Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Our Picky Eater and Climate Change

This post was also posted on the Climate Mama web site.

by Lauri

This didn't start out to be a post about climate change.  It began as a post about picky eating.

For those of you who are familiar with Jason and his eating habits, he has (thankfully) added a new food to his repetoire - peanut butter and honey sandwiches.  A week ago, he wouldn't touch peanut butter; now he proclaims it as one of his new favorite things.

Jason loving a peanut butter & double honey sandwich
This may seem trivial, but with Jason, it's all about trying to find sources of protein.  Vegetarian by choice, he's been eating lots of plain pasta with butter, flour tortillas, and white rice since we left the States.  He eats plenty of fruits and vegetables, but protein is a challenge - so far, it's been handfuls of nuts, yogurt and milk.  At home, he eats a jar of either almond or soy nut butter per week - which are definitely not available on the road.

Our daughter will happily chow down what we call "kid food" in the States - chicken nuggets, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, and the occasional carbon-intensive hamburger.  Jason?  None of the above.

At any rate:  we came back through San Jose for a few days before leaving for Peru, and we went to an excellent exhibit on climate change at the National Museum.

Mystery Sound #3

Here's another sound from Costa Rica.



Here are the links for more information from the end of the video (as you can't click them from within the video.  Don't click on these until after you've guessed, as they will give it away.

Link #1 (From the website of "The night tour" - we went on this while in Drake Bay, with Tracy the Bug Lady.  Although it absolutely poured on us, it was fabulous.  We have a mystery photo that will be coming from this tour)

Link #2 (wikipedia)


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Peninsula de Osa

We’re now just finishing an amazing two weeks in the Peninsula de Osa.  Jutting out into the ocean from the southern Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, this is truly the jungle.  It’s quite hard to get to; it’s the wettest spot on the Central American Pacific coast -- and, we’re here in the rainy season!  So, yes, we get rain pretty much every day, and sometimes it’s torrential.  Lauri and I agree that we’ve been in a couple of thunderstorms here that are the hardest rains we’ve ever seen.  However, it doesn’t rain all the time, and in fact we’ve grown to enjoy the rain and embrace it.

Embracing the rain...
There are about 5000 people in the entire peninsula, and about 1000 in the area where we’re staying (Drake Bay).  There is a road that one can take to get here, but in the rainy season it is discouraged, as the rivers you have to cross in your car are often swollen and impassible (there are no bridges).  The “easiest” way to get here is an hour water taxi ride from a town (Sierpe) about 30 miles away.  This water taxi itself starts down the Sierpe river, then winds its way through a tangled area of mangroves, with some of the waterways being barely large enough for the boat to squeeze through, and then out into the ocean for the last 5 miles or so.  These are not large boats, so even when the surf is not very rough, they launch up and crash down over the waves in a teeth-rattling adventure ride…  Jason especially loved it.

Crocodile on water taxi ride
Water taxi


Mangroves
The Osa is one of the most bio-diverse places on earth.  Excerpting from the excellent book “OSA, Where The Rainforest Meets The Sea” by Roy Troft and Trond Larsen, this small area of Costa Rica is home to over half the animal and plant species of the country.  And the United States, roughly 200 times the size of Costa Rica also has about half the number of species as all of Costa Rica.  So the number of species in this small area, a bit larger than metropolitan Los Angeles, is equivalent to the number of species in the entire United States!


Thursday, September 12, 2013

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Our kids' posts

Jamie & Jason are really getting into doing blog posts (it's also part of their school writing assignments!).  If you're not subscribed to their blog and seeing them, we suggest you check out what they've done.  We help them with formatting and some technical things (though not as much as you'd think...), but their posts are truly their own.

Recently Jason did posts and videos about our time with the Fundacion Corcovado and their turtle conservation efforts and the monkey bridges created by Kids Saving The Rainforest.  Jamie did posts about the Children's Eternal Rainforest and one about what we learned on a great chocolate tour.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Mystery Sound #2

Another wild sound from Costa Rica.  See if you can guess what it is.


Here are the links for more information from the end of the video (as you can't click them from within the video.  Don't click on these until after you've guessed, as they will give it away.

Link #1 (Wikipedia)

Link #2 (Anywhere Costa Rica)

Link #3 (Wilderness Classroom)

Link #4 (Project Noah)





Sunday, September 1, 2013

Children's Eternal Rainforest - Wilderness Classroom post

Here is our first "Notes from the trail" post to the Wilderness Classroom site.  It has some study guide questions at the end.  It's a little longer than will be our usual.

Here's some additional links for information about CER:

Digital brochure
Facebook
Website
Videos about history and biodiversity:
     Video 1
     Video 2

Mystery Photo #1

Check out the mystery photo we posted on The Wilderness Classroom site.  Go there to get clues and guess what it is.