Goodbye Costa Rica

This was written 2 hours before I left for the airport


In the past week I have been saying my goodbyes to Costa Rica. There was a goodbye party with all of the host families on Saturday in which we played families vs students soccer. I got elected goalie and am proud to say that only 14 goals were scored on me. This is a record usually the students lose by over 20. I was lifted onto everyones shoulders at the end of the game. It is probably the best sport moment I will ever have. On monday I went with two friends to Monteverde cloud forest. I can tell you very little about the cloud forest because we opted for an extreme canopy tour complete with tarzan swing, 100 ft repel, and 1 km superman cord. It was awesome and when I was flying horizontally and pretending to be superman 3 scarlet macaws pulled up near me. It was pretty incredible. On Wednesday we gave our final presentations and now my semester abroad is over. I leave for the airport in 2 hours. On our last day of class we went over how to adjust to being back in the US so we are not unbearable to everyone but it is expected that I will go into a semi-depression in which I hate on the US and everyone gets tired of hearing about Costa Rica. I find I am not excited for that. But I am now informed of it so hopefully I'll just be mopey and complain about the weather for a couple days and then get over myself. That is the plan going forward.

I really can't comprehend the concept of leaving. Four months was very very short and I still have so much I haven't seen here but looking back I've completed something pretty cool and I hope I can bring some of the things I learned here back to my life in the states. I'm going to miss my families here very much and I have to believe that someday I will be able to see them again. I've been trying to think about an answer to the question "how was study abroad?" I think its kind of a cop-out to say it was life changing or something that while true is also true of everyone's experience. It is impossible to come out of this unchanged (I have been informed that I am not yet aware of how I have changed but others will point it out to me upon my return). What I can say of my experience is that I got to watch the sunset on the beach for 60 nights, I know what it is like to wake up to chickens being obnoxiously loud, I am a professional bus rider, I became a part of two very different families and I got to be a part of a project that will attempt to better the lives of the people I have met here. I have no real regrets from my experience here which feels great and to some extent I am ready to come home. This was only part one (see blog title) I'll be back soon. Hasta pronto

Week 15

Lujadoras on the side of my presentation

This week I returned to the Pacific Coast many times. The first was on Friday when my group went to Tarcoles to take the fishing tour. I did not go since I have done that many a time and I got to visit my host family!!!!!! I missed them a lot so it was really fun to get to surprise them. My host mom started screaming "My daughter! escaped from the city!!!!" I was very very happy but when it came time to say goodbye we were all tears again. I did manage to get their address this time so now I will at least be able to keep in touch. After Tarcoles I went to try my hand at surfing in Jaco and try out their famous tourist nightlife. In terms of the nightlife, I would rather not do that again, we got into all the bars free and the drinks and music were great but there was a lot of prostitution going on around us so we left to night swim in the ocean before the party really got started. The ocean was incredible. There must have been a phytoplankon bloom recently because every time a wave crashed it started glowing electric blue.  We watched it for hours. The next morning, I did some very important shopping and then headed to the beach for surfing. Surfing is terrifying, we had beginning boards that are really good for catching waves and the waves were great for surfing however, balance was very tricky. When I felt myself catch a wave I would try to stand up as fast as possible but inevitably I would tip forward and summersault into the wave only to be stuck under water for around 15 seconds as the wave passed over my head. It was pretty freaky. I did manage to surf on my knees once without falling but after a particularly scary wipeout in which my board hit me in the back of the head, I decided I had had enough of surfing for a while. We returned to San Jose that night.

On Sunday we went to the Museo National de Costa Rica which was fun but pretty small in comparison to the museums I am used to, it only had 4 exhibits but all were very well planned out and I ended up learning a lot about pre-columbian costa rican culture which was nice.

On Monday I returned to Tarcoles for the last time to give my presentation to the fishermen. We set up the overhead on the beach and I got to present to about 50 people in spanish which was a challenge. Culturally it is not considered rude to shout questions or random comments in the middle of a presentation so I had to walk around constantly answering questions while explaining my slides multiple times. It was way out of my comfort zone but after completing it I feel much better about my spanish ability and I don't think I will be as nervous for any presentations in english in the future. After my presentation I said goodbye to my host family and the ocean for the last time, more tears but we formed a plan for my return and future life in Costa Rica which I hope to follow. I also promised that they will be a part of my wedding which they seem to think will be much sooner than I do.

