Our first adventure was the Simón Bolívar Zoo in San Jose. It was close to our hostel, and it was cheap. It was also by turns sad and funny.

Our first impression of the zoo was hardly encouraging; there was a tent full of aquariums and terrariums near the entrance, and every single animal was dead. Not sleeping, not temporarily removed for cleaning—they lay stone-dead in their exhibits. Ridiculous.

Come on.

Among other grim spectacles, there was a crucified bat propped up in the corner of its box, and myriad exotic insects and spiders, withered and legless, sprinkled over logs and plastic leaves. It was offensive, not only because these creatures were obviously victims of neglect, but more so because I had paid for admission to this dusty horrorshow, and they were calling it a zoo.

But it got better. They at least enlisted professional taxidermists for the really high-dollar cadavers.

I understand that there’s an inevitable element of imposition—some might say cruelty—in animal captivity, whether for public enjoyment or scientific research. In both cases, something is gained from the animals’ loss of freedom and habitat; experiments on animals save human lives, and zoos raise awareness and support for conservation. But if you’re just going to kill the animals outright and nail them to sticks, you belong in a cage yourself.

That being said, the zoo wasn’t all bad. The spider monkeys were having a hell of a time, from the looks of it. They peed from jungle gyms and wheeled around the yard, fighting and swinging, and then suddenly stopped, returned to their perches, and resumed peeing.

There were lions and a jaguar, too. They seemed less jolly. I don’t know jack about what lions and jaguars want, but I venture that a bigger goddamn cage would be near the top of their list, right after eating whoever stuck them there in the first place. Or better yet, no cage at all. At least just surround them with a moat and let them feel dirt under their paws.

The obviously neurotic jaguar paced the whole time. It padded swiftly and mechanically around and around the concrete floor of the small cage and it was alone and I wanted to shoot it.

But we didn’t let the suffering of others, especially animals, stop us from having fun. No way.

A day later we left San Jose for Monteverde—my hood. I’d barely been away for two weeks, but it felt like I was going home.

Our first full day, we enjoyed “The Original Canopy Tour” (the best canopy tour in Monteverde) and went to the San Luis Waterfall with some German and Canadian girls we met at the hostel. The Pensión Santa Elena is the best place to stay in Monteverde—after the Ecolodge San Luis, of course.

The canopy tour starts with a “tarzan swing” like the one at Selvatura Park.

In addition to the ziplines, The Original Canopy Tour includes a 150-foot rappel from a platform reached by climbing up the inside of a huge strangler fig:

Pete claims to have a fear of heights, but I’d say he’s either a liar or a hypocrite.

After the canopy tour, we went to the San Luis Waterfall.

On the hike back, Pete had the idea to climb a vine that hung across the trail.

Pretty sweet.  That’s all for now.

I just got back from a ten-day excursion to the Caribbean coasts of Panamá and Costa Rica.  I went with Sarah (from Bloodsport!) and Rachel, a resident naturalist.  The entire trip they talked about visiting the Aviarios Del Caribe Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica.  They had been sold on the idea by this video of a baby two-fingered sloth, recorded on-site.  They said it would be cute.

So we went.  And it was cute.

From L to R: three-fingered sloth, Sarah Wells, two-fingered sloth

Even the bathrooms were endearing, which is always a welcome surprise in rural Costa Rica.

Next to the bathrooms was a “Wall of Learning,” where we learned.  First, we learned that the common ancestor of modern sloths was a huge, terrestrial herbivore.  The sloths’ ancestors took to the trees to escape predators on land, and adopted a laid-back, inconspicuous lifestyle.

Geology Minute! As you can see, the Central American landmass is relatively young. It was formed by the slow collision of the Pacific Plate and the Caribbean Plate. The Pacific Plate slid beneath the Caribbean, and the ensuing underwater volcanic activity began forming islands. Indeed, the landmass known today as the Isthmus of Panama—through which we toiled to dig a canal—was but an archipelago as recently as 4 million years ago.

