Adventuring in Costa Rica

This weekend, since Abba was not working, we rented a car and went for an adventure outside of the city of San Jose. The car was a little SUV shaped toy car, and sitting in it I felt like Mr. Incredible and his car. From the car rental place we had to drive through downtown which is absolutely uncivil. Buses have no qualms about practically kissing your bumper, street lights are hung so high you cannot see them from the driver's seat, pedestrians spill off the side walks and weave between cars, there are rumors that ladrones break into your car while you are at a light and steal your purse, and of course, the streets don't have names so navigating the new area was difficult. But with relatively few glitches we got out of the city and onto a road toward the JUNGLE.

In less than a half hour we were winding our way up volcanos covered by lush greenery. Following two other Tico's before him, Abba, passed a put-putting truck pushing his way up the hill. And then quite promptly, we got pulled over by a cop who tells my non-Spanish-speaking father that he is being fined 20,000 colones and a 6-month license suspension. It was almost funny, except he wasn't joking. Evidently we had passed the truck across a double yellow line. As he wrote up a ticket, got our license plate number, and Abba's passport; Mom worked her sweet talking magic. How we have only been in Costa Rica less than a week, we had only had the car for one hour, how we really didn't know we broke a law... which were all, true, true and true. We even whispered amongst ourselves about bribing the police (though I don't think I could ethically do that, and he didn't seem like a bribing-kinda-guy). But by some trick of fate, after all that good scare he let us go free! And after that we drove not a hair over the speed limit and did not attempt to pass any other vehicles.

Finally we arrived at our destination--The Rain Forest Aerial Tram. This was pretty cool. The three of us got our own private tour with an extremely knowledgeable English-speaking guide. The trip included an hour hanging canopy tour, which among all the diverse jungle plants we saw a Kuwati and two white-faced Cappuchin monkeys! We also did a walking tour and got to see some extremely poisonous pit vipers (about the width of your finger), a bullet ant (over an inch long) whose claim-to-fame is his sting is more painful than that of a scorpion, a bunch of birds and butterflies, some really cool plants, and a whole battalion of army ants. My favorite sighting, however, were he leaf cutter ants. The colony had lasted for over ten years and these ants were the most organized and efficient workers I had ever seen. They even cleared trails to the forest, like little ant high ways so that they could carry leaves 3-times their size back to the hive. These leaves, by the way are not ant food. They are taken into the colony chewed and mixed with some ant digestive fluids in order farm a fungus for them to eat.

Here are some pictures from today:
Mom and Abba on the Aerial Tram


Some cool rain forest tendrill:


This was the best I could get, to capture the ants


A great sunset: