6 Months in Central and South America for the Price of a Car

Crimson-fronted parakeet eating mangos in San Jose, Costa Rica.
We sure do miss waking up to parrots.

Happy New Year! As we're coming up on a year since the start of our 6-month journey volunteering and traveling in Central and South America, we wanted to reflect on our time away. When we've talked with friends, family, and strangers about our trip, they often wonder how we did it. So we'd like to share a few of our thoughts here on why and how we managed to take 6 months off to explore, along with a graphic of how the costs worked out, percentage-wise. This is longer than our usual entries; we wanted to go a little more in depth.

When we began this blog, we mentioned a little about our motivations for taking this trip. It was very difficult deciding to leave jobs we loved for an uncertain experience far away from home, friends, family, and our two cats. The timing was far from perfect, but we realized we would never find an ideal time to leave: this trip wasn't something that would fit naturally into our lives; we needed to carve out a place for it. We spent plenty of nervous nights figuring out whether we could handle it financially, wondering where to go and for how long.

Economical Program Choices

Once we started seriously looking into volunteer bird banding opportunities, it became much easier to envision our trip. We found Fauna Forever Tambopata and Kekoldi Indigenous Reserve, both of which were very appealing.

Fauna Forever was intriguing because we'd been thinking about visiting the Peruvian Amazon for a long time, but the cost of going as a tourist is eye-popping. We felt that the hands-on banding experience would be great, and the website made it seem like a fun organization (nice work, Dave!). The program costs for a month and a half were far lower than we'd have spent on even two weeks as tourists.

Kekoldi seemed like a neat opportunity for as many months as we liked of hands-on experience, in an area of Costa Rica we'd never visited. Program costs were extremely reasonable, with excellent economies of scale for longer stays like ours. We liked the idea of learning more about the Bri Bri people's way of life and supporting local efforts to conserve their forests and bird species... and we'd already been thinking of making Costa Rica a large part of our trip, since we love the country so much.

While we were excited about the prospect of many months in the field with birds and other wildlife, we knew that we didn't want our time abroad to be all "work." We knew we wouldn't be able to afford a whole year away from home, but felt that some amount of time beyond our programs would be doable. We ultimately decided on a full month-and-a-half "phase" at Fauna Forever, three months at Kekoldi, and 6 weeks of travel to make our trip exactly six months.

House Concerns and Other Money Matters

We're pretty good savers, and make saving a priority (thanks for the skills, parents!). Food and travel have been our main splurges...along with our 2007 home purchase (no thanks, economy!). So spending a portion of our savings on a one-of-a-kind travel experience didn't overly intimidate us, but the idea of leaving our home either A) empty and accruing ungodly mortgage payments, or B) inhabited by strangers who might cost us even more in damages, was not at all palatable. We initially tried dealing with a real estate agent to list our place as a furnished, short-term rental, but that went nowhere and left us feeling uneasy, since our departure date was fast approaching.

Here's where our Massachusetts bird banding friends came in and introduced us to our then-tenants, who are now good friends, Barrett and Marcela. Barrett wrote A Bird-Finding Guide to Costa Rica, which became indispensable for us there and in Panama as well, and Marcela is a Tica--we were thrilled to meet her mother while in Costa Rica. Finding Marcela and Barrett was an incredible stroke of luck for us: our trip coincided with their need for a temporary place to live, and as soon as we met them, we knew our house would be in great hands with such nice people.

Aside from the monthly mortgage expenses not covered by rent, we paid many of our travel costs before we even left: both programs, gear, and our roundtrip, multi-leg airfare (BOS-LIM-SJO-BOS).

Airfare, as you'll see from our chart, was one of our largest expenses (and our largest negative environmental impact). We tried not to fly too much; aside from our main tickets, we needed to book a flight from Lima to Puerto Maldonado, the jumping-off point for our Fauna Forever program. The trip to Brazil from Costa Rica could have been done more efficiently and cost-effectively if we'd planned further ahead; as it turned out, that airfare was almost exactly half the cost of our total airfare.

Our combined program expenses came in second place, but by comparison, take a look at our time traveling in Costa Rica, and to a lesser extent, Peru and Panama, as *budget* tourists: 4.5 months of programs providing meals, lodging, and meaningful experiences, vs. a quarter of that time sightseeing and taking some guided tours: similar costs.

