Living Wisdom Home > Student Life

Our Boys in Costa Rica (March 1 - March 23, 2006)

All letters are from Rick Wonneberger, Francisco's dad, unless otherwise noted.

March 10th

We are in Parismina. We arrived yesterday around 3:30pm and set up camp in the front yard of John "JR" Holermann's house. This morning was laundry time and we had to wash a week's worth of stinky clothes. Tonight we will meet with the Turtle people and get the scoop on how we are to patrol the beaches to minimize the poachers from stealing so many eggs.

All we do is walk up and down and our presence is enough to discourage them. If we find a turtle laying eggs we are to wait, and when she is done, we are to scoop them up and carry them to the egg shelter so they can be guarded. Vickie, the Volunteer leader, says that we should see some turtles if we are here for a whole two weeks. I really hope so. JR's friend Rick is the local fixit guy and a pretty good naturalist himself. He has shown me some rhino beetles and hercules beetles that he has found on the island. They are just hanging out on his porch and they can fly away at any time. I will get some pix of the boys holding them.

The overall health of the boys is good. Rama has a sunburn both legs and arms, Ken and Ben had swimmers ear -- treated and gone now. Francisco was eaten alive by mosquitos in Sirquirres; we counted over 74. Yes, he was wearing bug spray, the one without deet. Now he only uses deet. Dylan and Ben have minor colds but their energy is not lacking. Other than that, everything is great.

I think all of the boys are sprouting gills; they are swimming as often as possible. We have village volleyball at 4 o'clock daily and we will challenge the village to soccer so we can and will be humbled.

March 12

I am surprised that you are still getting snow [ed: see our snow photos]. I can only dream of a cool dry climate. The weather here has been around 82 and overcast with humidity at 88%. We are constantly moist either from rain or sweat. The boys have been great. They all get along so well and support each other.

This morning we went on a hike to JR's property and Rick, his friend, lead us on a hike through the jungle. It was like following those crazy alligator guys on the TV. He is so fired up by the animals it's infectious. We immediately found an Eyelash Viper sleeping on a stick. It was about 8 inches long and all curled up. I have a picture to share when we get home. We also found some of my favorite creatures, Poison dart frogs. We saw and heard a Laughing hawk, Spider monkeys, and Howler monkeys just to name a few.

On the evening of the 10th, we did our turtle training and then we split up into two groups for patrols. One was from 8:00 to 12:00; the other was from 9:00 to 01:00. Francisco and I were in the second group. Towards the end of our patrol, when we were near the exit from the beach we bumped into the first group watching a Leatherback Turtle come ashore. We watched her crawl up and then prepare her site. Then she started to dig the hole for her eggs with her back flippers until it was about 80 cm deep. She then started to lay her eggs. I was allowed to hold her flipper out of the way so we could see this natural wonder. Her flipper was amazingly soft and supple. When she was finished laying about 50-60 eggs she filled in the hole with her back flippers and patted it down. She then camouflaged the area by smoothing out the surrounding area and proceeded to head back to the ocean. We measured her to be 1.63 meters long (4.5 ft approx.). She had been tagged in the past, so we jotted the number.

She laid her eggs within 30 feet of the hatchery so we did not disturb her eggs by moving them. Instead we helped cover the site with twigs etc.. to blend it in better. The poachers only steal fresh eggs. If the eggs are older than 4 days, nobody will buy them. Nobody has disturbed the site since then, so we are hopeful that they will be OK. I should mention that while she was digging we had a cloudburst that lasted 20 minutes and soaked the four of us watching her right through. It consistently rains every night and briefly during the day. All of the roofs here are galvanized steel, so when it rains it sounds like there are hundreds of squirrels playing basketball with steel balls.

The last couple of nights, the boys have been playing charades, Pictionary, card games and really enjoying themselves. We had lunch down at the pier today at a restaurant. They served Caribbean Mystery lunch. It was very good and the kids have been eating very well. We cook at JR's most of the time and Scott is always out shopping for food. It takes a while because there are three small village stores and you have to go to each one every day to get what you need.

I will try to email you every couple of days. The modem is so slow here that it takes 10 minutes just to load the earthlink web page. So in conjunction with my blazing typing skills it takes an hour to send an email.

