Last Trip

Today we took a trip to Poas Volcano and Lapaz Waterfall Gardens.

We headed out at seven in the morning for the volcano and it wasn't looking like the weather was going to be good to be able to see the volcano. We stopped for coffee and I bought some gifts for Anna, unless I want to keep them...haha.

The volcano is a basaltic volcano the stands at an altitude of 8,200 feet above see level. When we got up the volcano it was really cloudy and we couldn't see it. One of the guides, not ours, started yelling that the clouds were moving and just for us the clouds cleared and we could see the volcano perfectly. The guide said he had been waiting up there for 45 minutes, waiting for the clouds to move. It is often a rare occasion to see the volcano because it is so high above sea level and it is located near a cloud forest. The volcano wasn't anything I expected. It looked like a whole in the ground that smelled like sulfur and it had a pool that was emitting smoke (it's a prehistoric-looking hole that spews boiling sulfurous gases according to infrocostarica.com). I took so many pictures. We didn't stay up there very long because it was cold (first time I was really cold in Costa Rica and I had shorts on) and it started to rain more. The park also had a really nice gift shop where I only bought a few things because it was expensive.

After our trip to the volcano we went to see the waterfall. Our first stop when we arrived was to see the aviary where I was attacked by a bird who insisted on trying to eat my raincoat. It also stole one of my bobby pins. I thought I got it bad, but Peter was a target by the bird who liked me and a McCaw. I saw beautiful birds and took a lot of pictures. In that same area they had a monkey cage where there were tiny monkeys who liked to chew on my camera string; they had huge feet that were soft. These monkeys are from Brazil and are called the White Tufted Eared Marmosets.

Our next stop was the butterflies, but we had to walk through a pass that had Spider Monkeys and White Faced Monkeys in cages. The White Faced Monkeys were beating each other up and the Spider Monkeys were hiding. The Butterfly Observatory was one of the most beautiful things I have seen on this trip. There were thousands of butterflies flying everywhere. I took a lot of pictures, but than my camera battery died; that was really upsetting. I got to see butterflies hatching, butterflies who were drying their wigs, butterflies flying, EVERYTHING TO DO WITH BUTTERFLIES I SAW IT!

After the butterflies we went to the Hummingbird Garden. There were so many of them and they were zooming everywhere I thought I was going to get hit. You could here them zoom by you and you could get to see them really close, but they wouldn't let you touch. This is the only place in the world to find 24 hummingbird species that is documented.

Next, we went to the Serpentarium where we saw all different kinds of snakes. Some were large and didn't move and others were bright colored and they looked like they were ready to bite you, but they were in class cages. There were 30 species of snakes of Costa Rica there. Some of the most famous snakes were Bushmaster, Terciopelo, Green Vinesnake, and Golden Eyelash Viper.

After the snakes we got to visit Casuta de la Paz which is a house that is set up to look like the times 100 years ago in Costa Rica. This reproduction was built only using tools available to the average farmer a century ago. There was an ox-driven cart that a lot of us got pictures with, but the ox's smelled really bad.

Our next stop was the Ranarium where we saw frogs. I saw the two kinds of poison dart frogs that Costa Rica has, one is red and one is a pretty green. There were leaf frogs too that don't look like frogs when they are on a leaf because they squish down into the leaf and look like a slimy green blob.

We took our last nature hike last where I felt the spray of a 120 foot waterfall; it got me pretty wet. We started out at Templo water fall, walked to Magia Blanca (this is the magic water fall because if you look at it for 20 seconds than look away it looks like the trees are moving up towards the sky), than we moved on to Encantada, Escondida, and finally La Paz.

After our hike we shopped around at the gift shop than headed back home to San Jose.

This little trip was definitely focused on tourism, but I like that because it makes it easier to see all the beauty, but sadly they did have to damage the surroundings to make cement paths, bridges, and things like that. I enjoyed our last trip a lot even though it was gray outside and wet.

