Months ago, when I was considering a Spanish immersion program, I knew I would probably need a break mid-program. While I didn’t know who my host family would be, having lived with one before, I knew I would want to get away for a few days and enjoy some privacy. I also wanted to visit a wildlife sanctuary while I was here. I searched the internet and found The Blue Banyan Inn and Kids Saving The Rain Forest (KSTR), both run by the same people and located on the same beautiful piece of property. I am spending the weekend here now.
What I didn’t realize back home, sitting in my comfortable living room, planning this trip, is that I’d grown a bit soft over the years. While my host family is lovely, after a week in a tiny, hot, stuffy bedroom with only a wall fan, an overhead lightbulb, and a shared bath, I was longing for space, air conditioning, maybe a pool, my own bathroom, and a comfortable chair in which to sit. Stepping into the vestibule of the bank lobby this past week, I realized that it was the first time since leaving San Jose that I had been in an air-conditioned space. While mornings are reasonably coolish, as the day progresses, the temperature rises quickly along with the humidity. By 10 am, I am soaked and look like I’ve been working out in the fields all day. Even my eyeglasses fog up, rendering them useless.
For the first time, I understand what scientists mean when they talk about one of the primary dangers of a warming planet. Basically, there is never a chance for humans, animals, and plants to cool down and recover from the heat of the day. Clearly, I am not at risk of heat stroke, but the heat combined with the humidity has been surprisingly difficult to adjust to here along the coast.
Chip and Jennifer, the owners of the Blue Banyan Inn and KSTR, are Americans and have lived in Costa Rica for a long time. Chip owned a hotel closer to the national park for years when they met and married. At nine years old, Jennifer’s daughter and a friend started a fund to save the rainforest. They made jewelry and sold it to tourists to collect money to buy tracks of intact rainforest. A local boy who had heard about KSTR brought them a baby sloth he had found. There was no sanctuary then, no vet clinic, no knowledge of how to take care of baby sloths—nothing except two 9-year-old girls wanting to save the rainforest. But with help, they took care of the baby sloth. They named him Little Buddy, and after some time, Little Buddy was released back into the forest.
As word got out, more rescue animals started showing up. KSTR was located beside the hotel for a while. After growing tired of running a hotel full-time, and as KSTR’s needs grew, Chip sold that hotel and bought the land here. Together, Chip and Jennifer built the Blue Banyan Inn and moved the sanctuary to the property.
KSTR now houses a vet hospital for injured animals, a nursery for orphaned animals, a rehab center for animals that can be reintroduced into the wild, and a sanctuary for those animals that can never be released. There are three beautiful cabins on the property for tourists like me. There are open-air dining and reception areas, a pool, and a 3-story dormitory for all the volunteers and interns who come from all over the world to help at KSTR.
Chip seems to be the granddad of the operation. He knows every volunteer, intern, staff member, and guest by name. Today, he served all 20 or so of us breakfast, holding court with his booming voice the entire time. The cook’s 2-year-old daughter, Mariana, seems to love him and calls him Papa. Little Mariana hung out in the dining area all morning. It is always surprising to me how unsupervised young children are in some areas of the world. She is used to people coming and going—some of whom stopped by to play with her for a bit this morning. I took my turn when I saw that she had climbed up on the dining room table and was using her markers to color everything in sight. We shared some water and became besties for a while.
The property is surrounded by million-dollar homes, an active tree farm, and a palm plantation. A nearby former teak plantation (non-native species) of 300 acres was recently donated. Their plan is to harvest the teak and then reforest the area. So far, KSTR has planted 10,000 trees and is hoping to plant another 80,000.
On the property is a beautiful Banyan tree or Strangler Fig. Not really a tree but an epiphyte, it finds a host, curls its viney shoots around the trunk and up around the branches until the host tree suffocates and dies, leaving what looks very much like a tree in its place. This “tree predator” is a perfect home for small mammals, insects, and reptiles because the trunk is hollow. This particular banyan has a small colony of bats living in it. Bromeliads and epiphytes also make the tree their home. There is a beautiful wild vanilla orchid here that smells heavenly. Many Water Apple trees populate the grounds, covered in hundreds of buzzing stingless bees. This time of year, the trees drop their flowers, creating a blazing pink carpet underneath. Their slender, delicate petals cover the pool surface, making swimming this afternoon a delight.
When Chip showed me to my room, he told me that at 6 pm it would be pitch dark and that if I went out, to be sure to take a flashlight in case there were snakes on the paths. That killed any thought I had of a midnight walk to the dining room for a peanut butter sandwich. He also told me not to worry about the roof sound. It wasn’t someone trying to get in, but, instead, the night iguanas that make their home in the trees and, for some reason, love to hang out on the tile roofs at night. Their long claws make a racket as they scurry around. As he walked away, I heard him say over his shoulder, “And check under the covers for scorpions.” WHAT???
As much as I wanted to fall asleep to the forest sounds, I closed the windows, turned on the air conditioning, checked under the covers, and slept like a sloth. I think I may even have been a little chilly overnight. Only early this am, when I opened all the windows, did I hear the dragons on the roof and the din of a billion cicadas singing one collective insect ululation.