Me being caught off guard by a question during my presentation 

The last couple weeks

 I've been pretty busy lately so I think this post will be mostly pictures. So we shall start where I left off. I don't really have words for what leaving Tarcoles was like, in the last week I realized what an incredible experience it was and tried to soak up every second I had left. My host family took me to Punta Leona on the boat my last day to enjoy the ocean, and the morning I left I walked down to Playa Azul so I thought I was going to have some sort of closure on the whole experience. I did not because when my bags were packed we had to tell the little kids I wasn't coming back and my host mom started crying and telling me that all her children are always welcome in her home and I started bawling and my older host brother dragged me to the bus stop. It wasn't pretty. But I am proud to say I didn't miss a single sunset on the beach, looking back on it I got to live somewhere really really awesome for 2 months, I got to have little brothers, dig for clams at night, and be surrounded by piles of burning garbage and poisonous things. But it also hit me that I do not have very much time left here so I went into doing things mode. So we started with rafting the day after I returned to San Jose. Very very fun I recommend it. Then on that wednesday I went with my SJ host family back to the pacific to fail at surfing (my surf board was taken away and I was given a boogie board because I was embarrassing my host brother). Then on Thursday 11 people from my program and I went to the Caribbean. The Caribbean of Costa Rica is very different from the rest of the country but the main difference I noticed was that they but coconut in all the food. I am a big fan of this. We stayed in a hostel that was more or less a tree house and snorkeled over coral reefs. It was a very good weekend. Then on Sunday we went to a soccer game and I must say that the stadium is pretty genious. Because fans get so excited and then aggressive during the games you are not allowed to take in, any sort of bottle, coins, electronics that have throwable batteries, food, or excessive keys. So they make a lot of money when everyone has to turn in their change and then nothing in the stadium can be sold for less than 2 dollars because that is the smallest bill. But from the soccer game I saw in which no one scored, I think all these restrictions are necessary. It was a truly tico experience in which the cement bleachers we were standing on started shaking from the thousands of people jumping on them for the entire game. Then on Tuesday we went to Volcan Irazu so I have officially been to all 5 active volcanos in Costa Rica. On Friday I return to the Pacific!

Soccer Game!!!!!

Rafting Group

Cow

Rafting

Rafting

Snorkeling

Fishy

Volcano

Week 11

My mom, Aunt Sheri and Miss Lisa came to visit me this week!!!!!! After a couple flight cancellations everyone made it in by late Thursday night and we started our tourist adventures on Friday morning in Tarcoles. We started at the crocodile bridge and then went on a guided tour of Carara National Park, although I had been to the park before, the guide was a really good plan. He was able to point out animals we never would have seen on our own, we saw many lizards and cool birds including scarlet macaws, baby crocodiles, frogs, bats, and a boa constrictor. After the park we went to meet my host family and then out to lunch. At lunch my friend from the program Margo joined us for the night. In the afternoon we went to Pura Vida gardens and waterfalls which was incredibly beautiful, it was a sculpted garden on top of the mountain with a really cool view of the ocean which was wonderful to walk around in. That night we ate dinner at the hotel and went for a swim which was magical.

On Saturday we woke up early to catch our bus to the Tortuga Island snorkeling adventure that we had planned for the day, we were given breakfast and then set out on the catamaran to Tortuga Island. This island is exclusively for tourists and is absolutely beautiful with white sand beaches and a reef not too far off. Snorkeling was really fun although there were jelly fish in the water with us.

On Sunday we shopped around Jaco in the morning and did a zip-line in the afternoon. The zip-line was over Playa Hermosa and some of the lookout points were truly incredible. The zip-line itself was really fun, our guides were knowledgeable about the animals around us and the lines were super fast and I even got to try hanging upside-down from one of them.

On Monday we decided to rent a car and head down to Quepos the town where Manuel Antonio National Park is located, unfortunately the park is not open on Mondays so we had to "settle" for spending the day on the beach. It was quite relaxing and really beautiful. In the evening we went to Hotel Villa Calentas to watch the sunset in their outdoor viewing area, this hotel has been build straight into the mountain so the view is just spectacular.

On Tuesday morning everyone left and I went back to my not so real life here in Tarcoles to try and soak up as much of the Pacific Coast as I can until I return to San Jose on Saturday. I will be adding photos to this post when everyone puts them up on facebook for me to steal.

