Been a while. . .

Wow. I fail at blogging. Anyway, since I last posted just under a year ago, I have moved to Utah. I live in a city in Northern Utah, practically in Idaho. I've done a ton of roadtripping around here - there's so much to see and so little time! I'm moving in October when my position ends, but I don't have a destination in mind.

I think I'll do some "update" blog posts, but a quick overview of my travels since last August:
-late September was the crazy 23 hour road trip to UT by myself as I moved across the west
-early November I went to a VISTA orientation in Salem Oregon
- Thanksgiving I went back to Salem to hang with family
- in late December, early January I was home with family and it was gooood
- in late January my roommate and I drove to Jackson, WY to see the Alonzo King's LINES ballet
- in February, I drove back to Jackson to go to a Crooked Still concert, which was pretty amazing
- in May I went to Idaho to see my sister (who was visiting there from Portland)
- I also went to Bryce, Capitol Reef, Zion, and Escalante National Parks/Monument - amazing amazing amazing.
- in June I went home again (home again, jiggity jig) and had a blast
- for the 4th I went to Seattle with my roommate
- In late july, my roommate and I went to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone - impressive

And in a week, we leave for Portland, and then Eugene, and then a massive roadtrip that will include Crater Lake, Glacier, and Canada! Woohoo!

Sittin in a railway station. . .

Got a ticket for my destination.

I'm pretty much all packed, and am now staying with Becky in her apartment to facilitate taxi pick-ups and apartment key drop offs. We went out for dinner at a mirador in Cedros that overlooks the city. It was pretty incredible. No time for photo uploads - maybe another time!

Headed to Colorado for a few days before road-tripping back to Minnesota with mom and dad. Should be pretty sweet!

Volcan Irazu

My final trip in Costa Rica was with Becky and Ruth to Volcan Irazu. Irazu is the highest active volcano in Costa Rica, and by the time we reached the top, we were above the cloud layer, which was pretty cool.

Ruth and me at the summit, toward Cartago

The summit is 3,432m, which is about 11,260 feet, high. On clear days, you can see the Pacific and the Atlantic. I thought I maybe saw the Pacific, but I don't really know - and its really rare to have a day that is clear enough.

Main crater in the front left, with Turrialba smoking in the background.

Anyway, Ruth, Becky and I drove up Irazu, which is outside Cartago. The road winds up the mountain, and you can drive pretty much all the way up the summit.

Farms farms farms!

Because volcanic soil is good for agriculture, the sides of Irazu are covered in farms, growing all sorts of crops. As we drove up the road, we passed pick-ups full of farm workers headed to the fields for the day, or changing fields.

From the summit, you can see the main crater, as well as Cartago and other volcanoes and mountain peaks. We could see Volcan Turrialba, which has been smoking for about six months now.

Volcan Turrialba

The main crater has a lake in it, but we were unable to see it. The crater is pretty deep, and looks (to my admittedly very poor volcanological eye) like it was created after a larger crater.

From visitor's center, looking at the summit. That's a TV tower.

 From the summit, there is a steep, maybe 60m drop off to a more or less flat plain, which then drops off again to the main crater. That plain is mostly covered in grey, dusty, ashy soil, but there is a part in the center where they are trying to regenerate growth. Its covered is low ground cover - think creeping charlie type - and taller grasses.

Grasses and flowers on the plain

Irazu was pretty stunning in terms of vistas, but it doesn't look "volcano-y". (A very technical term meaning its not smoking or doing anything interesting, really). And I had a great time hanging out with Ruth and Becky. Plus, the drive up was beautiful - whats not to like about views off the side of a mountain on a clear sunny day?

View off the side of the mountain, on the road up. Cartago would be in the valley

Volcanes, Churches, and Ox-Carts: Oh my!

We had a new work group here last week from Texas. They were really fun, and taught me an awesome game you play with dominoes called chickenfoot. It was especially awesome because my first time playing I cleaned their clocks. They elected to do two day trips. One was the trip I'd been on already, to Sarapiqui, but the other was to Volcan Poas, Grecia (a small town), and Sarchi (another small town). Ken, who is the tour guide the UBL works with, and his wife Delia joined the group, which was lovely for two reasons: Ken is a birder, and could identify birds, and Dely is Costa Rican, so there was someone I could speak Spanish with.

Stunted Forest: this is what we hiked through

We drove up to Poas through fields of coffee and ornamental plants - which are apparently Costa Rica's fourth largest agricultural export. (You learn a lot when you travel with a tour guide). The road was lined with the houses of the farm workers. Because of the relative stability of the climate, Costa Rica doesn't have a lot of migrant farm workers. Rather, they work in the same place year round, since there is always something to do.

