Coming home

I have been very lucky these past few months because I have had only good stories to tell. Most of what I have written here is about doing a job I love and exploring the beautiful country that was my home this fall. I have left nothing out, because I think the less-glamorous parts of my adventure, like sitting on the floor of a bus or having my shoes walk off in the middle of the night, are what make it memorable and, I hope, entertaining.

What turned out to be the most glamorous part of my trip so far also happened to be the worst part, which led to my early departure. My parents came to visit me last week, after months of planning which involved my mother finally getting her passport in preparation for her first trip outside the US. They had an eventful flight into San Jose, in which the pilot twice tried and failed to land the plane in a dense fog. After the second attempt, the plane was too low on fuel to try again, and they had to fly to Managua, Nicaragua to refuel before the third and, luckily, successful landing. A van took them from the capital to La Fortuna, and I'm sure they felt very much like I did when I made the same harrowing drive almost three months ago. The exhilaration of careening through the foggy mountains at night is only rivaled by the same trip experienced in the daylight-- at night you don't know how very close you are to the mountainside, but during the day you can see every sheer cliff face.

The next morning, they went to Fortuna waterfall, which topped my mom's list of things to see in the Fortuna area. I met them at their hotel that afternoon, and right away things felt different. The hotel was cushy, way outside the traveler's budget I had been living on, and the English-speaking staff and hot showers were a strange but welcome sight. Going into that Americanized place made it clear how long I had really been gone, I was no longer used to starting conversations in English or being able to flush toilet paper (Costa Rica, like many countries, has a wastebasket-only kind of plumbing system). Because they hadn't seen me since I left, my parents could see what I couldn't, how tan I was and how long and light my hair had grown. The 10 weeks I had been there felt like no time at all, but Costa Rica had certainly left its mark on me.

Many buildings in Costa Rica don't have an address. If you want to tell someone where you live or even mail a letter, you have to give them directions from a landmark. Instead of 15 Main St or 123 Drury Lane, your address is 150 meters north of the church or 300 meters south of the park. Our hotel had an address, which made it easier to find. But it also made it easier for bad news to find us.

It's never good when the phone rings in the middle of the night. When the phone in our room started ringing, I thought it must be a wake-up call-- I was used to getting up before the sun was even fully up. But when I heard my dad's sleepy voice grow serious, and saw that it was only 2 a.m., I knew that something was wrong. My cousin was calling from 2,000 miles away to tell us that my uncle had died of a massive heart attack several hours before. Everything that came after the phone call was like a bad dream, even though no one slept that night.

When my dad asked me the next day what I wanted to do, my answer was out of my mouth before my brain even decided: I wanted to go home. If it had happened while my parents weren't with me, I probably would have decided to stay and finish my last two weeks. But as it was, with all of us already together and feeling so much grief, I couldn't imagine having my family leave me and going the next two weeks alone. I wanted to be home to feel security for myself, but mostly I wanted to be there for my mom who had lost her brother, and for the rest our family. Everyone I worked with understood completely. Costa Rica, like the rest of Latin America, is centered around family. They all acknowledged that the work I was doing was important, but it was more important for me to be with my family right now. It is sad but true that things like this bring everyone together; when I went to Pennsylvania for the funeral, I saw people in my family who I hadn't seen in years. It was comforting to know that everyone felt the same way about the importance of being there and being together--now matter how far they had to come or what plans they had to change to do it.

The first few days of being back in the States were strange. It still is, really. The weather was freezing compared to the sunny, humid days I was used to. I left the States in the heat of summer, and the usual cold days of fall never came. I think I expected it to still be summer when I came home, but there was no mistaking the season, if only because of the leaves. I had left a world of green for a world of reds, oranges and yellows. Because there were no crunchy brown leaves on the ground in San Carlos, every time I see one skitter across the ground here, I mistake it for a toad or a lizard, because in Costa Rica, that's what it would be.

Driving on highways, waking up after 6a.m., talking on a cell phone, wearing a sweater--all these things felt odd. I had been torn so suddenly from what I felt was my home, that for my first few days back it seemed like I had never really been there at all. The sight of steeple from the Catholic church in San Carlos, which for the past three months had meant I was home, was gone now, and I felt like I was nowhere. For the first few days I didn't want to see anyone except my family, because they were the reason I was home--really, the reason that I was in this strange limbo that was neither here nor there.

