Welcome to the Jungle

Christ almighty, it feels hard to believe three days have gone by since I last wrote on here. With the first visitors coming to Rancho Naturalista today, things have been getting a lot more busy, but more on all that in a minute!
Thursday 19th June is where I ended on my last post, so I'll start by telling you about Friday 20th. To be honest, not too much happened. When walking about a mile away from the Ranch, I heard a mighty roar at about 10:44am. I took one look at the time, remembered a game was on and instantly new Costa Rica must have scored, nothing else could produce that noise! Sure enough they had, and their stunning 1-0 victory over Italy gave the staff of Rancho great cause for celebration, as we huddled around the sole tiny, fuzzy TV. It was such a remarkable moment that I was almost able to forget that it was sending England out! However, the most "memorable" thing about Friday was probably the Fire Ants. Mi dios, the bloody, "insult suggesting incestuous relationship with maternal figure" Fire Ants...
I went for a hike, practicing more bird identifcation for when guests would eventually arrive. I still wasn't accustomed to the heat, or the altitude, and even a gentle 1km walk or so was knackering me a bit, so I made frequent stops. And I wasn't really concentrating, or in a great mindset, owing to this. So I wasn't really thinking about where I was putting my feet... I sat down on a rock, for perhaps a minute or so, until a sharp pain on my left calf jolted me to attention. An ant, a fairly painful one, but I'd had a few bites today and I wasn't that concerned. But oh no. Oh sweet Jesus, there's more than one here!
I'm afraid even a sailor would turn white as a sheet at the language used. I'd stepped on a nest of Fire Ants, so named as their bite gives a distinct burning sensation. In reality, probably only 100 or so had made it onto my boot and leg, but it felt like millions; I hopped around madly in a futile effort to shake them off of my left boot with violent air-kicks. To any passing observer I might have been hokey-kokeying. Then reason kicked in, and I realised the only way I was going to settle this was to take my shoe off. Untying the laces resulted in a lot of bites on my hands, and an awful lot more swearing!

I was a bit preoccupied to photograph the Fire Ants, but here's another insect that doesn't look too friendly. Damn nature, you scary.  

I sat then, for about 10 minutes, mustering up the willpower to do anything, knowing that I was going to get bitten again. That knowledge was 10 time more agonising than the bite itself. eventually I picked up the shoe, held it by the relatively ant-free laces, and bashed it three times against a tree trunk. This seemed to shake most of the ants off, and the 15 or so remaining were squashed with the hard end of my laces, with vindictive, sadistic, triumphant pleasure. I then had to shake them out of the inside of my shoe, and finally, I was good to go. My leg was somewhat blotchy and swollen, and I left that experience a wiser man. The jungle's a scary place...
That evening, another volunteer, Rebecca, arrived. German-born, Dutch-educated and on the last leg of an epic years travelling, taking in South-east Asia, New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii already. While she's not here for the wildlife as I am, she's proving a delight to the staff, helping out in almost every way possible, from mucking out the horses to working in the kitchen. In some ways I'm rather jealous of the greater variety of tasks she's doing, as learning the birds off by heart was, to be honest, beginning to feel slightly more like a chore than a pleasure.

I say that, I post this video, and I understand how little sympathy you feel for me. One of the hummingbird feeders on the balcony at Rancho. 

That all changed as soon as guests arrived though. I can't quite explain it, but I actually get far more pleasure out of showing someone else the wildlife I've slaved away hours learning to identify, rather than just looking at it myself. The hikes up into the trails were getting kind of lonely, especially given there was no-one else around with a keen interest in the wildlife bar Lisa, and she's understandably rather time-limited as she attempts to run the whole operation. The guests also seem to revitalise the whole ranch, a guest-house without guests never quite has the same vibe. But sharing the experience of showing stunning birds, butterflies and even some brightly-coloured beetles to guests of Rancho is enormously worthwhile. My first guided walk of sorts was today, with a father/son duo named David and Matthew who have come over from California. Though I'm not actually allowed to charge money until I'm the sort of zen-level expert who can identify 300 jungle birds by scent and telepathy, I did get a $20 tip for taking them out for two hours, showing them specialities like the Snowcap hummingbird and the Montezuma Oropendola, a frankly ridiculous creature that science ought one day to prove is an evolutionary steeping stone between birds and dinosaurs. It won't, because that's crazy, but it should anyway. But I digress, at the risk of sounding like an awful and recycled cliche, the money wasn't that important. The joy of sharing my hard-earned knowledge and seeing their reactions was what felt fantastic, as was the experience I gained and the knowledge that, with a lot more practice at identifying the wildlife, I might not suck too terribly at this guiding lark. Hopefully.
Anyway, what else have I been up to? Well I had another encounter with a Boa today. Hiking along the Pepper trail at about 9am, I wasn't really paying attention, but at any rate it was difficult to spot as it was in the grass at the side of the path. As I was walking right past it, I noticed something in the corner of my eye, turned and saw a rather large snake baring it's fangs at me! I thought it was a Viper and was planning to strike, and so beat a VERY hasty retreat back up the path, before planning how to get by.

my second encounter with a Boa

I still didn't realise it was a Boa, and thus was likely to be quite docile and non-venomous. The markings looked vaguely like a Fer-de-Lance (ok not to a herpetologist, but I was panicking) and I was thinking the worst, as you do in that kind of situation. I also wasn't expecting a Boa to bear it's fangs and hiss like that, a rather frightening experience!
My first plan of attack was to try and scare it away, first by clapping and stomping very loudly, and then by throwing sticks at it. The second one I threw hit it squarely on the head, but it just stared at me, a cold, indifferent, hungry longing in its eyes. Great, now I'd pissed off the Snake, not scared it off, and I still had no idea if it was some toxic viper that would leave me vomiting, collapsing and eventually palpitating off into the ether if it bit me! I therefore decided to take a sneaky route, wandering off the track and beating my way through the forest for 20 metres or so. Not really the smartest idea, as I could easily have stepped on an actual Fer-de-Lance, but it did the trick and I came out the other side of the 'dangerous' snake. It was only when I got home, and reviewed the photos I'd taken (yes I took photos of the snake I thought might be capable of killing me, it's just morbid curiosity), that I realised this was a sweet, delightful and relatively non-harmful Boa Constrictor, much like the one I'd nearly stepped on on Thursday. I felt the biggest wuss, hacking my way through vines and ferns to escape a gentle little Boa. He'd probably only bore his fangs as a warning because I'd gotten too close.
I think that covers all the salient points of the last three days. Before today it was quite relaxing, yesterday Lisa, Rebecca and I spent a few hours at a local pool as there wasn't too much else going on, and in the evening there ensued an epic game of chess. I was all set to win, with something like King, two Knights, Bishop, Castle and Pawn on the board, while Rebecca only had two Pawns, a King, a Bishop and a Castle, but I was so tired I fell spectacularly into a trap where her Bishop wiped out my King. I shall most definitely need a rematch at some stage, that loss felt as bitter as my US friends must have felt today, robbed of a stunning victory with the last kick of the ball!
Also I've been weaned off the Gallo Pinto (Black Beans, Rice and Chicken) now, as the diet becomes slightly more flamboyant with guests arriving. The variety of food is nice, but at the same time I was enjoying the Gallo Pinto diet, a mixture of that and a lot of walking up hills at high altitude is probably doing me a world of good health-wise. But still, there's many miles of trails left to explore!

Hasta Luego
Liam :)

this photo is irrelevant to the post, but I like it anyway!