design-newyork.com

Scary giant reptiles! But first, coffee. One of Costa Rica’s biggest exports is coffee. We went to a coffee plantation and I learned a whole bunch about coffee. Coffee coffee coffee. For example, coffee flowers smell very strongly like jasmine because coffee is in the gardenia family. And the coffee fruit is edible (the coffee bean we are accustomed to seeing is inside the red fruit) but it is a strong laxative, so one should not eat a handful lest one become like a bear in the woods. This place had coffee plants and cacao plants all over. These were cacao plants.

Coffee plants look like sticks with red and green berries popping out every couple of inches. The coffee bean must be picked by hand and can’t be stripped by machine because they ripen individually. They look like this:

Inside the red berry is a slime-covered beige-colored set of beans, and that slime is resilient, yo, it ain’t comin’ off easy. So what they do is soak the beans in water, where the slime coating ferments and slides off (and apparently this process smells super-gross). Then they commence with the roasting process or they plant them. If they plant them, they look like this:

They have come up with a variety of non-toxic ways to deal with problems that crop up (“crop up!” har!) in the fields. There was this ingenious little device strung up all over the place.

There’s three cups, the top two with the bottoms cut out, a plate, some rum and some water. The insects that attack the coffee plants drink the rum at the top, then fall down through the successive cups until they fall into the cup in the bottom (the one with water) and they drown. Low-tech and effective. Also, there’s a certain worm that likes to eat the roots of the coffee plant, so they put other plants with tastier roots in the with the coffee plants, and the worm eats those instead.

The way the Costa Ricans strain their coffee is using this cotton sock-looking thing suspended above a tin cup. It’s like the original filter. It looks gnarly because the sock-thing gets stained brown so even if it’s clean it looks like it was tied to the shoe of a hiker and dragged all over the trails. But it does the job so people still use this tool.

Okay, reptiles and whatnot. Iguanas! We saw a ton of iguanas. I learned that I love iguanas. I think they’re great. You would think most of the iguanas we would see would be green, but this was the only green one I saw.

It’s iguana mating season, so the males are this vibrant shade of pumpkin orange. They were draped all over the place, being sexy to the lady ‘guanas I suppose.

And then we saw iguana sex! They do it vertically which I think is unnecessary, but whatever. Not my call.

These iguanas were on the Caribbean coast. When we were on the Pacific coast we saw a different type of iguana that was stumpier and grayer. They looked more like Godzilla.

Geckos! Geckos are also great. They were my constant companion. They hung out near all the light fixtures waiting for buggies to show up. I insisted Cricket take many photos of them. Regular gecko. Dramatic gecko. Teeny baby gecko.

This is one of my favorite photos of the trip. This guy was really into his light fixture, literally and figuratively.

• | • | • INTERMISSION  • | • | •

A bug. I like the way he coordinated the white on his back with the ends of his antennae. Moving on.

• | • | • INTERMISSION OVER  • | • | •

Caimans! Caimans are little crocodiles. They do all the same things crocodiles do, like float there with only their heads above the water doing their damnest to be a log. I have a few pictures of that.

Awww, look at the baby! He’s so wee and you can see his little body under the water. So sweet and prehistoric.

This photo is called “Emperor’s New Clothes.” The guide informed us there was a caiman right in front of us, so we all dutifully took photos of this patch of grass, but I don’t know if anyone actually could see said caiman. So now we all have pictures like this.

Turtle shell. I didn’t put an exclamation point after that because, well, he’s dead and frankly not that thrilling. But I liked how you could see his ribs attached to his shell.

On one of our last days in Costa Rica we went to a bird ‘n’ crocodile sanctuary where big lethargic crocodiles laid around on the sandy banks and resembled spiked sacks of flour. We saw a ton of them. And one that was a ton. We’ll get to him momentarily.

At one point our boat captain for the day, I believe his name was José, decided to join the Bad Life Choices Society by getting out of the boat barefoot and feeding one of the crocs raw chicken meat. It was rough to watch because, you know, aaaaaaahhhh DUDE what are you DOING.

As we gently floated down the river, our guide Aaron got very excited because an insanely huge crocodile named Mike Tyson was hanging out near us. Mike Tyson the croc got that name by biting off the tail of one of his rivals. I learned that crocodiles never stop growing and Mike T is very old, so he looks terrible, like Jabba the Hut, all corpulent and flabbalicious. Aaron also told me one of my favorite nuggets of the trip, which is that crocodiles don’t really have any enemies once they reach adulthood and they can die “from elderness.” I have informed many people that someday they will die from elderness, and no one seems to appreciate it as much as me. Oh well. Here’s Mike Tyson.

And while we’re staring at the massive bulk of MT, one of his lady friends sidles up to the boat. How close did she get? Real close.

And the José got out of the damn boat, still with the barefootness, and fed them raw chicken. Aaaaaaaaahhhh JESUS CHRIST José do you have a death wish STOP DOING THAT.

