A way to keep all our family and friends updated on our adventures in Costa Rica.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
October is Snake Month!
Hi all,
Just a quick note from Costa Rica about what's been up.
First, I've been teaching like crazy for the past 7 weeks, so Amy has felt like she has not really seen me since we got back from Minnesota, and she is pretty much right. I taught in the Foundation Course in Peace and Conflict Studies, and then got a chance to finally re-teach a course: Conservation and Development...and that's where the Snake Month begins! October.
The first snake of the month was spotted on the edge of a trail in La Cangreja National Park in the nearby canton (county) of Puriscal. It is a small park, but home to some endemic plants and a fair number of critters. So, what you see in the following picture is a curled-up Eyelash Viper (una toboba). It was about 3 or four feet off the trail and about 4 or 5 feet off the ground. A number of my students had walked by and not even seen it due to its camouflage. Pretty amazing. This is a highly poisonous snake...and I'm glad we didn't stir it.
Here's the pic:
The second snake of the month came while Amy was back visiting her parents and going to her best friend Betsy's wedding in Grand Marais. It was a baby boa constrictor that decided to come and scare the bejeezes out of David one night. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and then realized....SNAKE!!! I'm not usually too scared of critters, but without my trusty identifying partner (Amy), I didn't know what to do. When in doubt, call our neighbors Juan Luis and Sandra. Unfortunately, the rural Costa Rican way of dealing with snakes is to kill them...you just don't fool around because there are too many that look alike and too many poisonous ones. Only after the fact did I identify the snake thanks to this picture:
Other than snakes, it has just been rainy. Rainy, rainy, rainy. Although the last few days have lightened up finally...perhaps we are turning the corner towards the dry season?
Well, that's all I have to tell y'all at this point. Of course there are a billion other stories, fieldtrips, etc. etc. but I don't have the time or the patience to write them all down right now. I figured the snakes are exciting enough.
Long overdue report from the States...and return to Costa Rica.
Hi Everyone (pics will be uploaded soon)
Time for another glimpse into the lives of Dave and Amy. I am especially behind in writing the update for our trip to the US this summer because, honestly, we saw so many good people and did so much while we were there I don’t know if I can do it justice!
Our trip began when we were picked up at the Denver Airport by our good friend, Matt Jaeckel. We went straight to the Mountain Sun where we met Matt’s girlfriend, Heidi, for the first time (she is great, by the way!) and where we were able to give in to our long time craving for Java Porter and Basil Blue Cheese/veggie burgers!
We spent a couple days in Boulder getting business done and catching up with friends. Our friends, Srinath and Tracy, were kind enough to let us use their place as home base while we were there and it was so nice! Thanks a ton, you two.
I had some pretty severe culture shock this trip. I have to say it was probably a solid week and a half before I really felt comfortable with the hustle and bustle of the states, and the alarming ORDER of everything. At one point Dave and I went to Boulder Liquor Mart with our friend Carol to grab a six pack of beer. This is a store Dave and I have been in many times over the years but we were both completely overwhelmed by the size and selection. Carol was laughing out loud at Dave just standing in the beer aisle with his mouth open and his eyes wide, paralyzed to make a decision. Then she said, “Oh come here! Come here! I want to see what you do when you see the whiskey aisle!”
After about 5 days in Boulder we rented a car and headed up to Steamboat for a Hoffman family reunion. It was excellent! We got to meet our new twin nieces, Morgan and Chloe and spend time getting to know our three other rapidly growing nieces and nephew. We had almost a week of time to catch up with everyone, and got to do a ton of fun things like tubing on the Yampa River, mini golf, the Alpine Slide and hiking in the Flattops Wilderness. Thanks, Hoffmans, for another great family reunion.
We left Steamboat a couple days early so that we could attend and participate in the wedding of our good friends, Matt and Carrie. They were married at a ranch near Dillon, Colorado. It was a fantastic time, full of laughter and fun with excellent friends both old and new. Both Dave and I really needed this time with our friends. It reminded us how important it is to have friends that know you and love you for who you are. But in the end it made us miss our friends even more. Congratulations, Matt and Carrie!
After the wedding we were off to Minnesota for a Moe-Hargis family reunion. We were especially excited that my grandparents, Elbert and Geneva Hargis, made the long trip up to Minnesota from Florida. It was so nice to see them! The first week we were in Grand Marais it was FISHERMAN’S PICNIC! Adam and Emily came up from Chicago because Adam had a bunch of gigs throughout the weekend. Most of our time was spent either listening to music or searching for a $500 bobber in a treasure hunt. I was sure we were going to get it, but in the end we were foiled. And, of course, we were able to see our baby girl, Solana. She is thriving in her foster home…receiving lots of love and treats and honing her rodent hunting skills.
Dave had to leave the vacation early, so unfortunately he missed the trip up to the Moe cabin in Canada. There is still a lot of tree clearing that has to be done at the cabin so Al and Dad did a bit of that while mom and I went to town to buy the essentials… bait and ice cream. We fished until we were ALMOST tired of fishing. The last day Dad and I got off to a rough start. We forgot the depth finder in the truck. We almost ruined the boat’s gas tank. Once we got the depth finder, the transducer fell off and almost got cut off by the motor. AND…Dad had trouble getting the motor into neutral and pushed me into the lake with the boat! I was soaked head to toe and covered in sand. Luckily, mom had some extra pants and shirt, and we had a sunny day to dry my clothes in the boat. After the rough start we had a good day of fishing, save a couple of dorks from MN who parked on top of us in our fishing spot.
While I was having fun fishing with the family, Dave was able to attend the annual Tope here in Ciudad Colon. Though we are not exactly sure how this tradition started, it definitely reflects the Costa Rican’s love of horses…and alcohol. There are some 500 horses that prance around and around the town’s center. At points along the route, the riders get shots and drinks, so by the end of the two or three hours the horses are exhausted and the riders are drunk. It is organized chaos and complete debauchery. You can catch a glimpse of the action by following this link:
Things did not return to normal very quickly after I returned to Costa Rica. Two days after I got back, the road to the University collapsed, the result of a combination of torrential rains and small earthquakes, NOT a result of a giant ant nest, as the mayor jokingly reported. The picture here doesn’t do it justice because there is no scale…about 100 yards of road fell down between 10 and 20 feet. This happened at the end of August, just as the new students arrived. Their first class was held at a high school in San Jose called La Salle, which means that Dave had to commute to the city for the last three weeks to teach his class. Thankfully, tomorrow they get to go back to the University and Dave’s next class, which starts on Wednesday, will be up there barring any further deterioration of the temporary fix the local and federal governments have done for the road.
The biggest news from my front is that I have sent my book to the publishing section of InBio here in Costa Rica. They wrote back and said they are interested in publishing it, so I am expecting to have a meeting with them in the coming weeks to discuss that.
That is all from here. Sorry for the blow by blow account of the time we spent with our family and friends.