And second-of-ly, I learned that the animals we call “sloths” belong to two very distinct families, no more closely related to each other than they are to armadillos or anteaters:

But let’s meet some real sloths.

This is Buttercup, and she loves you.

Buttercup is a 17-year-old, three-fingered sloth, and the story of the Aviarios Sanctuary begins with her.

In 1991 the Limón earthquake destroyed the country home of Luis and Judy Arroyo.  They rebuilt it as a boutique hotel, and offered tours of their rich rain forest property.  In 1992, three neighborhood girls brought an orphaned three-fingered sloth to their doorstep.

“We named her Buttercup. Finding very little useful information about sloths, we learned from experience – and a very hefty dose of common sense! Then, another sloth arrived. And another. Before long, we became known as authorities on sloth rescue and rearing – and sloths kept coming. Buttercup became the most loved and photographed sloth in the world.”

I didn’t get to meet Mrs. Arroyo, but I met Luis when he mistook me and my companions for the new volunteers scheduled to arrive that day.   This majestic portrait of the Sloth Godfather hangs in the gift shop, and it says more than I could hope to about a man with whom I spoke only briefly.

Let’s say goodbye to Buttercup for now, and go check on the little ones.

Bye, Buttercup

The sanctuary is home to more than 150 sloths, including more than a dozen babies in warm, fluffy, slowly churning heaps.  Since sloths reared together in captivity do not breed, these babies were orphaned, either in the wild or in captivity, born to dying mothers brought to the sanctuary too late.

This is Fozzy, a two-fingered toddler:

waka waka!

Fozzy is about 11 months old, I think, which is toddler-age for a sloth.  I might be talking out of my ass here, but I can’t be that far off.  Sloths reach adulthood around age 3, and they can live beyond 30.  Fozzy is particularly rambunctious; he continually pawed at our tour guide and twice sallied from his crate, languidly craning to bite her arm.

His roommates were chiller:

Sloths are natural-born yawners

So what’s the difference between two fingers and three, besides a finger, smartasses?  Well, I’ll let Wikipedia help me tell you about both.  I hope you learn something.

First, Choloepus hoffmanni, known commonly as the two-fingered sloth.

“Two-toed sloths spend most of their time in trees, though they may travel on the ground to move to a new tree, and are excellent swimmers. They are strictly nocturnal, moving slowly through the canopy after dark, munching on leaves. The name “sloth” means “lazy,” but the slow movements of this animal are actually an adaptation for surviving on a low-energy diet of leaves. These sloths have half the metabolic rate of a mammal of the same size. Sloths have very poor eyesight and hearing, and rely almost entirely on their senses of touch and smell to find food.”

Note: While adult two-fingered sloths are strictly nocturnal, juveniles are often awake and active during daylight hours.

Two toes = sleep during the day (nocturnal)

“Two-toed sloths hang from tree branches, suspended by their huge, hook-like claws, which are two to three inches long. Sloths sometimes are found hanging off trees after they die. Nearly everything a sloth does, including eating, sleeping, mating, and giving birth, is done while hanging from the branches in the trees. The only time that sloths are normally found right side up is when they go down to the ground to defecate, which they only do about once every 5 days.”

Another note: when sloths do defecate, they can lose up to one third of their body weight.  Whoosh!

“Sloths have many predators, including the jaguar, eagles, and large snakes. If threatened, sloths can defend themselves by slashing out at a predator with their huge claws or biting with their sharp cheek teeth. However, a sloth’s main defense is to avoid being attacked in the first place. The two-toed sloth can survive wounds that would be fatal to another mammal its size.

The sloth’s slow, deliberate movements and algae-covered fur make them difficult for predators to spot from a distance. Their treetop home is also out of reach for many larger predators. Their long, coarse fur also protects them from sun and rain. Their fur, unlike other mammals, flows from belly to top, not top to belly. This is so that when it rains, and they are hanging upside down, the rain slides off the fur easily.”

Yes, he's sucking his fingers

And three-fingered sloths?  I’m borrowing part of the Wikipedia entry for Bradypus variegatus, or the brown-throated sloth, one of several species of three-fingered sloth, and the most common in my area.

