This is Carlos, our tour guide. Apparently, he was kidnapped by Sandinistas and held for something like 8 years before he managed to escape to Costa Rica. Now he has 7 kids and a farm and gives tours of the jungle. I am not making this up. He didn't speak much English, but we managed to communicate okay. He'd point to something and speak in Spanish, then we'd look up and see tree sloths and be like, "Oh! Tree sloths!" and he'd say, "Si. Tree sloths." It all worked out.
Speaking of tree sloths, those guys were everywhere, but we never managed to spot one until it was pointed out to us. Carlos would point to a tree and go on in Spanish and then we'd look and look and not see anything and he'd go on and on and motion and talk and finally, four days later, we'd see something and be amazed. He really knew the place.He was also not afraid of touching the poison dart frogs, which excrete a poison when nervous. Apparently just touching them is enough to kill you, according to Garfield, our host. Even though the one in the picture is on a leaf, Carlos picked up a couple with his own bare hands and let us get a good look. They were pretty... PRETTY DEADLY. HA HA HA.
So, I still haven't shown you any pictures of the actual jungle. Well, here you go. And here's one taken from the boat.These are some pictures of the lodge we stayed at.
Check out this huge leaf. Clearly, jungle-caliber.Oh, something else about Carlos that I forgot to mention in the paragraph above. So, it's raining constantly in this jungle and we're all decked out in raincoats and hats and boots and he's just kinda tromping along in a t-shirt and jeans. Then he breaks off this big leaf and holds it over his head to shelter himself from the rain. I'm thinking, "Oh, yeah, that's real cute, Carlos. Show us your jungle ways." But then, the thing is, he didn't get wet at all from the rain. It actually worked. I was amazed. He wasn't just showing off. Of course, I didn't take a picture, either. Duh.
This is one of the crocodiles we saw from the boat.Here are a couple shots of the Nicaraguan checkpoint we had to pass through to get to the river we used to get to the lagoon. There were about 4-5 soldiers at it, and all they did was sit there and wait for people to come by. I suspect they saw a couple people a day, if that many.
Monkeys! Monkeys! Monkeys! Yeah, I know that they might as well be dark jellybeans in those pictures. Sigh.Here are a couple pictures of the scorpion we found in our room. I never knew they moved so quickly. It was only a couple inches big.
We got on and off the boat in Puerto Viejo. Here are some pictures from there. This was also there and kind of funny.More shots of the forest and one from the drive to Puerto Viejo.
Cool shot of a tree and one of a river going through the rainforest.Here is the driver of our boat, Luis (on the right, driving!). He spoke no English, was unwilling to, didn't talk much in the first place and he loved his boat. He ruled. There were a lot of logs and driftwood in the river on the days that we travelled to and from the lagoon, so his job was particularly difficult. At first, I was kind of disappointed that that picture was of the back of his head, but it seems appropriate as that what we usually saw of him.
Shot of San Jose, capital of Costa Rica.This river frequently runs yellow due to the sulfur in it, which comes from the volcano it runs off of. It definitely had a yellow tint, but Hartmut, our driver, said he had seen it much worse. That's a terrible picture, though. It rained hard constantly there, much in line with its status of "rainforest."
This is a moth that Pearl, our cook, brought to show us on our final morning.Finally, some pictures of your gracious host. The first is me on the beach facing the Caribbean Sea, while this is me on a river in Nicaragua. I guess I'm trying to look stoic or something.
Just added a couple more: close-up of a monkey and a close-up of me with gangly hair. Please don't get them confused.
