June 2009 Archives

Hi everyone. We're still in Costa Rica and having a great time. After Monteverde we went to the Arenal Volcano, which is an active volcano that is still letting out lava. When we arrived, great clouds of smoke were coming from the top of it, which was amazing to see. Later that day we went on a hike up the old lava flow, which was formed when it last erupted in 1968. While we were up there, we saw the volcano erupt and could even hear it rumbling! These "eruptions" usually last for only about 10 seconds, but happen as often as 17 times a day.
 

In my last blog we were visiting the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica. From there we went to see the famous Arenal Volcano. This is one of the 10 most active volcanoes in the world! There is always smoke coming out of the top, which we were lucky to see since the top of the volcano is often hidden in clouds.
 

Hello everybody on your computers. We continued our trip in Costa Rica, and visited Monteverde, which is in the cloud forest. A cloud forest is a type of forest similar to a rainforest, but higher in elevation and instead of having a lot of rain, there is a constant mist. There's 100% humidity in a cloud forest all the time. The other distinguishing feature of a cloud forest is that the moss grows all over the trees and branches, not just on one side, and this makes it a great environment for epiphytes to grow on the trees there. An epiphyte is basically a plant that grows on a host plant instead of in the ground and it's amazing how much stuff can grow on just one tree in the cloud forest.
 
There was a lot of cool stuff to see in Monteverde. Our first night there, we went to a place called Ranario, and "Rana" in Spanish means frog. They had a lot of different species of frogs that are found in Costa Rica. My favorite ones are the red-eyed tree frog, the green and black poison arrow frog and the glass frog. You can actually see through the glass frog and check out it's insides.
 

'Olla' everyone. I'm in Costa Rica and having a great time seeing animals and rare birds.

We went to a town in the mountains called Monteverde where we stayed in a tree house. It was really cool because we were in the cloud forest and had a great view. One morning, we went on a guided hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve. Having a guide was important because they really know where to look for stuff. The most amazing thing we saw was the rare Quetzal bird.

When we were finishing our hike, there were all these guides with telescopes and binoculars running around because someone had spotted a Quetzal. So we followed them and everyone was chasing the bird around, including us. Every minute the Quetzal would fly to a different tree, so everyone would go running again. It was really funny. Finally the Quetzal stayed in one tree and we got a really good look at it and even got pictures of it through our guide's telescope.We spotted a male, which has two beautiful long feathers that they use to attract a female. Check out Tyler's blog for a great picture of it from the front and here's a good one I got of the cool tail feathers:
 

Hello, I'm in Costa Rica and we are in the Tortuguero rain forest.

When we got to Costa Rica, we arrived in the city of San Jose. We're going to be in Costa Rica for three weeks, but we had no plans when we got here. But Mom found a good place for us to start and it turned out to be great. Its name is Turtle Beach Lodge and it was an amazing place. Our guide's name was Mario and he was really knowledgeable. We really liked him.
 
When we got to Turtle Beach Lodge it was raining, but we didn't mind. After dinner we went on a night walk through the rain forest. We saw two red-eyed tree frogs mating. We were lucky we saw them mating on a branch so low to the ground, since normally they're really high up and you wouldn't get to see them.

Hello everybody. We've left Peru and are now in Costa Rica. To start our adventure, we were picked up by a guide named Mario from the Turtle Beach Lodge who showed us around some of the Costa Rican rain forest in Tortuguero National Park. At around 1 p.m., we got to Lodge, which stayed at for the next three nights. The first night, we went out on a night walk through the rain forest to look for red-eyed tree frogs. Not only did we get to see them, but we saw them mating, which Mario had only seen once before in his ten years of guiding.The next morning, we went on another walk through the jungle and saw some hard-to-find white tent bats. These bats chew on the edge of a palm leaf until the ends fall down and forms a tent. There were seven little white bats all huddled together under the leaf and each one was only about the size of a thumb.

My second Peru blog takes place in the Amazon rain forest. Together with the NG Kids Expedition Team, we stayed in an open-air room with no windows or doors, so we really felt like we were part of nature. To get to the Posada Amazonas Lodge where we stayed, we had to take a boat on the Tambopata River, which eventually flows into the Amazon River. When we were on our boat ride, we saw the biggest rodent in the world, a Capibara, which was really cool to see.  We also saw a troop of squirrel monkeys and as you might know, I love monkeys.
 
It was a long day of traveling to get to the rain forest and they gave us lunch on the boat. To help the environment, our lunch was vegetable rice served in a banana leaf, so when we were done, we threw the leaf in the water which the fish got a free meal from. It's totally safe for the environment and leaves no garbage. By the time we got to the lodge it was getting dark. Once we got to our room it was really dark. The rooms were lit by candles, so me and Tyler wrote our blogs by candlelight, which was different.
 