Volcan Poas: the main crater

Poas is one of the most visited national parks in Costa Rica, partly because it is an easy drive from San Jose - and there is a public bus that runs from downtown to the park and back. It is one of the five tallest volcanoes in Costa Rica. It doesn't really have a peak, though. It has three craters, two of which are visible to the public. Both are lakes, though one is a sulfuric lake that's about 50 C, and the other is a fresh water lake that's very cold. Both are really beautiful, but in very different ways.

You can see the sulfuric lake. The smoke is rising from the fumaroles.

The crater principal has several fumaroles that smoke constantly, so that the lake is never clear. That smoke can get caught in the crater, and then blown up to the viewing point - which is really gross, because it smells like sulfur. While we were up there, that happened twice, and the sulfur smell is so strong it made my throat hurt. The crater itself is very wide, and the lake is in a secondary crater inside it. The whole crater is just rock and dirt; there are practically no plants. There is a road that runs along the crater, which is for vulcanologists and other researchers.

See that pale line along the ridge? That's the road.

The second crater, about a 30 minute hike from the crater principal, is completely different. It looks more like a glacial lake (except for the fact that the foliage is all rainforest plants) than a volcanic lake. (I don't know what I thought a volcanic lake looked like. This lake wasn't it.) The water is very blue, and looks super inviting. According to legends, the lake was used as a sacrificial altar, with people/things being sacrificed to appease the gods so the volcano didn't erupt. I don't know if this is true; I didn't see anything about it in the museum.

The Lake

We hiked to the crater principal while it was covered in sulfur smog, and then got to watch it all blow off, which was really amazing, because the whole crater cleared up and became visible. Then the men in the group, Ken, Dely, and I hiked to the lake, and then back down the mountain to the park entrance. We saw a ton of birds, including the volcano hummingbird, which is endemic to Poas.

Volcano Hummingbird

From Poas, we went to Grecia. We ate at a trapichero, or a sugar cane mill. We got to try raw sugar cane (yum!) and the final taffy (also yum!). We had cane juice at lunch (kinda yum. also tasted green.).

The group in front of the trapiche and water wheel.

Grecia is famous for its church. The church is all metal, and was shipped from Belgium to Costa Rica in the mid 1800s, and carried over the mountains by ox-cart from the port (no one knew if it was Puntarenas or Limon, but either way, there are mountains). The town was hoping that a metal church would be more stable during earthquakes - as it is still standing, I would assume that it is. Costa Rica as a whole has very few historic buildings because earthquakes demolished the vast majority of the colonial buildings.

The metal church. Looks pretty normal, doesn't it?

From Grecia we went to Sarchi, which is mostly famous for the ox-carts that are produced and painted there. I didn't really take any pictures, but the ox-carts are very colorful and pretty. Mostly we shopped in Sarchi, but its mostly grown-up stuff (aka not cheap. at all.)

Dad, I took this photo for you.

Guanacaste: Playa Hermosa!

Volcan Arenal from the road

Becky and I took a road trip in her new(old) car. We drove over the mountains and down into Guanacaste. Guanacaste is the "dry" region of Costa Rica. It is hot and dry during the dry season (now) and cooler and rainy during the wet season. The region is named for the Guanacaste tree, which is Costa Rica's national tree. Guanacaste is bordered on the east by the volcanic mountain range, to the north by Nicaragua, to the west by the Pacific and to the south by the Rio Tempisque and the Golfo de Nicoya. It reminded me a bit of Iowa - the landscape along the road is dominated by rolling plains, though there was some forest as well. The region is mainly cattle ranching, but they also grow sugar cane and cotton.

sugar cane field?

Becky and I took the Interamericana (also known as the Central American leg of the Pan-American Highway). We saw a huge variety of ecosystems, which was cool. We drove through cloud forest, rain forest, and flood plain. We also saw a lot more of San Jose than we had intended - it took over an hour for us to figure out how to get onto the Interamericana.

Interamericana in Guanacaste

I kinda liked driving around these funny side streets in small neighborhoods, but it did get frustrating after awhile. As noted in an earlier post, street signs are in short order here, and directional signs only appear once you are en route. While obviously nothing like US major highways, the Interamericana was still an impressive roadway - mostly given that there were few to no pot holes, and it was (for the most part) striped. This is a BIG DEAL in Costa Rica. Especially the lack of pot holes.

Rooster at the restaurant

 Aside from using the map in my guide book as our road map because the maps got left behind, we also used it to scout out a good place to stop for lunch. We ate at a hacienda-turned-restaurant-and-reserve that was right off the highway. Right next to our table was a small fish pond/fountain, and there were chickens and roosters running around. Anyway, the food was really good, and surprisingly cheap (I like!). We trundled back out onto the road, and continued on to Liberia, which is the capital of Guanacaste. We pretty much drove through the outer limits to get to a new highway that would take us to the coast. Becky had done some research on where we might stay, and the guide book also came in handy. We decided to stay at a really lovely hotel that was right on the beach, and when we arrived to make our reservations, they gave us refrescos naturales, which are kind of like fruit juice only thicker.

