Exotic beaches, red frogs and the tribes of Bocas del Toro

I, Konrad and Loths took a boat trip the day after we arrived. We were grouped with 2 girls from the US who work at a hospital in Panama, in a village near David. We were promised dolphins, but the season for dolphins was not at that time, so we did not see any dolphins. There were other that were luckier than us, that saw dolphins, but there are not as many around as in dolphin season. The place we went to look for them is even called Dolphin Bay. After looking, hopelessly, for dolphins, we went to a snorkel spot (after ordering food on a restaurant on stilts in the sea, for eating after the snorkeling). We were watching beautiful and colorful corals and some fishes. I have seen most of them before, because I have done so many snorkeling trips. It is surprisingly shallow around the islands. Even far from the islands, in the middle of the ocean, it was so shallow that we could stand up. It was a bit scary, because the bottom is full of corals and seaweed, and I was a bit worried to step on something that would sting me.

After the snorkeling, we went to eat at the restaurant on Isla Solarte. I had ordered fried fish with Creole salsa, it tasted delicious. They had shrimp, octopus and lobster on the meny too. When we had eaten we took the boat to Sloth Island to see some of these wonderful animals. They are hanging around in the trees everywhere on this island dedicated to them. The last stop was the Red Frog Beach where we had 2 hours to swim and play in the water. A lot of the time there are killer waves on this beach, but they occur mostly in the afternoon and from November to August. But they can occur very suddenly, so signs like this (on the picture above) on the beaches around on the islands are very common. When we were there, the waves were gentle and not so big. The beach is very shallow, so you have to go too far out to get a swim, or else you get a bit of swimming when the waves come in. The Red Frog Beach is called that because of the small red frogs that are numerous on the islands, especially on this beach maybe since it is named after the frog. The frog is poisonous, so tribes in South-America use it to poison their darts in hunting  for food in the jungle. The pictures are from the Red Frog Beach, the last one on the boat back to Bocas del Toro.

 

Above, poison red dart frog. They also come in blue and yellow and they like to stay in humid vegetation in and by the trees. 

The captain of the boat is a Ngöbe–Buglé, they were known as Guaymi before and live in Bocas del Toro and on the dry plains of Veraguas. I asked him about his culture and about their oral history, if they have any mythology or stories. And he said no. Later I was told that they do not like to talk so much with outsiders. He had his wife with him on our tour, and she never said a word to any of us. He did tell med that whhen Cristobal Colon came to the archipelago, he named it Bocas del Toro, and there is one island; Isla Colon that is named after him. I was also told that the Spanish chased off and killed many of the tribal people in the area, and so many escaped to the main land. he also told me that there are 4 "races" (he called them races) of tribal people living on the islands, and that their languages are so different that they do not understand each other. Spanish is the second language for many of the tribal people. He also told me that the women have beautiful gowns with bright colors and geometric patterns, but they do not wear them much these days. They may wear them during their festivals, and the men dress in exotic bird feathers and paint their faces with geometrical patterns in black, white and red. The Ngöbe–Buglé live in huts near rivers or at valleys on the main land, they fish, hunt, raise dogs, cows, chicken and pigs in modern days. The boat captain told me that before the Spanish came, they fished and hunted small deer, wild pigs, monkeys and sloth, now there is not much wild life left other than monkeys and sloth. And of course birds and amphibians. They are the largest indigenous group in Bocas del Toro Archipelago, forming 63.6 % of the national indian population, spread out in several communities in the islands of Colon, Bastimentos, Solarte, Cristobal, Popa and Water Cay. They still retain many of their aboriginal customs and practices, they have lovely necklaces constructed with colorful beads that originally were duller made from pebbles, pieces of bones, seeds and sea shells that they colored with homemade dye. The necklaces are called chaquira, and now they can buy beads of several shapes and colors and weave them into colorful ornaments. Another ethnic group in Bocas del Toro is the Bokotas who still use bows and arrows, spears and fish nets. You can see their round houses built on stilts, sometimes into the water (sea). Their women also wear a gown similar to the Ngöbe–Buglé, also called 'nahua' and necklaces, facial paint of black and red, and shiny hair combs. The men wear manta-sucia shirts. There are supposedly still many pure families of both tribes.

