(Orange pin - Earthquake epicenter, Red X - Pavones)
Last night at about 3:30 AM, Laura and I both woke up very confused by some unidentifiable commotion. It was like a giant blast of wind had hit the house, or a tree branch had fallen on it, or maybe like someone had broken in and smashed something in the kitchen. But a still-half-asleep, highly-confused look around showed no signs of any of the above. The kitchen was fine, the trees outside were all perfectly still and the stars were twinkling away in the sky. So we went back to sleep.
This morning, thinking it through with a much clearer head, it occurred to us that it was way too much disruption to have been nothing so we Googled "Costa Rica Earthquake" and BAMM!... Last night at 3:30 AM there was a 4.3 magnitude quake with the epicenter about 10 km away in both distance and depth. If you have ever experienced an earthquake first hand, a 4.3M that close to where you are standing/sleeping is a real shaker!
So the next thing we did this morning was follow Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote, "We learn geology the morning after the earthquake". The girls started their school day with a lesson on plate tectonics. A little white-boarding, some Q&A and then a PBS video and they probably know more about plate tectonics and the mechanics of earthquakes than a lot of adults! Next time you see them ask them about transform, divergent and convergent plate boundaries :)
When school was over for the day we went on our weekly local produce run. This time our order was error-free and we took two backpacks instead of one so the trip back home involved less weight spread across more carrying capacity so it was (relatively) easy.
And then we went for a swim at the mouth of the Rio Claro which was backed up about 2 feet higher than normal due to the full moon induced "spring" tide (our science lesson for tomorrow). Whether or not having the entire river delta covered in water rather than it being branching streams cutting through a wide gravel bed was the cause, we found hundreds of tadpoles swimming everywhere so we caught a few and brought them home to see how close we can get to frogs before our time in Pavones is up.
We will try to remember to reveal the important answer to that cliff-hanger of a question in our last Pavones-based blog entry so stay tuned!
Buenas Noches.