Hello again,
Fever saga
Well, last time I'd emailed I said I'd gone to bed at 6:30pm... and by the time I got back to my room my fever had reached 40C (which is over 100F)... I took the said 2 pills prescribed by the nice chemist, but to no avail. The next day at 6am I anxiously took my temperature again, and though I felt better (the shivers had gone), it still showed 38.1C, which at 6am, was a LOT. It meant I was going to rocket to 100F again by late afternoon.
So, Greg & I talked on the phone and he suggested we swing by his hometown and visit his local chemist who is very good. And if he felt he couldn't help, then take me to a private clinic (which would cost a lot more!). So, when Carlos came to pick me up, Greg gave him directions over the phone and we met up with him 90mns later.
The chemist said straight away that if I had a fever then my best bet would be a jab, that I could take tablets but it would take several days to work. I asked if the jab would hurt, he said no... It was true when the liquid went in but afterwards it stung like hell and I felt seriously queasy... he then gave me something to sniff to make me feel a bit better.
He also suggested I keep on taking the 2 pills a night that had been prescribed as they could only help speed up recovery. Plus he prescribed another cream with anti-asthamine. All that for a grand total of $8... I was relieved as my travel insurance doesn't cover the first $100.
So, off I went, with a sore bum, but it did the trick (I hadn't had a shot in my bum since I was a kid !!). Within a few hours I was very much on the mend... and I then could enjoy a beautiful drive to Bosque de Paz (the Forest of Peace). There were lots of bromeliads on the trees and just lovely valleys with horses and countless bridges with rivers of pure water (the national motto here is 'Pura Vida' - Pure Life). They say it all the time... it works for any kind of greetings. Doesn't really have an equivalent in other countries or languages. There were SO many different trees along the road too, it was bewildering... and there was lovely light too. It rains on & off a lot here and after each rain you have the brightest lights...
No sooner had we arrived at Bosque de Paz that a gorgeous caoti came to greet us... This made my day as I love them to bits, they look so cuddly. They had a lot of feeders around the lodge which attracted some mammals and many birds. I mainly saw agoutis and caotis, and a striped agouti that only came out at night. I was told that once a jaguar even came near the feeder to snap up an agouti that had just been pigging out for a while - all fattened up ! hum.
It rained that afternoon, so I couldn't walk very far. In fact, I couldn't walk very far whether it was rain or shine because the trails were SO badly sign posted, they'd change the names of the trails half way through, they'd show you 2 'exit' signs in opposite directions, etc. etc. More often than not you came to a left and right turn and had NO idea which was to go... I mean, just utterly useless. It was infuriating because it meant I was unable to go very far at all and could only walk the same paths, where I knew I could find my way back... as the last thing I would have wanted would be to be stuck in the middle of no where, in the dark... with jaguars roaming around !!! With so many trails to choose from, no one would have even known where to start looking for me... hum.
The location of the lodge was stunning, by a pretty little stream, and right on the edge of one of the most biologically diverse national parks of CR, at the optimum altitude (so that the animals who live in the high land sometimes come down to that level, and the ones who live in the low land sometimes come up as high as this too). So, in effect, it gave you maximum opportunity for diversity.... but I didn't see an awful lot. Not even ONE monkey. But there is so much that one could not see... they claimed that pretty much every tree at this altitude would host about 1,000 different species of insects or flowers... 90% of which would be on the canopy top.
But it was incredibly peaceful and the lodge's motto was 'Where there is Peace, there is God' and you could really sense that. It was beautiful but I could tell I was going to be bored very quickly, with no internet and no one to talk to...
Thankfully, later that day an American couple arrived at the lodge and since there was just me and no one else but them, they suggested we have dinner together, which was kind of them and meant I could have some conversations at least, since I'd come over to CR without even ONE book to read... I was banking on having internet connections every night and as I usually prefer writing to my friends...
Photo Workshop 1
So, as usual, I would go to bed at 8:30pm and sleep till 7am. The next day was my workshop with Greg. He really had an eye for spotting unusual things (like a red tyre behind the black bird which made it look like an aura!), and knew how to move his camera to get some 'mood' effects (1st shot, left to right and right to left over a 2 second shutter speed). Whether I can duplicate his style and achieve as good results again, God knows !
