Stories from Costa Rica

The Rainstorm:

We were in the rainforest, so it's no surprise that it rained. But this was an all-out, no-holds-barred DELUGE. Imagine turning on the faucet at your bathroom sink: all that water, coming out at full force. That's what it was like, only the entire sky opened up. I have never in my life seen that much water come down: the energy, the sound, the smells even. It was invigorating, and more than slightly frightening.

We were at a biological research station called Tirimbina, located about 5 miles up the mountain. There was just the 8 of us, and we all sat out on the porch - under the safety of the roof overhang - to witness the storm. It was so overpowering that it actually took us several minutes to realize that we were not alone.

I noticed the cockroach first: he was about 3 inches long and was sitting on the porch right beside me. I got to looking around and realized that probably every single insect, bird, bat, frog, lizard, whatever - was under that porch with us! All of them had come in from the rain to the protection our roof provided.

It was very strange - almost surreal...


The Great Termite Orgy:

Apparently there is one night a year where every single termite in the country gathers together for a night of sex, and we just happened to be right in the middle of it during my expedition.

There were quite literally hundreds of thousands of them. They were flying everywhere - in the cabin, in my bed, in the sheets, in my hair. I could hear them even thru my mummy-like cocoon I'd created out of the bed sheets - a futile attempt to keep them off of me.

We got no sleep that night, needless to say: the termites kept us all awake. Poor Leo (the volunteer from Brazil) lost it and went running off into the forest with his arms flailing about and his voice raised to a high-pitched scream.

The following morning revealed that all the males had died and the females had lost their wings. I'm assuming they crawled back into the forest to start some new nests.

Cleaning up after them, we found wings in the toilets, in our food, in our shoes, basically everywhere.