Constructing Life: To Monteverde et Bat Jungles and Chocolate

We’re now in Monteverde. The drive here was not far from an amusement park ride - incredibly windy but magnificent. Boy, the Porsche enthusiasts would love this newly paved road. Unfortunately, the pavement ends about half way. You take a bumpy gravel road all the way to 4500 ft above sea level.

Monteverde is a mish-mash of cultures. It was a significant landing point for Quakers leaving the U.S. during the Korean war. It followed to be a hub for traveling hippies too.

So, over time, due to an assortment of reasons, Monteverde and the town of Santa Elena have become the hippie Mecca within Costa Rica. The hippie gringos come here and take up art. Brooke and I spent our first hours here going to the myriad of art galleries. The first place was a local artist from Costa Rica who turned out to be the exception. His gallery was very modern, with a very professional style. We continued on to another gallery/store (really not a gallery, just an artsy store) where everything was cute and nice but lacked substance – surprise, it doubles as a yoga meditation studio. We continued on further to the “art cooperative” – totally just a tourist souvenir shop peddling the “supporting local women” clause. Luckily we did find a painting in a nice little gallery nearby. The painting was removed from the frame and brought to the till but when we asked if it could be packaged into a tube, the young guy who was working there (the son of the owner) didn’t have one! He said they often don’t restock things like this. He revealed that, amusingly, they don’t really sell much art there, mostly jam.

We spent the rest of today going to the “Bat Jungle” and stopping in at an Argentine chocolate store– absolutely delectable chocolates. The tour of The Bat Jungle was a great learning experience. They are really trying to get the word out on how important and interesting bats are. Bats make up one quarter of all the mammal species on the planet – over 1000 species! They are not related to rodents - the young guy who took us on the tour was emphatic about this. More likely, bats are related to primates. Those 1000 species break down into groups such as the insect eating bats, the fruit eating bats, the nectar eating bats and blood eating bats (vampire bats). Bats probably got their bad name from that last group, however, you would have to sleep naked in the forest for them to even try going after your blood. And, apparently there is no real harm as they would only take around 25g of blood. The only harm would be if they could transmit something infectious and apparently the scare of rabies doesn’t come from bats feeding on people but occurrences where people pick up sick bats and get bitten.

The insect eating bats eat so many insects helping maintain a delicate ecological balance - in many cases, they are key to protecting crops though many farmers still don’t understand this.

One fascinating fallacy is that bats are blind. In fact, they can see really well in conjunction with remarkable echo location - to the point of being able to locate a human hair in the path of their flight and avoid it. They may just be the most agile fliers on the planet, some able to reach speeds of up to 100km/hour while being able to turn on a dime. Their wings have all sorts of flexibility to change shape and tension during flight so that they can steer with amazing dexterity. Some of the nectar eating bats can almost hover like a hummingbird. Some bats eat fruit from trees, essential to spreading seeds all over the forest. Some bats are key to pollination for numerous plants and trees. It turns out bats are important to our survival. The huge caves of bats in San Antonio, Texas, are home to 20 million bats but this population is declining. Together, they eat over 250 tons of insects per night, mostly cotton bollworm moths, a severe agricultural pest, and are a major factor in keeping crops healthy and insect free. However, pesticides and fertilizers that are used are having a huge effect. The colony is collapsing.