A Kid Visits Costa Rica
by Timothy, Gr. 5, Cyberstories Editor
As my brother, my sister, and I tore open our Christmas
presents, we found plane tickets to Costa Rica to visit the rainforest
for New Year’s Week of 1998. I wasn’t very excited,
because I was worried about botflies that live in the rainforest.
I’ll tell you more about botflies later. First, let’s
find out about the rainforest.
First of all, what is it and where is it? There are five
different rainforests in the world located in five different
places. The biggest one is the Amazon rainforest in South
America. The Amazon is 1,370 million acres. All of the
rainforests are all located within the tropics, which are between
the two latitudes that are on either side of the equator.
Sometimes, there are 1,500 different trees in an acre of
rainforest! There are five layers in the rainforest each with its
own habitat where different kinds of plant and animals live.
Almost 200 feet in the air is the highest layer called the
emergent layer where the high flying birds and howler monkeys
live. Almost 200 feet in the air is the highest layer, called the
emergent layer, where the high flying birds and howler monkeys
live. Next down at 130 to 65 feet, is the canopy layer where the
liana vines hang down from the sky to collect water either from
the ground or from cylinder-shaped plants
called bromeliads. The canopy layer blocks 98% of
the sunlight from reaching the plants below, but rain can still
get through this leafy layer by trickling down the tree trunks.
The scarlet macaws like to fly around here and the sloth, the
slowest mammal on earth, which can move only 2 to 4 feet a
minute, like to live here. Next stop at 65 to 30 feet, is the
understory, where monkeys usually sleep and trees block the wind.
Falling into the shrub layer already at 30 to 15 feet, you'll see
lots of baby trees growing. Anxious to be on the forest floor at
15 to 0 feet, the underbrush is scarce because of such little
light getting through. If you're lucky, you might see a hunting
jaguar!
On our first day in Costa Rica, we saw iguanas walking around
our hotel pool. There were lots of lizards in Costa Rica: big,
small, red, gray- you name it, they’ve got it! So don’t
go there if you can’t stand lizards. The green iguana is
five feet world record long. The older ones eat plants, and the
young eat insects and small animals. It lives along rivers and
lakes in Mexico to lower South America. It is captured and bred
by smugglers who steal their eggs and smuggle them through Belize
to sell in pet stores in Mexico and the U. S.and then released in
Belize.
The author (second from
left) and his family at a river in the rainforest.
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One afternoon my parents took us on a long bumpy road to spend
the night up in the treetops! I was going to zip-line through the
rain forest! Zip-lining is a way to travel through the sky
without being in an airplane. First, you put on a lot of gear
like a leg harness, a stomach harness, a head strap flashlight,
and some gloves. That’s when we met our three guides for the
first time: Guanaleese, Chema and Emilio. They showed us a case
full of bugs that were found in the rain forest—some of them
were the size of my hand!
There are many insects in the rain forest such as the blue
morpho butterfly, the Goliath bird-eating spider, the leaf
cutter ant, the rhinoceros beetle, and the botfly. The blue
morpho butterfly has wings that are blue on top and brown on the
bottom. Scientists have found these butterflies that are as big
as their hand or as small as tiny moths. The Goliath bird-eating
spider is a tarantula-- the spider that preys mainly on young
birds. The rhinoceros beetle is named for a horn the males have.
Females don’t have horns. The botfly lays its eggs on the
beak of a mosquito. When the mosquito bites you it leaves the egg
inside of your skin to hatch. I was glad that I did not get
bitten by a botfly!
Our guide said we had the perfect night to go up in the trees
because we had a full moon so we could see and a strong wind so
the bugs would stay away. I sure hoped he was right about those
bugs! Once we were dressed, we began our adventure by hiking into
the rainforest. When I went into the rainforest I saw a lot of
leaves but I hardly saw any animals because they were hidden.
They were all around us, actually! We came across some leaf
cutter ants carrying little pieces of green leaves. Guanaleese
explained that leaf cutter ants harvest leaves by taking them
into their holes where they chew them into mush, add fungi
spores, and grow a kind of fungi never found any were else in the
world but their nest. That’s their food. He said that only
some ants could mark the path with their smell from smell glands.
He warned us that if you smear their path by stepping on some
ants that are following each other, the smell that marks the
whole path might get lost, and the whole colony may lose their
way.
We hiked to a canoe tree, which was 20 feet wide. A canoe tree
is hollow inside. The Costa Rican natives named it a canoe tree,
because they could cut it in half and make canoes. The tree we
climbed up was so big it should have been called a cruise ship
tree! The guides hooked me up to a wire leash that prevented me
from falling, and I began to climb 85 feet up a ladder in the
dark. Once I got up to the top, I found a steel platform that
looked like it was made out of really strong chicken wire hanging
in the tree.
The author swinging on
the zip-line and being helped to the platform.