Last Weekend Adventure

Pool

About 4:40 in the morning

4:50 AM

View from my hotel door

The hotel

This crab was in Ronaldo's bathroom

Free bananas

Thursday we went to La Selva Biological Station and stayed the night. The Next morning we went to the Chiquita plantation and after that we headed to Puerto Viejo and spent one night there. We had fairly nice rooms, but three of the guys got this huge suite that had two bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen.
Saturday morning we headed out to the Caribbean to go snorkeling. It was a lot shallower than where we had snorkeled before and you could see the coral reefs clearer. I saw them so clear that I even hit one with my knee when the tide moved.
After snorkeling we went to Manzanillo and stayed at the most beautiful resort that was right on the coast of the Caribbean. The rooms had the coolest windows that were mirrors looking into the room from the outside and windows looking out in the inside. They had nice bathrooms with hot water and some of the bathrooms had a bidet. Not only did we have the Caribbean right outside our doors, but we also had a nice pool.
The first night I stayed up all night to wait for the sun to rise with Diane, Steph, Bob, PJ, Even, and Steve and it went from pitch black to sunny from 4:40 to about 5:30. Lucky us, there were clouds and we didn’t get to experience much.
The next day we took a hike out to this lookout point that was close to Panama. The rest of the day there was a lot of sleeping and a little bit of rain. That night Peter made a bonfire on the beach and I opened up another coconut. This time it took me a lot longer because I didn’t use a rock. I used my pocket knife and I wouldn’t let anyone help me!
Monday we left to go back to San Jose. This trip we watched all three Bourne movies, Oceans 13, and Even Almighty on the bus to give you a sense of how long our rides were.

La Selva

My guide with a bird's nest in his hand

Poison dart frog

Huge spider

Bird that didn't move

Our home for the night

We started off our trip for our last weekend at La Selva Biological Station on Thursday.
La Selva is situated at the joining together of two major rivers in the Caribbean lowlands of northern Costa Rica. It comprises 3,900 acres of tropical wet forests and disturbed lands. The Station is bordered on the south by Braulio Carrillo National Park (closest national park to San Jose). The station is a protected area as well where biologists/researchers study the animals and plants and hope to increase the biodiversity of Costa Rica by keeping a large part of Costa Rica protected. They figure out how plants and animals behave in their surroundings. While we were there I went on three nature hikes, one of them was at night without a guide! I learned a lot more about the rainforest and its animals and plants while I was there by Roberto and my guide from La Selva.
We saw a lot of poison dart frogs that were red, monkeys that put on a show for us, and wild pigs with their babies called peccaries (?) that were really tame.
We learned about the plants that live on other plants (Epiphytes) and strangler fig trees (trees that grow around other trees until they cover the whole three and it dies from lack of sunlight).
La Selva has four major tropical life zones and protects a large portion of Costa Rica’s biodiversity including more than half of the 886 species of birds, home to 1850 species of vascular plant flora, thousands of mammals, reptiles, insects and amphibians.
There are two equipped laboratories at La Sleva. La Selva can sleep 80 people in six-person eco-dormitory rooms and cabins (we got to sleep in the turtle cabins). There is a huge bridge that connects the two parts of La Selva. La Selva is one of the world's premier sites at which to conduct ecosystem research according to the Organization of Tropical Studies website.
La Selva's combination of protected ecosystems and laboratory facilities is unique. There is an extensive trail system of more than 50 kilometers, which provides access to a wide range of different biodiversities. The entire property has been topographically surveyed and there are markers ever 50 meters, so, it´s hard to get lost.

Cafe Britt is Everywhere!

As I have been traveling around Costa Rica the one thing that I see pretty much everywhere is Cafe Britt coffee. You can buy it in grocery stores, tourist shops; I even saw it in clothing stores. My host family drinks 1804 coffee, it´s another big coffee I see around. Although coffee is still an important drink, many Costa Ricans prefer herbal teas. According to Culture Shock, Ticos still have one of the highest per capita caffeine consumption rates in the world. I can easily get coffee at anytime. Coffee dispensers can be found in banks, supermarkets, school, etc.
Coffee is used as one of the many remedies that Costa Ricans have. Coffee is used as a migraine cure and it apparently opens up constricted blood vessels in the brain.
According to Cafe Britt, a cup of coffee can last 20 minutes and should never be re-heated. Although this is a sin to Cafe Britt, many Ticos re-heat their coffee and even use instant coffee. There are no foreign brands of coffee sold in Costa Rica according to Culture Shock. Coffee in Costa Rica often tastes great because it is generally grown over a mile above sea level, where low air pressure results in hard beans. Soft beans burn when roasted.
Costa Ricans almost entirely rely on Nicaraguan`s to work for them. Young Ticos are no longer interested in the hard work and low pay.
The process of red coffee berry picking takes a week: pressing, peeling, fermenting, sun drying, raking and roasting at about 250 degrees Celsius. The longest roast is called a French roast.

