6/12 -- Boating for Birds

Jim spotted this little guy as we walked to breakfast at the hotel.

We drove to Los Chiles, very close to the Nicaraguan border and embarked on a boat ride to see birds and other aquatic life. The river is part of a biological corridor that is being created across the country to allow the wild animals to traverse their traditional territories without having to brave human intervention. The river corridors started out narrow and are gradually being widened, though we saw some narrow areas on our ride.

Crocodile

Basilisk lizard

Howler Monkeys

Basilisk

Heron?

Most of the cattle here seem to be brahmans

Another lizard -- generally easier to see and photograph than
some of the birds.

When we neared the border, we had hoped to get a picture of us by the "Welcome to Nicaragua" sign, but another big boat with LOTS more passengers hogged the location. We briefly entered Nicaragua as the boat turned around.

The border!

The river and our boat

Green Heron

Eleanor is holding an interesting flower: Andres plucked the
sheath on left from a tree and pulled out the flower on the right.

Iguana

Bats! These sleep on a tree. VERY tiny.

Ducks left, jicana right

more ducks

Another heron

Heron?

Flying Egret

A raptor

After the boat ride, we had a lunch that will help with my weight loss program and then drove to the home of a family who has made a successful business out of preparing and selling papaya root for a traditional picadello, used for celebrations. The husband had been a pineapple farmer and was physically no longer able to do the work. He and his family saw prepping the papaya root as a valuable service because it was so time intensive. But he was also an inventor and developed a number of tools to speed the process. His wife showed us around and gave us a chance to help with some of the work.

The whitish things are papaya -- called roots,
they are also the base of the tree, which are
replaced every two years. The long handled
tool in the front is used to skin the bark off
the tree.

This is the grinder, which was hand punched with several
different shapes. The papaya root is sent from outside to inside
with in a big tube and lands on the platform behind. When
the grinder is running, it is covered with a metal box and the
grindings fall into a big plastic bin below. I tried feeding the
grinder -- you would develop some muscles doing this.

The bucket is unloaded onto this screen and pushed through,
capturing the harder and larger chunks which are discarded.
The grid is removed and the ground root is packed into 2
kilo plastic bags. I helped with this step and also bagged
and got the right weight on the first try.

Afterwards, we had the opportunity to sample the picadillo made from the root. Another weight loss product for me....