The Butterfly Farm

I woke up on my second day here (before the Caravan tour officially started) itching to take my camera and start seeing more than just the hotel room, and thankfully Marc had arranged a morning tour for me the day before. After an uncomfortable wait under the awning in front of the hotel, a tourist van picked me up about 15 minutes late to take me to the Butterfly Farm. The wait was uncomfortable because I was clearly the only foreigner up and about that morning, and the Barcelo hotel was not hospitable to us at all (until the Caravan Tour Director arrived then they did a 180 but more on that later). I was not sure I was standing in the right place to meet the tour van, or what it would look like (many tour vans circled and stopped before mine arrived, so I was not sure if i missed my ride or not). Finally, I was greatly relieved to see a bright little van with "The Butterfly Farm" happily painted on the side. I was most warmly welcomed aboard and with two brief stops to pick up Butterfly Farm employees, we were on our way.

My host in the van was a young woman named Fannie who was totally wonderful and engaging and indulged me greatly by allowing me to ask questions about our treatment at the hotel. Specifically, I wanted to find out if there could be any possibility that we were inadvertently offensive by our tipping, our behavior or whatever. She was very upset on my behalf and said that tourists are the main source of income for the country and that no hotel should treat people unkindly and that she was going to call them. I assured her that I did not want to cause any trouble and that the only reason I was asking was to make sure that there was nothing we should do differently.

While our conversation transpired, our van driver deftly maneuvered through the dense morning traffic and suddenly we were out of San Jose and in the most delightful countryside. It reminded me of some farming towns I have seen in Southern Washington State, with green everywhere, and little houses with big yards, horses dotting the landscape and happy looking people wandering here and there on the narrow streets which were warming fast in the morning sun. Of course the houses were radically different than those in the states, being mostly quite small, brightly painted and often with corrugated metal roofs.

As we neared the Butterfly Farm, our van stopped to show me several hand painted butterfly murals on the outer walls of houses and schools. Fannie explained to me that they had just started having mural painting contests and the winners would get to paint a building or wall. One house was painted entirely (all four sides) in a bright deep blue with happy colored butterflies flying in circles around it for eternity, or at least until the paint starts to peel in the hot and humid weather.

Moments later we pulled into the farm itself. My first impression and memory (writing now, many days later owing to lack of easy internet access these weeks due to our often remote locations) was of many flowering bushes lining the walkways, and what seemed to be 500 pairs of wings floating hurriedly from blossom to blossom. And this was outside the farm! Next my eyes alit on the external Banos building, which had also been painted by a mural winner and was just gorgeous. I almost forgot to tell you one fun fact: by some quirk of fate I was the only person who had signed up for the tour that morning --- I had the whole place to myself, whee! I was invited to take as many photos as I would like, no worries, no rush, and i indulged myself in doing so around the outer walkways for about 5 minutes. Capturing butterflies with a digital camera, it seems, is not all that much easier than capturing them by hand!

My van hostess was replaced by a tour guide who told me to make the Farm my home and offered me a wonderful cup of Britt Costa Rican coffee (whose plantation we would later visit and tour) and I drank gratefully, coffee lover that I am, and then the tour began.

I was guided into a wonderful little area, perhaps 4 times as large as a ranch-style living room, whose walls and ceiling were composed entirely of fine white netting. Sun and elements could penetrate the Farm. Most predators (spiders, ants, grasshoppers and perhaps small lizards excluded) could not, and of course the butterflies could not escape unless the door was kept open too long. Immediately we were surrounded by fluttering wings of every color, but especially the wonderful Blue Morpho that was fairly recently the subject of a boy's quest film that was quite poignant and memorable. There were golden wings, green wings, blue wings, spotted wings, striped wings, wings with dots that looked like eyes, colored wings in every combination (black and red, black and yellow, red and yellow, the list goes on and on.