The next day we went to a lake and took out a pontoon paddle boat so that we could quietly float on the water and see the birds.

We also went to spots where we could fish for piranhas. Our group caught two of them using meat as bait. Our guide showed us the piranha's sharp teeth, which was awesome.

Hello everybody. For this blog we are reporting from the Amazon rainforest.  
 
The first thing we did when we got there was take a 90-minute boat ride to our rainforest lodge. We cruised up the Tambopata River, which is a tributary to the Amazon. It goes for 5,000 kilometers until it meets the Amazon.
 
On our ride over, we saw some nice wildlife, like the capybara, which is the largest rodent on earth and is the size of a dog. We also saw a huge tree filled with lots of monkeys. Besides mammals, we also saw lots of birds, like macaws and toucans.

Hello people, I was just in Peru with the National Geographic Kids Hands-On Explorer Challenge Expedition. It was such an honor to be with the kids who won! Thousands of kids entered this contest and only 15 got a chance to go. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't enter. All the kids that won never thought they would be picked, so you should try it next year ... plus, it's really fun.

We met up with the group when they were flying from Lima to Cusco, where we all spent time together in the Sacred Valley. One of the days we were there, all of the kids participated in a "treasure hunt" with a group of local people who live in the highlands of Peru (we were at 14,000 feet!). Our first competition was hair braiding, since this is a popular traditional hairstyle in Peru. Our team did not do so well. The second competition was textile weaving. I learned how to how to do it from a local woman, but I wasn't so good at that either. I got to keep the bracelet I made though, which was a really cool souvenir from our trip.

 

We also had an event where we used slingshots to shoot at balloons and hats that were strung up in some trees. It was hard but really fun. One of the kids, Dewey, was really good at it. He shoots beebee guns at home, so maybe that's why he was so good.

Hello everyone. I was just in Peru, where we met up with the National Geographic Kids Hands-On Explorer Challenge winners. We spent nine days in Peru with them, which is really exciting. Some of you might have read their blog posts on this website over the last two weeks.
 
We met up with them at the airport in Lima where we flew together to Cusco. After we arrived, we took a bus to a traditional weaving center where they knit tapestries the way the Incas did hundreds of year ago using wool from alpacas. Before they could even start weaving, the women spun the wool using big wooden tops and then dyed it all different colors.
 
From Cusco we went on to the Sacred Valley, which was at almost 14,000 feet in altitude. Because most people are not used to that extreme height, some got altitude sickness. Stefan and I took medication against it, so we were okay. Our activity for the next day was a treasure hunt with a group of local people from a nearby village.

Hello people of the world, I'm in Greece and it has been great.
 
The third island we visited, was an island called Skiathos. In Skiathos we chilled out, went to the beaches, and did some school work. We did take one big hike that was long and hilly. When we reached the top of the big hill we got to a monastery. There we met people who were helping to restore a church and they offered for us to stay and have lunch with them. We had yummy cheese pies. They made the pies in a traditional wood-burning stove. I thought it was nice to have lunch with the locals.
 
Then we went to Delphi, or otherwise known as the belly button of the world. Yes, the belly button of the world! It is called that because when the god Zeus wanted to find the center of the world, he released two eagles, one from each end of the earth. The eagles met at Delphi, so he said it was the center of the world. Where the two eagles met, they built a temple for an oracle, who is a person that can tell the future and speak to the gods in the heavens. The people on earth would come to the oracle and ask questions about important stuff and the oracle would tell them the answer. So it was a very special place. Tyler and I tried to predict the future, so we'll see what happens!
 
From there, we went to one of the most amazing places in Greece. It is where the first Olympic games were held in ancient Olympia. There we saw the first track ever used, which we even got to run on.

Hello everybody, I'm going to tell you more about Greece: Part Two.  
 
First, we went on a ferry to the island of Skiathos, where we stayed at an inn owned by our friend Aris' friends, called Villa Kim. In Skiathos, we went up to a monastery that used to house 70 monks, but now has only two. When we arrived at the monastery, we got a big surprise ... there was a peacock trying to attract a female next to him, which meant he had all of his feathers up. Even though he looked incredible, the female didn't seem impressed.
 
From there, we went on a hike and reached another monastery, where we were invited to have lunch with the people who were there restoring it. We ate some delicious cheese pie that had just been baked in an outdoor wood-burning stove. It was really nice to meet such friendly locals.