My Experiences in the Rainforest
by Dylan Sheets
My name is Dylan Sheets and I went on a trip to Costa Rica in June of 2006. I was the Student Ambassador for the Monte Verde Conservation League. Mrs. Rachel Crandell, the President of the Monteverde Conservation League US was our teacher and guide.
I loved the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest! The first day of our trip started in San Jose at the National Institute of Biodiversity where we saw a Two -Toed Sloth and a Three -Toed Sloth. It was also my first experience with Green Iguanas. There was so many I couldn’t count them all. I could walk up to them within three feet. The full grown Iguana shook his head and made his flap of skin underneath his head shake when we got to close. I also got to see lots and lots of babies which seemed less than a foot long. During the two weeks I was there I hiked through the Cloud Forest and the Dry Forest where my mom saw a large family of Coati during her Solo in the woods. They look like a cross between a raccoon and an anteater.
What I hoped to discover at the Rain Forest was an unnamed bug which was exactly what happened! You see, there was this strange bug that had the back end of a caterpillar and the wings of a butterfly and the front body of a wasp. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. The story starts like this: Mark Wainwright, had finished a complete book about bugs and animals of the Rain Forest. He took us on a night hike. He just snatched this bug out of the air and did not know what it was!
During our night hike, not far from our cabin, we saw a tree with the claw marks from a Puma on it - the second biggest cat in the Rain Forest. Mark Wainright also found a Rufous Eyed Stream frog and a Rain Forest frog with lots of bumps on him. We also found some scat ( or animal droppings) that no one could identify! During our hike through the Cloud Forest we were looking at these weird blue beetles with black spots , when we heard this loud explosion from the Arenal Volcano. I also saw the biggest bird in the Rain Forest - the Black Guan. We also saw Glass Winged butterflies, Monarch Butterflies and the big Blue Morpho, Zebra longwinged Butterflies and Tiger Beetles. I got to release a Blue Morpho butterfly that had just hatched. On the way into the Cloud forest we saw two male Dung beetles fighting over a ball of dung and trying to take it from each other. We also saw a Hercules beetle and a female Rhinoceros beetle.
The best part I think was when I got to hold a baby Boa Constrictor at the serpentarium. We also saw two jaguars, a Puma and lots of white faced monkeys at Las Pumas, the animal rescue center. We only saw three types of monkeys: Howler monkeys, and a mother Spider monkey with a baby on her back and a lots of White Faced monkeys. One jumped over my head in the canopy above me and I got to see his underbelly.
Now the Raft trip was the second best part! We rafted down the river called the Rio Tenorio and saw lots of Long Nosed bats and Black Ctenosaurs. My friend's mom also saw a Yellow Headed Gecko. There were lots of different Herons and other birds and Howler Monkeys overhead and wood storks. We rafted by a nest of 11 baby Caimans. The mother was probably near by so we didn’t go really, really close to the nest. Although we did see three Caiman heads above the water. We also saw an American crocodile sunbathing in the middle of the river we were rafting on. I estimated it to be eight to ten feet long. Just then when we went by it, it slithered off it’s mud island and swam slowly toward out raft….Just then it went behind our raft and swam away.
The third best part of our trip was meeting the Bat man! Dr. Richard Laval, author of "Field Guide to Bats of Costa Rica" showed us 6 bats that he had caught in a mist net he set up at night. He showed us insect eating bats and fruit eating bats. Though I had hoped he would catch one, we did not get to see a vampire bat. When we were going to sleep in our cabin, my mom was getting into bed when she gasped! A giant Katydid was clinging to the wall above her bed. It had eggs and we put it outside. When we went outside that’s when we met the female Rhinoceros beetle. We also watched a gigantic Sphynx moth that has enormous wings. In the Dry Forest we also saw a moth which mimics a hummingbird. It’s wings beat so fast you couldn’t even see them. We also got to hike to Mrs. Crandell’s cabin and she showed us where she saw what she felt was a Jaguar track. Then we climbed inside her Strangler Fig Tree, it was like climbing inside the belly of a gigantic worm. There were baby Strangler Fig vines hanging down. My mom saw a pair of Toucanets flying in and out of a hole in the side of tree in a clearing - they must have been feeding their young. Above these birds, she saw three Chachalaca birds. The tree was like an apartment house. We got to help plant trees so the Bell Birds and Resplendent Quetzal would return on patches of land that earlier had been cleared for cattle. Last but not least, our free day was spent zipping over the Cloud Forest, 400 feet in the air on a zip line. I recommend this trip to anyone who is interested in forests, cold waterfalls, warm hikes, and endangered animals.