I was given very ample time to try to capture all I could on film, while my guide wonderfully showed me the entire process of metamorphosis from egg to pupa to caterpillar to butterfly. A butterfly, I was told, lays about 100 eggs a day, and we found samples of eggs of 15 or so different of butterflies on the bottom of various leaves in the garden. As we moved further along, we saw pupas and caterpillars. Being originally from the Northeast in the US, I was only familiar with plain black caterpillars with red- or yellow-colored spots on them. I was totally amazed at the huge sizes, variety of colors and other physical attributes of the caterpillars here, such as spines and exotic shapes like little dragons.

Next, we entered what was perhaps my favorite place in the garden, at least that day. It was a room where caterpillars were collected in safe boxes, provided with food and cool covered shelter so they could prepare their cocoons in total safety (if I understood all I heard properly). In the same room were 4 or 5 white boards covered with rows of living cocoons carefully affixed to them with straight pins. Some looked like earrings, actual silver metal earrings. Some looked like little jade pendants with gold dots --- the gold and silver were very shiny and actually looked like real metal. As I recall there were over 50 types of cocoons, and some were now empty, with a brand new butterfly hanging from the papery shell that had been it's home for a week or more. I was permitted to handle as many cocoons as I wished, and I touched many, completely in awe that they were all living and would soon fulfill their purpose and bring forth new fluttering life. Much to my happy amazement, while I was holding one, its butterfly emerged from the cocoon right before my eyes. This particular butterfly had two probosces - which the guide told me was quite rare and often meant that the butterfly would not survive. The new butterfly crawled on me a bit then my guide put her on a leafy ferny plant she said that it would like. The guide remarked that I had been lucky three times that day: to have the tour to myself; to see a butterfly born in my own hand; and to see one born with two probosces -- all of which were rare occurrences, she said.

Finally she took me into a room where the owners of the Butterfly Farm had prepared a somewhat new presentation, in which the guide presented the hypothesis that humans, like butterflies, might undergo a metamorphosis of mind, body, and spirit over the course of life, that miraculous things might happen, reminiscent of the miracles of butterflies and flight. I delighted in the words, which were spoken against a backdrop of 6 or 7 butterfly murals that were similar to the ones I had seen in the village, but to my eye a bit more elegant and polished. At the end of the presentation, the guide asked me what I thought of it. I enthusiastically assured her that the subject was a favorite of mine, and the ideas were some I myself had been pondering for the last 40 years or so. I asked her how the Costa Rican people felt about the presentation and she told me that most walked out, saying that they didn't believe humans could be butterflies.

Time, I suppose, will tell.

Tomorrow we head back for the United States. It will be nice to have internet daily; I am enjoying this new process of recalling some of my thoughts and experiences on these adventures. It's like taking the vacation twice. I rather like it.

I have taken around 5,000 pictures here and will be updating the blog with more of them as soon as I can edit them for size. I can't upload them here very easily, I keep getting kicked off the hotel network when I try.

Until next time,
Namaste,
Jeree

Day One - Poas Volcano

In order to experience Costa Rica without the possible pitfalls of being relatively inexperienced travelers and not knowing anything about the country, we elected to sign on with a guided tour. In the end, we chose Caravan, for a full tour of the country, and so far it's been the best possible decision we could have made.

We left San Jose at 8:00 and headed up the mountains toward the Poas Volcano. It's crater is at 8,871 ft elevation, and is (we are told) only visible 30% of the time. We left San Jose in perfect weather conditions, all 45 of us travelers secretly hoping the weather would hold. After a gorgeous 90-minute ride up very curvy winding mountain roads dotted with cute little homes in almost every color of the rainbow, we arrived at the National Park. To our great happiness the weather was perfect on arrival and held for the entire two hours we stayed.

The crater itself is a mile wide, with a wide lake at the bottom that glistens like liquid mercury, with a sulphurous steam trail emanating from an unseen chasm on the left that follows the breath of the wind as it tries to decide where on Earth it wishes to head. Clouds lingered behind the mountainous crater edges, but cooperated mightily and did not creep over the sides to obstruct our view.

