Day 3: The Waterfall

Today we had to be up earlier, well, some of us. You have to get up earlier to milk cows I guess. Kaitlin, Heather, Hunter, Chris, Henry and I went and milked. It was still pretty much dark when we first got there, but then it got lighter as we went on. The farmer was actually Giovanni’s dad, which was kind of cool. They looked alike. The cow’s name was Sousa (I think that is how it was spelled). Sousa is a cool name to me because of the composer John Phillip Sousa, who also invented the sousaphone (which I played). Anyway, the farmer was a totally hardcore at milking. That stuff came out at super high pressure and it was pretty awesome. He went really fast as well. Everyone took turns and some people were hilarious just because of their personalities.

For me, milking the cow was pretty strange. I mean, the utters and the mechanics of milking were strange. You kind of had to roll your fingers down the utter and squeeze the milk out kind of like toothpaste out of a tube. I wasn’t amazing at it but I was not bad either. I guess I did the job but it would have taken forever for me to fill up the bucket.

Today was the day for the waterfall hike; I had been waiting for it since we got to Costa Rica. Trust me, I wasn’t disappointed, which you will find out about later. Geoff was our guide on for this hike and when we were walking I saw that he had a Nikon D40x (another dSLR) and I got really excited. I had found someone in Costa Rica I could talk about photography with. Right when we set off I snapped this photo.

We walked for a while and Geoff asked me a few questions about photography and SLR settings. I answered to the best of my ability. We also talked about waterfall photography and he said that he had taken several pictures of it before. Apparently, as we were walking Doug tripped, fell, and cut up his knees. I didn’t find out until later and felt bad about it because Doug had to hike pretty much the whole way with a hurt knee and torn up hands.

We got to the end of the road soon enough and we had to pay a toll to this guy so that we could cross his land in order to reach the waterfall. I heard later that he charged $8 a person to cross his land which means he was made over $100 off of our group alone. That is a lot of money for those people. The trail was very, how should I say this, stereotypical jungle feeling. It was not long after we paid the guy that Caitlin noticed an animal in the trees. Luckily I had just changed to my zoom lens on a whim, so I was able to snap off a few pictures… well, a few being about 50.





It turned out to be a prehensile-tailed tree porcupine. What a strange animal. It is kind of ugly but cool and pretty at the same time. I was both really happy with and proud of Caitlin for noticing it in the trees.

Elated by that fact that we both got a picture of the porcupine, Geoff and I continued to talk as we walked the trail back to the waterfall. It was a pretty tough trail and was a long way back to the waterfall. We saw some more wildlife along the way like this butterfly.

We also saw the elusive Jungle Chris.

Eventually we reached the waterfall. This was the initial view of it.

I quickly set up my tripod and began snapping away. All the while Chris and the others were getting ready to take the plunge into the icy waters of the waterfall. Here are some of the pictures I got. This is a decent view of the top section.

Here is the rest of the waterfall (I need to figure out a way to get rid of the sun spots).

Notice Chris majestically bursting out of the water.


After I was mostly satisfied with the pictures I had taken I joined the rest of the group in the water. Talk about cold. It was a little ridiculous how cold this water was. My entire body (that was submerged) was numb and my hands hurt a little from how cold it was. After we had had our fill of the cold water the group got walking back out. There was a little confusion between the guys (who had stayed at the waterfall and let the girls go up the trail to change out of their bathing suits) and the girls because we were waiting for them to come get us and tell us they were done changing. Eventually we figured they had to be done and set out. I kind of got left behind a little because I was fooling with camera equipment and then eventually I was completely alone on the trail because I was stop every now and again to snap off a picture or two. Here are some of the shots I got.







I eventually made it out of the forest and back to the road, where I ran into some of the group that was walking with Caitlin because she had rolled her ankle and was moving a little slower. I was happy to have people to walk with again.

After the hike and lunch we went to the outdoor classroom to learn about insects with Katie. Henry found it especially interesting and took notes, which I thought was cool. I might get them from him later. After she was done talking to us she and Cameron sent us out to capture some specimens in the field. I took that opportunity to take pictures. I got this one pretty shot of the Bungalows at the Eco Lodge.

It worked out to James catching the Bugs and me taking pictures, which I was fine with.

James and Hunter decided to chase after the same butterfly.

After the bug class we had dancing lessons with Giovanni. Katie was his partner for the demonstration and they taught us the Combia. Giovanni said that it was easy, but we soon found out that his and our definitions of easy were a little different. It was a cool dance with a lot of spins. I never actually memorized all of it since some of the moves were pretty intricate and we went pretty quickly. Caitlin eventually got to dance with Giovanni, which it seems she liked.

Dinner was right after the dancing lesson and we didn’t really do much after dinner except relax, which I am doing now. I guess it is bedtime. Until tomorrow!