Life at Whitworth South: Pacific Coast Time

Off to the beach again! This time to the lovely pacific side. Much hotter, with less rain and less green jungly feel, but still very enjoyable.

Shortly after we got back from the Caribbean Coast trip, just enough time to let our shoes and backpacks dry, we packed up again and headed for the mangroves in the Pacific.

It was a much shorter drive this time, so we got to the beach and went exploring in the mangroves before lunch.

There were two different types of mangroves that we saw. Mangrove basically just means a type of tree that can tolerate brackish (salt/fresh mix) water and live part of the time submerged. One type had these funny little antennae roots that stuck up out of the ground about six inches and helped the tree breath. it also "sweated" out the extra salt through its leaves.

Mangrove jungle-gym

The other tree sends out all kinds of nifty prop roots to help it stand up, and also to give a nice comfy home to a ton of crabs.

The easiest crabs to see had bright red claws and black shells, and would run across the roots of the mangroves. They were a little shy.

After paying attention for a few minutes, we notices that the shallow water at our feet was swarming with little hermit crabs, cruising around to their hearts content. Some fought with each other for shells, which made the future kindergarten teacher in our group feel sad for the poor bullied crabby. A few of the student were even able to do a crab re-location project for one little guy who was living in a sad little circle of bark for a home. They found him a nice empty shell...how nice.

One of the hermits

After exploring the beach a bit more, and finding a ton of cool sea shells, we headed back to the campus where we were staying. Bertie, our biology teacher, was nice enough to give us free time, so we spent noon to two (the most dangerous hours in terms of the sun...according to Lula) playing hearts and eating fresh mangoes from the trees outside.

At two, the magic hour when the sun can no longer burn you so it is safe outside, we headed back down to the beach to swim. We discovered that about ten yards out, the sand turned to incredibly slimy, squishy, strange-feeling mud. Lovely, right?

Pretty, isn't it? You'd never guess what lies beneath the surface.

A group of us ended up walking through this lovely mud, just for kicks, and it was quite pleasant. The water was perfect, there were nearly no waves, and as far as we could walk the water only ever got about chest high. (By the way, this wasn't open ocean, the coast of the northern peninsula was less than a mile away, so it was more like a bay.) One thing wasn't quite so pleasant, though...

Source

This sign shows pretty much exactly what went down. Except that my legs weren't strangely detached from my abdomen, gracias a Dios. While we were walking through the ocean, I felt was I at first thought was seaweed brushing across my knees. That impression only lasted about a half a second, and then I realized that this seaweed really hurt! It stung quite a bit, kind of like a whole bunch of ant bites in a row across the tops of my knees. But for a while I still wasn't sure it actually was a jelly, since I always though a jellyfish sting would be somewhat debilitating with all the fuss people make over it. Really, it wasn't that bad. And it didn't get worse, so I just kept walking. I had a nice red stripe across my legs for a while, but after an hour or so it didn't hurt any more. I'm sure there are more powerful and painful jellies, but this one wasn't any worse than bee stings really.

Moving on, after dinner that night we had a presentation about the mangrove forest, and then went down to the beach to have a bonfire. After very little success and nearly a full box of matches, we resorted to the bug-spray-flam-thrower method of lighting the fire. Quite exciting! And then feasted on some s'mores, Tico style (with Nutella instead of chocolate bars and Maria cookies, which a kind of like a Nilla wafer or animal cracker but flat and round) Yum!

The next morning we headed out to a town called Tarcoles to visit a fishing community. We heard presentations from several people who work in the artisan fishing coop, learned about different types of fish and mussels, and tried Chiviche, which is fish "cooked" in the acid of lemon juice, which peppers and herbs thrown in. Mouth-puckering-goodness!

In the afternoon we took a tour of the on-shore aspects of fishing, including where they clean and untangle the long strings of hooks, where they prepare the chum, and where they process the fish. While we were there, two divers brought in some of the biggest lobsters I have ever seen and two little octopus.After this, we went out in search of clams with a lady that has been gathering mussels and clams to feed her family for over fifty years. By following her example and digging through the rocks in the tide pools, I was able to find 13 of those delicious little things. We took them back to the office and cooked them up right then and there. Talk about fresh!

That night we spent with our host families. We went to a community soccer tournament after dinner, and then slept since we were all pretty exhausted.

The next morning we all went out in the little fishing boats with different captains. We saw how they put out the nets, and then used individual reels. I "caught" one little silver fish, in quotation marks because really the assistant captain (son of the captain) took my reel until he felt a pull, then told me to pull it in. So really, I can't take the credit.

After returning from the ocean, we lunched with out host families, and hit the road. The ride back was fairly uneventful, save for a ice-cream stop and spontaneous parking lot dance party that was filmed by at least two Ticos, and a inter-van rock/paper/scissors battle between me and another guy in another tourist bus. Good times.

Here are s'more photos...