5ft Boa's and milking cows

Following our return from La Fortuna it was finally time to get our teeth into some conservation work on the reserve. This basically involved moving wood chips from the store to where they were needed on the trails. It was good old fashioned manual labour and you could tell Henry, the main chap who maintains the trails, appreciated our help as it would have literally taken forever for him to do this on his own.

The day got off to an entertaining start when, as soon as I had picked up my first bag of wood chips, everyone began to shout 'snake snake'. Ah don't worry it won't be anything serious I thought as I almost stepped on the 5ft Boa Constrictor I'd accidently uncovered.

Sorry I woke you up Sydney snake


If you found a Boa Constrictor what would be the last thing you'd do with it? Pick it up and let it wrap itself round your arm? Strangely that was Henry's first thought. After a little while of looking at it and taking photo's of it, Henry put it in one of the wood chip bags to take it back to the Lodge to show the other guests haha.

Henry the strong man


After shifting bags of damp wood chips through the forest for an hour or two, Henry decided it was break time and we should help him with his other mid morning activity... Milking the cow. Milk is relatively expensive in Costa Rica especially in the remote areas, as such it makes more sense for the Lodge to have a few cows to provide fesh milk.

It was quite quickly apparent that this morning Henry would be having a rest and it would be us doing the milking, he needed a volunteer, so I stepped up to the plate... sorry bucket ;)

It was a very strange sensation, but Henry said I had it down... well he was speaking in Spanish but I'm pretty sure that's what he was saying. If 12 months ago you'd have said in one year's time you'll be milking a cow in a remote area of northern Costa Rica, I'd have told you you were a crazy person!?!

Good technique


The cows were kept in the fields infront of one of the neighbours houses, after we had finished our milking we sat and had a chat with them. The neighbour was a retired lecturer from San Jose who was originally from the area. She had her grand daughter staying with her, who appeared very bemused by the funny speaking foreigners.

Slight distrust


As I said earlier the main of the work today was manual labour, carrying the bags of wood chips from the store to the point they were needed on the trail. They weren't too heavy and it was all about technique (again). I managed, with a little guidance from Henry, to get to the stage I could carry three at once, though on the uphill sections of the trail I did have a few entertaining incidents where I nearly toppled off the trail into the forest.

Again... all about technique

Spreading the wood chips

Rest time

There were various storage points throughout the trails and the piles of bags of damp wood chips formed the perfect place for various creatures to call home.

Whilst we were resting we found another little creature running around the wood chip store, a fair sized Tarantula. Apparently your generally fine to handle Tarantula's, just make sure you don't make them feel threatened. I've never been massively keen on Tarantula's, it's the fact they're hairy... it weirds me out. Anyways as with so many things on this trip... when am I ever going to get the chance to hold a Tarantula again?

Hi little man

Hairy little fellow isn't he

Immediately we found the Tarantula we got another little surprise when we stumbled across another unexpected friend. At first glance we thought this was a Coral snake, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. However on closer inspection it turned out to be a Milk snake. Milk Snakes are non-poisonous however they imitate the markings of the Coral snake in order to warn off predators.

A little Milk Shake... sorry Milk Snake

All in all it was an awesome day of animals, volunteering on a reserve is definitely the best way to see some real wildlife.