Little Girl

All the bad bananas

Plastic bags on the bananas

Chiquita is a Spanish word used to describe a little girl.
The Chiquita banana plantation that is in Costa Rica has been practicing to be more sustainable for four years with the Nature and Community Project. The Chiquita plantation has tall bushes around their plantation to keep pesticides inside the plantation. There are signs around the plantation that say keep out when they are spraying the pesticides. Chiquita uses harmful pesticides and the workers that have more contact with them have to get blood tests every three months to make sure they have proper levels. Unlike many other plantations in Costa Rica, Chiquita takes proper care of their workers and it is their number one priority to keep their workers safe from the pesticides. All workers are trained in appropriate agricultural practices, occupational safety and proper use of protective equipment.
How Chiquita packs their bananas: Banana stems arrive at the packing station where they are counted, weighed, and examined by quality inspectors. Plastic bags and twine are separated and compacted to be recycled. In the dehandling area, banana hands are cut off the stems and placed into water tanks. The fruit that meets Chiquita specifications is cut into clusters of four to eight bananas. Bananas with blemishes are processed into puree, and the rest is sent to organic waste composting trenches. The fruit is washed in water tanks for ten minutes to eliminate latex residues that can stain the fruit. Water that leaves the tanks passes through a solid waste trap, which prevents solids from reaching the water drainage systems. Clusters of bananas weighing a total of 18 kg (40 lbs), the equivalent of a box, are placed on trays where workers gently affix the Chiquita labels. The tray is passed through a final shower to seal the cuts and prevent crown rot. The fruit is packed and weighed. Boxes are placed on pallets and stamped with a traceability code. Recycled plastic strips protect the corners of the boxes. Plants are placed in containers, which are loaded into Chiquita´s great white fleet ships and transported to the various markets.
The Nature and Community Project is a joint effort by Chiquita, the Swiss retailer Migros, GTZ, Rainforest Alliance and the local community to preserve 100 hectares (250 acres) of rainforest, promote environmental awareness through education and provide additional income opportunities for the community. The Nogua Group is one of the small businesses created to generate income for this community. This group is the one that did a play presentation for us.
Chiquita employs 25,000 people and owns approximately 37,000 acres of banana farms in Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala. Workers in Chiquita farms enjoy higher living standards than other agricultural workers.
Although Chiquita is not 100% sustainable they are trying to make a better situation with what they are doing. The fertilizers they use are approved by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Union regulatory authorities. Since 2000, Chiquita in Costa Rica has achieved 100% Rainforest Alliance certification.
Another thing that Chiquita does to be more environmentally responsible is that is has protected land close to their plantation that is connected to other protected areas. It also has planted at least one million trees along rivers, lakes, roads, and residential areas.
With expanding liabilities, in the future Chiquita may be liable for destroying Costa Rica's environment from pesticides. Chiquita introduced bananas into an environment that cannot handle them so they force bananas to work by using pesticides which makes bananas a damaging plant.

Bananas Destroy Lowland Forests

Bananas are another major source of income and are now bringing in twice as much money as coffee. According to Culture Shock, "Costa Rica is the second biggest banana producer in the world after Ecuador."
Banana farming requires a lot of land to be profitable. Many lowland forests have been destroyed because bananas need flat and moist land. Bananas are native to Asia. Because bananas need a lot of land there aren't small family farmers who can sell their bananas worldwide. This led to the domination by big, foreign-owned companies with local workers.
Banana farming created too much water build up so they had to create irrigation systems. This helps spread the pesticides that are sprayed on the bananas into the rivers, which go to the ocean.
Plastic bags are put over the bananas because they need shade and to keep the bugs off. If they hadn't cut down all the tropical trees from the forest they may have had enough shade to please the bananas. Also, don't they use gross pesticides to kill off the bugs? Because bananas are native to Asia they are not used to the bugs and fungus in Costa Rica. This is why they have to use so many pesticides on the plants. The plastic bags used to be a big problem because they weren't recycled properly and drifted into the ocean. Today, there are better recycling programs and some of the bags are created to be biodegradable. More harmful pesticides cause cancer and sterilization.
Six months after the banana plant is planted a large flowering stem emerges which is where the fruit comes from. One stem contains between 120 to 150 bananas. The banana fruits are bagged about two weeks old. The bananas are ready to harvest about 12 weeks after bagging.
Trivia: the average person in the US eats more than 25 pounds of bananas each year.