Buglere is the Chibchan language of Central America, spoken by a 1000 people in Panama and Costa Rica. Like most Chibchan languages (30 different languages spoken in Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica), Buglere is a tone language with SOV word order (S= subject, O= object, V=verb. It means that a sentence is usually built up with the words in this order; subject-object-verb. English and Norwegian are not SOV languages, but Latin, Japanese, Basque, Dogon and Hopi are among 73 (known) languages that are). Many linguists consider Buglere and Bogota to be dialects of a single language, but according the captain, speakers of the two languages can not understand each other. In Panama, the Buglé an td their relatives the Ngöbe (or Guaymi) have joined into a single Ngöbe–Buglé tribe. Most Ngöbe–Buglé live traditionally in simple small jungle settings and identify with their communities much more than with ethnicity, which in turn affects their level of national political organization. They were organized in the latter twentieth century to protect their land and culture. Their society was disrupted by the spread of banana plantations, the construction of the Inter-American Highway through their territory, and the appropriation of their communal lands by mestizo peasants and cattle ranchers. The 1972 constitution required the government to establish ‘comarcas' or reserves for indigenous groups, but this policy was not universally implemented.

The erosion of their lands caused many to leave and join Panama's migrant workforce where they were generally given the lowest paid and most physically damaging jobs. However development projects like the  Cerro Colorado mining project put Ngöbe–Buglé ancestral land in peril. This forced them to organize themselves politically.

The Jaguar Rescue Center

 One day I took a bike and visited the Jaguar Rescue Center. The story of the center is interesting; An Italian woman and a Spanish man worked in the same Zoo in Spain, but did not know each other. Then the Zoo arranged a tour to Costa Rica where they got to know each other, fell in love with each other and with Costa Rica. They bought a house and soon people learned that they had worked in a zoo, so someone brought a baby jaguar to them. The jaguar died, but people continued to bring them animals, and so they had the idea of opening up a center, and have volunteers working there. They also opened up for the public so that they could have an income since the goverment is not funding the center. They have a variety of animals, but no jaguars, but the center was named after the first animal they had. You get a tour from a volunteer when you go there, so you will learn a lot about the animals. One monkey was f.ex. found clinging on the road to his dead mother. He was clinging to her for 2 days before someone brought him to the center. Most of the monkeys have similar stories, they are orphans because the mother has been killed on the road or by a fire. The sloths come in because they are electrocuted by the many power lines that are hanging near trees. They try to get from one tree to another, and touch the power lines. it is very traumatizing for sloths, they have a slow metabolism and are very sensible to outer disturbance. Because they live a slow and solitary life, they are easily stressed by human activity and can easily develop skin infections. Some animals are confiscated from people that attempt to smuggle the animals out of Costa Rica. The margay cat (also called the climber cat because they are the best climbers among cats) in the park came there because of this reason. It was a good thing that he was saved because he was held in the trunk of a car and fed coffe and bread!!! Can you imagine that!? When Develino came to the park, he was so weak and undernourished that they were afraid he would die. Little is known about this little jungle cat, it is nocturnal and solitary and like to roam the remote areas of the rainforest. It is on the list of near threatened animals. Margays spend their entire life in trees, they even hunt in the trees, whereas its larger relative, the ocelot, mostly hunts on the ground.  The margays hunst monkeys and birds in the treetops, skillfully because of an ankle flexibility that enables them to climb down a tree head-first. Its ankles can turn 180 degrees, and it can grab on to the tree equally well with the fore and hind paws. It can jump almost 4 meters. Develinos decire to hunt and kill is kept alive by giving him live prey, and he has to climb, leap and sneak to get it. The woman (Anca) that runs the park has taken him to the jungle many times to release him, he follows her on the trail, she leaves him, but 3-4 days after he comes knocking on Ancas door. They hope that he will be ready to leave when its time for him to get a girlfriend. The orphan monkeys in the park they take to a 'monkey park' in the jungle where they meet wild troops, when they are ready to leave the safety of the shelter, they will be adopted into one of the wild troops. It has been a very successful method, one female that was adopted into a troop brought her whole troop to visit Anca a year after she found a troop, and she was pregnant.

