Canopy Tour Anyone?!

Let's go on a canopy.  It may be a quick one because we are about to go on another adventure to a VOLCANO!!!  But first lets not down play the amaziness of the canopy tour.
Strap on some adventure boots and lets head out!

So first we got on all our gear to go zip lining through the rain forest canopy!  Zip lining is when you get strapped to a cable between two trees and FLY!!!  It was so much fun.

Can you see Sief on this cable coming towards me?

Maybe now?!

You can't see any animals flying through the trees, but it does make you feel like a bird.  The tour we went with had a couple of other adventure things, such as the Tarzan Swing.  Which sounds cool, right?  WRONG! Haha no it was cool, but it freaked me out.  They put you at the top of a platform clip you in at your waist, hand you the rope and shove you off the platform.  There is a free fall before the rope catches you and you swing out.  I was totally freaked out by this one and was big time scared.  Hopefully the video below works!

And the grande finale of the day was SUPERMAN!!  We got to fly like superman for a kilometer over the rainforest.  It was the coolest thing ever.  I could look down and see my tiny shadow floating across the canopy below.  One of our friends took a video while flying.  When I get it I'll be sure to post more pictures.



I have more cool pics to post, but I have to run, Sief is telling me I'm going to make us late for our next adventure!!!  byeeeeee

Green Challenge #7 and Monteverde Part 1

Green Challenge #7:  No more gum in those plastic packages! 
Ok, so this is sort of a wussy challenge, but I've been busy and some changes I plan to make can't happen while in Costa Rica.  So.....for now here's a relatively easy one.  You know those packages like Eclipse that have the flat cardboard with plastic inside, I'm giving up that kind of gum.  It's just more plastic and ends up in the landfills and eventually scattered all over the world!  I'll explain more on that later once I'm back in the states!

Now on to the fun stuff:
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Monteverde

This past weekend, we made a trip to the rainforest and had one of the BEST weekends of my entire life.  Please, come take the trip with me.
We started the trip with a walk and tour at the floor of the rainforest.  We went on a hunt for animals and just to take in the beauty of the trees and vegetation!  It was absolutely amazing!  The clean air and the wind would make all of the leaves dance in unison.  The sounds were so calming.
We saw an agouti which is in the rat family, a few squirrels, a salamander, and a couple of birds on our walk through the rainforest.

The trees were almost always covered in vines and the branches were like window sill pots lined with plants.  The plants that grow on the branches of the trees are called epiphytes.  Epiphytes are a type of plant that grown on another plan non-parasitcially.  These plants derive their nutrients from the air, rain, and sometimes from debris that accumulate around or in them.

Nature's swing set!

 Much of the tour was spent on hanging bridges, high above the ground.  This offered us a view from above to better see birds and look down at some of the animals below.

One of my favorite views of the day!

This tree is hundreds of years in the making!  Can you see the weird lattice type work that appears in the trunk above?  This tree is actually hollow in the middle!  Wait? What?  How does that happen?  Well many many years ago a monkey was sitting on a tree eating or something when it pooped or a bird.  This poop fell down and landed on a branch.  Within the monkey's feces was a seed of a plant called a strangling fig.  This strangling fig germinated and started growing.  The fig sent down roots from the branch.  Those roots eventually hit the ground and took hold.  Over hundreds of years those roots solidifed and grew together and formed the tree you see above.  The strangling fig eventually cuts off nutrients to the tree upon which it started it's life and the original tree eventually decomposes and leaves a hollow tree!

                                               

And what better thing to do with a hollow tree than to climb it!  It's helps when guides before us have placed nice rope steps within the tree.

Peek-a-Boo!

Coming up next on our Monteverde adventure is a Canopy Tour!!!!!!!!

A Day Late Again!

I think my green challenges should be posted on Monday's while I'm in Costa Rica.  I will get back to my Sunday schedule once I'm back in the states.  I just got back to San Jose after a 5 hour bus ride from Monteverde.  To say the least, I'm a bit exhausted.  Sief and I along with a few of our classmates had an AWESOME!!! weekend.  I cannot wait to share it with you, but....you'll have to wait until tomorrow.  There is so much to share I'll most likely give you pieces of my weekend day by day.  I look forward to choosing amongst my 240 something pictures I took this weekend to post on my blog.  I promise it will be worth the wait!

Green Challenge #6 and Puerto Viejo

Green Challenge #6:  Eating only local fruits and vegetables!

I think this is going to be one of the hardest changes I am going to make.  While in Costa Rica this change will be easy, because I am surrounded by wonderfully delicious fruit and fresh fruit juice.  Pinapples, watermeleon, cantelope, pineapples, bananas, plantains, mangos, etc.  I am going to have to learn to hit up the local farmer's market weekly and can or freeze fruits when they are in season, so I can have them all year long. 

I have not had time to do the appropriate research to tell you exactly how this is eco-friendly, but...I do know that rainforests have been cut down to make way for banana plantations.  Where do you think those bananas go?  Some to the USA I'm sure, and they end up in my cereal bowl.  So no more banana's when I get back to the states.  Also, local fruits and veggies means less trucking/shipping, packaging, etc which all equals more green house gases.  Buying locally ensures that the food is fresh, not shipped across the country or flown over continents to reach me.  Right now my definition of local will be within the same state, yes I know some states are huge - I may narrow my range once I get better at buying locally and figuring out this next challenge. 