Brazil, another substantial expense, was a special case. We knew it was an unnecessary expense, but we realized (thanks to your help, poll-takers) that we might not have another opportunity in the near future to return to the Pantanal, which we'd loved in 2009, to spend time with Ailton, and hopefully see jaguars and other amazing wildlife. This turned out to be one of our best decisions of the trip, and we don't regret the cost at all.

And now, after much fanfare and exposition, we give you our pie chart of trip expenses. We won't go into exactly how much the whole thing cost, but we will say that for the same price, we could have gotten quite a nice new car. Honestly, we're happier with the way we spent the money on the experience.

Expense Chart

By way of further explanation, the house costs in the chart are our out-of-pocket costs after rent (the rest of the mortgage, the water bill, insurance, etc), and the gear includes the replacement for our poor, broken (now fixed!) Nikon D300s. Most of the gear we bought consisted of hiking shoes, clothing, and one new hiking pack; we'd actually already had a bunch of gear from previous trips. "Travel" includes hotels, lodging, food, bus fare, laundry, and other travel costs, and "incidentals" are the things we realized we needed/wanted while traveling. A note on our hotels: in general, we stayed relatively inexpensively, but found that we generally can't deal with the noise of hostels, making our trip considerably more expensive than if we'd gone that route.

Have you thought about taking a combined volunteer / tourism trip? We'd love to hear about it and live vicariously now that we're missing ours. And we're happy to offer more of our thoughts on any of the places we've been either as tourists or volunteers. Hope you have some fun adventures in store for 2012!

Day of the Oropendolas

First off, we've been extremely delinquent in responding to the people's will: you told us to get ourselves to Brazil, and to Brazil we go. In June, we're heading back to the Pantanal with our friend/guide extraordinaire Ailton Lara to the Pantanal Jaguar Camp. Ailton's so sought-after that we're competing with the crew of National Geographic for his time. We should clarify, since we've gotten a lot of questions, that we're not extending our six-month time away from home. This will be a side-trip, after which we return to Costa Rica before coming home as planned in mid-July.

In the meantime, we're very content with the hordes of birds we've been getting in our nets at Kekoldi. Today, we were stunned to get half a flock of chestnut-headed oropendolas. These are fairly large birds that don't usually come low enough to get caught in the nets, but we were on a ridgeline today that they kept crossing while foraging. We banded a total of seven, but a bunch more escaped from the nets as we approached. One of the nets actually collapsed under the combined weight.

Check out the enormous beak. It hurts, but not as much as the claws.

Above, Duaro has a laugh while Mike attempts not to get speared,
using a bag as protection from the claws.

Adult and hatching-year females (younger at right).

While we had the birds, their flockmates stayed very close to our site, calling for their friends in concerned voices. As we let them go, they went to join the others and had insane oropendola conversations about the ordeal. For those who haven't heard an oropendola before, you really should.

Photo Tour: Birding, Banding, and...

Aaron, Duaro, and Mike examining dusky-capped flycatcher

The last two weeks have been full of bird banding. We've stuffed our heads full of plenty of new species and are trying to remember the six-letter codes for each to speed up our data entry (example: long-billed hermit, a hummingbird, has Latin name Phaethornis longirostris, which becomes PHALON in our data sheet). There are also plenty of different criteria for determining the age and sex of birds, varying by species.

Red-capped manakin: fully adult males look like this,
but younger males and females look alike and are olive-colored

Some of our birds are ultra-tiny hummingbirds, but occasionally, too large to band, like this broad-winged hawk. Getting it out of the net was a two-person effort.

Our prettiest birds to date have included this green honeycreeper and golden-hooded tanager:

Our teenage Tico banders are awesome. How many US teens can rattle off dozens of Latin bird names? These guys also have a great sense of humor.

Keswar drinking scalding hot coffee
from a carefully folded leaf cup

What kind of book has these four teenage guys so engrossed?
Hummingbirds of Costa Rica, of course!

Sometimes, we find cool things like this caterpillar
when we're out working

When we're resting, we're often reading at the station and staking out the birds that visit the fruiting and flowering trees. Still trying to get a great shot of the keel-billed toucan, which, in spite of its size, is very shy. All the ones we've seen take off once they realize they're being watched.