Week 10

We hiked to the top of the lump on the left

This was the beginning before it got steep

This is a cool bird I saw

This weekend I took a mini-vacation to La Fortuna, which is where Arenal Volcano is located. I left at 6am Friday morning and sat on 3 different buses in order to arrive at La Fortuna at 3pm it was not very fun at all. La Fortuna is one of the most touristy parts of Costa Rica, so much so that I had a hard time using my costa rican currency which I found a bit ridiculous but that is just how the town works. One of my friends from my program is working in La Fortuna so she was able to show us around. She was able to recommend probably the swankiest hostel I have ever seen to us, It is called Arenal Backpackers Hostel Resort and for $15 a night you get to lounge in nice hammocks, and swim in a really pretty pool also the rooms have ac, and the bed was probably one of the comfiest I have slept in since arriving in Costa Rica. So if you ever find yourself in La Fortuna I would recommend staying there. The one downside was that the rooms are dorm style and they are gender neutral so the first night my friend and I spent the night with 6 other guys. 5 medical school students studying to be urinologists because "The world needs more cock doctors" that quote pretty much sums them up, they were charming charming fellows who we spent very little time around. The other person was a quiet german man.

Our decent into the lagoon

Close to the end

          On Saturday morning we decided to hike to the top of Cerro Chato which is the old volcano that now has a lagoon in its center, the hike was only 3km from the start of the trail so we were pretty convinced that we could do that for the morning and go see the waterfalls in the afternoon. That was an incorrect assumption, we decided to walk to the trail so we added another 5 or 6 km onto our trip both ways by doing that and the 3 km hike was absurdly steep. It was absolutely beautiful but I did not make it through the hike with very much dignity. My friends are very good hikers and climbers and I am slow and kept getting distracted or wanting to stop and sit for a while so I made the journey by myself and every once in a while someone would yell down the mountain to make sure I didn't get bitten by a snake or something. But eventually I did make it to the top, only like 5-10 minutes behind everyone and it was worth it, we could see everything and the lagoon was beautiful so I think for a day trip it was definitely worth it. That said, I am currently very very sore and my host family finds it very comical.

Lagoon

Week 9

This is my rural host family: from the left, Clever, Marcos (host dad), Maria (host mom), Sammi (host nephew), Me, and Mariano (host brother)

            I feel that maybe I should describe the actual living in Tarcoles part of my life. I was in San Jose Monday and Tuesday which made coming back to Tarcoles after a week away more describable. First off I'm not sure if I have reported on this yet but it is obscenely hot here. Not like yay vacation hot, like I can't move but I have to because I am so sweaty I frequently slip off furniture hot. In addition there is no air conditioning anywhere period there just is none of that. Also it was low tide at night this week which means no ocean bathing. So because it is frequently super duper hot I try to stay in the shade most of the time for safetys sake. Costa Ricans are not big water drinkers so I often ask my host mom for access to the kitchen to fill up my water bottle and she comes back with a cup of coffee and tries to convince me that its the same. So thats where I am at on the temperature front but usually it cools off a bit at night or at least the sun is gone so I can play about outside. Which leads me to the second thing about this week, I got quite a lot of bug bites last week. This has put me at somewhat of a circus freak status and everyone who sees my legs feels the need to say something usually it is useful like "dear god what happened to you" or "thats a lot of bug bites" so I have a set response to all of these comments of how grand that you noticed I have so many bug bites I had forgotten!

So this is what the discovery channel decided mermaids
look like

              The most exciting thing about this week was that I finally have found the key conversation starter for Tarcoles. Before we entered the field our program directors informed us that if you want people to talk to you talk about something they like to talk about and that it will usually be futbol. Which makes sense because there is a big rivalry in the country between La Liga and Saprissa. I am proud to say that I have been assigned a Saprissa fan so Go Purple Monsters!!! but overall futbol doesn't really get people talking here so I was very excited  that I stumbled into the real topic. Its Mermaids!!! Which is awesome, people here can talk about mermaids for hours and they have done their research which is fun. I've talked to a couple fishermen who keep earplugs in their boats at all times in case they come across Sirens (greek myth style). But most people believe that a mermaid skeleton washed up on shore a couple years ago and that the government (were blaming NASA here for some reason) took it away so the public wouldn't get scared. But essentially the theory is that mermaids are an ancestor of humans that moved into the ocean around the time that the giant wolves that are whales now moved back into the ocean and that over millions of years these creatures turned into half human half dolphin sorta things that we call mermaids. I find this endlessly entertaining because everyone has a slightly different take on it and can contribute my knowledge of NASA to the conversation, because I'm just not sure NASA cares about mermaids so much but they are a widely known government organization here probably due to US television channels so I'm probably not going to win this one. But hey why not mermaids would be cool I am totally on board with them and there is a much anticipated discovery channel documentary on tonight about them so were all going to stay up late and watch it.

