Poor Rachel was initially hardest hit because she'd scratch it and it spread from her ankles all the way up to the bottom of her short shorts. A few days after that, Shawn started moving his as well and his legs were also covered in pimply like sores that has started to become infected (as evidenced by the white pimple like heads to the sores). So the nice Doctor put them on IV drips to combat the infection and then reduce the allergic reaction. After three bags each, you could see the swelling go down... but of course the itching remains. They gave them Antihistimines and anti-bacterial Cortizone creams along with Calomine to deal with that. Rachel is nearly better (although she still shows some scarring) but Shawn's was still bad so we went back yesterday for another treatment and they gave him his shot in the tush... you should have seen the look of surprise on his face when the nurse asked him to roll over and pulled down his pants! They have given them some more creams and pills/liquid antihistimines and say it may be another 5-10 days. I can say from my little bit that the itching drives you nuts.... and can wake you up from a solid sleep.
They told us to stay out of the ocean which has been a real bane for Jen... being in a place with this beautiful water and apparently fantastic snorkelling but not being able to use it - although she's MUCH more upset about this than the kids are and has been really bothered by this hole fiasco. We narrowed it down to a walk that the kids and I took in the rain forest behind the Casita's at Bio Thermales. While trying to find the main path, we took one of the side branches that seemed less used and was a bit over grown. When we went back later with Jen, we never went down that path so that's the only spot we ever went that she didn't and we believe we brushed up against this plant on that walk. Nothing very serious as it was initially just around the ankles above the socks, but our scratching has moved it around and no amount of lukewarm showers (hot water is non-existant here) and soap can remove the oils so any scratching just moves them around to start a new reaction somewhere else. We are going to boil up some water today and try that with some strong detergents. The good news is that sitting in the swimming pool here provides immediate relief so we've been doing that a lot and this spot is a howler Monkey paradise and we can see more than a dozen without moving more than 50' off our front porch at pretty much any time.
Our little Casita at Costa Azul between Cahuita and Puerto Veijo. That's a breakfast nook and kitchen along the side/back. Nice having the kitchen outside facing the rain forest!
The little swimming pool where we spell RELIEF! From here, we hear Howler's and see all kinds of pretty yellow birds dive bombing the pool for a drink!
Here's a few monkey shots we were able to take (out of hundreds). These little guys are the second loudest animal (after lions) in the world and their howl sounds like it came from a Freddy Kruger movie. It's the males that do it, the juveniles and females almost purr..
Just hanging around... their tails are the strongest limb and we were told that if you pick one up, you should always pick it up by the tail... which seemed counter intuitive until we tried it. They are perfectly happy hanging by their tails!
Monkey love! (There are 6 of them in there!)
Just laying about... and howling at passing trucks!
OK.... where's that truck gone now? (This is an adult male).
We also spent some time at the local Jaguar Rescue Centre (so named because they rescued a Jaguar kitten who's mom had been shot by a local farmer - which subsequently failed). It's a volunteer run centre run by two Spanish biologists from the Madrid Zoo who fell in love with each other and Costa Rica on a field trip and decided to stay. When locals found out they were biologists, they just started dropping off sloths, monkey's etc and the place is now got scads of animals from Caymans to Fur de Lance Pit Vipers to Bird Eating Spiders to local small deer. We attended a tour from a British student volunteer that was excellent and gave us a very good sense as to the issues facing the local species. Best of all, we got to go in a monkey hut and have dozens of Howler's crawl all over us and check us out for fleas and termites! They are amazingly gentle and the kids were bowled over by this experience.
Some tiny (3') Caymans cooling themselves off.
A two toed sloth just hanging around....
This little guy was a big suck... he'd climb into your arms and immediately try to go to sleep!
When one jumps on you, they all do! They seemed to like the heights I'd provide.
Checking for fleas!
A Red Eyed Tree Frog (with orange feet/belly). When he closes his eyes and hides his feet, he's almost invisible.
A two toed sloth. You can tell them because they have no tail, have a pig like nose (as you can see here!), and two toes on the front paws. They hiss when you try to pick them up and these little guys have big teeth they use for opening fruit. We've seen quite a few of them around the Casita as well.
I've also been teaching Shawn some basic coding and now he's raced off and started learning HTML5, Javascript and CSS. He's very enthusiastic about it. Rachel has been doing a lot of French, Math and knitting. The ebook readers are proving handy as we've had a lot of time to just lay about. We're hoping to take a walk on the beach today if the rain holds off (it's been fantastic weather here during the day with large thunderstorms during the evening/night).
A "Crocodile Tree". These little thorns are intended to keep animals away and are amazingly pointy and sharp... but the big iguana's just ignore them and happily climb right up them! They stick out about 1/2"
Yikes, that poison ivy sounds horrible, sure hope it clears up soon. Makes my sand fleas experience from a few years back seem pretty trivial by comparison.
ReplyDeleteI love the monkey pictures, what a great experience to be able to hold them!!