Funkytown

Day 13 9-7-12 Monday Quote of the Day: ¨Yeah P.V. is just kind of a weird place...¨-Brian, from California and/or Texas Back in Jaco, we had briefly met a woman named Jeanie that had lived in Puerto Viejo for 5 months. She gave us some recommendations of places to check out and things to do while in P.V. She said that Sunday nights were really happeneing at this bar called Lazy Mon. Clearly, that´s where we headed. When we arrived, we found out that there is an open jam starting at 9:30. We were quite early but settled on an appetizer and some drinks. By the way, their guacamole was to die for. Yum! As 9:30 got closer, more and more people began to arrive. Things were really looking up! A group of people came and sat next to use, and before you knew it, we were pushing tables together and joining the group. It´s really weird how this happens in Costa Rica, possibly in all foreign countries, I don´t know. It´s much harder to do this impromptu meeting in the states - though I do hope that this is one thing I can take back to the states with me. Why should we all be pushing our tables together and getting to know strangers better? In general, it sounds like a great idea. So, at our table was Brian, from California, Tom from Florida, Pamela and David from Missouri, and Yvette and Giovanni from Southern California. We ended up swapping stories of travel and of course having many a laugh. Once the open jam started, our conversation died down but there was still plenty to make note of. It will be far too difficult for me to put the night into words. Though, there was one guy I saw, wearing a plain white t-shirt that read, in simple block letters, DEBACLE. Yes, indeed! How fitting for this place! Jason compares the scene to a night out in Eugene, but I´ve never seen anything quite so entertaining while I was out in Eugene. I wish! I will say that it´s like Eugene in that everyone is kind of doing their own thing. For instance, one woman sang highly inappropriate songs, but everyone was totally respecting her creative lyricisms, one woman, probably around age 50 was rocking a long blue wig, with matching blue tights, and just dancing to her little hearts content, right out there in front of everyone! You go girl! She was in incredible shape, btw. I presume from all the dancing. Everyone just accepts others, and tolerates them well. It probably helps that a large percentage of the population is high the majority of the time. Weed is a popular thing here, again, much like Eugene. Later, I met a red head named Damon from Ireland. It turns out the Irish accent is incredibly difficult to understand. I´d like to inform you of what we talked about but I couldn´t understand a single thing that guy said! I loved getting to know all of these stories but it was after one in the morning, so we finally called it quits! With such a late night, we slept in until 10. Well, I did. I guess Jason was up earlier due to the roosters crowing. They start cock a doodle doing quite early here. I don´t live around roosters, so I don´t know if this is normal, but to start crowing at 2 or 3 in the morning, seems a bit too early, don´t you think? I heard them, this morning, also, but that´s when I got up and put my ear plugs in. I do not sacrifice sleep much. I wanted to make it to the Sloth Sanctuary today but the tours there were around 54 dollars. This seemed a bit ridiculous, and I was sure we could master the transportation on our own. Well....this was easier thought, than done. We obtained our bus tickets, but had no idea where to get off the bus. So, we finally just chose a place, I thought was close, but it actually wasn´t close at all. We were trekking along the side of the road for what felt like days, and there wasn´t a sloth sanctuary in sight, when a bus pulled over and asked us where we were going. When we told them, they shook their heads and told us to get in. Ay, stupid Americanas! They got us to the sanctuary right at 3, just in time for us to see their sign that says,¨Last tour at 2¨ I was devastated. Thoroughly heart broken over it. The woman that helped us when we came in, Ursula, felt so bad for us that she asked if we´d mind paying a small donation and she´d introduce us to Buttercup, the sanctuary´s oldest sloth, and Mobly another sloth currently at the sanctuary. This sounded like a good deal to us, so we acquiesced and it actually ended up to be quite informational. Ursula, our informal tour guide, turned out to be the best one. I don´t think she regularly gives tours, but her parents are the ones that started the sanctuary and she now works there. She was very knowledgable and taught us so many things. The story of the sanctuary goes... Three little Tico girls were walking to school one day when they found a baby sloth in the road. They knew the baby had likely been abandoned and, as kids do, naturally, tried to take the baby sloth home to keep as a pet. One of the girls´ mother´s said, ¨oh no! we are not keeping that!