             So  I mentioned at the beginning of my post that I need to ask permission to access the kitchen, this needs to be explained in my house here the kitchen is a very narrow room that really only one person can fit in at a time so I am not allowed in there all that often so if I'm feeling bold and want to fill up my water bottle by myself or something else equally crazy, I have to wait for my host mom to be off somewhere else then dart into the kitchen and dart back out just to be ratted out by one of my host brothers. So the kitchen is off limits, other rules are that I, as a guest, must always have a seat during tv time, this gets funny when everyone wants to watch what is on because there are simply not enough spots on the couches and I feel bad when I would be happy to sit on the floor but thats just how hospitality works here. Overall I am starting to feel more like a part of the family tho which is nice, they are starting to make fun of me, give me tasks, and I get in trouble for doing "cosas malas" mostly I am not allowed to scratch my bug bites

Semana Santa

About to head out from ranger station #1

Week 7 was boring and not worth reporting on, I actually did my work and such all week and there was no fun to be had which was ok because I was saving up for my camping adventure for Semana Santa. I only get 10 days of not doing my project... technically. So I saved my fun for the Wednesday of Semana Santa. Over the past couple weeks 5 of us got together and planned a camping trip to Rincon de la Vieja National Park which is an active volcano with many a waterfall and hot springs and such. So on Wednesday morning my companera del campo Lauren and I woke up at 5 to catch a large assortment of buses to the volcano. After grocery shopping we arrived at the national park around 3:30pm. We soon discovered that the park only allows camping at one spot and we were 8km away from it. So we figured we would get there around sunset which is perfect because hiking in the dark is dangerous and such right? A quick side note, this park does not have maps for you to take the only one I saw was a half sheet of paper in the rangers station so we headed in map free and entirely dependent on signage to get us to the campsite. So we began our journey and about 2 hours after we began we came upon a familiar looking sign which was a relief at first because we hadn't seen a sign in a while but we soon discovered that we had walked in one giant circle and were at the beginning again and the sun was setting! Upon this discovery we went back to the park rangers and explained that they had instructed us poorly to which they laughed a whole bunch and then explained that what we were actually supposed to do was duck under some "peligro" (danger) tape and continue on that path to the campsite. When we asked why there was danger tape covering the start of the trail they explained that they didn't want people getting confused and going down that trail when they wanted to go in the circle. I am not a fan of these park rangers. But as we were not allowed to camp at the first ranger station we started walking fast to the try to get to the other one. We did not reach our destination... we walked until we couldn't see anymore and it was getting dangerous because these were not flat trails in the least we were going up and down mountain and volcanic rock and sometimes the ground was bubbling so I was starting to get scared. We all decided that it would be best to just find somewhere flat and set up camp for the night. None of us slept well, mostly because we had failed to put the rain fly on the tent and it was raining but also we were sleeping on a rocky path so it was really only partially our fault.

Aguas Terminales

             So we began day 2 a little frustrated and very sleepy but there were white-faced monkeys in the  tree outside our tent so that brightened the day right up. In addition to that about 3ish kilometers away we found the hot springs which we sat in for quite sometime because they are wonderful even if they make everything smell like sulfur. So after that we just kept on treking for much too long but at around lunch time we were getting antsy because we hadn't found the campsite yet but we decided to keep going and about 30 minutes later we popped out of a trail labeled "for horses only" we had taken the much longer trail meant for people on horseback and I still don't know how we managed that but good for us we found the campsite and were able to set up a clothes line to dry our things and make a delicious lunch of peanut butter saltine crackers! In the afternoon we went to a waterfall and began to realize that we were beginning to be attacked by both black flies and mosquitoes. The day ended with a very smoky fire to keep the bugs away and a lovely massage train.

