Kayaking at Arenal Volcano

On March 2, it dawned bright and sunny. Our local friend Jeff called to ask if we wanted to go out with him in his kayaks at the Lake Arenal dam, just at the foot of Arenal Volcano. We jumped at this chance, and soon were winding our way along the lake in a clear blue sky toward the put-in point.

As we were unloading and sorting out the kayaks, the volcano gave a big boom and erupted with a cloud of smoke and ash hundreds of feet into the sky. We were several kilometers away, but we still kept our eye on this mountain during our paddle!

We paddled in and out of little quiet coves with draping jungle right to the water's edge. Cormorant-like Anhingas and Great White Egrets were all along the shoreline. No monkeys on this trip, but Jeff said they are common. There are recent rumours of crocodiles sighted in Lake Arenal (supposed pets that have been released), but no bug eyes breaking the surface on our trip.

It was a spectacular day, and even though we loaded on the sun screen, I got a slight burn on one leg. The sun is nothing to trifle with at these latitudes.

All in all a great outing and wonderful geologic interlude!

Arenal volcano erupting at the start of our kayak trip

On Lake Arenal with volcano in background. Smoke from eruption drifting to the right.

Giant green wasp

The other night, Janet noticed this guy on the inside of our patio glass door. We caught him in a glass and got some photos before releasing to the night. Giant wasp-like creature, with irridescent green all over body and legs. No idea what he was, but he was mad! I wouldn't want a hive of them after me...

Scorpion in the laundry

Here is another movie idea - scorpions in the laundry. But, heck, after Snakes on a Plane (2006 horror film), this seems pretty tame. Still, when Janet saw movement in the laundry basket and uncovered this little honey, we have been shaking out our clothes even MORE than before...


No stings this time, and we released this juvenile into the outside hedge to find a normal place to live.


Having learned that scorpions commonly come in pairs, we looked and looked, but no partner. Whew!

Pizote - bandit of the forest

An elegant racoon-like forager, Nasua narica (White-nosed Coati, local name "pizote"), browses the forest floor and margins of open areas. This chap has become a regular visitor, during the afternoons and at dusk. He moves with slow steady walk, and seems cautious, but not overly afraid of humans. Pizotes commonly form packs of up to 20 or more, and commonly stop on roadsides to be fed by tourist minibuses.

We have developed a love-hate relationship. We like him and he is a pleasant and quiet visitor, but he climbs on the bird feeders and knocks them down. But, easy enough to set up again. Everyone has to eat...

Ambling in for a look-see

Close up. Racoon-like paws (sharp claws!), long padded back feet (slippers), and 3/4 inch long incisor teeth (like a cat). Long nose for sniffing and rooting out goodies.

Close up at dusk. He tolerates close up photos.










Initial response - Growling and chasing with broom (Janet is doing the growling...)







Reconcilliation - now we're all friends.

Janet's Birds

Janet had an idea to put fruit on tips of branches of broken limbs, placed at the edge of our patio as a bird feeder. This plus a non-stop supply of sugar water in the hummingbird feeder has been a big hit with the local bird life (plus squirrels, lizards, a coati mundi ("pizote") and a possum).


The hummingbird feeder attracts many other thin-beaked small birds (brilliant dark blue and azure Red-legged Honeycreepers; the turquoise green and black headed Green Honeycreeper), as well as Hoffman's woodpeckers.


The brilliant yellow and dark royal blue Euphonias are the bold little fellows that come immediately followed by clay-coloured robins (CR national bird), grackles, a kiskadee, blue-gray tanagers, and a couple of aricaris (smallish toucan-like birds).


The highlight is feeding pieces of banana by hand to the aricaris. On slow approach, they cock their head, extend their neck and take banana with their ragged beak, then turn and zoom off to sit in a tree and lift up their beak and drop the banana into their throats.


With all the frenzied activity, a wall of small animals, it looks just like a Disney movie. All they need to do is start to sing and dance in unison to make it complete.


Now the Kiskadee squawks expectantly at 6:30 am, demanding more banana!

Euphonias

Aricaris

Aricari eating papaya on patio

Attack of the Foam!

This could be a plot idea for a grade-B sci fi movie, but I think it is taken - yes, The Fog has already been made (a 1980 so-so thriller from John Carpenter), where a sinister white drifting substance envelopes people and they begin to drop off in gruesome ways.