The beach from the tidal pools

Sea slug

 The beach was (probably still is) beautiful. It had grey sand, and the water was really clear, though a deep green color. The town we stayed in is called Playa Hermosa - Beautiful Beach - and is very small. There are a total of three paved roads - one is the freeway that borders the eastern edge, and then two very pot-holed access roads to the beach. The beach is probably about 2 km long, and its a small bay. There were tons of fishing boats and small tour boats moored out from the beach. The beach itself was really shallow, and hardly had waves at all (which I liked). Its bordered on both ends by tidal pools, which I had great fun exploring.

Sea urchins

We spent the night in Playa Hermosa, and left to go back to San Jose a little before noon. We had rain for a large portion of our drive, but it was, luckily, clear while we were driving in the mountains. We stopped in San Ramon, a small town outside of San Jose to look for food, but we didn't find any. What we did find was a green - that hospital green - evangelical church. Unfortunately, my camera battery died, and so I don't have any photos of it, but it was quite the sight to see.

One of the cool things we saw on our way back to San Jose was a group of pilgrims walking to Cartago. August 2nd is the Feast Day of Nuestra Virgin de los Angeles, and a large number of catholics make a pilgrimage to Cartago in honor of La Negrita. The pilgrims we saw were walking from Tilaran to Cartago, which is about 150 km, up and over a mountain range. It was pretty impressive.

Blurry pilgrim!

I'm hoping to go back out to the region, and maybe do some snorkeling out in some of the islands. Its a pretty touristy region, but if I go during the week, it would be less busy. . .

La Selva

It seems that I can't really get outside of the Parque Nacional Braulio Carillo these days. I spent a day and a half at the Organization for Tropical Studies Biological Reserve La Selva, which is a fancy way of saying place for biologists and students to research. I know that Hart and Ben have both spent time here - I felt like a scientist!

Iguanas! They're everywhere!

Anyway, I went on this trip with about 20 students from the UBL, and I was the second youngest in the group. We were accompanied by four professors, two of whom were actually the trip leaders. Roy and Janet are a married couple who teach at the UBL, and Roy is somehow connected to the Costa Rica Ornithological Society - I think someone told me he was the president. We left San Jose at about 6:30am on a bus, and much of the group spent the trip singing. We arrived at La Selva by about 8:30, and took a 3 hour hike through the park, split into several groups. We saw massive spiders - the size of my palm, tons of birds, peccaries, bullet ants, leaf cutter ants, and some monkeys. (Bullet ants are one inch long. They terrify me. Their bite supposedly hurts for about 24 hours. These ants are things of nightmares.) After the hike we ate lunch, and then went to a talk about La Selva and the environment, the fieldwork that goes on there, and Costa Rica in general. It was very interesting. But even better was the fact that the room we were in was air conditioned. La Selva was incredibly hot and humid. Unbelievably so. I sweated sitting still in shade - my jeans were pretty much wet by the time the hikes were over. In the evening, we went on a night hike, which was really cool. Unfortunately, my group didn't really buy into the whole "if we're quiet we'll see more animals" bit, which I found frustrating. We did see a ton of frogs, spiders, walking sticks, praying manti, snakes, and an owl, plus a sloth! 

This is the trail we used for the night hike. It translates: Singing Frog Trail

The next day, I went with Roy as he hiked and bird watched, which was really interesting. I got to see a lot of birds, and have them identified. It started to rain at about 8:30am, but settled to a misty-drizzle, so Roy and I continued hiking. Once we got out on the trails, though, it really began to pour - we both became completely soaked. I was really glad I'd borrowed rain boots from the guides, because we were walking through puddles in places that came up to my ankles, and water was running down the trails. We got a bit turned around, and ended up being late to meet with the bus, but it was lucky I was with Roy, since Janet was annoyed with him - the "responsible" one - and not me. By the time we reached the bus, it was too late to change, so we rode the hour and a half back to San Jose completely soaked. Despite that, it was a super fun, if exhausting trip. I've discovered that I enjoy birdwatching when interspersed with hiking in the rainforest (or riding on a boat in a river, or climbing a mounting, or just about anything as long as I'm not stationary). Anyway, I think I've spent enough time in that area of the country, and I should probably branch out some.

One of the main trails; Roy and I started our hike here.

Volcan Barva

Volcan Barva from the street I live on

Volcan Barva is north of San Jose, at the southern tip of the Parque Nacional Braulio Carillo. I read somewhere that it is the third highest volcano in Costa Rica, which is kinda sweet. (No, I don´t actually remember how high it is). Its in cloud forest, which is sweet, but does mean that after about 11am, it is difficult to see anything beyond whats in front of your nose.