He taught me that I could even use my polariser on a cloudy day to minimise the glare from the leaves, he showed me how exposure compensation works and how to make water blurry, and would show me with his digital camera what the different settings meant in real terms. Being visual, I needed to SEE the results. I'm still not 100% au fait with it all and I'll be glad to have a recap in a week's time! But he was very pleasant and very professional and it was nice to be with someone who could appreciate beauty in nature the way I could.
We walked about 4 hours trying to find a secluded waterfall, but kept getting lost. Greg told me that this was not just a case of bad sign posting at Bosque de Paz but in all over Costa Rica. That, a few years back he'd once asked for directions to a farm and he was told 'you turn right where the old bus stop used to be and left where Juan lived 30 years ago'... as he told me, 'if you knew where Juan lived 30 years ago, you wouldn't be asking for directions' !!! But he said Costa Rican seem to take pride in the fact that *they* never get lost and assume everybody can cope too... so, you will find no street names, no house numbers, etc. etc. And there's me who can't even read a map, so, one with no names... forget it !!!
And there were no kamikase flies over there, which was such a relief. Though the sand flies still got me and my legs currently look terribly sore with every bite being surrounded by a red circle about an inch wide. Yuk.
The lodge was owned by a millionaire who set it up to raise awareness of the importance of rainforests and to organise conferences for scientists, etc. The next World Conference on Orchids for instance will be held there, as there are 1,500 species in CR and 33% were represented in a garden he'd carefully planted. 90% of them were minuscule orchids, the bigger ones that we usually see in shops are hybrids... but the 'real' ones, you needed a macro lens to try and picture them (and Greg lent me his and I couldn't even focus with that, phew, hard work).
But I was reading in the lodge literature that every second of every day in the neo-tropics an area of rainforest the size of a football pitch is cleared out, which is seriously worrying. Greg, who is a political scientist too told me that this was probably exaggerated, esp in CR where pretty much all the national parks are now protected so they could never be chopped down. Still, at the lodge where I stayed they re-invest every dollar you give them to buy more acres so that the animals can live in peace forever more as the main reason animals become extinct is because their habitat is slaughtered as much as they are. They also said that the tremendous fires caused by such clearing of rain forests had caused 50% of the gas emission that have made global warming worse. Seriously, seriously SAD stuff...
But it was a very peaceful place though, as the name suggested (!) and only botanists or people with a special permit can visit. And they had the best fruit juice I've ever had in my life ! They said it was blackberry but it looked a lovely pink and tasted more like a mix of grenadine & raspberry. I was addicted to it ! Yummy.... I also had a papaya milkshake to die for... For me, fruits will always be infinitely much tastier than chocolate ! :)))
Waterfall located !
The next day I went on a guided tour to the waterfall, with the American couple and it took us 2h30 up hill to reach it but it was pretty glorious. 30-40 meters high, and surrounded by such lush vegetation... it looked like a movie set. I just hope I took some decent enough pix. It was only 1h to walk back down...
After lunch we all had a nap (as it'd been such hard work going uphill) and then we went to the laboratory so that our guide could show us the smallest orchid in the world under a microscope. The design was incredibly rich considering you could barely see it with naked eyes. They tend to discover 2-4 new orchids every year at Bosque de Paz alone... it's like a treasure hunt. They all seemed tremendously dedicated to recording every single one they'd found so far. Meticulous work. Personally, it'd have bored me silly after a while... I love all flowers, not just the ONE specie, but it showed we're all different ! :)
Another quiet evening, another early night... I really felt it was time to move on. In fact, in every place where I've been so far, I've kind of stayed one day too many in each. Because 2 days is enough for me to take all the photos I'm likely to want to take... it'd have been fun with just ONE friend to talk to, or walk the trails with... but completely alone most of the time was a bit too daunting and too lonely, somehow. I didn't realise I wouldn't have my driver with me the whole time... which made such a difference in my previous trips. There they just take me from A to B, drop me off and tend to go... which doesn't seem to work for me :(
Fever saga
Well, last time I'd emailed I said I'd gone to bed at 6:30pm... and by the time I got back to my room my fever had reached 40C (which is over 100F)... I took the said 2 pills prescribed by the nice chemist, but to no avail. The next day at 6am I anxiously took my temperature again, and though I felt better (the shivers had gone), it still showed 38.1C, which at 6am, was a LOT. It meant I was going to rocket to 100F again by late afternoon.
