Spring Break with the Iberle Clan

I just returned to San Jose from a wonderful week of vacation with Ben and his parents. The trip started off with Osa, the southern, Pacific peninsula that is home to Corcovado National Park. We stayed just a few minutes walk from the entrance to the park and spend the first day hiking.



I've always been told that walking into Corcovado means seeing wildlife, but we had such good luck: scarlet macaws close in the canopy, a troupe of coati chicas drinking from a stream less than a meter from the trail, spider monkeys eating bananas, white-faced monkeys running along the branches, and (the crown jewel of the trip) a tapir.



Tapirs deserve a little more explanation. They are the largest mammal native to Latin America and look like a cross between a small hippo and a horse with a long, flexible, almost elephant-like snout. (Yeah, they are kind of awkward.)



And they are fairly rare and also very important to forest structure since they eat and disperse tree seedlings. I hope to see more tapirs and maybe peccaries, a native wild pig, when I am working on the seedling project with Chris Graham with summer.

When we weren't hiking, I lounged in the hammocks and read or threw a frisbee in the surf with Ben. Very relaxing. Ben and I had a chance to talk to the lodge's sustainability coordinator and resident naturalist, Ifigenia, about conservation on the Osa.

To me, she is a great role model because she approaches conservation very positively and holistically. She engages a wide-range of actions as conservation, from toy collections for indigenous children to recycling programs, from collaborating with women in the community to produce chickens to promoting natural literacy in the community. She accounts for social and cultural, not just environmental needs.



Actively involved in her community, she was bothered by the fact that most of the conservation groups that she saw were large and organized by rich North Americans or Europeans. So she founded ASCONA, the Asociación Costariceñse para la Naturaleza, as the first Tico conservation organization on the Peninsula. It's still very small, but they have taken on very useful, concrete projects on Carate, the nearby town. It would be a great organization for Grinnellians to work with over the summer!



After Osa, we drove to Arenal, an active volcano in the mountains north of San Jose. The cool, misty weather was a welcome change from the heat and humidity of the coast. The volcano first erupted in the 1960s, killing 80 people and thousands of cattle. Since then, it has quietened and the town has exploded with eco-tourism this and eco-tourism that.



We choose to visit the National Park, Butterfly Conservatory, Hanging Bridges, and the EcoThermales Hot Spring. All great choices. The views of the volcano from the hiking trails around its base were amazing. Steam billows from the top and the base is littered with huge gray-colored rocks that had formed during the eruption. Volcanoes are quite impressie-looking.

The hike around the two miles of trails at the Hanging Bridge turned out to be some of the best wildlife watching opportunities we had. Here's the list (not including some birds whose names I don't remember.): 1) Green hermit hummingbird that sat still and chirped for almost ten minutes. 2) Juvenile whiptail lizards with bright, electric blue tails, 3) howler monkeys dangling from the branches, 4) bright red and blue poison dart frog--wow!



I never thought that I would see a poison dart frog in the wild!. And, of course, the canopy and neat leaves, flowers, and fruits from above. A great and worthwhile tourist attraction.

Tomorrow I am off to Monteverde & Cabo Blanco for 2 weeks without Internet. Hooray! When I get back, I will add wonderful pictures of all the animals that I saw. Hasta luego!