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!"

Back to the Big Blue

This weekend I took the long-awaited trip to Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast. Many Tico travel agents (and roadside touts) will tell you that it's difficult to get there on your own, and try to sell you a package for a three-day tour with transportation.  I'm sure these tours are nice, but they can be a little pricey, and we only had two days to make the journey.

Morgan and I made this trip alone, since the new volunteers went to Jaco for the weekend and she and I have been talking about catching the end of turtle season for quite some time. We had also made plans to meet up with our friend Lucy from the CCS house, who had left to travel on her own after four weeks.

The day started out promising- we made it to San Jose in two and half hours (a new record) and were in Cariari by 7:30 Friday night. Cariari is what Lonely Planet describes as a "rough-neck banana town,"which is about as accurate a description as they come. Besides banana plantations, the town is really only known for being a stop-over point for people on their way to Tortuguero.

The only real hotel in Cariari is called Hotel Tortuguero Central, run by the extremely friendly and helpful Patricia (aka the Mama of Cariari). When I read she was called the Mama of Cariari, I was expecting a jolly, Afro-Caribbean woman in a bright patterned dress, so I was surprised when we were greeted by a delicate, soft-spoken woman in a beige cardigan. Patricia met our taxi at the front of the hotel (in its new location by the college futbol field) and offered to drive us to a place we could get some dinner. Driving down the road, I could see why she didn't want us walking-- this was definitely not a tourist town. She dropped us in front of a restaurant and twice reminded us to make sure we got a cab back to the hotel. There was no English spoken (or written on menus), but we managed to order some good food and get our waiter to put some post-season baseball on the TV. Around 9pm it was back to the hotel for a quick, cold shower and early bedtime, so we could catch a 6am bus to Pavona.

Patricia saw us off from the bus stop, and we were off to Pavona right on schedule (ten minutes late, as per Tico Time). From Pavona, we took a boat down the river to Tortuguero Village. Right as we were pulling into the dock, Morgan pointed out a blond girl pulling up in another boat. As luck would have it, it was Lucy! She showed us around town and we checked into the hostel where she was staying (Balcon del Mar, well worth the $7 a night, with a very friendly staff and a five second walk to the beach). We dropped our stuff in the room and went straight to the beach to enjoy the sunny weather and calm waves.

Lucy told us she had seen baby sea turtles around sunset the night before, so we returned to the beach around 4:30 to troll the shore for new hatchlings. We saw newly turned nests with pieces of egg shells, and tracks leading to the water, but no turtles were in sight. Just as we were about to give up, Morgan followed a stray dog up a dune and yelled for us to follow. The dog had already made off with one baby turtle before she shooed it away and we saw that there were many more in the nest! We didn't know what we could do, since touching the turtles is illegal, but luckily a guide showed up out of nowhere (I think six out of ten people in Tortuguero are guides). He dug through the nest and found that many of the turtles were already dead, but there were at least 10 still alive. He told us to help carry them to the water, so we put them in our hands and brought them to the shore.

Baby turtles in the nest.

I had been worried I wouldn't even see any turtles, but there I was, holding them and helping them finish their journey back to the ocean. They were amazingly fast once I set them down, and they knew how to swim even though they had hatched only hours before. After a while, more people saw what we were doing, and flocked to see the turtles. But it was pretty amazing knowing that I was the first to see them--I felt like they were my turtles! Once they all made it into the sea, the guide said to us, "I'm so glad you were here. Thank you for helping save these turtles." Anytime, turtle guy.

Marveling at the little miracle.

Setting the little guy free.

 

 

 

We went for one last swim at sunset, still on a natural high from the surreal turtle-saving experience. We decided that even if we didn't see any mother turtles on the nighttime turtle walk, this had still been one of the best days of our lives. But we got truly lucky around 11pm that night when we got to see a turtle laying her eggs in the sand. After a very long wait, during which I accumulated more bug bites than I can count, the guide brought us onto the beach to watch the mother turtle fill a hole in the send with over 100 round, white eggs. She was there for almost an hour, popping out these glistening ping-pong balls, before she covered them up and made her slow trek back to the sea.