“It is the most widespread and common species of the group, being found in many different kinds of environments, including evergreen and dry forests and in highly perturbed natural areas.

It is a solitary, nocturnal and diurnal animal, feeding on leaves of many species of trees.

The female of the species is known to emit a loud, shrill scream during the mating season to attract males. It is a cry that sounds like “ay ay”. This scream has been remarked to sound exactly like that of a woman screaming. The male can be identified by a black stripe surrounded by orange fur on its back between the shoulders.”

We did indeed hear that scream, and I was shocked that a docile creature like Buttercup could make such a racket.

Three fingers = active during the day (diurnal)

Note how her neck is twisted in the photo above.  Three-fingered sloths can turn their heads up to 270 degrees, which is helpful when you spend life upside-down.  This remarkable ability is facilitated by extra vertebrae, visible in the photo below.

“The Brown-throated sloth has grayish-brown to beige color fur and it is very coarse and stiff. A sloth has a round head and on it there are two eyes, a blunt nose, peg-like teeth, and ears that are not visible. The tail of a sloth is very small.

Over parts of its range, the Brown-throated Sloth overlaps the range of Hoffmann’s Two-toed Sloth. Where this overlap occurs, the three-toed sloth tends to be smaller and more numerous than its relative, being more active in moving through the forest and maintaining more diurnal activity.”

But that’s not all!  Three-fingered sloths are ecosystems.  Somewhat like the cecropia tree (which is only slightly less mobile) three-fingered sloths host a symbiotic commonwealth of beetles, moths, molds and algae that thrives within their nappy fur.

The algae and mold naturally camouflage the sloth by turning it green.  Insects feed on the algae, including a species of moth, Bradipodicola hahneli, more commonly called the “sloth moth.”  The sloth moth lays its eggs in the sloth’s poop.  The eggs later hatch and the brood flies off to find another sloth.  Miraculous.

The sloths at the sanctuary are algae-free because they don’t get wet all the time the way they would in the wild.  This hardly diminishes their quality of life, as sloths have been known to starve to death in the wild during prolonged periods of rain.  That’s right⎯starve. Sloths need to keep warm in order to nourish the good bacteria in their bellies that help digest the pounds upon pounds of leaves they eat.  If they can’t get warm, they can’t digest their food.  Sloths can starve to death with full bellies.

With the Internets as my witnesses, I anoint you all sloth experts.  Now let me show you my baby pictures:

Sleepy Sloth (VIDEO)

Yes, he's cuddling a teddy bear

This itsy-bitsy baby sloth arrived at the sanctuary with fungus in his fur, so he got shaved.  To keep him warm, special jammies were made from socks.

That does look cozy.

Sweet dreams.

That’s my mom humming along a zipline in Selvatura Park.  A guide is with her for extra weight because that particular cable (one of 18) is one kilometer in length.  If you get stuck in the middle of that line, you better have already gone to the bathroom.

Selvatura Park is a really cool place with loads to see and do, but they pay people to tell you all about that, so I refer you to their Web site, linked above, if you care to learn more.  The Ecolodge makes arrangements for our guests to visit there, and it’s something every visitor should do.  

Something every visitor might not be willing to do, however, is the “tarzan swing” toward the end of the zipline canopy tour.  But how can you know you won’t enjoy being shoved off a twenty-foot scaffold to swoop inches above a concrete platform, unless you try it?  I’m pleased to report that both my sister and mother are qualified to take an informed stance on the issue.  Here’s what they had to say:

(Video)

Mom

Alex

Afterward we visited the Hummingbird Garden, where we actually heard the birds humming.  The Nahuatl word for hummingbird is huitzil, an onomatopoeia describing the sound of their wings.  Imagine a dozen enormous bumblebees around you.  These weren’t skittish at all, and I was able to get quite close.

At present count, Costa Rica is home to some 51 species of hummingbird.  14 species are found in Monteverde.  This one is a coppery-headed emerald, and it is endemic to Costa Rica, meaning that it is found nowhere else.  Costa Rica, especially the Monteverde area, teems with such unique fauna.  

