Hunting for Jungle Bugs was Magical

Last May Brent and I went to Costa Rica, fulfilling a dream I've had since childhood. Over the course of our 9 day trip we did so many excellent things.

• Rafted the Rio Narajano and learned from our guides how to easily slice up a watermelon (game changing information)

Preparing for the El Chorro rapid

• Ogled hermit crabs and learned the Spanish word for cow (la vaca) on our hike to Playa La Vaca
• Learned that Americans overstate how frightening transportation is outside the U.S.- the ferry to Drake Bay is fast, but totally fine, don't worry about it

• Were awoken by green parrots (Loro verde) outside our bungalow at dawn (also, stayed in a bungalow)
• Snorkeled in Playa San Josecito.

Went on a 5-mile jungle hike to get to this beach. Totally worth it!

• Saw amazing spiders, tapirs, macaws, and monkeys in Corcovado National Park.
• Re-learned my sleeping-in-cars habit on the winding road to the cloud forest. Don't worry about the ferries, it's the roads that are sketchy.
• Listened to bird songs in Los Queztales National Park.

Oh my gosh! The birds! And the lichens!

• Went trail running to waterfalls in the cloud forest
• Took a dip in hot springs near Cartago.
• Saw an active volcano - Turrialba - from a dormant volcano - Irazú.

That fanny pack is the best purchase I ever made

Instead of a multi-part saga about all the amazing stuff, I'd like to focus instead on the highlight of my trip: the Bug Lady Tour, which was amazing and had a lasting impact on the way I explore everywhere.

Horned catydid. The chompers on catydids are no joke, they can tear gaping holes in flesh

Brent seemed reticent to make Costa Rica our 2018 international destination, which I mistook for being anti-Costa Rica, rather than reasoned skepticism of what might have been a transient obsession of mine (see Becka + bike packing, Becka + woodworking). Trello, a program you can use to organize and track tasks (and now helps me remember every momentary obsession), is another thing I've been obsessed on and Brent and I share a Trello board to organize our travel. One unremarkable day I received a Trello alert that Brent had commented on a Trello card by adding a link to the Bug Lady tour! Not only did that mean that we would be going to see bugs in the jungle, but Brent was looking forward to a trip to Costa Rica!

Crickets getting busy - the male sings to the female for up to 30 minutes before she decides whether or not he's alright

Once I knew about the Bug Lady tour our trip really took on some structure. Since I HAD to go on this tour, we had to go to the Osa Peninsula, one of the most isolated parts of Costa Rica. To do this we rented a car to get from San José to Quepos to Sierpe, then took a ferry from Sierpe to Bahia Drake where we spent three days getting everywhere either by foot or by boat. Bahia Drake/Drake Bay provides access to rugged beaches and national parks and if you hike a bit to the southwest you can spot an island that was the inspiration for the Jurassic Park book.

Watching the sunset on Drake Bay was beautiful. Seeing Brent get swept into the ocean here was hilarious.

The Bug Lady tour is run by Tracie Stice and Gianfranco (Jon, if I remember right) Gomez. Jon met us near a hotel and as we hiked toward the Drake Bay trail he pointed out basilisk lizards, bats, and toads hanging out in the nearby trees. Then we hiked the Drake Bay trail, stopping often to ogle so many cool spiders, beetles, crickets, and ants. Our guides showed us how to operate the red and white lights of our headlamp early in the tour, warning us that there were nocturnal wasps out that would be drawn to our white lights if we kept them on constantly. They also reminded us to watch where we stopped, we needed to be mindful of the industrious ants, which would crawl right up and over us if we rested in their path. We spent a lovely 2.5 hours rummaging through the jungle and the only things I was really worried about were the wasps and ants.

Cane toads, actually native in Costa Rica, seemed really unimpressed with us.

One of the first bugs we spotted was a highlight for me: a highly venomous banana spider! These spiders sometimes ended up on loads of bananas and delivered really terrible bites to banana boat workers. Tracie conducted a 'temperament test' by stroking it gently with a stick and this one was pretty docile. 

A banana spider in the Phoneuria genus - so cool

Shortly after that we saw a net-casting spider and learned about how they hunt (watch this video!) and I finally pulled out my macro lens to capture everything else we saw. Now I know to ask early about photography, because our guides highly encouraged it (conscientious photography, of course, keeping ourselves and the bugs safe), they even helped with the pictures.  

A net-casting spider (family Deinopidae) and its net

Often Jon would go ahead with a spotting scope to search for whatever surprises were out that evening. He found bio-luminescent fungi growing along the trail - a glowing fungus - and what might have been a new species of arachnid! Tracie stayed with us turning over leaves to show unexpected bugs, helping us spot the hatches of trap door spider tunnels and explaining the ecology of the jungle around Drake Bay. Tracie and Jon know so much, not only about Drake Bay bugs, but about the ecology of macroinvertebrates. They are really interesting walking encyclopedias that also take great pictures. One of my favorite things Tracie told me was that ants are like the wolves of the jungle, responsible for so much of the ecological structure of the jungle. We got to see that in action because everywhere the ants went was totally clear, when they combined forces tiny ants have an outsize impact and they never stop working. 

Busy millipedes. I enjoy the Spanish common name - Milipies gigante de horjarsca - and the Latin name - Nyssodesmus python

Brent spent a lot of the tour using his headlamp to help me get well-lit (and thus better focused) pictures of the things we saw. This tour made me fall even more in love with Brent when he explained why the bug tour caught his eye. I knew Brent had some interest in science, he's got a broad array of interests from history to photography, but his willingness to sign up for a guided tour (when we prefer to do stuff on our own) looking for bugs (which most people think are icky) really surprised me. When I asked him why he wanted to go he said, "Bugs are cool. They're like tiny monsters."

Brent and a tailless whip scorpions (order Amblypygi). They have impressive chelicerae but rarely bite

Oh, my heart! Remembering the time I found out Brent thinks bugs are cool still makes my heart flutter. 

Tarantulas can live in so many places. In Costa Rica we saw these burrowing tarantulas and tarantulas that live in trees. 

Aside from hundreds of pictures that I enjoy going through, I got two major things from our tour:

1. When you see sparkles in your headlight beam at night you can distinguish between spider eyes and water droplets by looking at the color. Spider eyes are blue and water is white.
2. I can go out at night, armed with a headlamp and stick, to look for spiders on the ground, on leaves, and under rocks. And I do that.

In short, my life is more magical now that I can actively search for sparkles and hidden treasures in the darkness. And I mean that so sincerely. 

A Lynx spider (family Oxyopidae) noticed and photographed by Brent

Wandering home from our hike we found a wandering spider (Arana errante).