Instead of the nesting woodpeckers we were hoping to photograph,
this lizard was kind enough to pose

Every week to week and a half, we get a little time off. On our last free weekend, we went to Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo. Very beautiful, but we felt like the trails stayed much too close to the main highway; we could hear traffic as we were walking.

Right now, we're in Parque Nacional Cahuita, and spent an enjoyable morning hiking...more on that to follow.

Life in the Hills

Our new temporary life in Costa Rica is off to a good start. The hills are still turning us into red-faced, drenched versions of ourselves, but we think we’re having a slightly easier time of it now than a week ago.

The Kekoldi station entrance is about 10 minutes by bus from Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. From the entrance, we hike up a forest path about 30 minutes to get to the station. There are various trails around the forest, most of which we still don’t know. In fact, one of our first days of bird banding here, we accidentally took the wrong trail in the early morning hours on our way to meet the team, and had to backtrack up an even steeper part of the hill than our usual route. We haven’t made that mistake again!

Emily with Keswar (left) and Duaro (right). Most of our banding
stations are in the field and we sit on a tarp. 
Here, we have a table!

Our team consists of Daniel Martinez, who’s been leading the operation since 2006, Bribri brothers Duaro and Keswar, Aaron, who’s just joined us from Kentucky/North Carolina, and us. They’re all very nice and intelligent, and the three of us Americans attempt to converse in Spanish as much as possible, only switching to English when we’re not sure of a word or phrase. I think our Spanish is improving, but it can be exhausting trying to think in another language all day.

Birds here have continued to be interesting, and for mammals, so far we’ve seen sloths galore, white-faced capuchins, and an olingo (which only Mike has seen so far, even though it apparently comes by the station every night). Favorite birds since last time, seen, not netted: a pair of spectacled owls during the day, great potoo that hangs out by the station, white-collared manakins that have leks all over, and woodpeckers of various persuasions including cinnamon, pale-billed, and black-cheeked. Oh, and spring raptor migration is happening! On any given day, we’ll see groups of hundreds of them—mostly turkey vultures, Swainson’s hawks, and broadwinged hawks—flying north, just over the span of a few minutes.

Spectacled owl...figures the long lens was back at the station.

This is cropped from a 50mm lens.

A few days ago, we had time off and went to nearby Manzanillo for hiking (both of us), snorkeling (Emily) and kayaking (Mike). The water here is a great temperature, and the reef is right off the shore—though the best reef is probably further out than swimming distance. There are boat trips for snorkeling, but we’re trying to be good about our budget.

Speaking of budget, here’s a question for you all: once we’re done with our program here in June, should we spring for a trip back to Brazil before we return to the states in July? We went to the Pantanal several years ago and had to purchase expensive 5-year visas, which expire in another few years. But since we’re in this part of the world already, maybe it makes sense to return on this trip, before we go home and “settle down” more permanently. It’s not cheap or super-close to get there, and the Pantanal and Amazon require guided tours and stays at fairly nice places. This could be our last chance for quite a while, though, and we’d still really like to see some big cats (and small cats!) and the ridiculous giant anteater. Last time, we saw Brazilian tapir, birds galore, and other neat creatures. But what if we return home jobless? Maybe we’ll regret the additional expense. The economy still seems pretty slow. Check out our poll on the right and tell us what you think. Other suggestions of favorite places with excellent wildlife viewing opportunities that come at a reasonable price?

Coatimundi, from our trip to Brazil in 2009. 

Last days in Peru, first days in Costa Rica

Our last few days in Lima, camera aside, were enjoyable. We stayed with Narda and Alexis’s family again, saw Chris of FFT and met his family, and had a few great outings. Narda and Alexis took us to Pantanos de Villa, the only reserve within Lima, and we had an awesome time birdwatching with them. We searched in vain for burrowing owls—found a nest, but owls were hidden—but did find the hilarious Peruvian thick-knee, one of the silliest-looking birds we’ve ever seen.

