Climbing the Matapolo Tree

In Costa Rica there are trees called Matapolo trees. They are the strangest trees I have ever seen. They are also called strangler figs because they strangle other trees. A monkey, bird or sloth eats a fig and leaves the seed or poops out the seed at the top of a tree. The seed begins to grow blocking out the host tree’s leaves with its own.

The forest floor of the rainforest is so shady that many trees have adapted to “cheat” by starting at the top of other trees to catch sunlight. They are called epiphytes. The strangler fig is unusual even among the epiphytes. As well as growing up towards the sunlight, it also grows down by sending air roots down the sides of its host tree. Eventually these air roots totally encircle the tree and begin strangling it. The host tree, cut off from sunlight and having to support the strangler fig’s weight, dies.

The hollow tree made up of the air roots as a trunk becomes a good home for animals. It also is easy to climb because all of the roots create handholds and footholds.


Wearing a safety harness, I climbed about seventy feet into a Matapolo tree. It was fun. I wasn’t scared until I had to swing down on a rope. Looking down from the tree took my breath away. After several false starts I was able to inch my self off the edge. “Ahhhh!”

Squirrel Monkeys

While we were in the backyard of our rental house in Quepos on the Pacific Coast, a group of squirrel monkeys started coming down the trees and jumping on to the roof. They looked like little old men. They were very playful and curious. They chased each other around for about thirty minutes. I threw one of them a piece of a banana that they fought over. My wife then told me that I shouldn’t feed them; it could be bad for their health and they should not become too familiar with humans.

Here is a list of reasons not to feed the monkeys:
10 Reasons Not to Feed the Monkeys

Coffee

Almost all Costa Ricans drink coffee. They also grow a lot of it. The big school vacation is from November to January so that children can help with the coffee harvest. Many Nicaraguans from the country to the north come to Costa Rica trying to find work picking coffee. Picking coffee beans is hard work, workers are paid only by the amount they pick, and a good worker makes less than twenty dollars a day.

This is where they measure how many beans were picked.



Coffee plants are grown in planters first because armadillos looking for worms to eat often destroy the young plants. They are then planted in the ground and trimmed to grow upward. Coffee plants only needs two hours of direct sunlight so the farmer often plants fruit or nut trees along side the coffee plants to shade them, and receive a second crop of fruit or nuts.


After the beans are picked they are soaked to remove the shells or skins. The beans are then dried in huge courtyards until they reach a specific humidity. Then they are either packaged to be exported, or roasted and sold locally. The skins are composted and then used by the farmers as fertilizer.



If I don’t get my coffee every morning before I teach, I’m crabby.

The Walk to Town

From where we are staying in Camaronal, on the turtle beach, the nearest town is a three and half mile walk. One of the Costa Ricans we are working with, Ricardo, tried to explain to me a short cut that would make it two and a half miles. He gave up and decided to show me himself.

We walked for a while through back roads when I noticed the road we were on ended at a river. Before I knew it Ricardo had stripped down to his underwear and was wading through the river. I had no choice but to follow, luckily I was wearing shorts. We waded through the river sometimes waist deep. He led us to a trail on the other side where we had to climb over fallen trees and cross a swamp. Going to town was an adventure in itself.

In the afternoon one of our volunteers found a baby turtle in the sand. We then noticed two of the nests in hatchery had hatched, about 150 turtles in all. We put the turtles in a bucket and set them free on the beach. They began to crawl toward the sea. We guarded them so no birds or crabs would get them.

Sometimes when they reached the ocean a wave would push them back all the way to the beginning and they would have to start again. The best waves would move them to the side, parallel to the beach and then gently pull them toward the ocean. All the sea turtles eventually made it to the ocean.

The hatchery is a fenced in area on the beach where we bring a few clutches of eggs to be watched and protected.

The reason we have the turtles crawl down the beach instead of just dumping them in the water is that the females will return to this same beach in about ten years to lay their own eggs and they have to remember or have it imprinted on them. The males will never go on land again.

This has been one of my most favorite parts of the trip.

Olive-Ridley Sea Turtles

I am now at Camaronal, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, working with sea turtles. Every night we patrol the beaches from about 9:00 PM to 2:00 AM protecting the turtles and their eggs from poachers. Sometimes we see the turtles come out of the ocean, they then drag themselves about thirty yards up the beach until they are well above the high tide mark. They use their back flippers to dig a hole between two and three feet deep. They then lay between forty and one hundred and twenty eggs. The eggs are about the size shape and coloring of ping pong balls, they are also kind of slimy.

If we see the turtle laying eggs, we dig right behind her while she is doing it and collect the eggs. If we don’t see the actual turtle, we have to follow the trail they make when they drag their bodies up the beach. At the end of the trail we poke around with a stick looking for loose instead of compacted sand. We then dig down with our hands looking for the eggs.

Once we have found the eggs we dig them up, put them in a bag, and go to a new spot on the beach away from the drag trails and bury the eggs. Poachers use the drag trails to find the eggs so it protects them to move them.

Poachers are people who take turtle eggs to eat and sell. Stray dogs, raccoons, birds, crabs and other animals also like to eat turtle eggs.

We also count the eggs and measure the turtles. I like to watch the turtles go back to the sea. They lower their heads and crash through the waves.

The pictures have a red tinge because the turtles don’t like the white light of camera flashes and flashlights.

School

I have been teaching a little over a week now and I really like it. I am teaching third through sixth graders English. The first day, with no preparation, I taught three classes. Half of the students go to school in the morning; the other half go to school in the afternoon. There is a little store, a pulperia, across the street from the school and the students are constantly running over there throughout the day for treats, popsicles, and cold drinks.

The students are very nice. They can be very silly one minute and hard workers the next. I’m supposed to teach six forty-minute classes a day, but this has only happened once. The school day schedule can change quickly and with little warning. It is such a small town, that I really enjoy seeing my students around town after school.