Nicaragua Part 2 (finally)

Sorry for the delay in posting this second and final Nicaragua story, as you know by now I am not a very good blogger. It is difficult to be motivated when Lindsey's posts are so entertaining and frequent. So, we left off with me and Kevin getting through one week of Nicaragua in the dry forest. Our second week was to be on the other side of the country (the Atlantic/Caribbean side) directly across the river that forms the boarder between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. to save travel time we our travel to this new location consisted of an in-country flight, followed by a three hour boat trip down the river to our lodge. This first picture is the airport where we landed, the building to the right is the terminal, the field to the left is the runway, and if you look close you can the the airport security in the background (an armed military person with a machine gun). The second picture is the boat we took down to the lodge, the picture is actually the day we left and the boat was having some problems, as you can see. I included this picture because it gives you some idea about the river we were on, the far side of the river is Costa Rica.

This lodge was much nicer than the accommodations in the dry forest the previous week. There was a really nice sitting area that you can see in pictures 3 and 4. We spent most afternoons here because it was usually raining. This site, the humid forest, had a lot more kinds of frogs including 2 species of poison arrow frogs and tons of tree frogs. We also saw one boa about 4 feet long. The last picture was taken just outside of our room. Like the lodge in the dry forest, this place had mosquito nets over our beds and here there were no windows, just shudders. This frog is just under our shudders and made its way into our room that night, thank goodness for mosquito nets.

There were also a lot of bugs but I have decided to only post a few pictures of them. First is a stingless bee nest that was inside of one of the logs the supporting the roof over the sitting area. The next picture is a grasshopper that I thought looked cool. Kevin and I both collected one of these huge beetles, this picture was taken right after Kevin and I caught the first one. To kill these we used a syringe to inject ammonia directly into the beetles mouth, it killed it instantly. I know that sounds mean but it was the most humane way to collect and preserve them.

So, let me tell a few stories to liven this post up. We collected a lot of velvet ants (one of our goals of going to Nicaragua) in the dry forest. For the first 4 days or so in the humid forest we collected ZERO velvet ants. We finally started seeing them on days when it didnt rain but almost as soon as we would spot them, they would run under the leaf litter that covered the ground and we would loose them. My strategy for collecting velvet ants in the leaf litter worked pretty well, as soon as I would see one, I would grab at it and the leaves that where in its immediate vicinity and quickly throw the handful of stuff into my net. I would then slowly sift through the leaves and twigs in my net until I found the velvet ant. One of these times I was searching through the leaves in my net and I was down to one or two leaves left and I had yet to see the velvet ant. I picket up one of the dry rolled up leaves and unrolled it. Inside I found the velvet ant and a mother scorpion with babies on her back. It is kind of scary to think that I grabbed that leaf and threw it in my net. This picture is not the exact one I grabbed but it gives you the idea.

One more brief story. Kevin and I decided to take a trail that was supposed to go to an old abandoned farm that was 3-4 km away. We hiked for a while maybe 2 km and got to a river that was too big to cross so we decided to head back. We were told that all of the trails at the lodge were loops so we decided to take another way back. We followed the trail for a while and it began getting smaller and obviously less traveled. In Nicaragua it gets dark quickly, at 5:30 it is light and by 6:00 it is dark, there is very little time that I would call dusk. Anyway it was about 5:00 and we were pretty far out into the jungle. I felt like I had a good idea which way we were supposed to go so I was leading the way. soon the trail was blocked by a big fallen tree. rather than try to get around the tree and find this little trail we decided it would be best if we went back the way we came. Kevin was totally lost, he could tell which way the lodge was, or even if we were on a trail we had already been on. I can see where he was coming from because the jungle is pretty different than anything either of us has spent a lot of time in (like the desert). I was walking pretty quickly so we could get back before dark and we were forced to stop and rest quite a few times (Kevin was not really used to long hikes, especially in the humidity). So we finally made it back to our original trail, and I took this picture of Kevin, you can tell he is tired, sorry it is grainy but It was really dark so I lightened it with photoshop so you could see. This place where I took the picture is where Kevin was afraid he would fall into "quicksand" just below him in the picture was a small stream bed with a muddy bottom, I put some sticks in the mud so I could cross but kevin is a bit heavier than me so he sunk up to his calves. Not true quick sand but pretty intimidating for a tired, semi-lost gringo. The other pictures below are me and kevin going off trail following a creek bed. I thought it would be really fun to follow the creek rather than the trail, I thought we might see more cool stuff if we got off the beaten path. We only made it about 300 yards then we decided to turn back when kevin slipped into the creek and filled his boot with water. I want all the readers to know that Kevin wasn't just being a wimp on this trip, even though that may be how I am making it sound, this was his first time out of the country and I was not making it very easy on him because of all of my harebrained ideas. He actually did really well and I was quite impressed. The last picture is me relaxing in a hammock while it is raining, again. If you look really close you can see the lodge's pet monkey sitting in a tree in the background.