Road Sign - I passed at least 3

I got up at 5 am to catch a bus to downtown San Jose. Because I was worried about timing (and it turns out I didn´t need to be), I caught a taxi to Heredia. I then took another bus to Barva, which is a small municipality immediately north of Heredia (it took not even 10 minutes). The bus stops at the central plaza, which, like all plazas, is in front of the Catholic church. There was an early morning mass going on, which I could hear bits and pieces of as I waited for the bus outside the church. I stopped at a bread store and had a donut for breakfast, and also bought a small baugette to eat later. At the UBL, the majority of the students are ¨christian¨, aka protestant. I forget that Costa Rica is a mostly Catholic country, but it was brought home to me by the men who biked past the church - of the 13 I saw, 11 crossed themselves. The third bus I caught took me about halfway up the mountain, to a very small town called Sacramento, which is the end of the line.

view of the central valley -aka San Jose - from the road

At that point, I began to walk. Having looked it up before starting, I knew that it was a 10 km walk up to the park, and the last 3.5 km were not paved. Thats about 6 miles of walking - I figured it´d take me about an hour and a half. Well. Try three hours. It was a beautiful morning, luckily! I walked up the side of the mountain, through big farms, mostly cattle  ranches. I had, for much of the morning, views of the central valley, and therefore of San Jose. I saw tons of cows, birds, and butterflies. I got to watch the morning clouds roll in, and cover the valley, and then the road. I passed through small towns, and by farms where the families all smiled at me, and asked if I was headed to the volcan. I watched as the vegetation changed as I got higher and higher. Several cars passed me, and I considered asking for a ride, but I decided that it wouldn´t be very safe, and that I was enjoying my walk. I had no watch, and the only way I could tell time was passing was from the sun and the clouds, which crept across the road and into the hills the later it got.

View down the road once the fog rolled in

Finally, I reached the unpaved portion of the road. As I continued on, I ran into a group of young ticos, who were walking home after a long night of drinking. They all called to me, and told the one english speaker in the group what he should say to me - although I understood everything they were saying. One of the young men decided he wanted to accompany me up to the volcano, and another of his friends came along to keep him out of trouble. After about half a kilometer, the first young man decided he was done with walking up a hill unneccesarily, and they both turned back. I reached the park at about 10 am, and checked in with the ranger, and arranged for a taxi for the way down.

Trees along the trail

The hike to the volcan was pretty short, considering the walk I´d had to get there. I walked on a smaller trail that caught the main trail at the start of the steep climb up to the volcano.

Poor Man's Umbrella - the purple thing is my winter hat

On that trail, I passed (among other things) a thistle that was taller than I was, and grasses that came up to my shoulders. When I reached the summit, there was a lookout platform over the crater lake, which is about 70m in diameter.

Laguna Barva

 I sat down at the top and opened my backpack to get out the snacks I had packed, to discover that I had not, in fact, packed them. So I ate my bread, and the nuts that have lived in my backpack since leaving home, and drank my water and gatorade, and thought longingly of the chocolate ¨enrobed¨ cookies that I knew were sitting on my table, along with other snacks, carefully packed in a bag.

Trail Markers

I then hiked back down the trail, and took a second trail to a mirador, or a lookout, that looked over another valley. I had a surprisingly clear view, though it was still cloudy. I continued on to the park entrance, where I chatted with the guarda bosque (park ranger) and two men from Philadelphia, who were waiting for their wives. I learned that durning the week, hardly anyone goes to Barva, and on the weekends, its mostly tico families, not tourists. I also learned that the guarda bosuques live at the park for 10 days, and then with their families for 5. Eventually, my taxi arrived. I chatted with the driver all the way down the mountain, to San Jose de la Montaña, where drivers switched, and I continued almost in complete silence to San Jose. I took the taxi all the way into San Jose because it wasn´t that much more expensive that taking it just to Heredia, and I was pretty exhausted. I caught the bus back to my apartment, and was home by about 3pm.

Pretty Flowers from the trail

So despite the ridiculously long walk in the morning, which, to be fair, ended up being my favorite part of the day, I loved it. I had a great time, and a beautiful day - no rain, which is practically unheard of. Everyone thought I was crazy for walking all that way, and some thought I was crazy for going by myself, but I had a lovely time being by myself, which is something I miss out on here sometimes. I have to be ¨on¨ when I´m at the UBL, and its still pretty tiring to work mainly in spanish, and Luz is in and out of my apartment after work, sometimes with the other kids in the complex, so having time to myself where I don´t have to be on was pretty amazing, and very refreshing.