The Beach in El Salvador!!!

We had a four day weekend at the beginning of May and me and a two other teachers decided to hit up Playa el Tunco in El Salvador! Sasha, Roxanda and I caught the bus leaving at 2am from Guatemala City and rode through the night to San Salvador in El Salvador. The shuttle from our hotel picked us up there and drove us the 40 or minutes to Playa el Tunco, a tiny surfer town.

The three days that we stayed there this was the basic plan:

• Wake up hung over around 8 or 9am
• Head to the place down the street for an enormous breakfast burrito, fruit smoothie, and fresh coffee. (for those of you who know me, you know how strongly I feel about breakfast. This was heaven)
• Walk to the beach and settle on loungers at a tiny beach bar
• Read book
• Sunbathe
• Walk out to the water every now and then
• Do this for roughly 6 hours
• Then head back to the hotel, take shower and put on clothes
• Go eat a delicious fresh seafood dinner
• Freshen up and head out for ladies night and crazy dancing

Sasha with gross smelly man

Since Playa el Tunco was a surfer town, there were only a few women. This meant that every night at least one bar was having a ladies night in order to get the girls and ALL the boys. These ladies nights were crazy, they would just hand out vodka tonics and rum and cokes for FREE. For multiple hours.

The seafood was also amazing. It was incredibly fresh and incredibly well done. It was an utterly amazing weekend.

Semana Santa in Costa Rica Part 4

Well for some stupid reason, blogger won't let me upload the Capuchin monkey video. Bummer. 

Moving on.... On my second to last day in Costa Rica we all went on a little day trip to an island called La Isla Uvita. Some dudes took us out in a motorboat and then gave us a tour of the tiny island. It has an interesting past: CHristopher Columbus stopped here in his travels, later, some nuns built a convent and it became a leprosy island, after that, drug runners took over, and now its just a little island thats nice to visit. 

On our hike we visited the foundation of the convent, a few different little coves where sea urchins and fish and even an eel(!) lived. We slipped on slippery mud and got bit by some very large ants. We also collected pretty hermit crabs and slogged through some tidepools (my sneakers got soaked). There was a torrential downpour in there, as well as some snorkelling. It was eventful.  

 

It was a fun but tiring day and I was happy to head back to the Sanctuary that night. 

Semana Santa in Cost Rica Part 3

So my absolute favorite animals at the sanctuary were the kinkajous. I was literally obsessed with them. Kinkajous are super cute creatures in the raccoon family. They are nocturnal and so are only really awake from right before dinner to dawn. At all other times they lie curled up with each other in their little sleeping box.

They were really sleepy if you went to see them during the day, but I took to visiting them right around dinner time and they were super affectionate and enthusiastic. They would both clamber out of the sleeping box and leap onto my shoulders sniffing me and pulling on my clothes and camera. Their tails are incredibly strong and the could could actually hang from my neck using on the tail to hold on.

Each volunteer chooses an animal to be in charge of enrichment toys/activities. I, of course, chose the kinkajous. I scavenged some coconuts that we had already drank the coconut water out of and filled them with bananas and honey. I then hung the coconuts at random places in their cage. One of the kinkajous woke up when I was hanging them and ate all the bananas and honey out of one coconut before going back to sleep. I came back later at night and both kinkajous and Itchy the olingo were going crazy about the treat. 

 Itchy shared the kinkajou enclosure but was not nearly as friendly. She spent all day inside this orange tube. She only came out at night and when she did, she was incredibly jealous of whatever the kinkajous were doing. If the kinkajous were on my shoulders, then she had to be on my shoulders AND she didn't want me to touch her AND she would then pick a fight with whatever kinkajou was on my other shoulder.

Itchy the Olingo

My other favorite animal was Billy the coati. He was soooo sassy. Everyone, including me, was a little scared of Billy. If you got near his cage he would rush at the chain link and jump up on it on all fours and growl and squeak at you. After a few days of this nonsense, I decided to push him a bit. I would sit as close to the cage I could get without him being able to reach me. (And he tried) And so I would sit until he calmed down. Then he would lay down against the chainlink and I would stroke his fur as fast as I could. He would immediately turn around and growl and squeak at me menacingly, before laying down against the chainlink again. Sometimes he would throw a suspicious look over his shoulder at me. So I'd pet him real quick and the cycle would continue. I maintain that he enjoyed it because he could have just walked away from where I was sitting but he never did. 