March 13th

I am surprised that it is still snowing as well. Christian is bummed that he is missing it. But he is enjoying swimming in the ocean every day. Tonight we start our scheduled turtle patrols, and tomorrow we start prepping the community center for painting. Scott will have spent all day going to Siquirres to do our food shopping and getting paint supplies with JR. They have to leave at 06:00 to catch a ferry to Caño Blanco and then a two hour bus ride to Siquirres; do their shopping and then catch the bus back at 1:00 pm to catch the only ferry back to Parismina at 3:15 pm.

March 15th

The boys have been great. Last night the troop that went out saw two turtles. I am on the late shift tonight 1200 to 0400. We teach English to the high school tomorrow at 1300 and in return get a Spanish lesson. It has been pretty easy for me to converse with the locals. So much so that I got one store owner to make tortillas for us, actually her Aunt makes them and she delivers them every third day. Carina the owner also has started to bake brownies to sell. The boys love it. I am out of time tonight but I will write on our typical day for Kathy. Please let all of the parents know that all of the boys are doing very well and we are trying to get them to email their parents, but they are having such a good time playing and working that they forget.

March 16th

from Michael:
Dear Mom,

Please make it your personal crusade to stop worrying about me, and tell the other mothers to stop worrying about their children too, for if they do, Nitai and Scott will make us e-mail you. It costs a dollar for a half-hour and it takes 20 minutes to load a page. Unfortunately, we're running low on food money, and we may run out if we have to keep e-mailing you guys, so please don't worry about us. We're doing fine.

Actually, I'm not okay. The cd-player that I brought finally broke and I am very disappointed.

Love, Michael

P.S. I'll tell you about the turtles when I get back, I promise.

from Rick Wonneberger, Francisco's dad:
Last night went well. We watched a Leatherback turtle climb ashore, try and find a clear place to lay her eggs, but she was not satisfied so she went back in the ocean. They only lay in completely clear sand, no vegetation at all. We hoped that she would not try again that night for fear of her eggs being taken by poachers. We were the last shift last night from 00:00 till 04:00. As we were heading back home we noticed the first area where probably the same turtle came out. She bumped into two logs forming a chevron and could not get past them. It must be tough to do that many push ups to climb ashore. I figure at least 120 just to make it deep enough on shore to be in dry sand, add another 120 for the return trip and about 50-60 for camoflauging the area. When you weigh 500-800 lbs that is an awful lot of pushups.

Tonight I will be going out again at O'dark hundred and getting back at 04:00. I understand we will be moving some equipment down the beach. I don't know what, but I'm sure that I will find out then. So far as a group we have done very well seeing turtles: we have a total of 4. The two weeks prior to us arriving, they had zero. I feel that the project is working well because three of the four guides I had so far are retired poachers. They are now some of the biggest advocates for the three species of Sea Turtles that breed here at Parismina, and to quote one, "It is very gratifying to watch the hatchlings waddle to the ocean."

As we are walking down the beach, (did I tell you that we walk seven miles a night) on these full moon nights we stop at two large lagoons. First, we shine a flashlight on the surface and see how many cayman there are on the surface. You can tell because their eyes light up red. Then we often see how many shrimp there are as well. The unspoken rule is that you don't approach the lagoon without your flashlight; cayman don't like surprises.

You can pretty much guarantee that you will get rained on when you are out and it usually will completely soak you, but you don't mind because it is cooler than the surroundings.

Tomorrow we start painting the community center. We will start at 06:00 to keep cool and work till 11:00 and then siesta with math homework and reading. That will take us to about 16:00 then we prep for dinner, eat, cleanup and play games until 20:00 when the first group goes out on turtle patrol. The second group will nap and be ready at 00:00. Just to start all over again until the painting is done. I figure 4 days.

Guess what we watched here with all of the other school students last night? Would you believe "Madagascar". We all had a good laugh and enjoyed the mingling of cultures. We bought rice pudding and punch from them for their fundraiser. Today we played Pictionary with the high school students. They had to come up with the word in English and we had to in Spanish. It was a lot of fun and everyone had a good laugh.

March 17th

from Nitai:
The trip is going very well. We´ve been on the island for a week now and have settled into some routines. The focal point is the turtles as about 8 of us go out each night on patrol. This means walking about 6 miles along the beach. By now most everyone has gone native and does it barefoot. It is extremely beautiful with the surf and the full moon and the empty beach stretching out all around. The shifts vary with the earliest one from 8 to midnight and the last one from midnight to 4am. That was the one we had last night and everyone is pretty sleepy today.