It is amazing to think that something as small as a baby turtle will become so big--the mother was over three feet long, and from the looks of her, very heavy. It's also disheartening to think that in 10 years, the turtle walk might not be allowed anymore. More and more people seem to come every year, and the sad truth is that the more people there are, the more likely it is that someone will try to exploit these amazing animals. Turtle eggs are very valuable, and even though it was wonderful to touch the turtles, it's something that should not be done unless absolutely necessary (as it was that day). It seems that the more people appreciate something, the more we have to appreciate it from afar. The same way you used to be able to go inside some of the Egyptian pyramids, that option is gone now, in part because of too much foot traffic and other human-related dangers. I'm so glad I got to see it in my lifetime.

Sunday morning, we went on a 5:30 canoe tour of the river, where we saw three kinds of monkeys (howler, spider and capuchin), cayman, Jesus Christ lizards and green macaws. After a big breakfast and a little more beach time, it was time to take our three buses and one boat back to San Carlos. The whole way home, I thought about turtles.

Next weekend: Cahuita and the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary!!

Too far afield (trip)

Today I got to take a day off from work to go on a field trip with some of the students from the English class where I sometimes help out. Most of the students are around my age, and they love to have native English speakers to chat with. Sometimes they ask me questions about what words mean, or how to translate a phrase (today's highlights: an in-depth analysis of the phrase "sold me down the river" and a long search for a synonym for the word "bowels"), but mostly they just like to talk about their families and friends and ask me about mine.


I got up around 5:30am to leave at 6:30 and meet the class at their school. Tuesday was their last day of class, after studying English together for over a year. We took a van to an ecological site about 10 minutes outside of Ciudad Quesada, where the first thing I noticed was a pond full of fish. Someone asked me what kind of fish they were, and told me the Spanish name for them was trucha. I guessed that they were trout, and luckily Google tells me that I am correct in that assumption. Glad that I did not spread misinformation about fish (fishinformation?) to the whole class.

I was told that there would be lunch on the field trip, but I was not aware that these fish were it. And that we had to catch them. So with a hunk of plantain hooked onto the end of a fishing line, I attempted to reel in some lunch. It took a few attempts to finally bring one up, but I caught a fish! And as soon as I brought the line up, it made a break for it and jumped onto the ground. As weird as it is, fishing for your lunch at 8am, it is definitely weirder to have to pick up a flapping fish off the ground, only to throw it into a sink and watch a surly Tico wearing rubber boots and machete in holster on his belt unceremoniously tear its head off. I now have the happy task of trying to scrub fish blood out of my white t-shirt.

Optimistic.

Reeling one in.

Looking like a fool with my fish on the ground.

Got him!

After a very exciting morning, we segued into a very tedious hike, where the surly Tico stopped us every few meters to tell us about a different leaf. We passed a mine cut into the rocks, and when he handed me a flashlight and told me to go inside, I followed orders. I was just starting to wonder whether or not there might be bats in the cave, when the beam of my flashlight fell on a spider the size of a small dog. At home, I'm not usually one to cower in fear over a spider, but when I saw this sucker, I'm pretty sure my life flashed before my eyes (this is the second time a bug has made me scream here; a cockroach hissed at me in the shower the other day) . I saw a few of its friends skittering along the walls as I ran out of the cave, dragging several confused and panicked people in my wake. After a few braver souls went in to check it out, I saw a bat fly over their heads and out of the cave. I was still more afraid of the spiders.

A much braver soul than I managed to snap this picture of the cave-dweller. I feel completely justified in my fear.

I was glad when we walked away from the Spider Caverns, but I don't think any of us were prepared for the six hour hike that followed. Luckily, it only rained a little, and we got to take in some beautiful views.