 

I had more of a love hate relationship with the Capuchin monkeys. They were incredibly cute and so humanlike, but they were also little troublemakers. One of their favorite games was to jump in the water bucket and then shoot down the back of your shirt so you ended up with wet dirty monkey climbing up and down your back. The worst was when one was under the shirt and the other outside of the shirt and they would fight with each other. Other times they would cling to you and refuse to get off when you wanted to leave their enclosure. They managed to escape twice, using this method. Simone got out and promptly ran amok everywhere. She moved onions onto volunteers beds, chewed ipod cords and stole cookies. When Wim got out she just jumped from the top of the cage to the tree nearby and back. 

(I tried to put another video in here but It wouldn't let me. I'll try on the next post)

Just realized I forgot to blog about the accommodations. They were rustic. Rickity bunkbeds all around. But the pool was nice. Though the mosquitoes were a holy terror. 

Bed

Pool!

Semana Santa in Costa Rica! Part 2

We got off the bus in Limon which is actually right on the beach. (Though we weren't supposed to go out to it because Limon is one of the most dangerous places in Costa Rica.) We walked a bit off the road to The Paradero Wildlife Sanctuary.

The first afternoon, Nicki and I met everyone, got a mini tour of the animal area and hung out for the rest of the day. At the program already was Alex from Germany, Erik from Sweden, Beth from England, Eva from Germany, Elisabeth from Switzerland, the volunteer coordinator Dominika from Hungary and the orphan puppy named Stripe who is everyone's baby.

Stripe!

The Sanctuary is set up with the long lodge with the kitchen and volunteer rooms in an L shape around the pool. Beyond the pool is the butterfly garden where some sloths and the toucans reside and where we take the howler monkeys everyday to get exercise. On the other side of the lodge are the rest of the enclosures holing various animals like the spider monkeys, Capuchin monkeys (Simone and Wim), Bambi the deer, Billy the coati, the various parrots and macaws, a whole bunch more sloths including Tito and Snowball in the nursery, and my personal favorites the kinkajous with their grumpy roommate, Itchy the olingo.

Billy the coati

As a part of the volunteer program, we had various duties. The animals had to be fed 3 times a day. This involved superhuman amounts of chopped veggies and fruits. The cages also had to be raked once a day and the water refreshed. The Capuchin monkeys made cleaning the cage an arduous activity because they are extremely mischievous

Each day the howler monkeys had to be carried to and fro and to and fro again to their night enclosure and the butterfly garden. (They had to be taken out when the toucans and sloths got fed because they were assholes and knocked all the sloth food to the ground.) Carrying the howler monkeys was fun because they would immediately jump on your head and cling. Although they were not exactly potty-trained so every now and then you got poo down your front or back. That was not pleasant and smelled revolting.

Kirsten on Alex;s head

Top view of how howler monkeys like to ride. 

Eva moving the monkeys

 Notice how this brat wrapped his tail around my neck so he could hang upside down with his monkey bum in my face.

Another job was sloth babysitting. The two youngest orphan sloths were Tito, a two toed sloth, and Snowball, a three toed sloth. They spent most of their time in small cages in the nursery and were taken out about 5 hours a day to be cuddled and to get some exercise on the sloth "playgrounds". I have the most pictures of them because all you did was sit with them for hours. Tito was my fav baby sloth. He LOVED to cuddle and would cry when you put him on the playground. He would chase me around and grab me and cling like a burr whenever he got close.

Nicki with Snowball

Me and Tito

Look at that face of trouble!

Snowball exercising

Erik with Snowball

I ended up with a few scratch marks from Tito when I wanted to put him on the playground and he preferred to sit with me.  

Babysitting Tito after feeding him his veggies and joined by Kirsten the howler monkey.

After our duties, we usually hung out in the pool, which felt amazing and I also spent a lot of time reading in the hammock.