In our version (based on a true story), a happy, unsuspecting woman (played by Janet) puts a load of laundry in the automatic washer and a normal amount of laundry soap. She returns to the laundry room shortly after and with a shout of utter terror, sees water on the floor and oozing white foam emanating from the wall!! Now THAT is a plot twist. She calls her husband (played by Scott) and together they do battle with the oozing malevolent white substance that seems to know no end. Out it pours, forming a growing white mound creeping for the door... With broom, bucket, rags, with bare hands, they battle for minute after minute... until the tide slowly turns and the foam is beaten back and recedes into its lair of pipes mysteriously plumbed in this house....


Well, OK, maybe not a killer idea for a box office hit. But, it happened to us!


Our laundry room was originally meant to have a utility sink, but it was never put in. The drain pipe intended for the sink was just taped over, and this was joined to the drain from the washer. There was a blockage in the overall drainage outside. The water here is extremely soft, so a little detergent makes mountains of foam. Join these together and you have a recipe for danger! The laundry discharge built up behind the blockage and the foam pressure burst through the tape, oozing out of the wall (see stills from the movie trailer below).


We have now fixed the blockage and use much less soap. Life has returned to normal in our pleasant town (until the next visit of The Foam!!!)







Foam oozing out of wall ready to swallow up unsuspecting laundry users

Close up of The Foam, before our frontal attack. It was touch and go for whole minutes. There was talk of evacuation, but we kept at it and beat it back!

Wasn't It a Mighty Time!

On Sep 8, 1900, a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 217 km/hr struck the Gulf Coast of Texas at Galveston. In the ensuing storm and flood, between 6,000 and 12,000 people perished. Out of this disaster came several songs in folklore. One of these, The Galveston Flood, has the refrain:


"Wasn't it a mighty time;

When the storm winds struck our town!"


Well, on Jan 10, 2010, a wind storm of mythic proportions swept over Poas volcano from the north and slammed the ridges above Grecia, where we live. All day and all night, great curtains of rain and mist swept down the slopes, twisting, turning, lifting, spinning and spiralling down on us. Our two storey wooden cabina has a metal roof and stands just on the lee side of a grove of 100 foot pine trees. As the wind storm intensified, a hail of pine needles, pine cones, twigs and branches rattled down on our roof with the explosiveness of gunshots. After a few minutes in our upstairs bedroom, we opted to move to the downstairs bedroom, with an earth enbankment outside our window and an extra floor between us and potentially falling limbs, or even trees. The staccato of gunfire on our roof continued while the moaning roar of the disconsolate wind made the tree tops dance.

In the morning, the storm continued and during breakfast we heard a great crashing whump! Outside our side window, a 40 foot tree top sheared its way down from above and landed, neatly, parallel to our side veranda. A near miss.










When the storm let up, our yard was littered with boughs, limbs, cones, pine needle bunches and branches of all sizes. A major cleanup is to follow, after these January winds stop - which may be another week or so! All is not sunshine and tranquillity in the tropics.

Poas - the slumbering giant

On a recent morning trip to Poas Volcano with friends Sally and Joan, we encountered good weather. We viewed the main crater and saw clouds and fog approaching from the north, so scooted over to a lake filling a dormant crater several hundred meters away. It was a fine trip and very interesting gnarled high-altitude plants (11,000 ft + elevation).


We were a few days early of a mild gas eruption on Christmas day, that sent steam, gas, rocks and dust towering 2,000 feet above the main crater. Fortunately, this fell straight back down, as the viewing platform (see bottom photo) is not far from the active vent. That would have been a thrilling geologic interlude, for sure...


It's easy to forget that central CR is on an active tectonic plate margin, with fairly regular and recent volcanism. Poas is truly a slumbering giant. I'd not like to be close when he wakes up.

Pathway in Poas National Park

Rubber tree plants over 30 ft high

Overarching tough springy vegetation. These plants reminded us of windblown tuckamore along the coasts of Newfoundland

Lake in dormant side crater.

Main crater with hot lake and steam vent (from viewing platform). Thick forest on far side shows there have not been very recent eruptions.

Detail of steam and gas vent. Some of this gas is SO2, which on calm days sinks down into river ravines along the flanks of Poas and can give a rotten egg smell kilometers away.

Elle and Janet at active Poas crater.

Christmas Tamale

Christmas Eve is a big day in Costa Rica. Most families gather and eat mountains of food and exchange small gifts back and forth. Several generations all in the yard, talking, laughing, playing, singing - an easy relaxed fiesta.