¨ Naturally, as parents do. But, the mother of one of the girls, Theresa, knew of a white lady in the neighborhood that kept dogs as pets! Can you believe? So she suggested they take the baby sloth to the crazy gringa to see if she knew what to do. Well, Ursula´s mother, Judy, had no idea what to do, really, because she had no training in veterinary medicine, or biology, or anything! But she did know that if she didn´t intervene this baby sloth would surely die. She remembered from her childhood in Alaska, that her mother would feed stray animals with goats milk, so that´s what she started to do. She started to feed Buttercup with goats milk and leaves, and in good fortune, Buttercup began to grow, get healthier and stronger. Later, it was learned that feeding any other type of milk to sloths, whether it´s human milk, cow´s milk, or formula, it will surely kill it. So, Judy did a good thing in going with goat´s milk! This incident happened in 1992 and by 1997 their residence was recognized as a sanctuary for sloths, as more and more people brought sloths to them to be helped. It is now the most famous sloth sanctuary in the world, as it is the only one. Since then, the place has grown like crazy. The´ve added 75 cages, which house 1 to 4 sloths at a time, just in the last 8 years. Ursula explained the problems with this, in that many rescued sloths are babies (0-6) months that have been abandoned by their mothers, or their mothers have died for some reason. Other female sloths, will not take on the baby of another female. Mainly because they know if they spend time raising someone else´s baby, they won´t have time to raise their own. And, their whole purpose is to spread their species, so they have no time for that. However, once babies have been taken in, they can never be released back to the wild. This is due to the lengthy training process a baby sloth would go through with it´s mother in nature. Many leaves in the forest, are toxic to sloths, but to teach the baby sloth this, the mother travels from groups of trees, toxic and non toxic, and eats from them all, to teach the baby, which are okay and which are not okay. This process takes at least a year. It´s confusing, but consider if there are 90 types of trees in a given area, sloths may only be able to digest 6-8 types out of those 90. But, to know, which types are okay to eat from, they must go through this toxic/non toxic process with their mothers to learn. Other adult sloths that get rescued, are usually able to be released to the wild because they already have this training. Most sloths that are rescued, are rescued out of people´s homes. When it´s very rainy, sloth may seek refuge under any type of shelter, maybe even your front porch! For some reason, people don´t like this, and often they will prod the sloth with broom handles and other sharp objects to try to get it to move. Then, the sloth gets injured, and then has to be rescued by the sanctuary to be rehabilitated. The sanctuary currently holds 147 sloths and each sloth has a lifespan of about 40 years. So, you can see why if they are taking in many babies why this is a problem! There isn´t a lot of documentation about the successful release of sloths, but Judy estimates that she has released at least 100 back to the wild. Sloths, in general, are super interesting. Ask me somtimes, I´ll tell you ALL about them! I was only a little bummed out we didn´t get to see any babies. First we met Buttercup, like I said, she´s the oldest sloth in the sanctuary, and is 20 years old. She resides in a little hanging chair up on the balcony and Urusla quite talks to her like she´s human. When we visited, Buttercup was in heat, but because she´s so old and will be in captivity for the rest of her life, no male sloth suitors give her much time. Therefore, when she sees males of any species she gets a little riled up. I think this made Jason a little nervous, but she put on quite a show for us. Ursula told us it is possible that she might try to reach out for Jason, but she didn´t. Although, I would have died and gone to heaven if that had happened! I think my extroverted self was the one in heaven last night. Getting to meet so many people and hear so many stories and lives, etc really had me pumped up. And, today with no activities planned my introverted self has sort of taken over. I don´t do so well with downtime when I´m traveling. It´s like I know I´m supposed to be ¨relaxing¨ but I am not relaxed because I´m thinking of all the things I could be doing! So, today, was kind of a down day. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring more activities for me. It should be noted, however, that even in my gloomy state today, and as much as I worry about being swindled, or getting things stolen. There really are good people everywhere. Like the bus that stopped and picked us up today. Who knows how long it would have taken us to get to the sanctuary on foot? We probably wouldn´t have gotten there until 5! Or, Ursula, who took the time out of her afternoon, to talk to us and educate us about these adorable animals. Like Jason, who tolerates my illogical rants and raves, and is patient enough to just sit back and let them happen. I´m very lucky to be traveling with him. And, I´m so very grateful that such good people do exist. Goodnight to you, my good people, Judy