Our tour group consists of Asians, Americans, Mexicans, Indians, Canadians, South Americans. We've all struck up odd little friendships and chatting groups, all so far focused on the places we have traveled and the places we dream of traveling. Two by two, we took turns taking pictures of the other couples over the rim of the glorious volcano and further dreaming about other fantastic things we might see if life stays this good.

We stopped briefly on the way back to San Jose to lunch at a wonderful restaurant with a view of wide green valleys, farms and puffy white clouds that seemed to go on forever on every direction. The restaurant put on a little skit featuring a "shaman" and two young "female tribe members" who danced, spoke and played instruments in mime against a prerecorded backdrop of words and music. It was quite sweet but most memorable in that the actors were all drop dead gorgeous. Did I mention that my honey and I are the youngest persons on the tour? Never have you seen so many retirees jump SO fast at their chance, at the end of the performance, to have a picture taken with the beautiful ones who performed for us. After a delicious lunch featuring local organic strawberry shakes or purees; grilled chicken or beef or fish; and finished off with beans, rice, salad and a fried plantain we headed to the bus for the final leg of our return trip which would include a visit to the National Museum.

The National Museum is housed in a converted fort. Costa Rica has no military, since it was disbanded (if i recall correctly, in the 1940's) to re-appropriate the funds for education and health care. If you walk at a reasonable pace, you can see the entire museum in 45 minutes or so. There are a number of pre-Columbian artifacts, including a wonderful little room of metals and gold artifacts that seem simple compared to some other relics I have seen but still made my heart pound with delight.

My precious loved one, Marc, in case you haven't seen him, has extremely curly hair falling down past his chin nowadays, that, on the best of days falls in perfect ringlets Little-Orphan-Annie style, and in this humidity rather resembles a nest. To my delight, there was a gaggle of school children in the museum, all in dark blue uniforms resembling Boy Scout wear, and very often, when Marc was stopped to take a picture for me (both my batteries on my own camera were already used up this day) the children would point to his hair, rib each other and giggle. :)

As has happened on each afternoon, all the angels in the heavens seemed to stop over San Jose and weep uncontrollably for all the sadnesses that have afflicted this world since the beginning of time. Or perhaps they were only watching "Ghost".

Tomorrow we head for the rain forest where we are most limited on what we can take and will have no access to electronics or, of course the internet. We expect to see all kinds of wonderful wildlife and hopefully even the green sea turtle, which actually spawns and hatches there this time of year.

On our return three days from now, we will write again,

Until then,
Namaste
Jeree and Marc

San Jose

Though we have been here two days (will write out of sequence on that later), our tour officially starts tomorrow. We've been relocated to an American Hotel (Holiday Inn) in the heart of San Jose City. This hotel is somewhat better than the other (the Barcelo on the outskirts of the city, where they seemed to not like Americans...more on that later...). We just ordered Nachos, Fajitas and a few beers from room service. The delivery was very fast and the food was out of this world delicious. The best guacamole I have ever had, fresh as can be.

Our view is of mountains and part of the city, with the dense beautiful cloud cover that has been the norm each afternoon since we arrived 3 days ago now. The clouds here are the most beautiful I have ever seen, changing rapidly, and in every shade from pure white through the entire range of grays, falling short of black. Yesterday it rained so hard it was literally like a wall of water. Never in my life had I seen rain that thick or drops that big, though I have traveled through most of the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Cancun.

This afternoon the city looks a little gloomy, with the cloud cover being so low, but the bright red and orange roof tops still make it seem festive. The buildings are mostly older and quaint. Wrought iron railing covers every door, window, store entrance, even every carport that we have seen, and nearly every facade is streaked with rust over the colorful paints (deep rich shades of blues, browns, and reds, no pastels here...) which add character and a sense of history for me.

Tomorrow we leave early for a dormant volcano and some time in the cloud forest and rainforest. Apparently, a cloud forest has less rain but more humidity than a rainforest. We'll get to walk to the rim of the crater of the volcano if weather permits, we've been told there will be a 30% chance at visibility of the crater (sulphur fumes and cloud cover often obscure it) so we've got our fingers crossed.

Until tomorrow, then,
Namaste