Coffee is Everywhere or Not

The role of coffee in Costa Rica has changed dramatically. Fifty years ago coffee was so recognized that tearing out a coffee field would have devastated the country. According to Culture Shock when coffee prices rose after WW II, dozens of counties rushed to plant coffee, the worlds second biggest dollar commodity after oil. Soon supply was greater than demand and price fell dramatically, which they never really have recovered.
Now, many farmers say that the cost of producing coffee is more than what they earn from it. Hundreds of fields have been ripped out. Today, coffee only covers 2% of the land and what used to be rich coffee land is now cemented over because of the rapid population growth. This large cemented area is where I live half of the time, San Jose.
Some other former coffee fields have been planted over with higher earning ornamental plants and ferns. This diversifies the economy.

OSA

Doggie at the camp

huge bug

lizard that walks on water

Group picture

Our beds in our tent

waterfall I jumped off of

Sunday, June 1, was spent traveling to the OSA Peninsula. The roads were gravel and dirt, which makes it take us longer to get to where we are going. We went through a huge palm tree plantation (that's what it looked like). They were in perfect lines for miles. They were doing a lot of roadwork the majority of our drive and had to wait sometimes to cross one-lane bridges that were very tiny. We were almost to where we were going to get onto boats to get to the peninsula when we found out the bridge was washed out, completely gone. We had to go back a little way and found a tiny bridge to cross. We had to get off the bus for safety reasons and the bus bottomed out and the guys had to push the bus. Lucky us, the bridge was by a bar and some drunk Ticos came out to help with the situation...haha. If Ronaldo were driving (our regular driver with the Mercedes Benz bus) we would have gotten over it with no problem.
We took two boats and a boat with our luggage down the Sierpe River to get to our final location. There was a very pretty scenery but it was raining some of the time. Interesting fact: Costa Ricans don't like having docks because that makes it public property under law so there aren't many docks around which makes it harder for us because we have to get wet to get out of the boat. There weren't any docks, which kept the protected areas even more protected because it restricted who could come to the areas.
We took taxicabs up the hill to get to our eco-camp, Drake Bay Wilderness Camp, where we were staying for the weekend. It was a short ride up hill. The camp was very muddy, but we had a lot of fun. We lived in tents that had real beds in them, but the beds didn't have box springs so the mattresses went through the boards and it was quite uncomfortable and hard to find a good position to sleep in.
Monday we walked down the hill to the beach where we got back on the boats. They took us to another part of the peninsula that was protected, Corcovada National Park. We did some eco-tourism there: two nature walks. We had to leave he location as we left it. At this park I saw the most animals. I saw Scarlet McCaws, jaguar footprints, howler monkey, bugs, crabs, agouti (I think, brown, cat-sized rodent), and tapir footprints (one of the largest mammals in Costa Rica).
My guide through the forest didn't ware shoes. He did everything barefoot and it looked painful, but he said it hurt for him to ware shoes. I got to wade through a "river" where there was a half eaten otter floating. I have a picture, but it's disgusting.
There was fresh water everywhere and I got to swim in it in two different places. Our guide opened a coconut for us and that is when I fell in love with fresh coconuts. It tastes completely different from the coconut flavoring.
Tuesday it was raining and we thought that our trip to the island, Isla Del Cano, would have to be canceled. It wasn't and we got to snorkel in the coral reef and we swam at the beach. I saw beautiful fish while snorkeling. My favorite was a blue one that was iridescent. I opened my first coconut on this beach all by myself. It took me about fifteen minutes. I had to break open the outer shell by hitting it against a rock and then had to peel back that layer. When I got to the coconut I had to take a rock and hit it around it in a circle and finally it cracked open. It was very delicious. On the boat ride home we stopped and watched the dolphins jumping in the water.
A little more about the eco-camp: I overheard that the owner started building it last August and we were his first visitors. Everything was open, there weren't many walls and I don't think their were any windows. Our showers drained into the forest, which I don't think was very eco-friendly because there are chemicals in our shampoos and soaps that are not gentle to the rivers that flow into the ocean.
Wednesday we returned to San Jose. It pretty much took the whole day.

