Ants in the Pants

The nocturnal nature hike is all fun and games until someone gets ants in their pants.

Naturally, these wouldn’t be your normal Ohio ants. They would have to be some form of rainforest ant that stings you. (I was told that ants don’t bite, they sting.) And of course, there wouldn’t be just one ant, there would be 12. As chance would have it too, you’re not on the hike alone and you have to try and play it cool in front of the group you are chaperoning by pretending it doesn’t sting or your leg is on fire. Welcome to Costa Rica.

The rest of the hike was pretty neat though. We saw a tarantula and some other enormous spiders along with a giant rodent and something that looked like a raccoon. Unfortunately, there weren’t any jaguar or puma sightings.

I finished off yesterday by going to a place with the other CPI chaperones called Mata e Caña and had a great time. It was nice to just hang out with everyone and relax for a little bit. Who knows when we will get to do this again…

On a different note, if you remember, I decided to do my laundry the other night and was really excited about have a washer and dryer to use. Well, let’s put it this way, I had a washer to use. I got my entire load washed, threw it in the dryer, pushed the button and waited. Nothing. I pushed the button a second, third, fourth and fifth time. Again, nothing. I now had a full load of soggy laundry and no way to dry it. All I could do was laugh. Fortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation so I took the laundry back to my room and laid it everywhere hoping it might dry by Friday. By the morning, it was still soaked. However, the maintenance man showed up by chance after my run and I explained my predicament and he promptly fixed the situation. Twelve hours later, I dried my laundry. Considering the normal turnover time for drying laundry, this wasn’t bad!

I have one day left in Monteverde. : ( I got ice cream yesterday with the kids from my favorite Costa Rican family, Julian and Diego. Of course, I had to do my backflip for them. Good thing I’ve been practicing over the past year!

All right, time to get my day underway!

Chaooo,
Jessica Lynn

P.s. Feliz cumple, Papi! (Yesterday) : )