Hiking about in the forest

Cool view from the top of the mountain

           On day 3 we decided that we wanted to see the big waterfall so we hiked the 8km ,stopping at the hot springs of course, back to the first ranger station. We decided that we were going to camp illegally on the waterfall side of the park because we really didn't think the rangers would notice, unfortunately the rangers were more focused on us when we returned and did not let us go to the waterfall because it was too far away to make it back before sundown. This was a bummer but the closest hostel let us pitch our tent on their property so everything worked out ok there.

seriously small hostel room

         Day 4, 3 of my companions headed back to San Jose but my friend Margo and I headed to the coast to celebrate the end of semana santa on a beach called Playa del Coco. It was beautiful, we stayed in a very small hostel and walked and swam about all day, I got quite sunburnt and that along with the bug bites was unfortunate but it was wonderful.

Just a sampling of how many bug
bites I have

        Easter sunday was a different story, we had purchased bus tickets in advance because we knew that it was going to be a busy travel day but what we didn't know was that our bus was going to break down when we were already 2 hours behind schedule. This meant that our 4 hour journey took 9 1/2 hours which was really no fun at all but, silver lining, we got put on a new bus that was standing room only but the bus driver let me sit in the copilot chair which was a really cool view.
       

Playa del Coco 

Week 6: Testing Fate

My host brothers and I under part of the waterfall

Ok so week 6 started out very productively with meetings and approvals and long days actually working on my project so Monday through Thursday afternoon are not super interesting so I shall skip them. On Thursday night I was sitting on my log watching the sunset with the 2 dogs who do not get tied up when the little Chihuahua runs up and jumps on my lap and I am happy because he is the softest and that was fun. Suddenly my whole family joins me and is like were giving the dogs baths you should come. Giving the dogs baths means walking them into the ocean and letting them swim about then declaring them clean... they are not but thats ok. So after we put the dogs back in their spots to guard the house my host brothers and dad were all Emma or Eva which is how they say my name, you should take a bath too. I tried to be all I literally saw a crocodile 20 ft from here yesterday but they would have none of it and insisted that if there was a crocodile in the ocean with us it would eat one of them first because they are smaller. This didn't make me feel better but I decided that swimming in the ocean at sunset with my host family should happen so swimming I went. It was wonderful and not as scary because since it was high tide we never were in more than 2 feet of water so it was more like wading but I suspect that big fish that attract crocodiles don't go that shallow so sorta safe I think.
             Friday was a big day for the cooperative I work with, a large group of fishermen and women came from the Nicoya Peninsula (look at map of Costa Rica) to observe the coop with the hopes of starting their own. In this event I got to sit and be awkwardly not Costa Rican all day but it ended with a fishing tour! My host dad was the captian of the boat I was on so I got a special seat and the best of the bait which was marvelous. Because all the other people on the boat were professional artisan  fishermen we caught quite a few fish, I did not catch anything but thats ok. We stayed on the boat until it was quite dark outside which was cool because the ocean completely changes in the dark. From the light of my cell phone flashlight I could watch squid and shrimp glide along the top of the water and most amazingly and I am not going to get the chemistry right here but something about the salt composition in this part of the ocean makes it glow bright green when you are moving fast enough, so when the boat was moving I could stick my hand in the ocean and make streams of neon green light in the water. It was awesome and I was throughly amused until someone on the boat was like you need to be careful how much you do that or you will draw the sharks closer. After that comment I did not decide to dunk my hand back in but still it was quite worth the unknown risk.
             Saturday was a little riskier still because I decided to walk down to Playa Azul by myself because I wanted some blue sand and I got pretty far until I saw a strange looking log in the distance. I was convincing myself that I was just being paranoid because I was by myself but as I was about to continue said strange looking log got up and walked into the ocean, it was a crocodile, I about faced and walked as calmly as I could back to the safety of the fishing boats. This encounter did not stop me from swimming in the ocean that evening.