Along the way, I talked with Carlos, a 19-year-old student who told me he hopes to use his English to become a tour guide because he loves meeting people from other countries. "If someone knows English, I just want to talk to them," he said. Carlos told me several times that he was glad we came on the trip, "because without you it would be very boring." That alone made me glad I went. He had a lot of questions about different words, and kept reminding me to correct him if he pronounced something wrong. He said to me "I think you are a very nice person. Some people I meet, they seem very proud, just because they have money. Even if I had a lot of money, I would still be the same. I think you are that way, too." It made me feel somehow guilty that when he talked about people being proud just because they have money, I knew he meant Americans. Most of the Ticos I talk to haven't had the chance to travel around their own country, because they don't have the money. But it made me feel good that he doesn't see me as privileged, even though he knows I've been traveling. It was also amazing to me that he had only been studying English for a short time, but his words could be that heartfelt and nuanced. I hope my Spanish will one day be that good.

After the hike, we returned to the pond, where our fish were waiting for us, looking not that much different from the way we left them. Just frozen in a sort of surreal, crunchy tableau. There were lots of little bones, but it was definitely fresh. And there was yucca frita and arroz con leche (best foods ever).

Trucha tableau.

The rest of the afternoon, we hung around on the porch to stay out of the rain, playing card games and talking. I went home with severely muddy hiking boots, the aforementioned bloody t-shirt and the e-mail addresses of some new friends.

Monkey business (and the dealings of sloths)

If I may refute a popular saying, sometimes it is not about the journey, it's all about the destination. Getting there may be harrying, hellish and all-around disheartening, but once you make it to that dreamed-of place, it's all worth it.

This weekend's destination was Manuel Antonio, on Costa Rica's Pacific coast. The day started without much promise-- hazy and gray, with a rain that never let up. Making it to the San Carlos bus terminal on time seemed to be a good omen, but the ride to San Jose took longer than expected (as per usual), and we were late getting into the terminal. The North Atlantic Terminal. And our next bus was due to leave from the Coca-Cola Terminal in ten minutes. We asked a cab driver and he said it was a few blocks away and pointed us in the right direction. So we ran.  And got there just in time to see our bus pull away without us on it.

A cab driver told us the next bus to Quepos wasn't for two hours, but he could take us to catch up with the bus at its next stop. So in one regulation red cab and one suspiciously unmarked (except for several Jesus fish) white sedan, we sped after the  recently departed bus. It was like a chase scene in a movie--honking horns, frantic cell-phone screaming, collisions avoided by mere inches. The driver told us we were looking for a white bus, and when he pulled off onto a side street he said something quickly in Spanish that sounded a lot like, "you can make it if you run." So we ran. Maybe an eighth of a mile, during which my backpack came open and spilled its guts onto the side of the busy highway. So when I finally reached the bus I was panting, sweaty and clutching my open bag (thankfully with all my things back inside--minus a can of bug spray, the only casualty). But I was so glad to be on that bus that I didn't even mind not having a seat. For nearly six hours I sat on the steps between the door and the driver, hopping up every time another person came on or off the bus. It was wet and it was cramped, but we were on our way!

Co-piloting the bus to Quepos.

 And when we finally arrived, everything fell into place. The hostel had miraculously saved the reservation I had sent them by e-mail a week before, and we made it to the sushi place in town (the promise of which had kept many of us hopeful and salivating for the entire journey) just minutes before closing time. The taste of tropical rolls (crab, eel sauce, avocado and fried banana) and a cold beer is truly the taste of victory.

My survival instincts got the better of my journalism instincts for a while, but I was able to snap a picture of the tropical roll before I ate the whole thing. 