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Chema unhooked my wire leash from the ladder and hooked me to
a cable that would let me glide to another tree. I sat down on my
leg harness, jumped off the platform, swung out into the air, and
slid down to the next platform where Emilio was waiting to catch
me. It wasn't very easy because I had to use my gloved hand to
brake myself, and I always braked too soon. So I got stuck
hanging in the middle and had to pull myself
to the next platform with my hands. I could not see the guide,
because it was so dark with only my head flashlight, and I got
kind of scared. Once I got my head skinned by the wire, but after
that I ducked down so that didn’t happen again.
My brother, Michael,
flying with good form and our guide, Chema, carrying sleeping
bags between platforms.
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We glided through about 11 platforms before we got to a
platform where we were going to sleep. I was hoping it would be
like the Swiss Family Robinson tree house, but it was just about
8x10 feet wide with wires all around. When we went to sleep, we
were still wearing a belt harness and our leash that hooked us up
to the tree. Our tree was silent when we went to sleep except for
major wind! Little did I know that little white-faced capuchin
monkeys came to sleep above our heads!
I woke up to the sound of howler monkey music. They sounded
like oooh oooooh ooooh. They are the loudest monkeys in the world
and can be heard up to 2 miles away.
We watched as white-faced capuchin monkeys ate and danced in
the treetops. One had slept right above me in the treetop and I
watched as it climbed over my head. You can only see White-faced
capuchin monkeys if you sleep up in the trees, because the noise
of the rappelling wires scares them away.
My family on the platform
after spending the night sleeping in the rainforest canopy
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On the drive back
to the hotel there was a turtle in the road that we moved to one
side of the road so that it would not get squished! It ran across
the road to the other side, opposite from where we put it.
Believe me when it ran, it ran fast! Turtles are not slow!
There are many mammals which live in the rainforest, most of
which I did not see. There are three kinds of mammals: carnivores,
herbivores and omnivores. Carnivores are meat eaters,
like the jaguar and the ocelot. The ocelot is the most common cat
in the rainforest, but it is very rare to see. It is more likely
to see its claw marks on a tree. Herbivores eat plants. The black
howler monkey is an example. What is an omnivore? It eats both
plants and animals. The pygmy marmosets as well as the night
monkey, the only nocturnal monkey in the world, are examples. The
pygmy marmoset is the world's smallest monkey. Some are only 5
inches long. I saw them in the endangered species building at the
Philadelphia Zoo.
There are more birds in Costa Rica than there are bird
watchers. One afternoon we were driving along a dirt road that
was the bumpiest in the world, because Hurricane Mitch had washed
most of it away, when three black and white birds flew right past
our windshield. My dad stopped the jeep and we jumped out and ran
back to look. We found the three birds perched in a tree. They
had big colorful beaks. All together we yelled out,
"Toucans!" A toucan saws off berries with the saw-like
edge of his beak, balances the berry on the top of his beak,
throws it up in the air and catches it. Toucans also use their
big beaks for beak fights with other toucans. We didn’t see
them do this, though. They just sat in the tree, but they were
still very cool. Scientists think their beaks are so colorful in
order to scare off other birds so they can eat their eggs and
their young. 
Let me tell you about other birds in the rain forest. The most
interesting one is the scarlet macaw which is a red, yellow and
blue bird that talks. The blue and gold macaw is the exact same
body shape as all other macaws. The
hyacinth macaw is plain blue and lives deep in the rainforest. It
is rare to see because they are a threatened species and there
are only 2,500-5,000 left in the world. Macaws’ favorite
foods are seeds, nuts, and fruit.
The bumpy road where we saw the toucans was leading us to
Mount Arenal, which is a big volcano in Costa Rica. It is
supposed to shoot hot coals off regularly. We swam at Tabacon Hot
Springs nearby, which is a bunch of creeks and a swimming pool
heated by the volcano. The water comes up from underground
springs that flow past the volcano’s magma so that makes the
water hot. The creeks are long and have very windy paths and I
got lost. It has many waterfalls to play in. If you want a hot
bath go there -- but go in mid day because they close at nine and
are expensive. The volcano Arenal was supposed to shoot hot coals
out. But no, it did not show off. Instead, I got my head bounced
to pieces on the bumpy road for nothing.
Costa Rica is pretty much owned by reptiles, birds, and
monkeys. In other words, Costa Rica is a great tourist spot.
Rainforest Links
Rainforest
Alliance
Rainforest protection to the max; educate yourself on
the issues and places.
Rainforests,
Diversity and Destruction
Abstract introduces the reader to the rainforests,
their importance to the world's ecosystems and the truths
behind their destruction.
Rainforest Action
Network
The RAN works to protect the Earth's rainforests and
their inhabitants. Their colorful, educational Web offering
is full of relevant info on the current state of rainforests
worldwide, political policies and active campaigns. A Kid's
Corner is included.
Indonesian
Tropical Rainforest - a tour to the endangered rainforest.
Rainforest
of Sarawak - contains information about the rainforest.
Rainforest
Workshop - A student and teacher run link to rainforest
information on the internet.
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