this is 1/4 of the entire waterfall

            Sunday was the riskiest day I've had here but it was the most worth it. The best way to describe it is that had I known how dangerous it was going to be I might have freaked out a bit more but ignorance really really is bliss in this case. My host family decided to take me and Lauren to the waterfall. It is the tallest in Costa Rica and I have been looking forward to seeing it since I got here so I was very excited that my family had agreed to take me. The waterfall is actually connected to a garden and costs 20 US dollars to get in. My host family did not want to pay that so we went our own special way. If you are ever going to this waterfall pay the $20 and you will be putting yourself at much less risk but you won't see the same amount of nature as we saw. Our way was walking on pig trails (trails cut by these smallish warthog things) unstream of the river Tarcolitos which is fed by the giant waterfall . It was actually a really pretty walk but it involved a lot of wading through the river rapids in which my feet got caught between rocks many many times and then walking through the jungle up very steep inclines on a path that was not quite the width of one of my feet. This was very dangerous as I found out as I slipped and fell down about 15ft till a tree caught me but it was still more or less an adventure so we went along with it. We came across some really cool wildlife as we were walking along there were a ton of very cool colorful birds, we caught a glimpse of a warthog, saw a very large black snake, and caught some bright green and black frogs. It took about 2 1/2 hours to reach the top but we finally found the waterfall, or at least a portion of it, the entire waterfall is over 200ft so we really only saw a quarter of it but the quarter was well worth the journey. We played in the waterfall for quite sometime and then headed back the way we came. Luckily we did not meet up with any more snakes. When we arrived home I was super exhausted and went to bed a happy camper.

Clever and his poison dart frog

This is a baby version of what we saw

             I did not fully understand how dangerous our journey had been until this morning when my host mom woke me up to watch a show on animal planet about deadly animals. She woke me up because last week we watched the movie Anaconda and anacondas killing people was the third super deadly animal on this television program. We watch a lot of these programs because they usually feature Costa Rica which is fun because most of the crocodile footage is shot not too far from here so we were waiting for Tarcoles to come on the program when instead the next two extremely deadly animals were this giant black snake that looked very similar to the one we had seen about 3 feet from us on the river. It was the same snake and it is ranked among the most poisonous and deadly to people in the world and usually doesn't hesitate to strike. If bitten the person usually dies within 20 minutes I am ever so happy I found that out after we had already returned from our trip to the waterfall or I probably would have freaked out on our way back which wouldn't have helped anyway. The next deadly animal on this program was the poison dart frog, kills within 3 hours and is deadly when it feels threatened and covers itself in a poison saliva that can seep into your skin but is most deadly when it actually enters your blood stream. I was watching this program with my host brother Clever who spent a good half hour playing with these frogs, I seriously don't know how none of us got hurt but we didn't Pura Vida. I will most likely be more careful in the future but I guess what I've learned here is that Costa Rica especially the Pacific coast of Costa Rica (it gets its own episodes of these types of deadly animal shows) is a pretty dangerous place to live and freaking out and worrying about it probably won't help much. I am now more aware of the danger and can avoid it maybe but the fact of the matter is that even though I meet with at least one of the planets most deadly animals every day that no one here has died in the last 5 years so I'm not going to waste my time fretting about it and neither should you.

Week 5

Sunset Picture from my front yard

Ok I have good news! I will be back online, the ACM has agreed to pay for wifi within the consorcio that I work in so I should have facebook for like 2 hours a day, the consorcio is supposed to open at 8 and close for lunch at 11 then open back up at 12 till 5, yesterday it opened at 9:30 and closed at 11 and didn’t open again at all so Pura Vida, also the wifi wont let me sign on so this is being written in a word document with the hope of posting it to my blog later this week. So that is where I am at on the internet front! Being in Tarcoles is an experience, upon arrival I had the largest now what moment of my life so I just kind of sat around and watched, tried to talk to people, bothered my host family, got frustrated with the wifi, walked about the beach, found a dead sting ray, watch chickens cross the road (because my life is a joke now) but I really did all those things.  And this morning I found out that I have been doing it right I’m just supposed to watch things happen and observe them happening, figure out when people are on the beach and why and then watch what happens when there are fish and when there are not and look at things that wash up on the beach and such so with a little more talking to people I’m all set. That said I find I’m used to a bit more structure and am a little frustrated by the lack of things going on in my life but its all going to be fine.

On Tuesday afternoon my family took pity on my situation, which they call “esperando por el gallo puso” which means waiting for a rooster to lay an egg and is used for people who don’t do useful things with their lives. So we walked to Playa Azul named for its blue sand, unfortunately there are only spots of blue sand left because of pollution and garbage that comes down the Tarcoles River but apparently large clean up efforts have been put into place and the beach is much cleaner than it was before. The large amounts of garbage probably keep tourists from seeing it so it is rather unused even though the blue parts are really very cool. After seeing this beach my family showed me a river that is fed by a waterfall and is therefore pure, crocodile free, and ok to swim in. This is an epic discovery because now I know where the giant waterfall is, giving me something to do with my free days, and now I can swim when I really need to which is all the time because it is hot here.