She looks to be a female; males of the species sport rich stains of copper plumage.  This difference is an example of sexual dimorphism, a common pattern in wildlife that is especially pronounced in birds.  Obviously one expects some vital anatomical differences between males and females of any species, but whether or not a male gets to appreciate them firsthand hinges on making a good first impression.  A good first impression, in turn, hinges on being physically conspicuous—that is, attractive.  I’m sure this is old news to every living thing on the planet, but it’s a rich topic, full of surprises.  Like this

Below is a violet sabrewing.  They’re big—the males push six inches—but they are not proportionally territorially aggressive in the wild.  In the garden, however, they were rambunctious, driving smaller species from feeders.  This is a male.  The female sabrewing has violet only on her throat, and is otherwise green and gray.  This guy doesn’t seem to fit his own description, either, but this is an effect of lighting and perspective.  The male sabrewing’s coruscating plumage plays the spectrum from B to V, and they don’t hold still very long, even when feeding.  This is the best shot I got.  

Here is a hummingbird nest, discovered on a tour of the Butterfly Garden.  My thumb is for scale.  

The Selvatura Butterfly Garden is a vast enclosure full of flowers and butterflies.  We explored it as a guided tour audience, but I didn’t listen to anything the guy said. No, that’s not true.  I remember only that at the end the poor kid bungled a Costa Rican joke that, due to his poor English and the fact that puns generally don’t translate, made absolutely no sense.

There was a nursery of chrysalises in a cabinet, and clumsy newborn butterflies falling out.

And this is how they’re made.

This butterfly frightens predators by mimicking a snake’s head.

Not a real snake

That’s all for today.  Butterflies bore me.  Let’s go to the beach.

Click me!

I shot video because I thought the audible reactions of the gathered giddy rubberneckers would be worth preserving.  The guy working the sack is Scott, resident naturalist and one of my favorite people.  

And here is a gratuitous picture of myself (one of your favorite people, no doubt) to replace the mental image of cold, dead monkey face.

You're welcome

Last Saturday my mom and my younger sister showed up at the Ecolodge San Luis.  They have since returned home with sunburns and stories.  I was excited to see them—indeed, it proved to be a week full of novelty—but I am also relieved by their departure.  I don’t know if it’s truly possible to have too much fun, but we must have been close.  Don’t believe me?  My mom held a snake on the first day.  

On our first full day we took a cab up to Santa Elena to visit the Serpentarium, eat lunch at an overpriced tourist trap, and explore the Orchid Garden.  The Serpentarium is exactly what it sounds like, with one invaluable exception: it doesn’t smell like you have actually been swallowed alive by an exhibit.  This is key.  Visitors to the reptile exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo are scourged by a stench so profane that it can only be black magic wrought by the spirits of dead Indians, upon whose pagan graves the blasphemous House of Reptiles surely rests.  It’s distracting, to say the least.

Not to say that the Serpentarium isn’t gross at times; there’s a whole exhibit of pickled reptiles in jars, set against a collage of snake-bite wound photos.  I’ll show you some.  No, I won’t, actually.  They’re ghastly, and definitely worse than any of my cockfight videos that got taken down.  ”Sorry” to some, “you’re welcome” to others.  Have some cute instead:

I don’t really know anything about these two snakes, except that the first is a juvenile and the second is pretty.  I’m kinda burned out on learning about animals for the time being.

Moving on!  After the Serpentarium we hiked to the center of town to eat.  We went to the restaurant at the Tree House Hotel.  I do not recommend eating there, simply because the food is expensive but otherwise unremarkable.  

We then walked to the supermarket, where we bought several bottles of wine and a little something for me to share with my colleagues.  Naturally the burden of carrying all of this for the rest of the afternoon fell on me.  That doesn’t sound like much, but I also carry about 25 pounds of gravel in my backpack to keep my daily waterfall treks challenging.  I tell you this only to help explain the absence of photos from the Orchid Garden we then toured, for I quickly grew resentful of every blossom that delayed our progress toward the bench I knew to be at the trail’s end.  