Chris helped us set up an outing with his friend Guillermo, a guide in Lima, to the Lomas de Lachay, about 100 km outside central Lima. It’s full of rolling hills that are apparently cloud-forest-like in the wet season, but were more desert-like when we went. We still saw a bunch of neat birds, including two pairs of burrowing owls and the elusive Andean tinamou. Apparently, the entire countryside in the area outside the reserve used to be similar habitat before ranchers and loggers pretty much turned it into the desert it is now. Even in the reserve, in a less-used entrance, there was a squatter illegally grazing his goats. The park service must be either powerless or turning a blind eye. However, they are trying to reforest the area inside the reserve, collecting seed pods for planting, which was neat to see.



Kekoldi research station

When we arrived in San Jose, we stayed the first day at Hotel Kekoldi (same name, no relation to the indigenous reserve where we are now). Lots of errands including doctor visit (Emily: just finished the resulting course of anti-parasitics and anti-bacterials…stomach in slightly better shape), haircut (Mike), bus ticket purchase, and eating. We both agreed that San Jose has really grown on us since our first visit in 2004. It’s walkable, pretty safe, and has some attractive parks.

Emily and

white-whiskered puffbird

The Kekoldi Indigineous Reserve, where we’ll be doing bird research for a while, has a nice research center run by the incredibly hospitable Sebastian, Maritza, and their Bribri family. They cook tasty food and are eager for us to have a good time. We need to revise our thoughts that Peru would be hotter than Costa Rica, though: it’s been a lot sunnier and more scorching some days here. Mosquitoes are still a problem, and there are leishmaniasis-carrying sandflies, too. Hoping we’ll stay healthy!

The place is super-hilly, too, and makes us feel out of shape and sweaty. Hopefully we’ll get used to it!

Birds from the first few days of mist-netting and banding were very cool: a tiny hawk (that’s really what it’s called), white-whiskered puffbird, tanagers, woodcreepers, and tons of hummingbirds, which thankfully have all flown off okay.

We're actually pretty worn out...this trip is no relaxing vacation! But we're doing well, and looking forward to the next few months.

Three-toed sloth

Bronze-tailed plumeleteer

Mike measuring hummingbird

Sunset from observation tower

Tiny hawk

View from observation tower

Sleeping tree frog (points to whoever can tell us which kind)

Fauna... forever!

The past month has been an experience like none we’ve ever had. Sure, there’s been plenty of rain and we haven’t been able to go out as much as we’d originally planned, but we’ve also been out in the forest plenty and have gotten to see some fantastic things. Here are some highlights (and a few lowlights) since we last wrote:

Emily and night monkey. Photo by David Johnston.

Way back on Valentine’s Day, we were in town. Here’s how we spent the day: Mike – at the house with a stomach bug; Emily – machete-wielding with the group to clear the trails of a few trees at Anaconda Lodge. ¡Que romantico! The night before, the group had gone to La Balsa, an open-air disco next to the river, a pretty neat place. Our last day in town was spent at the Amazon Shelter, building and improving enclosures for the animals they take in. One owl monkey in particular took a special liking to Emily and had to be pried off her shoulders. Dave's picture of it appears in a cool interview with Fauna Forever leader Chris Kirkby.

Praying mantis.
Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Next came Casa ITA, run by Reserva Amazonica on the Madre de Dios river, which has all the access to RA’s trails, but with considerably more rustic accommodations a mile or so away. The trails themselves were a bit worse for wear because of four straight days of rain while we were there, and more before we’d arrived, but among other things, we saw a sleepy porcupine at eye level a few feet away, saddle-backed tamarins (cute, tiny monkeys), and a quick glimpse of peccary (wild, hairy forest pigs). We also found a fantastic leaf-mimic praying mantis. The insects in general are out of this world.

Our mist nets were in between thigh-deep pools of water, which we’d been dreading, but which didn’t turn out to feel as horrible as we expected. Especially since one of the birds we netted was the very large, very cute black-fronted nunbird, one of Emily’s favorites.

Mike with whip snake caught by
herp team. Photo by James Spence.

The best part about Casa ITA / Reserva was the canopy walkway, which we took advantage of with Naun whenever possible. There were some truly amazing birds, and the view of the forest was incredible.

Because our next destination unexpectedly closed for a month, we ended up back at Sachavacayoc Center for our last part of the program, which was fine with us. We were able to go out bird netting/banding most days, and the herpetofauna (snakes, lizards, frogs) team took a lot of night walks and other excursions.

