Toby's Cloud Forest Page

Dear Class,

I was just in Monteverde Costa Rica for the last month. I climbed inside a strangler fig. A strangler fig is a fig that strangles a tree and the tree dies and the strangler fig becomes the tree that is hollow. Strangler figs start as a vine in the top of a tree and it goes down. The vines hit the ground and sends out roots. I am going to talk about epiphytes now. Epiphytes are plants that never touch the ground. They collect water and are good places for poisonous tree frogs. And their nickname is tree frog hotel, funny nickname!! Their other nickname is airplant but I like tree frog hotel best because they hold tiny tree frogs inside. I saw lots of epiphytes. I saw an epiphyte that had landed on the ground it was so big and heavy. Can I talk about seeing some ferns? I saw some very very big ferns, they were bigger than me if I was lying down. The fiddle heads look like clubs. Do you know what a fiddle head is? A fiddle head is a baby fern they call it that because it looks like the head of the fiddle if you dont know what that is.

We went into the rainforest that we have been sending our pennies in for. Please send other money that costs more such as dollars. Because then they can buy more rainforest quicker. It is called the Children's Eternal Rainforest. Here is a picture of my sister and I in the Childrens Eternal Rainforest.

The animals that I saw were mono congos which means howler monkeys - they howl really loud, you can hear them three miles away. Monocariblancas means white faced monkeys, we saw perizosas dos dedos y perizosas tres dedos that means three toed and two toed sloths. This is a picture of a coati mundi. Coati mundis are very silly animals they hang around where there alot of people and they are very shy. This coati mundi has more pictures taken than a model! We saw an Olingo that is nocturnal and endangered we saw it near the entrance and running around in the daytime! Isnt that very amazing? We saw lots of birds too. My favorite was the emerald toucanet.

Hope you are having a good year! See you next year!
Bye

Toby

Volcan Arenal

The photos on this blog page are all of Volcan Arenal because a trip to La Fortuna and Arenal is all about that - looking at the volcano!! We left Monteverde on Wed morning via the trip advertised as "Jeep Boat Jeep". This is the fastest way to Arenal because the only roads that go through go all the way around lake Arenal, and this trip takes a dead end road to the west end of the lake then a boat across the lake then another road into La Fortuna. However, the reality is it is a busette boat busette but I guess this just didnt sound interesting enough. The trip took only 2 1/2 hours and was really nice to have a variety of conveyances to interest the kids. The bus trip around would have taken 8 hrs!!! We had decided to spend 2 nights at the volcano on our way out of Costa Rica to try to ensure that we would at least have one night of visibility on the volcano. The first night we spent at Catarata EcoLodge outside of La Fortuna near the Fortuna Waterfall. It was a really nice place run by a local cooperative with a beautiful small pool, great views and a nice simple restaraunt. We would totally recommend it, rooms are in blocks of 3 and very good. La Fortuna itself is yucky - a definite example of how tourism unchecked can ruin a place. The main drag is filled with restaurants and hotels from tacky to worse. Ironically, as if it couldnt stand looking at the hotels any more, the volcan moved its action to the other side of the mountain after La Fortuna was built up. Now the only place to get good views of active flows at night is from the park, or the only hotel within the park, the Arenal Observatory Lodge. We decided to splurge and spent our second night at the Observatory. It was TOTALLY worth it because you are right below the volcano (see photo with our room and volcano behind it) and can hear and see 10 -20 ton boulders spewing out of the volcano all day and night. During the day you hear the loud rumbling nonstop and see what looks like plumes of dust rising from the boulder paths. At night, the boulders and plumes are all glowing red since they are hot lava!! Talk about ideal entertainment for a 6 year old boy! (Cass liked it too!) Periodically there would be a Really loud explosion and a huge plume of smoke would pour out the top, I dont think I would have liked to live there long term!! The kids spent a lot of time in the pool and hot tub with a perfect view of the volcano. They spent so much time in it that Cassidy's hair actually turned green!!

Volcan Arenal is one of the 10 most active volcanos in the world and we feel very fortunate to have seen it. From our rooms deck would sat out in the dark and watched the lava flow. Friday morning, I ran/hiked to Cerro Chato, the crater lake formed in the extinct Volcan Chato then we lucked out and found a taxi from the San Jose airport dropping a fare off at the Lodge so we got a really reasonably cheap taxi to the airport. The trip only took 2.5 hours as opposed to the 5 hour public bus ride we had been looking at. The road was so windy both kids got completely carsick and we had to stop multiple times . Good thing we weren't on a bus!! Flight to Miami was late and immigration took FOREVER so after getting our luggage and renting our car we arrived in our hotel room at 2am!! Toby hadnt slept at all and was totally cheerful and wired and before falling asleeep he sat up and said - mom, can I tell you one more thing? Its 2 in the morning!!"

Last Week in Monteverde

Samara Beach

Our hotel, Lisa's birthday party and boogie boy with the hotel beach in the background.