But now that I have been home for 10 days and started to resume some of my routines, the memories of my trip are coming back to me. I feel like I really was there, and I left my indelible mark on Costa Rica just as it left a mark on me. More than my tan, which will fade, and my hair which has already been cut, I am marked by the people I met, the children I taught and adored, the places I saw and feelings I had there, both bad and good. Feelings of being both small and alone in a giant world, but also of being a part of something lasting and intimate. I am home now, but I know I have also left a home behind.

The Land of the Sloth

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for- the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary!
First, a little background on my sloth obsession. I first saw Aviarios a few years ago in a Vimeo video that was making its was around the web and melting hearts one little two-toed beauty at a time.

I'd known about sloths before then (it has surprised me these past few weeks to learn how many people don't even know what a sloth is), but seeing how strange and adorable the babies were had me pretty much obsessed. I watched the video a million times and hoped that someday I might see a sloth in stateside zoo, but I never even dreamed that I would be headed to the site of the famed video to meet those very sloths in person. It was amazing to be in a place that I had idealized for so long, and to fulfill one of my major travel goals for this trip.

As you read in my last post, I got a ride to the sanctuary from a mysterious Tica who appeared in Cahuita and drove us 15 minutes down the road toward Limon. The entrance to the property is in the shadow of a giant prehistoric sloth statue. After our visit, the founder's grandson drove us home, and he told me that everyone thought his grandfather was crazy for wanting to build a 30-foot sloth, but it has actually brought them a lot of business, since it is visible from the road.

Me standing with the slothasaurus.

 Once we arrived, we were the only guests at the sanctuary, so we got our own private tour, which began after a cup of free coffee in the gift shop. The first stop on the tour is Buttercup, the sloth who started it all. The founders of the sanctuary rescued Buttercup in 1992 when a few local girls left the injured sloth in their care. Ever since then, they have taken in more and more sloths, learning from experience the best ways to take care of them and hopefully release them back into the wild. Sloths are put in danger every day when parts of their habitat are cleared to make way for roads or powerlines. Sloths are often hit by cars or electrocuted, leaving many babies without mothers to care for them. Good parenting is very important to a sloth's first year of life- the babies need their mother to show them how to hide from predators, and which foods are good to eat. A mother sloth gives birth to only one baby at a time, and she will carry the baby with her for up to one year until he has learned the way of the sloth.

Buttercup lounging in her throne

Sadly, Buttercup cannot have any babies of her own. She has lived in captivity too long, and would not know how to care for a newborn sloth. But lots of other babies are born in captivity every day. I saw about 10 baby sloths, each one cuter than the last. The three-toed sloths have wiry, mossy hair and flat faces like Buttercup, while the two-toed variety have shorter, softer hair and large, pig-like noses. The two different types of sloths are actually so different in skeletal structure that they really should not even have the same name. The two types are more related to their other relatives the aardvark and the anteater than they are to each other.

Popping out to say hello.

Two-toed sloth getting some exercise.

Three-toed sloth lazing about.

After spending time with the precious babies, we moved on to the area where they keep the adult rescues. There were dozens of sloths, including one wild sloth who was ready to check himself into the sanctuary! They told us that sometimes wild sloths will hear the screaming noise that the females make when they are ready to mate and come into the compound to investigate. That was definitely the case with this little guy, who had the bright markings on the back of his fur which indicate that he is ready to find a mate.

Peeping sloth: a wild male peers into the adult cages. The flies on his fur are attracted to the pheromones given off by the bright patch on his back.

After a short video about the sanctuary, we went to see some two-toed sloths eating lunch. They were laying around in their cages munching on vegetables and leaves, and I even got to feed one!

Feeding time.

If there was ever any doubt that sloths were masters of their domain, check out this guy in the lap of luxury.