Trails were in overall better shape, and we saw tons of mammal tracks including tapir, deer, and peccary. We briefly saw some peccary through heavy foliage, and Naun—lucky Naun—actually saw a tapir at the mist nets, then, later in the same day, an ocelot! We were just far enough behind to miss out. Years waiting to see an ocelot while traveling in the tropics: 7. Moral: walk right on your leader/guide’s heels.

James, putting his trust
in Emily, who is in the
process of making him
unintentionally bald.

What we did see, in the morning before we came back to town, is the rather rare harpy eagle. It flew across the field at Sachavacayoc, landed in a tree for long enough to get a good look, then took off again before we could call the others. Think about a giant bird…maybe a red-tailed hawk for those of you back home in the States. Now double or triple it in size and give it a cool crest (with a color change to shades of gray). Awesome.

Now, we're in Lima for a few days. Then, time for Costa Rica. More to follow. Anyone have any favorite animals you’d like us to try to see for you?

Many thanks to Dave, Chris, Naun, Brian, James, and Tania for making our time with Fauna Forever Tambopata memorable and enjoyable!

Emily oohing and ahhing over black-fronted nunbird.
Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Mike with green-and-rufous kingfisher.
Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Musician wren. Photo by Naun Amable Silva.

Birds, "special friends," and the rainforest

To start with, here are some random notes from the jungle:

• Thorny bamboo: did you know it exists? Is it thorny in Asia, or just here? Why does it seem to leap out of the trail edges to stab you?
• Just when you think your body has reached a carrying capacity of mosquitoes, more join the party. DEET is an appetizer for them, and cortisone is pretty useless for relief.
• It is exciting to be able to get up at 4:30 instead of 4 on some days.
• "Quick-drying” is a relative term…at 90-plus percent humidity, mostly dry is often as good as it gets.
• Washing machines and dryers are one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Wheel…fire…washer and dryer.
• Everything we learned in school and the news about deforestation meaning hotter land areas is true. Walk across a patch of cleared trees: 90 degrees F. Into the forest beyond it: 75 degrees almost immediately.
• The term “wet season” is no joke here. We’ve seen rivers rise and fall 10-15 feet over just a few days.

There’s the bad. On to the good: our bird research with Fauna Forever has been interesting so far. Plenty of neat birds to band and identify, plus some camera trapping, where we’ve set up a camera with an infrared sensor that captures motion as a creature (or tourist, or blowing leaf) crosses the field of view. Our first sites got us paca (member of guinea pig family), red brocket deer, coati, and two ocelots!

A typical day involves waking up sometime between 4 and 4:45 AM (if it’s not raining), walking between 1 and 3 km to the bird nets, unrolling them, and setting up the banding materials between some of the nets. We check the nets every half hour, take out any birds that have gotten caught, and take them back to our banding site. Back home, processing usually consists of banding, age/sex, and wing/weight measurements for the owls. Here there are about 20 bits of data to be collected from each tiny, squirming bird before we can release it. The banding “station” is wherever we happen to be at the time: a poncho spread on the forest floor, maybe a mosquito net strung between trees if we’re lucky. We close the nets at 9 am, lug them to the next day’s spot, set them up, and then hike back for lunch and a much-needed shower.

Afternoons (and mornings when we’ve been rained out) are spent doing laundry, playing cards, listening to audiobooks, and maybe a bird walk before dinner. Bedtime is very shortly after dinner.

A long time ago, we came up with a code word for something Mike really hates: spiders. Referring to them as “special friends,” or perhaps, if they’re quite large, very special friends, makes them seem less threatening. Let’s just say that we’ve had enough special friends in our various rooms to make us feel very popular. Those, plus a variety of other insects ranging from innocuous to awful (cockroaches). However, outside, there are lots of really awesome insects to be seen, including several dozen different kinds of butterflies. We’ve also seen a few praying mantids and some walking sticks, which are fantastic.

We’re doing well…missing home but having fun here. More to follow before we head back into the jungle!

Oh, in spite of a brief revival, the camera is yet again dead and back in the States for repairs. These are a few of the photos we got before sending it away.