 This is a baby two fingered sloth, it lost its mum. It was very hyper, climbing around all the time, not what we would think a sloth would do.

These are baby opossums. Opossums are usually solitary and nomadic, staying in one area as long as food and water are easily available. Some families will group together in ready-made burrows or even under houses. Though they will temporarily occupy abandoned burrows, they do not dig or put much effort into building their own. As nocturnal animals, they favor dark, secure areas. These areas may be below ground or above. When they are threatened or harmed, they will "play possum", meaning that they mimic the smell and appearance of a sick or dead animal. In the movie Ice Age there are a couple of opossums, they play dead and hang from the trees by their feet.

 A grown up three fingered sloth who came to the park because it touched an electric wire. Even though they are quite docile they are able to defend themselves when they are in their environment; the trees. Their claws are powerful (remember they hang all day by their claws), and they can bite as well. They are most vulnerable on the ground, so they spend as little time as possible on the ground. They go to the toilet only once or twice a week, then they have to climb down to the ground.

This deer was brought in by a hunter that shot the mother right after giving birth to her. She was still wet from her birth. She can never go back to the wild because she has no fear of humans as she has grown up with humans. She thinks she is a dog according to the volunteers. The park also get predatory birds. Their main injuries come from humans littering along the streets. When people throw garbage by the road it attracts a lot of rats and mice. Predatory birds like falcons, eagles and spectacle owls are attracted to the abundance of rats and mice, and they hunt by night. When they hunt in the night they get hit by cars, and get their wings crippled, or they die. Snakes and amphibians are bred in the park, and you may wonder why someone would breed dangerous snakes that can kill people and frogs... Amphibians, because they have the special skin that allows them to take oxygen through it and live both in water and on land are very vulnerable to all the chemicals we dispose of in the nature.
Think about this; when all the predatory animals we like and those we do not like are gone what will happen? Most places have huge problems with rats and cockroaches. When we do not protect the snakes, predatory birds and small and jungle cats the problem is going to grow even more. Anca has a boa constrictor in her house, to control rats, mice and cockroaches. Because even if you do not see them, they are there, and they are many. If we do not take care of our amphibians, spiders and birds we will drown in insects and cockroaches. ALL the creatures put on this planet have a wonderful purpose of keeping everything in perfect balance. If you love the nature and animals, you can not hate any animals, not even the shark or spiders. Only humans have no purpose at all as long as we treat our planet as if it is worthless. Along with our pets and farm animals we are on the brink of destroying all life on earth and the earth itself. Pets, like cats and dogs, have managed to vipe out species of birds and animals. And to feed farm animals huge areas of virgin forests and jungles are destroyed every day, chasing away and  pressuring the animals that used to have the area as their home. Think twice about your actions on mother Earth, treat yourself better by not filling your body with chemicals. How can we care about pollution on the planet when we so willingly pollute ourselves every day? Do you want to breath toxins every day? Drink water and eat food that is contaminated with chemicals? Use body products with chemicals. The medical world try to tell us that we get sick because of our gens. That we get fat because of gens. That is NOT true ladies and gentlemen. The truth is that it is natural to be healthy and live a life of high quality, and we get sick because of the food and water we consume, and the air we breath. I believe there exist NO bacteria and viruses that are older than the human race that was a ever a natural or catastrophic threat to mankind.