The tour ended with a short canal tour, where we saw a lot of beautiful birds and another wild sloth. At first I was a little disappointed that we weren't able to hold any sloths during the tour, but after I thought about it I'm glad that Aviarios is so protective of the animals. You can tell that everyone there--from the short-term volunteers to the owners who moved to Costa Rica for their cause-- really cares about making a better life for these amazing creatures. Local kids who hunt and tease sloths for sport are still a huge problem, and the sanctuary has an education and prevention program where they bring in local kids and teach them about how wonderful sloths are, and then have them sign a pledge saying that they will never hurt a sloth. To learn more about Aviarios, visit their website, and make sure to check out all the pictures of the sloths!

Cahuita: days on the beach, nights in mosquito netting

This weekend, five volunteers and I went to the quiet Caribbean town of Cahuita- home of quiet beaches, the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary, and not much else. But don't let this description fool you into thinking it was a dull weekend, the weather was beautiful and sunny both days, and I finally got the perfectly uninterrupted beach day I've been hoping for for weeks.

Catch of the day: a local fisherman wheels his bounty to market.

The bus ride there was another standing-room-only affair, but I'm more than used to this by now. It just makes sinking onto my lumpy hostel mattress seem even sweeter after those six or seven hours on the road. Our hostel was called Cabinas Atlantic Surf, run by Califonia native Javier and his Tica wife Wendy, both of whom are extremely friendly and accommodating. Their guestbook was filled with enthusiastic comments and letters from past guests, including one Canadian traveler who apparently sent them a bottle of wine as a thank you for "helping me when I fell down and knocked out my teeth." You can't make this stuff up.

My mosquito tent- I wish I had one of these every night.

My weekend thankfully did not include any such mishaps, just lazy days on the beach and a night (or I should say an evening, as I was still in bed by 9:30) out on the town. The beach in Cahuita is very narrow, since it is a wilderness beach. The sand backs right up to the forest, and during high tide there is usually only 10 feet or so of shoreline. The beach is part of a national park run by the people of Cahuita, so they ask for a small donation before you enter the park, and there is always a guard in place to make sure people swim in the assigned areas and don't bother the coral reef (one of only two living reefs in the entire country).

I didn't get to see the reef, since a brief morning rain shower thwarted my Sunday snorkeling plans. But I plan to try again in Manzanillo this weekend. The water was great for swimming, and I got to see a live sand dollar, which is a very strange animal. In life, they are brown and have millions of tiny hairlike "feet" on the bottom. If you watch closely, you can even see them breathe.

The beach at sunrise (on a very cloudy morning).

My other big animal sightings came in the form of two different kinds of monkeys. When Morgan and I got up early to see the sunrise over the ocean, we saw four or five white-faced Capucin monkeys in a tree. When I pointed them out to a fellow sunrise watcher, he seemed unenthusiastic, to say the least. "Yeah, they're cute, but they'll steal your iPod," he cautioned. Duly noted.

Adorable primate, or petty thief?

The second monkey sighting was on the beach later that day, when we followed the sound of howler monkeys into the forest and saw several of them hanging around in the trees. They had woken us up that morning with their howling-- even just a few monkeys can create quite a cacophony.

 But I didn't come to Cahuita to see monkeys- I  was there to see sloths! The sloth sanctuary was only 10km from our hostel, so we decided to take a taxi there. Unfortunately, there were none to be found. We enlisted the help of a friendly drug dealer (everyone in Cahuita will try to sell you either marijuana or a fish, maybe both), and inadvertently started a contest between him and another not-so-friendly drug dealer over who could find us a cab the quickest. The not-so-friendly won the race, and came down the street shouting that he had found us a ride. His jeans and dirty denim shirt were soaked with sweat, and his eyes were rolling around sightlessly in their sockets, probably because of the half-empty bottle of vodka he was clutching. I thought there was no way I was going to take any ride that this guy found me. Until a tiny woman pulled up in a surprisingly clean silver SVU. I figured the three of us could take her in a fight, so we climbed into her car and agreed to pay her $10 for the ride. I don't know who this woman was, but there were at least four cheap bottles of booze (in varying states of emptiness) rolling around on floor of the car as she sped along the highway, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel along with the beat of the merengue on the radio. The drive turned out to be surprisingly uneventful, and we were at Aviarios within 20 minutes.


And that is a story for another post (you didn't think I was going to give up the sloths that easily, did you?) Until next time...

"I can hardly stand the suspense!"