In other news I have had questions regarding my 8 legged friend, she is still there and wants to cuddle but I now have a mosquito net which encompasses my bed, my spider friend simply cannot outsmart it but earlier this week I did wake up to a spider above my head so she keeps close in case I slip up but I feel that I have won.

Just a crocodile in the ocean

            On Wednesday morning I was sitting on the beach observing things like I’m supposed to when my friend and I noticed something in the ocean that was large and appeared to be moving, it was a crocodile. It was about 4 meters long and about 20 ft away from us. I am never ever ever swimming in that ocean ever. When I freaked out about it to my host family they were completely unfazed and explained that it happened and they very seldom get out of the water so its fine. They also explained that in the wet season (starts in April I will be here) the drainage ditch fills with water from the rain and crocodiles like to nest there and its fun because you can play with the baby crocodiles but when they grow up it gets awkward because the come up to the house and try to eat the chickens and dogs. As if I wasn’t appaled enough by this news my host mom turned to me and was like Emma your legs are so pale that a crocodile might mistake you for a chicken so you better watch out. So there is always that, unfortunately this has made my long walks on the beach less fun because now I think everything is a crocodile. The real problem is a lot of the time I am probably right.

Yenni

            In terms of good news, I have 6 dogs their names are Donkey, Pinto, Caballero, Negra, Balon, and Yenni. I do not have a favorite but Yenni and Negra are not tied up so they get to walk me places which I enjoy, Yenni also reminds me of a blond merlin because he crosses his paws when he lays down and has some lab in him. Negra is super old and can’t see very well, I found out yesterday that she is Caballero’s mom tho which is nice. Donkey likes to chase cars so he does not get to roam around very much but he likes belly rubs and gets very excited when I come home. Balon is a Chihuahua and is freaking adorable, the family treats him more like a pet rabbit than a dog but that’s ok, he lives closest to the house so when I read outside we sit together unless the chickens are about, he’s afraid of them. Also the chickens are not for eating, they are gardeners! Apparently eating chickens are bullies and tried to beat up the small children so my family sold their eating chickens to their neighbors so I shan’t be killing them!   

                 Also the sunsets here are beautiful. Also my Advisor showed up today fixed the internet and now I have things to do Yay!!!

My Research

Before I head off for 2 months I decided that I will let you in on what I will be doing with my life on the beach. I have written a 25 page research proposal but I doubt anyone is really interested in reading all that so I shall try to recap. I will be working in Tarcoles on the Pacific Coast, my research focuses on a responsible fishing area and how this area is affecting the economic situation of the people who live there. The local cooperatives ( I will be working with 3) of fishermen were the ones who fought to create the area in order to conserve fish and shrimps for the future. Right now there is a regulation that forces the big shrimp trawlers to not shrimp with in 15m depth of the shore, unfortunately the local fishermen cannot shrimp there either, because the big trawlers have no problem moving farther out and the local fishermen do, they are the only ones being screwed over by their own regulation. But, if they dont conserve the shrimp and fish now their way of life will die out due to overfishing.
           My project is going to focus on this interaction and try to show just how much the fishermen have lost out, I also will be conducting interviews with the fishermen to see how they are feeling about it. In addition to this I will be tracking all the fish that come into the cooperative to see how much money is being made overall, I will then compare it to 2009, right before the area was enacted. Also I will be creating projections for what the future looks like for them in a variety of different situations such as the area goes away and the shrimp boats come back and eat up all the progress that has been made etc. Also I will be looking at the environmental impacts of the area to see if the zone is even effective in conserving the populations that it was designed to protect.
              If i ever get all that done, I plan to use the information to give these fishermen a clearer view of their economic situation and help discover the best alternative for moving forward. This is even more important now because the responsible fishing area goes up for government re-evaluation in August, my research could help the cooperative make its argument to the government about the area stronger. Which is exciting because I get to do something that will actually matter outside of academics.
             Unfortunately the paper portion of my project is kind of a mess because I have like 4 projects within my project which do not exactly cover a specific discipline but we will worry about that in May. I will be attempting to post once a week from this point on however I am sharing a dial-up internet connection on a very old computer with an entire cooperative so we will see how that goes. If you are used to communicating with me through skype or facebook, that will be going away.