The next day I slept in until 8am before grabbing some free breakfast at the hostel (Wide Mouth Frog in Quepos, highly recommended for friendliness and cleanliness, but the location leaves something to be desired) and taking the bus to Manuel Antonio National Park. Ten dollars gave us access to the park's hiking trails, which lead up to several small beaches. A guide told us that we had arrived just in time, since most of the wildlife begin their day around 9am.

Within just a few minutes of walking down the path, I saw a guide and a few tourists stopped at the edge of the trees, looking down into the jungle at something. It took a while to spot it, but then I saw my first Capuchin monkey, with its little white face peeking out from behind the leaves.

Capuchin monkey, jumping from tree to tree.

 

 

A few more animal sightings later (iguana, tree frog and one very bold raccoon) and we were at the beach. The first thing I noticed was the blue ocean and white sand. Then I saw all the monkeys.


Spotting monkeys in the jungle had been a challenge, but here on the beach they were everywhere! In the trees, on the sand, climbing on garbage bins. It's a sad truth that they only come so close to humans because people continue to feed them (for a list of the important reasons NOT to feed the monkeys, please click here), but it was still amazing to see so many monkeys up close.

One angry monkey.

Little did I know, I would be able to get much closer to a monkey than this.

Mother with a tiny baby riding on her back. The baby was fast asleep the whole time!

After watching the monkeys and taking a million pictures, I finally went for a swim in the ocean. Which was quickly interrupted when I noticed a raccoon had stolen my shorts from on top of my towel. I ran up the beach just in time to shoo him away and watch him drop my shorts from his tiny paws. Later that day, my friend literally played a game of tug-of-war with a raccoon over her purse, and had a monkey steal her bag of trail mix while we were busy climbing a tree in search of crabs and lizards (which we found).

One bold monkey, chowing down on some pilfered raisins and peanuts.

Curious hermit crab, checking out its surroundings. 

Then, on our way out of the park, I had possibly the most exciting animal sighting yet. After six weeks in Costa Rica, I finally saw my first sloth! It was every bit as slow, mossy and majestic as I imagined it would be.

A beautiful sloth specimen. In Costa Rica, they are called perezosos, which literally means "lazies."

After the sloth sighting, I thought it couldn't get any better, but then we went to dinner in a bar housed inside of an old army transport plane, which was "shot down by the Sandinista army, leading to a scandal that uncovered illegal CIA supply missions to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua" (Frommer's). We had heard it was a great place to see the sunset, but the hazy, blank sky meant no pinks or oranges in sight. The view was still breathtaking. Staring out into the unbelievable depth of that nothingness, the sky was absolutely white--like the perfect inverse of outer-space.

Standing outside El Avion.

Coming out of the plane that night, I couldn't imagine anything that could improve upon what had definitely been one of my best days in Costa Rica . Then some people on the street pointed out a sloth hanging from a wire above our heads. For a while I couldn't believe it was real, but then I remembered that everything in Costa Rica really is pura vida.

Urban sloth, swinging from the power lines.

Wet Paint

Another volunteer came to join me at Llevando Luz this week, so I was finally able to paint the mural Dona Karen had requested when I started my placement. It only took me two days, which is a good thing since the kids couldn't play outside while I was painting, and having them cooped up inside makes them restless.

Most of the time I was working, they all crowded around the gate to the patio and watched, asking me to add different animals. I had them come out one by one to add their hand prints, which made up the flowers. Karen's son, Sami, who was my assistant through the whole project, left his mark as well.

Hand prints are pretty much a universal theme in volunteer work, and it's no wonder. They say, quite literally, "I was here, I helped, I got my hands dirty."

Banner in the Library of Hope at the school where I volunteered in Sohag, Egypt in 2009.

Hand print leaves at Llevando Luz.

I had really wanted to paint the mural inside the house, where there is a bare concrete wall, but during the green season it's just too damp to paint inside (and somehow I doubt that even the dry season is really that dry). I think it turned out pretty well, though. Eventually I'm going to add some paintings on the floor, with hopscotch or four square patterns that the kids can use when they play outside.