Each family has a secret recipe for the "best" tamales, which are cornmeal, rice, vegetables and meat, wrapped in banana leaves and boiled. These are quick, cheap and filling. Unwrap the leaf, and you have an instant plate on your lap.


Our Tico neighbours across the road (Eli and Brigita) arrived at our front gate at 6:30 am on Christmas eve with a seasonal gift - two homemade tamales for us. Fortunately, we were up already and both came out for smiles, handshakes, cheek kisses and Feliz Navidad. While tamales are not for everyone, this was sure a nice thing to share with us.

Still warm from cooking, delivered by our neighbours at 6:30 am

Chalet Nicholas at Nuevo Arenal

Here are some photos of our recent stays at a fabulous B&B in Nuevo Arenal - Chalet Nicholas. Run by ex-New Yorkers Cathy and John Nicholas, and their three Great Danes (Minnie, Muki and Marty). This is an excellent pick and highly recommended.

Chalet Nicholas from front yard

Oropendula nest - a beautiful pocket of twigs woven together with entry hole near top. These sway in the wind from tree branches, and are used by birds only once.

Marty (brown) and Minnie (black) "sitting" on Janet's lap. As puppies, they liked sitting on laps, so just continued as they got larger. At 150 lbs. however, they should be issued back-up signals like heavy equipment.

John Nicholas showing span of buttress roots on tropical hardwood trees in tropical forest reserve behind his house.

Strangler fig wrapped around a now-dead branch. On a subsequent visit, we saw just this corkscrew vine, with the inner branch completely gone.

Elle completely under a gap in a buttress root during forest walk. Bamboo walking sticks are for stability and to poke ahead in likely snake areas.

Lake Arenal from public beach and slipway at Nuevo Arenal. Canoeing anyone? Down the lake are persistent high winds giving some of world's best wind-surfing areas.

Hanging Bridges

Some pictures from recent trip to Hanging Bridges, near Lake Arenal dam.

The Tale of Many-Legs and Sharp-Tail

There are many wonderful and outlandish insects in the tropics. Some you've heard of but never seen so big, some have yet to be named and fully described, others you've heard of but didn't want to encounter. This is a tale from the last category.

One night Janet, I and daughter Elle were relaxing on our sectional sofa watching a DVD movie. This sofa is a brown plush sectional with large, overstuffed pillows along the back and sides. Suddenly, Elle announces "Oh, I just got a sharp pain in my backl" We investigated to find two small red puncture marks about 1/4 inch apart on her lower back. This indeed looked like a bite! At this point it was movie off and emergency response. Janet whipped off the sofa cushions and there we found a fine squiggling 15 cm specimen of a Costa Rican centipede like this one:

We captured him (her?) in a dust pan and put him in a plastic baggie. After applying insect sting liquid and looking on the internet, we found these guys are carnivorous and have a mild toxic sting, somewhat like a wasp, but not deadly. Elle felt an initial sting that went away after a short time, with no side effects. We deposited him outside in the shrubs to hunt for prey more his size. After a THOROUGH search and no more such visitors, and Elle wrapping up in a thick (insect-bite-proof) blanket, we resumed the movie. Funny, I have forgotten the title...

Onward to CCE (creepy crawly encounter) no.2. While on a trip to Samara on the Pacific coast over Christmas with Elle, Janet's daughter, Andrea and boyfriend Mike, Elle was feasted on again. This time in the middle of the night, while putting on a Tshirt that had been lying on the floor, she was stung on the index finger by a teen-age Centruroides limbatus (scorpion).

Jerking her hand from the sting, she launched the scorpion onto the bathroom counter. Gathering herself, she came to the door of the adjoining bedroom where Janet and I were sleeping and (more calmly than I would) announced "Dad, I've just been stung by a scorpion." An initial thought was "well, the only thing left is a snake..." All hands were soon up. I put on more insect sting ointment while the others pursued the scorpion and Mike captured it in the bathroom. After a photo in a drinking glass, Mike gallantly took glass and scorpion out of the room, across the courtyard, out of the hotel, across the street, to release it in bushes near the beach. Later internet search shows that scorpions in CR can give a painful sting, but not deadly. They also commonly come in pairs, though we never found the other one. After a couple of days, the little red sting spot was gone from Elle's finger, leaving no lasting souvenir. This encounter reinforces a good practice of always shaking out clothes and knocking out shoes in the tropics, especially anything that has been on the floor.