So, Greg & I talked on the phone and he suggested we swing by his hometown and visit his local chemist who is very good. And if he felt he couldn't help, then take me to a private clinic (which would cost a lot more!). So, when Carlos came to pick me up, Greg gave him directions over the phone and we met up with him 90mns later.
The chemist said straight away that if I had a fever then my best bet would be a jab, that I could take tablets but it would take several days to work. I asked if the jab would hurt, he said no... It was true when the liquid went in but afterwards it stung like hell and I felt seriously queasy... he then gave me something to sniff to make me feel a bit better.
He also suggested I keep on taking the 2 pills a night that had been prescribed as they could only help speed up recovery. Plus he prescribed another cream with anti-asthamine. All that for a grand total of $8... I was relieved as my travel insurance doesn't cover the first $100.
So, off I went, with a sore bum, but it did the trick (I hadn't had a shot in my bum since I was a kid !!). Within a few hours I was very much on the mend... and I then could enjoy a beautiful drive to Bosque de Paz (the Forest of Peace). There were lots of bromeliads on the trees and just lovely valleys with horses and countless bridges with rivers of pure water (the national motto here is 'Pura Vida' - Pure Life). They say it all the time... it works for any kind of greetings. Doesn't really have an equivalent in other countries or languages. There were SO many different trees along the road too, it was bewildering... and there was lovely light too. It rains on & off a lot here and after each rain you have the brightest lights...
No sooner had we arrived at Bosque de Paz that a gorgeous caoti came to greet us... This made my day as I love them to bits, they look so cuddly. They had a lot of feeders around the lodge which attracted some mammals and many birds. I mainly saw agoutis and caotis, and a striped agouti that only came out at night. I was told that once a jaguar even came near the feeder to snap up an agouti that had just been pigging out for a while - all fattened up ! hum.
It rained that afternoon, so I couldn't walk very far. In fact, I couldn't walk very far whether it was rain or shine because the trails were SO badly sign posted, they'd change the names of the trails half way through, they'd show you 2 'exit' signs in opposite directions, etc. etc. More often than not you came to a left and right turn and had NO idea which was to go... I mean, just utterly useless. It was infuriating because it meant I was unable to go very far at all and could only walk the same paths, where I knew I could find my way back... as the last thing I would have wanted would be to be stuck in the middle of no where, in the dark... with jaguars roaming around !!! With so many trails to choose from, no one would have even known where to start looking for me... hum.
The location of the lodge was stunning, by a pretty little stream, and right on the edge of one of the most biologically diverse national parks of CR, at the optimum altitude (so that the animals who live in the high land sometimes come down to that level, and the ones who live in the low land sometimes come up as high as this too). So, in effect, it gave you maximum opportunity for diversity.... but I didn't see an awful lot. Not even ONE monkey. But there is so much that one could not see... they claimed that pretty much every tree at this altitude would host about 1,000 different species of insects or flowers... 90% of which would be on the canopy top.
But it was incredibly peaceful and the lodge's motto was 'Where there is Peace, there is God' and you could really sense that. It was beautiful but I could tell I was going to be bored very quickly, with no internet and no one to talk to...
Thankfully, later that day an American couple arrived at the lodge and since there was just me and no one else but them, they suggested we have dinner together, which was kind of them and meant I could have some conversations at least, since I'd come over to CR without even ONE book to read... I was banking on having internet connections every night and as I usually prefer writing to my friends...
Photo Workshop 1
So, as usual, I would go to bed at 8:30pm and sleep till 7am. The next day was my workshop with Greg. He really had an eye for spotting unusual things (like a red tyre behind the black bird which made it look like an aura!), and knew how to move his camera to get some 'mood' effects (1st shot, left to right and right to left over a 2 second shutter speed). Whether I can duplicate his style and achieve as good results again, God knows !