Animal encounters

 As I said before in a blog, the Cahuita National Park is also protecting an endangered reef near the coast. The reef is built up from over 35 species of corals including elkhorn corals and smooth brain corals   http://www.livestockusa.org/BRAINS.html
Elkhorn corals are actually in danger of diseases and death because of human feces (from sewage), according to a study done by the University of Georgia. The very important coral, that give shelter and food for countless species of invertebrates and fish, gained federal legal protection in 2006 along with stag horn corals, and are now even rared in zoos too save them. In 2008 there was also passed a law that prohibited all activity that would harm the reefs, but the reefs are still dying, leaving huge areas deserted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw3ylqPxeuU
Snorkeling there is excellent, and during the dry season you can snorkle from the beach. Now it it rainy season, so I went out on a tour with a boat to do snorkeling at 3 points near Punta Cahuita. It was amazing. I saw a lot of colorful fishes, some that I had not seen before, and beautiful squids changing colors. After snorkeling we went to Punta Cahuita to have a lunch and a walk. We were 4 in my group, and had a guide for the walk. We met other groups of people there but the guides made sure that the groups kept apart. Below are pictures of snakes. On the first picture it is difficult to see the snake, it looks like the branches.
 

I really wanted to see a sloth, so I was so proud of myself (and count myself as an excellent animal finder ;) ) when I was the one that spotted something in a tree that the guide passed by. Sloths are difficult to see because they do not move much, and when I saw one, I was not sure if I really saw something worth seeing, but the guide confirmed that it was indeed a sloth. Since I love so much writing about animal medicine (and psychology) I will create a blog about sloth medicine, and some other animal medicine.We actually saw 4 sloths that day, and one them was a baby showing us how to give a good scratch. A troop of curious howler monkeys lay digesting their lunches in the trees.

 We saw many birds and I photographed some, but unfortunately the camera I have now is not as good as the one I had. I saw 2 different species of vulture; black vultures and a king vulture (they are more beautiful looking). And the bird sitting by the water might be a heron. We swam over coral reefs and walked through lush vegetation, on a sandy beach, crossed a bridge over a mash and mangrove swamps. Can you find the snake on the picture below? Hint; it is yellow. It is a yellow eyelash viper, it is venomous (the most dangerous in Central America), found in Central - and South America, and they come in a wide variety of colors, I have seen pink ones. The eyelash viper is a mystery to the rain forest because of the 5 color phases. Many animals and humans are afraid of the ferocious looking snake, but fortunately it will never attack a human unless the human is stupid enough to attack it. And unfortunately that is why humans are bitten; when they see a snake, people in Costa Rica go for the head with a jungle knife, and that is when they are bitten. Apart from that they will only have an interest of attacking their food; small mammals, lizards, frogs and birds. The eyelash viper give birth to live babies (I have witnessed an eylash baby being born!), and once it crawls out of the mother it is quite capable. However I have read that there IS actually a little bit of child rearing going on; they learn from the mother for 2 months and during that time she will also protect them. The reason why it is called "eyelash viper" is because it has some small antena-look-alike structures above the eye that makes its head look like a flower from a birds perspective. So it is a camouflage that also helps the snake sneak up on a prey and quickly inject its venom. They can live for a year without food. Snakes are interesting because they dwell in so many places and come in so many colors, shapes and sizes. Snakes represents versatility, transmutation and change. Their natural behavior is to shed the skin and leave the old one behind, adapting to new ideas. Unfortunately the snake has gotten a bad reputation from the Bible, and is seen by many as evil or bad news. But in the older mythologies the snake is an icon for healing and spirituality. The snake is used as a symbol in the pharmacy industry. Snakes awaken spiritual and magical intuition in people.Snakes are associated with unseen creative forces at work. With the snake totem the powers of intuition and observation becomes keener and more precise. The combination of change and intuition will allow great new development in life and a proper instinct for deciding which changes will be effective. The snake is openness to new experiences and opened horizons. The snake totem possesses the following virtues: Wisdom, healing, intuition, awaking of creative forces, ability to change without resistance, new opportunities for change, material vitality, intellect, power over rashness in speech and thought, emotional control, increased sensitivity to the environment, increased power of observation.