Pacuare River

Saturday, May 31, we went rafting on the Pacuare River. We left that morning around 6:30 am and didn't get back to Veritas until around 6 pm. My guide on the bus and on the raft was Ricky. He was a really fun guide and liked to play jokes on us. I was the target on my boat. He pulled me off the raft a few times; it was really funny. The scenery was beautiful and I wish I had a waterproof camera.
There were some class 3 and class 4 rapids and the rest were 1 and 2. There were a lot of people who fell off the rafts. There was a big scare when two rafts got pushed together and everyone on both rafts fell off. One of the girls (not from Miami) got stuck under the water and was in shock when she finally got some air. She had to ride in my raft, sitting on the floor, holding onto a rope. No one in my boat fail out besides Steph, but we aren't counting that because she had to switch from the right side to the left side when we had to take on the girl and she only fell out for a second.
We saw indigenous people who get their food from a line that goes across the river with a basket attached to it. We went under a lot of abandoned bridges; some of them were abandoned because of the earthquake that was in the early 90s that destroyed the train tracks and plans for an electrical company (?) to move across the river. It reminded me of the Indiana Jones movies.
I had such a great time and even a sunburn on my thighs and shoulders (I wore sun screen).

Ecotourism

Golden frog

San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica, but it is not known as a good tourist destination. It´s dirty, overpopulated, and seems to be no different than other large Latin American cities. What makes Costa Rica different than other Latin American countries is what is outside San Jose. I call it the ¨country¨, but it is Costa Rica´s natural parks and protected areas around the country that makes it a good tourist destination.
Costa Rica prides itself with being a large ecotourism country. Ecotourism enhances cultural and environmental factors. Our first ecotourism destination in Costa Rica was to Arenal (volcano) and Monte Verde (cloud forest). They are ecotourism locations because Arenal is a natural park and Monte Verde is a protected area.
Arenal is a visited tourist destination because of the volcanic eruption of 1968. When we traveled through the park we saw how the land had naturally recovered from the eruption without human involvement. There were smaller plants that covered the ground and when we got closer to the volcano the volcanic rocks took over and a few plants grew around them.
Monte Verde is a protected cloud forest. There was a primary forest that is older than 80 years old. There is also a secondary forest that has been cut down within the last 80 years, but it is now growing back and will become a primary forest again. You can tell the difference between the two because the secondary forest has shorter trees and more foliage on the ground. The primary forest has taller trees with fewer plants on the ground because there was less sunlight for them to survive.
According to Cradle to Cradle, ¨Nothing goes in or out of the planetary system except for heat and the occasional meteorite. The system is closed, and its basic elements are valuable and finite. Whatever is naturally here is all we have. Whatever humans make does not go ´away´´´ (103). Costa Rica is taking advantage of their naturally beautiful landscapes and making it so humans cannot destroy some parts of their country (natural parks and protected areas). This is becoming very appealing to tourists because they want to see what ´´natural´´ looks like. This may also destroy what is making Costa Rica a lot of money. People can destroy protected areas, trampling through, taking things that aren´t supposed to be touched, and scaring away the natural wildlife which could eventually destroy the natural habitat of the plants that need the animals to help them pollinate and grow.´´ The vitality of ecosystems depend on relationships: what goes on between species, their uses and exchanges of materials and energy in a given place…Remove the threads, one by one, and an ecosystem becomes less stable, less able to withstand natural catastrophe and disease, less able to stay healthy and to evolve over time´´ (Cradle to Cradle, 121-122).
Example: The golden frog was a very popular frog in Monte Verde, but now it is believed to be extinct because it hasn´t been seen for over twenty years. Reasons for its extinction include that a fungus was introduced into Monte Verde that killed off the frog. Another conclusion is because of the climate change that is a result of global warming.
One way Costa Rica is trying to lessen the amount of tourists is by not making it easy to get to these locations. Our ride up to Monte Verde was a very long ride, up a mountain, and the road was full of potholes. Not widening to roads or fixing the potholes is a strategy that local towns are using to keep to tourist population low, but how long will that last?