He taught me that I could even use my polariser on a cloudy day to minimise the glare from the leaves, he showed me how exposure compensation works and how to make water blurry, and would show me with his digital camera what the different settings meant in real terms. Being visual, I needed to SEE the results. I'm still not 100% au fait with it all and I'll be glad to have a recap in a week's time! But he was very pleasant and very professional and it was nice to be with someone who could appreciate beauty in nature the way I could.
We walked about 4 hours trying to find a secluded waterfall, but kept getting lost. Greg told me that this was not just a case of bad sign posting at Bosque de Paz but in all over Costa Rica. That, a few years back he'd once asked for directions to a farm and he was told 'you turn right where the old bus stop used to be and left where Juan lived 30 years ago'... as he told me, 'if you knew where Juan lived 30 years ago, you wouldn't be asking for directions' !!! But he said Costa Rican seem to take pride in the fact that *they* never get lost and assume everybody can cope too... so, you will find no street names, no house numbers, etc. etc. And there's me who can't even read a map, so, one with no names... forget it !!!
And there were no kamikase flies over there, which was such a relief. Though the sand flies still got me and my legs currently look terribly sore with every bite being surrounded by a red circle about an inch wide. Yuk.
The lodge was owned by a millionaire who set it up to raise awareness of the importance of rainforests and to organise conferences for scientists, etc. The next World Conference on Orchids for instance will be held there, as there are 1,500 species in CR and 33% were represented in a garden he'd carefully planted. 90% of them were minuscule orchids, the bigger ones that we usually see in shops are hybrids... but the 'real' ones, you needed a macro lens to try and picture them (and Greg lent me his and I couldn't even focus with that, phew, hard work).
But I was reading in the lodge literature that every second of every day in the neo-tropics an area of rainforest the size of a football pitch is cleared out, which is seriously worrying. Greg, who is a political scientist too told me that this was probably exaggerated, esp in CR where pretty much all the national parks are now protected so they could never be chopped down. Still, at the lodge where I stayed they re-invest every dollar you give them to buy more acres so that the animals can live in peace forever more as the main reason animals become extinct is because their habitat is slaughtered as much as they are. They also said that the tremendous fires caused by such clearing of rain forests had caused 50% of the gas emission that have made global warming worse. Seriously, seriously SAD stuff...
But it was a very peaceful place though, as the name suggested (!) and only botanists or people with a special permit can visit. And they had the best fruit juice I've ever had in my life ! They said it was blackberry but it looked a lovely pink and tasted more like a mix of grenadine & raspberry. I was addicted to it ! Yummy.... I also had a papaya milkshake to die for... For me, fruits will always be infinitely much tastier than chocolate ! :)))
Waterfall located !
The next day I went on a guided tour to the waterfall, with the American couple and it took us 2h30 up hill to reach it but it was pretty glorious. 30-40 meters high, and surrounded by such lush vegetation... it looked like a movie set. I just hope I took some decent enough pix. It was only 1h to walk back down...
After lunch we all had a nap (as it'd been such hard work going uphill) and then we went to the laboratory so that our guide could show us the smallest orchid in the world under a microscope. The design was incredibly rich considering you could barely see it with naked eyes. They tend to discover 2-4 new orchids every year at Bosque de Paz alone... it's like a treasure hunt. They all seemed tremendously dedicated to recording every single one they'd found so far. Meticulous work. Personally, it'd have bored me silly after a while... I love all flowers, not just the ONE specie, but it showed we're all different ! :)
Another quiet evening, another early night... I really felt it was time to move on. In fact, in every place where I've been so far, I've kind of stayed one day too many in each. Because 2 days is enough for me to take all the photos I'm likely to want to take... it'd have been fun with just ONE friend to talk to, or walk the trails with... but completely alone most of the time was a bit too daunting and too lonely, somehow. I didn't realise I wouldn't have my driver with me the whole time... which made such a difference in my previous trips. There they just take me from A to B, drop me off and tend to go... which doesn't seem to work for me :(
posted by Sylvie at 9:36 PM
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