This weekend we headed to the beach we have been gazing down on for 3 weeks for some sun and surf. Well actually, we look at the Gulf of Nicoya and we were headed down and across the top of the gulf to the Pacific coast of the Nicoya Penninsula beyond. We joined together with another family whose daughters are at the Creativo and who are from CO as well and our teacher friends Kirk and Maury and another intern Lucy for a private busette down there. The CO family´s girls Courtney and Lisa are our kids favorites so that was an added bonus to the trip. We arrived Friday around 4 and went immediately into the water. We were staying atHotel Fenix which is right on the beach south of Samara in Matapalo, a very quiet area. We shared a room with Kirk and Maury that had a pull out couch in the living room and a kitchenette. They were great sports to hang with the whole kid scene and fortunately are naturally early risers too!!

Samara is one of the few beaches on the Nicoya with no rip tides which was huge incentive for us to go there, it is also one of the easiest to get to from Monteverde. The beach isnt gorgeous, it is gray sand instead of white and the water isnt very clear by the beach but who can complain . . . its the beach and the water is warm!!! The waves were small so we didnt bother with a surf lesson but they were perfect for boogie boarding. We were actually getting rides of over 100 feet in shallow water! The kids loved it. Toby could stand at his waist level and join on to the tail end of our rides and still get close to 50 ft of riding in really calm water. Cassidy invented boogie bronc riding which involves sitting astride the boogie board and getting launched into the ends of the waves. She is light enough that she can actually ride them like that!

There was also a pool and lots of hammocks and chairs in the palms between the hotel and water so it was really idyllic and no one got overly sunburned! Cass came down with Toby´s fever Saturday night (Toby had been sick Thurs with a very high fever that was done on Friday) but still played in the water all day sunday with a off and on temp up to 103!! We even went out for dinner thanks to our resident babysitters! Lisa turned 12 on Sunday so we all had a fabulous chocolate cake on the beach before we left. Kids were fabulous in the van too.

All in all a fabulous weekend. And to top it off we returned home to hot water!!!

Here are some other random photos from our Monteverde stay so far. Cassidy with the butterfly she was trying to release at the Mariposario, it liked her pink and wouldnt fly away! The family on horseback on our trip to the hotsprings.

Lots to do here!

This weekend, Jan 11, I went for an early morning hike in the Monteverde Reserve with a new friend from the school, Kirk. Hiked for 3 hours and saw almost every trail there including a beautiful waterfall, the continental divide, great cloud forest habitat, and a Quetzal!! I knew Dave would be totally jealous if his nonbirding spouse got to see one and he didnt so I told it to stay put. The kids and Dave showed up to meet me at 11 and I took them to the same tree right away. Fortunately it was still there so we all got to see it! To hidden and far to get a picture but very cool to see. We also saw a troop of Congo monkeys and a coati mundi. We then did about a 3 mile hike with the kids through the forest which they were totally excited about. There is a hanging bridge that takes you through the upper canopy )see photo) which was really neat for them. Toby is going to work on a blog page about what he has learned about the rain and cloud forests while we are in FL with a quicker internet connection. Stay tuned!

That night we actually got a babysitter, a new student at the school who is from CO and the kids ADORED her! We went out to dinner with Kirk and Maury from school and came home at 8 the kids were rocketing around with her in extremely high spirits. they were having so much fun they forgot to have dessert! which is pretty much unheard of!

The next day we went horseback riding at some friends of Milton´s place down valley somewhat. We rode for an hour down to a natural hot springs they have built up next to a raging river. This time Toby rode with Dave and liked it more. At the end he and Cass both rode a little by themselves and were very proud. It was a steep trail but the horses were strong and knew what they were doing. It was beautiful and very fun. Super nice family. They brought their 5 month old who slept the whole time on the horse and laughed at our kids in the pool. On the way back toby spotted a white faced monkey that then climbed down from its tree and ran across the field which Ive never seen before. Overall very awesome weekend!

Monteverde Week 1 at Creativo

We are volunteering at the Centro de Educacion Creativo or Cloud Forest School a prekinder to 11th grade private bilingual school. The campus is beautiful and has a large swath of protected rainforest. Dave and I are alternating volunteer days and on the days we have our kids we spend a few hours a day with our kids at the school. On my days with T and C we help out in the preK room and do recess with them. In the afternoon we play at home or go into town. When Dave has them on Tues and Thurs they help out with the garden and school trails with Milton, who runs the campus. On our volunteer days we help with tutoring, I do some development work, and we help Milton with reforestation projects or garden work. The other volunteers range from 19 to 27 but most are either in college or taking a gap year. The older ones who are here for at least 3 months help with a specific classroom. The folks here are all very nice and welcome the volunteers gratefully. The students are almost all Ticos and 65% of them are on scholarship. All the classes are taught in english after 3rd grade except high school history and social studies. They operate on a shoestring budget but do it quite well. There library is very lacking so they always welcome donations from the states of books and school supplies.

The kids are generally more wild than schools we are used to in the states but are lots of fun. I went with a class to climb a massive strangler fig tree this morning, the kids went at least 100 feet up!! That would never fly at home would it!! We´ve seen sloths, toucans, coati mundi and white faced monkeys on campus. Very cool.