So far we´ve found 4 leatherback turtles all about 6 feet in diameter. They are amazing creatures, reputedly older than the dinosaurs and in great danger of extinction. So far we have helped protect over 200 eggs. The island is home to about 300 people mostly clustered in the little town of Parismina. In some ways it´s similar to Ananda in terms of size and group interactions. You begin to recognize everyone after only a couple of days. By now the boys have found every retail outlet and the cookie and soft drink sellers are very excited to have us here.

Today we had a short exchange with the high school students, about 20 in number all of whom know as much English as we know Spanish. It made for some very short conversations. One you will appreciate was Christian´s first Spanish communication with a few of the younger boys who like to play with him. They came by the house and he said no, me estudiar, soccer manana. Pretty good for your beginning student. Scott is doing yeoman´s work keeping us fed. We´ve had a lot of rice and beans, and then some beans and rice, mixed of course with some cheese and eggs for different recipes. We´ve also gone out to eat a couple of times for more variety.

Everyone is doing pretty well, much better than when we were home before the trip started. Kashi has had a few problems with his neck, sinuses, and ears, but Rick is helping immensely with everyone´s health. Pete adds a level of maturity that it quite accessible for the boys, such as his comments on the heavy vibrations of the machismo facade that some of the young men here put on. We have taken tons of pictures, but can´t upload them on the internet because the connection here is so slow, think 1994 phone access. We can share them when we get back. We also have tons of bites which the boys are handling quite well. Today we had a math contest to come up with word problems based on the number of bites per ankle, arm, shoulder, etc. I think that´s all for now.

March 18th

Today was pretty mellow. Last night I cancelled the 8pm and midnight turtle walks because of rain. I was glad that I did because it poured until about 0500. The boys are pretty healthy and I wanted to keep it that way. The guides go out no matter what, so the turtles are still protected.

Today we started in earnest painting the Community Hall. We got about 60% done this AM from 0600 to 1200.

Tomorrow if the weather permits, we will finish that project. Tonight we should be able to hike the beach. We are all well and counting the days to our return. We have 4 more in Parsimina and the last day we start to travel at 0600 and get home late that eve.

Today I am pretty tired; we worked and played hard. We played ultimate frisbee with just the boys; some of the locals watched. Hopefully some will play tomorrow.

March 21st

We are all looking forward to getting home. It has been a wonderful experience, and I am glad that I was part of it. We finished painting the Community Hall this A.M. It looks better. I was really touched when a couple of 5-6 year old kids came up this morning and said, "It looks beautiful. It use to look ugly." I took their picture afterwards and they liked seeing it.

You know, they have a very effective alarm clock here that does not need batteries or winding. It is called the Thermal clock; it goes off precisely at sunrise. It in turn immediately activates the Swedish sauna built into each tent so you start to drip within 3 minutes and if you still don't feel like getting out of bed, the ants start to bite you, so you have no choice.

So far to date, we have seen 17 turtles. Francisco and Simon were on the night that saw 7 turtles. They literally were tripping over them. Their 4 hour hike was 5.5 miles with so many sightings. They both were exhausted before the hike and were very ready for bed after. The next day we let them rest, but remember, you can't sleep in because of the Thermal alarm clock.

On Friday, we had some excitement. Five of the boys were swimming at the beach floating on a log and two of them went out with the rip tide: Christian and Dylan. Evan and Simon were right on top of it though and helped them out. Evan swam out and got Christian. Evan could still stand up so it made it easier for him to grab Christian and bring him in. Christian ran back to the house and got me, and several of us went out. When we got there, Simon and Evan were on the beach walking back to the house with Dylan. I think now they have a better respect for Mother Nature and her power and mercy.

On another ocean story, this one on Thurs AM., I was playing in the ocean with Francisco, Christian, and Simon when my left leg got bumped into by a stingray or a sand shark. It hit my leg so hard, it knocked me over. My leg has been sore since. It bruised the bone and makes it tough to walk sometimes. All I can think though is Ouch! his nose must really have hurt. Their noses are cartilaginous, similar to ours, and their nervous system is even more sensitive than ours, so it got the worst end of the deal as it was riding the surf that day.
Today I have been walking around town taking pictures of our normal hangouts and places where we have regular interactions to better document the event.

Tonight, we have salsa dancing with the HS students at 6 PM. I hope to get some pictures. I can't take any pictures of the turtles. The flash might cause them to go back to the ocean before they lay their eggs.

I better go. There is a line waiting for this computer.