and Dad then run to get a pan, and as soon as we walk back into the room the hurricane candle holder friggin EXPLODED and glass flew everywhere and the flame was like, roaring
Mom: AHHH
Me: AHHHH
Dad: *covers flame with pan*
(We wait)
Me: is it gone?
He lifted the pan, and there was a ton of smoke, but no fire...but then a second later the flame jumped up again out of nowhere
Me: FUCK
Dad: *puts pan back*

misc photos:



red-eyed green tree frog


red-eyed green tree frog


leafcutter ants



**OKAY SARA SCROLL OVER THIS PICTURE IT IS A SPIDER**



fucking scary golden orb spider THEY WERE ALL OVER THE PLACE AHH THEIR LEGSSS
the females are this big and the males are like 1 cm long

ALRIGHTY NOW.
I have a little book that I draw Kabs and Asparagus crap in. I scanned and fixed some pages
enjoy your AIDS





The ghost guy is Asparagus's brother, who died in a tragic meat grinder accident. Asparagus kept his remains in the freezer, but then Kabu ate them or something



good kabs, you look kinda tsundere


Gee, that House face didn't really work out. Remember, kids, tracing doesn't solve everything.



KABU IS A POKEMANS MASTER
HE HAS A GENGARS YAY

Oekakis:



Zuka (OC)



Vokuro (OC) he's like a shark...spirit...god thing...i'm gay



I...I LIKE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES
I KEEP WATCHING IT OH GOD
why is braniac 5 so moe

Poop:


fabulous giorno doodle...look guys, i draw jojo characters too...! I'm really cool



joey



keep dreaming asparagus



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