A story I love to tell sometimes is about the time I stood half a meter from a rattlesnake in Bolivia. Rattlesnakes are also vipers, belonging to pit vipers. The only reason why I think it was a rattle snake was because it rattled. I was walking with "my" jaguar, Yaguaru in the jungle one day (I worked for the organization Inti Wara Yassi for 8-9 months in the Amason Basin in Bolivia), and on the way to his beach he suddenly stopped dead. I heard the sound of a rattle and saw a snake with its head and upper body lifted up, and it was between me and Yaguaru. Yaguaru stared at it in with huge, round eyes, but stood dead still, the snake did not attempt to strike, but it was clearly warning us. I was in quite a hopeless situation since both sides of the path had trees with spines, so there was no way of going around. Strangely enough I was not afraid, I was calm, thank God, and it kept Yaguaru from doing anything that would put us in danger. I did not think for one minute that the snake would bite me. It was hopeless for me to get to Yaguaru, for one he is a jaguar and you just do not jump, or step towards a jaguar when a snake is between you and the jaguar, so I had to make him come to me. I talked to him encouraging him to jump over to me, so I moved carefully backwards a little to make space for him. I also talked to the snake telling it that we just wanted to pass, and that I respect its space. I also told it that we would come back the same way, and that we were friends and thus would not harm it. I talked to Yaguaru and told him that the snake would not bite us, that we would be safe and that he had to trust me and come to me. In the end he made a big leap to my side and we continued to the beach. Maybe some readers will think that I am a "werido" who think I can talk to animals and that they understand. But they do understand everything. They are all soulful, intelligent beings, I know that because it was my daily life at that time, communicating with big cats, monkeys, birds, peccaries and coatis. I never thought for one minute that it would be fruitless to talk to a snake that was threatening to strike.

The beautiful spider on the picture below is the golden silk orb-weaver. The female is huge and the male looks like a tiny fly. He has a difficult job getting to the female and not being eaten. The male of spiders will send messages to the female by touching the treads of her web with his feet in a certain pattern when he is wooing her. This will send vibrations through her web that tells her that she is visited by a male, as opposed to a victim that has been caught in her net. The males interest is, of course, to mate with her, but sometimes the female decides that she is more hungry than in the mood for love, so she eats him in stead. Talk about girlpower! The females weave quite an impressive web, and they are noted for it because the web of a mature female can reach a meter in width. The treads are yellow, so they look like gold in the sunlight. If the male is successful, the female spins an egg sac on a tree and lay hundreds of eggs. If you are bitten by one you will experience local pain and redness from its venom. many people find spiders scary and repulsive. In animal medicine, and animal psychology, people are encouraged to look closely at animals they find repulsive or are very fearful of, because it also gives you an important message. The spider is linked with time, and in India with the Goddess Maya, the weaver of illusion. You may ask you self, if you fear the spider, am I in charge of my own life /destiny? Is there a balance between my past and my future? Physical and spiritual? Yin and yang? How do I look upon my future? The spider reminds us that we are the center and in the center of our own world, and this is how it should be, because only by knowing yourself first you can know the Universe. The spider is so fascinating that I want to write more about it. But I will stop here. Afraid of spiders or not, believe in spider medicine or not, they are a blessing to this planet in so many ways. For one they control the bug population. 

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
~Chief Seattle~

Punta Cahuita in the background. On the path we would also meet some interesting ants called "limpiadores", cleaners. The reason is because they clean. They march out in the jungle in big armies and carry away everything that is dead. The guide told us that they will occasionally come into peoples houses in huge numbers, and the only thing the person can do is to leave the house for a few hours and let them do what they have come to do. Clean! Dead animals and pieces of food lying around in your house will be carried out. The reason why you better leave them there to do their job is that if you get in their way, their bite can be quite painful. On the picture below; our boat for the day (the bluish greenish one).