When we finally got there, I sat down, cheered up, and snapped this Motmot.  It’s a fairly common bird here, but impressive nonetheless.

Turquoise-browed Motmot

When we got home, we hiked the Camino Real.  I was impressed by the girls’ stamina that day.

Well, that does it for the first day.  More to come.  Lots more.

I had visited, as I often do, the same leafcutter ant trails from my first big post.  (No matter how many monkeys and bats this country throws at me, I keep coming back to the ants.)  But this time I had an idea for an experiment that seems, in hindsight, an irresponsibly tedious exploit for a blogger—I really shouldn’t even be boring you with the details—but here we go.

Wait, no.  First, look at this:

This is a leafcutter soldier with its mandibles stuck in the seam of a split twig.  The soldier’s own weight has caused the stick to sag like a falling drawbridge, trapping his face forever.  Divinely, I intervened and gave him a second chance to toil all the way to the grave.  I sure earned my two scoops of raisins today.  Anyway, back to my exciting research:

As more than one person has pointed out to me, the experiment should have consisted of mortal combat between exotic pairings of ants and other living things besides leaves.  Anything but leaves.  So I obstructed each side of a fork in the ants’ trail with a different leaf, and I checked every so often to see which leaf disappeared first.  Let’s go to the re-play:

In this corner, a fern-like specimen!

…And in this corner, a not-fern-like specimen!

Most great fight leaf in USSR

Yes, this leaf had clearly been chewed already.  The whole affair was amateur hour.  Anyway, I’ll just let the pictures tell the story.   At 2:37 p.m. the race was on:

Fern - 3:12

Not fern - 3:12

Fern - 5:09

Not fern - 5:09

Fern - 7:32

Not fern - 7:32

There you have it.  The ants chewed on both leaves a little, but apparently the obstacles didn’t warrant a major diversion of labor.  What does it mean?  I’ll let you decide, because I am so over the task of wringing significance from this particular caper.  Let’s rinse this taste out with monkeys.  I’m going to show and tell about monkeys.  Stay tuned.

It might look like it was a piece of cake, and indeed it might have been for many people with more experience in my field.  But those people charge thousands of dollars.  I don’t have as much experience, so I work slowly, and I work for free.  For now.  

About half of the photography is my original work, and certain images required hours of behind-the-scenes Photoshop work to make them pop.  And as anyone else could tell you, rarely does a complete vision of the finished project pin itself like a blueprint to the inside of your eyelids at the start.  You can brainstorm and sketch thumbnails all you want, but when you finally sit down at the computer, you’re just staring at a big white space surrounded by a boggling array of buttons, panels and menus.  And once you’ve conquered that white screen, and you’ve got enough text to fill the empty spaces, tweaking becomes an obsession.  I must have generated the equivalent of four different brochures before I was happy enough to show this to anyone.  Accordingly, the version that goes to print will likely look somewhat different from this:

UPDATE: When I posted this, the images suddenly looked terrible.  All bright-green and washed-out.  They were made in CMYK color scale, so they’re made to look good in print, and they will.  Use your imaginations.

L to R: inside flap, back panel, front panel

The background photo here was taken from the UGA-Costa Rica website.  The only change I made was to reflect it so the buildings appear on the right side.  It is obvious that someone none-too-subtly enhanced the rainbow at some point.  It bothers me, but not enough to do anything about it right now.  Realistically, no-one will end up raging at our receptionist because we don’t really have rainbows that look as though they could support the weight of a human being.  Notice that I have downplayed the fact that this facility is associated with the University of Georgia.  That’s because people get confused easily.  From now on, I work at the “Ecolodge San Luis.”  Let’s take a look inside:

Inside

Some of you might recognize the kinkajou and the white-faced capuchin from my post Monkeys Before Breakfast.  Those two particular pictures were generously contributed by my buddy Carrie, one of the resident naturalists here.  That’s her with the butterfly on her nose.  Scratch my back and I’ll make you a star.  