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This weekend we traveled to Puerto Viejo- a Caribbean beach in Costa Rica.  It was not nearly as beautiful as we expected it to be.  The town was run down, dirty, and rampant with stray dogs.  We unfortunately were unable to snorkel because the rain that came when we got there caused rivers flowing into the ocean to bring sediment and the water was turbid and too hard to see.  Instead we hung out on the beach - which was a black sand beach, they say it's from the lava from nearby volcanos.  We swam in the ocean and enjoyed the warm water.  Sief managed to get his first really bad sunburn - shoulders and back.  I have a mini sunburn on my left shoulder and at my hairline.  The sun is so much stronger here and really takes a hit to our winter skin.

Below are some pictures from the trip!  Enjoy!

Black sand beach! 

Relaxing in hammocks at our hotel!

The HIGHLIGHT of the entire weekend - a wild sloth in a bar at night!  Doesn't it look like a small hairy child.  It was soooooo awesome and moved slowly.  I did some sloth research, but it's late and I have to get to bed, so I will have to fill you in on my sloth knowledge in another post!

Tomorrow

I know that it's Sunday which means I need to post a green challenge and more importantly fill you in on my weekend trip to the beach!  But...it's a little bit late and I have some photos to download, so you will have to wait until tomorrow!  Just wanted you to know that I hadn't forgotten!  Hope everyone had an enjoyable weekend.

We Made It!

     Sief & I made it safely to Costa Rica.  We are staying with a local family in a neighborhood or suburb of the capital San Jose in Curribadat.  We do not have an address, but a description of where we live in reference to landmarks and that we are the house with red wine colored bars in the front.  I recognize our house too, because there is construction being done to the house next to ours.  All the houses here have gates and bars covering all of the windows.
     We are lucky because our house has warm water.  It comes out of a shower head that is somehow electrically hooked up and the water gets heated as it goes through the shower head.  No water pressure, but at least it is warm.  We're also lucky because we have wireless internet at our place.  I was completely not expecting that!
     What I've learned so far is that Costa Ricans like their rice & beans. It's a staple here and I've only had one meal thus far without them.  Breakfast has consisted of eggs and rice and beans.  They also love their juice and I'm not a juice person.  The restaurant juice is pretty good, but the juice my "tica mama" makes is from powder and super sweet and concentrated.  I've only been here 2 days, so there will be many more culinary adventures yet to come!
     Today was our first day of class, mainly just them talking to us and explaining things about the city and how to get around.  We rode the  bus to school, which we will probably do on most days.  We live about a 40 minute walk from school, which wouldn't be bad except for all of the exhaust we would have to breathe in during the walk and the fact that we risk our lives everytime we cross the street!  Tomorrow we start class for real and Sief and I are both in the beginner beginner class!

I'll post pictures soon!  Just wanted to check in quickly and let you know we are here & enjoying the beautiful 80 degree weather!  It's oh so nice :)

Green Challenge #5

A quick check in for how I'm doing with the green challenges.  Overall, I would say pretty well.  I'm not going to lie, but I have cheated a little bit this past week riding the elevator.  I rode it more than I should have.  I guess I was just being lazy.  I'll keep trying. Tomorrow I will be at the airport and will try to do better once I have checked my bag.
As for last week's challenge and not using anymore plastic/reusable bags - so far so good. 

This week's challenge, with a little bit less research than I would have liked, but I have a good excuse.  Excuse:  I had to work until 6pm today, then drove 1.5 hrs to Chico, finished packing my suitcases for Costa Rica, quickly ate dinner, submitted my residency rank list and now am writing this blog soooo...I think you can forgive me for lack of research.

Green Challenge #5:  I'm giving up my hair dryer!

Again, this one comes with a few exceptions.  I am allowed to use a hair dryer for special occasions.  Examples of upcoming special occasions include:  Birthday, Match Day, Graduation.  The ultimate goal will be to use it as little as possible.  I'll try to remember to post my indiscretions and let you know when I use my dryer - just to give you an idea of how well I'm sticking with it!

I can guarantee you I will not be using for a FULL month.  How can I guarantee that you ask?  Well, I'm not taking my hair dryer to Costa Rica with me :)

Ok - so how's this eco-friendly.  Well, hair dryers suck up A LOT of energy.  My hair dryer draws up to 1875 watts of electricity (most draw between 1200-1875), which is more wattage than it takes to use a microwave (run around 750-1100).

A quick wikipedia search for watt (mainly because I was curious) states:

A watt is the rate at which work is done when an object is moved at a speed of one meter per second against a force of one newton.  Huh? 

examples: 
-  climbing a flight of stairs is doing work at a rate of about 200 watts
(my hairdryer does work at a rate 9x's greater than climbing a flight of stairs!)
-  a typical automobile engine yields power output of 25,000 watts while cruising
(sooo running a car uses only 13x's the amount of work as my hairdryer?)

*warning - I have no idea if my calculations are correct, but regardless - I know I'll be saving energy by plugging in one less appliance!

Wish me luck & now you'll understand why my hair will be in a perpetual pony tail for all of my Costa Rican photos :)