By they way, the entire time we were hanging out on this river that is rife with predators that have eaten living things for forever, some idiot farmer allowed his horses to graze on the banks of the river. We were all like, run! Run away horses and one mule! They couldn’t hear us. They seemed okay. I still worried.

Oh, and I wanted to include a video Cricket took of leaf-cutter ants. We saw them when we went on the night frog walk. They were so cool. They had worn down a path, and some ants were carried giant leaf shards with ants on it cleaning it. Did you know the ants don’t eat the leaves? They take the leaves down into their ant lair where they basically do some farming, and a fungus grows on the leaf, and that’s what the ant eats.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIFPZCzVkLA

Bromeliads! Bromeliads are a type of plant. Here, I will let the Bromeliad Society International website explain them for you:

All bromeliads are composed of a spiral arrangement of leaves sometimes called a “rosette”. The bases of the leaves in the rosette may overlap tightly to form a water reservoir. This central cup also collects whatever leaf litter and insects happen to land in it.  Tank bromeliads (as the water storing species are often called) rely less heavily on their roots for nourishment and are more often found as epiphytes. The roots of epiphytic species harden off after growing to form holdfasts as strong as wire that help attach the plant to its host. Even though bromeliads are commonly called parasitos in Spanish-speaking countries, these epiphytes do not take sustenance from their host but merely use it for support. All bromeliads share a common characteristic: tiny scales on their leaves called trichomes. These scales serve as a very efficient absorption system. In species found in desert regions where the air is hot and dry and the sun beats down relentlessly, these scales also help the plant to reduce water loss and shield the plants from the solar radiation. These plants are so covered with scales that they appear silvery-white and feel fuzzy.

The most well-known bromeliad is the pineapple and the most well-known epiphyte (air plant) is the orchid. Epiphytes will attach any place they land on. Here are some epiphytes on a power line.

And here are some bromeliads scattered about growing on a horizontal branch in the forest.

We went to pineapple plantation to learn about the wonderful world of pineapples and I was taught how to choose a good pineapple in the store. It is not by sniffing it or squeezing it or poking it at its base to check for softness or tugging on its leafy crown. A good pineapple has large “eyes” in the pattern, it is shaped nicely (not pear-shaped or uneven), and the bottom part is golden-colored. I also learned that the bottom half of the pineapple is sweeter and less stalky than the top part, so save the bottom half for people you really like (or yourself). Here is a shot of the pineapple plantation that grows amazing organic pineapples. It is owned by the Collins Street Bakery in Texas, famous for having the best fruit cake in the world (their claim, not mine – I’ve never tasted their fruit cake, so I cannot judge).

They also grow ornamental pineapples. Like these cuties:

And these that I christened “tiny pineys”.

And now changing gears for a second: The Montezuma Oropendola! It’s a bird, not an ailment. A cool-looking bird, in fact.

What I loved about this bird was the amazing sound it made. It sounded like someone shaking a thick sheet of plastic. And apparently they are called “oropendola” because when they make the call, they will hang upside down from the branch for a second like a pendulum. I found a video on YouTube that kind of captures the sound and the motion. It’s way cooler in person, all tremulous and loud.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HjNZ1a0PTY

I could listen to that all day.

Check out this yard full of canna lilies being all flouncy and vibrant.

I like the way the seed pods look like unpeeled lychees.

I spent a great deal of this trip taking (or attempting to take) pictures of ferns. I’ve always loved ferns, but the second I would get them into my house, they would become very sad and die. The first day we were in Costa Rica, we went to a volcano and Cricket insisted we go on a walk. In the rainforest. 6,000 above sea level. On a mountain. This did not go well for me. At one point I wrapped my arms around a moss-covered tree trunk and whispered, “I love you, tree. I hate my boyfriend. I hate him so much. I will live with you forever. Because I’m going to die here. Right now.” At one point Cricket tried to take my pulse but it was too fast for him to count. Periodically we would stop so I could catch my breath and stare daggers at Cricket and I noticed this lovely baby fern leaf all curled up. I said, “Hey, can you take a picture of me pointing to this?” Cricket went to take the shot just as some NATURE! flew up into my eye aaaaaaaahhh nature in my eye. So now we have two lovely pictures of a curled-up fern leaf and me making low moaning noises while trying to get what turned out to be a piece of leaf out from under my eyelid.

(I’m real outdoorsy.)

I learned a neat fact about ferns. We passed some fern farms and the wee fernlets were under large tents covered in black mesh fabric. That is because ferns grow on the forest floor where 60% of the sunlight is filtered out, so the black mesh is attempting to mimic that.

Here’s a fern I saw one day that had spores on the underside of its leaves.

Here are teeny-tiny ferns growing in the rainforest.

And here’s my favorite fern photo. FERN FIST.

Other plants: a stilt root tree.

A red ginger flower. I don’t know if it tastes like ginger, but that’s what it’s called. It’s used a lot in fancy-pants flower arrangements.

And a passion flower. I’ve always known passion flowers to look like this:

But did not know they also looked like the one I saw, this one:

Birds are next. A lotta birds. Very exciting.