You may also recognize the fig tree on the right from the same post.  That is in fact the same photo.  I magically and painstakingly extracted it from its home on the Camino Real and planted it on top of the mountain from which I shot the background image.  And no, you can’t just instruct Photoshop to move the tree and nothing else, not even the sky, from one image to another.  Photoshop not understand tree.  Photoshop not understand what is sky.  But one of my bosses really wanted that tree somewhere in the brochure, and I’m glad he insisted.  I think it looks quite nice. 

That’s about all I want to talk about work.

Saturday I rode almost three hours on the world’s worst roads, traveling possibly dozens of miles, in order to watch bulls crush and fling foolhardy drunks around a dirt ring, and to have a shot at becoming one of them, myself.  It was a magical evening.

GET SOME!

The main event is bull-riding, but crowds don’t turn out to see man conquer beast.  Quite the opposite.  The tougher riders last maybe 15 seconds on the bull, but once unburdened, the furious animal rips around the ring, imperiling the cheap lives of foolish, drunk young men.  Naturally, I was in on the action. Regrettably, my heroics weren’t captured on film, but let it be said that I harrassed the bulls with zest and positively deserved a horn up my ass.

With me is Sarah Wells, fellow intern and very good sport.  She was definitely the only gringa in the ring, and there’s a good chance that I was the only one of my kind, as well.  Sarah teaches computer literacy and English to the youth of San Luis.  We made new friends fast (I suspect she was instrumental) and we had a rowdy time running around, drinking and shrieking the traditional Guanacasteco rebel yell: “uí! uí! uí!”  And dodging bulls.  In brief, we were badasses for a day.

+++++++++VIDEO+++++++++VIDEO+++++++++VIDEO+++++++++VIDEO+++++++++

No, wait—there was one other woman.  All afternoon everyone was buzzing about the lady bull-rider.  There was so much anticipation that it seems inevitable in hindsight that she would be flung onto her face with savage and hilarious abruptness.  I have no idea what her story was, but she was clearly not a professional and looked to be twice the age and weight of her male colleagues.  Witness now the entirety of her ignoble career in Costa Rican rodeo:  (Plus: a guy gets plowed over by the bull)

UPDATE: My videos keep getting taken down from the various video hosting sites, presumably because they depict violent and arguably unethical activities.  I don’t want my blog to get taken down for violating the terms of use or anything, so just contact me privately or hang out with me when I get back.  I might be a big story-teller for a while, and I’ve got way too many photos and videos to post.

There was also greased-pole climbing.  The fellow in the picture below spent most of the afternoon shimmying up and down the pole, throwing dirt on it to increase friction.

All afternoon, while people were meeting their maker at bull horns below, this guy was diligently flinging dirt in anticipation of the moment when he would soar to fame and the cash-prize equivalent of $55.

You earned it, dude

Outside the arena, there was a fair that improved on just about everything in American state fairs that enchants or horrifies us:

• Instead of Grand Funk Railroad and Steppenwolf leftovers there was a rap concert.
• I enjoyed legitimately tasty food without the guilt of complicity in a debauched arms race between deep-frying maniacs with the culinary ambitions of four-year-old boys.
• Instead of buying reams of tickets to disguise the fact that I was being charged one left testicle for a cup of Bud Light, I paid reasonable sums of cash to choose from a robust array of beers and cocktails.
• There were tons of beautiful women.
• There were drunk cowboys on horseback everywhere, hitting shamelessly on these beautiful women.

Never abandon your childhood dreams

This pin was another highlight:

Sarah and I each bought a pin celebrating “El Malacrianza,” the most famous bull in Costa Rica.  Sure, we bought them for their ironic value and improbably low-fi production values (the photographer didn’t even bother to shoot over the barbed wire) but this bull has killed two people in the ring.  Respect.

Nick, if you’re out there, get to a bull ride.  And bring money; you’re gonna wanna consume around fourteen beers and half your weight in Costa Rican fair food.  That’s all for today.  Happy Mardi Gras.