18:00 Last night it was extremely windy for once and I got woken by it on a couple of occasions. There was also no electricity and following a phone call from one of the cooks I went all the way to the entrance gate (about a 40 minute casual walk if you know the way) to let the I.C.E. Costa Rican Telecommunications in for park maintenance and repairs though there was no one to see until 20 minutes of waiting. This ladies and gentlemen is so-called “Tico Time” and is also why the iPod is genius.
I returned to the station eventually and
then went snorkelling with a lucky volunteer to quickly collect the data loggers
that I hope had held up until now, of which we came back with 4 out of 5. The so-called “Open Ocean” logger had been
claimed by its named and was probably now descending to the deep or lodged on a
rock just out of view. I was somewhat
surprised by this as this logger was strapped firmly to a flat surface of rock
using cable ties and surplus rubber bands, then a secondary marine strengthened
rope was tied to part of the lagoon (solid rock) before being tied round a
massive loose bolder and ending tied to a 4 kg dive weight. All of this was then wedged by me into the
corner of this small “bay” that was to the side of the lagoon right against the
Pacific Ocean. So you would think this
would hold for a week. Apparently not,
ok so I suppose the ocean can move trees or move continents and so I admit
defeat, but nevertheless this ‘loss’ of data might be temporary but my hope is
almost non-existent and the only annoyance is that comparing all the data
points would have proved pretty interesting I feel.
I finally caught up on this journal,
meaning I didn’t want to risk taking it to Corcovado so have just finished
copying everything over from the temporary journal I kept during that tough
week. The cooks returned, a delivery of
food shortly followed and I gave them a gift of tea towels and spatulas which
came all the way from England, and this made them quite happy.
I have just had to remove a small
(“massive”) Wolf Spider as well as this “scary” tiny baby Gecko from the Swedish
girls room – Wimps! You know who you are :-)
They repaid me by teaching me to play
Uno, then I taught them a couple of card games as well as a simple magic trick I
had picked up previously and then before it got too late they taught me a new
interesting game called “10-1” or “10 to 1.” Right before bed I was interested
to learn that in Sweden they actually have a word for the poor quality snow
that soon turns black and slushy which I am used to calling “Snush” (A mixture
of snow and slush) but am now going to call “Slask” broadening my language
skills that much more.
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