Saved!

I'm writing from the covered terrace. It's pouring buckets in front of me... just like in the rainforest. At least it drowns out various other noises that sometimes keep me awake at night. Monkeys throwing branches on the corrugated roof, grasshoppers flying against the mosquito net, and huge toads putting on a concert outside my window.

I slept through Saturday completely and only got up to feed the macaws. On Sunday, I had the energy again and went snorkeling with Felix. Although I saw beautiful fish, the coral reef looked like a graveyard. It's a shame that most of the corals have irreversibly bleached due to the rising sea temperature! I'm sure it looked completely different a few years ago. Anyway, there have been alarming changes here in Costa Rica. Although it may look like I'm in the middle of the Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge on the map, it seems that every effort is being made to sell this nature reserve. Along the entire coast road, there are signs with 'SE VENDE' written on them. Private individuals are selling areas of up to 100,000 square meters, and the new owners can do whatever they want with them. In the first 24 hours that I was here, a huge fence was built around a former rainforest area and a foundation was laid for a new villa. Often, they are vacation homes owned by wealthy Americans or Ticos from San José. Of course, this means that the macaws' feeding and nesting trees are gradually disappearing and they are more exposed to dangers such as dogs, cars, and other threats.

On Monday, Sara, the biologist, climbed a tree to change the battery of a camera in the nesting box. By chance, she saw that a chick that was about to fledge had a large lump in its crop. This macaw would have died within a few days if we hadn't taken it to the nearby Jaguar Rescue Center today. There, they were able to remove the lump. In the process, I had the opportunity to take a closer look at the Rescue Center's infirmary. Various animals were treated there. Particularly pitiful was a spider monkey with huge burns that were being cleaned by a veterinarian. The poor thing got caught on a power line. It probably thought it was a vine. I was also impressed by a 1.5-meter-long iguana that had broken its thigh bone.

The past two days, right after the second feeding, I ran down the mountain, grabbed my surfboard, cycled on the gravel road to the beach, and then jumped into the waves in my swim trunks. I had an hour left before I had to go back up, otherwise I wouldn't have seen anything since the path through the forest is not illuminated all the way to the top. I quickly caught a wave, and my whole face lit up. The waves were almost two meters high and had a lot of power. I'm very happy that I can now surf here in the afternoons when the waves are good because the evenings up here alone at the station can otherwise be very long.