Week 3

My home starting March 2nd

Coffee being toasted

I have now completed 3 weeks in Costa Rica! As before a lot happened this week. On Wednesday we went to a coffee plantation which was a tour of the factory, it was really really loud and I understood that it is important to control the humidity in the factory and that the beans need to be dried many times. After the coffee tour we went to a local alternative medicine place where they tell what is wrong with you by reading your energies with a stick... theres more to it than that but I am struggling to describe it. I of course volunteered to lay down on a massage bed in front of about 60 people I don't know and have my energies read. This was a bad life choice as it was discovered that the middle of my forehead contains an energy that relates to my reproductive glands so they stopped and asked me in front of all these people if I was having a hard time getting pregnant. I then got to explain to the people poking me with sticks, my classmates, and a canadian tour group that I am in fact on birth control so were I trying to get pregnant it should be difficult. It was awkward but they found parasites in some people so it could have been worse I suppose. The coffee trip ended with a whole bunch of coffee drinking which was fabulous.

this is the spider I found in my bed
its not dangerous but it is super creepy

Just the view from my house. 

This weekend I visited my field site for the first time. It was a mixed experience. Lets start with the good things, my new host family is very welcoming and well connected to fishing which is what I'm there to study sort of, the house is roughly 50 feet from the ocean (30 at high tide), they have 5 or 6 dogs and a cat that I suspect is part jaguar, and there are scarlet macaws that live naturally in the trees. In terms of bad things, my room is not connected to the house internally so when they lock the main house at night I loose access to the bathroom, there are spiders that are really way too large living in the house because they eat mosquitos, and there are chickens on the property that will be dinner therefore I as a member of the household will be slaughtering chickens. Also there are crocodiles.
On Saturday night I got quite sick probably due to the travel and different bacterias in the water. My San Jose host family seeing that I was about to get quite sick from drinking iffy water offered me

Crocodiles in Río Tarcoles

Lagoon located 1 mountain above Volcan Poas.

"alcacelcer"which turned out to be 1/2 a liter of salt water, I was quite displeased at being deceived by them however it probably kept me from getting even sicker so they have now been forgiven.
Sunday morning I was woken up at around 6 and asked how I was feeling, not well so I was packed into a car and taken to the volcano poas for some fresh air. Even though hiking on a very upset stomach wasn't the most fun thing in the world, the lagoon created by an old volcano at the top of the mountain was beautiful. The volcano is at a higher altitude than san jose so I was told to dress warmly or I would freeze, it was around 55 degrees at the top of the mountain.... there were people there in snow suits. Why anyone in Costa Rica owns a snow suit is beyond me but they looked chilly and told me I was crazy for walking around in a t-shirt and jeans. Unfortunately the volcano was spitting out sulfur smoke stuff and that with the clouds made the actual volcano impossible to see unless you were lucky enough to be looking at it right when a cloud moved, I was not so I did not seen the actual volcano. During my stay here I plan to visit at least 2 other volcanoes so hopefully I have more luck then.
That pretty much wraps up all the fun things I've been up to, my research proposal is almost finished and on Saturday I leave San Jose for Tárcoles where I will be living for 2 months. I am hoping to be able to post from there as I will have access to my e-mail so fingers crossed.

Week 2

Cacao fruit, only the white part is for eating
the middle is the part gets made into
chocolate

Sloth!!!!!!

A lot happend this week, most notably during the week we had a dance class in which we learned salsa, a dance I can't remember the name of, and regatton. We have 2 more classes over the course of the semester so hopefully I will improve. This weekend we had our first outing as an entire group. We left very early friday morning and drove to Puerta Viejo in Limon provence. In Puerto Viejo we visited a cacao farm. Cacao is the plant chocolate is made from and this farm is one of the most productive in Costa Rica. Additionally cacao farms are known for encouraging biodiversity and sloths like to live in them. Consequently, within the first 2 hours of our adventure I tried cacao fruit which is unlike any fruit I have ever tasted but is quite delicious, and I got to hold a sloth!!!! It was adorable. We ended our visit to the chocolate farm with a tour of their refining factory in which cacao seeds are turned into chocolate liquor (the stage before the chocolate is refined into what we know it to be in the states). I purchased 1 kilo of this chocolate and am trying to think up what on earth I am going to do with it.

Following the chocolate farm we went to a banana plantation. This particular plantation was owned by Dole. The banana tour was fascinating  we watched the packaging process of taking the bananas from the bunch and cutting them into appropriate bundles etc. The most interesting part for me was how much was done to make the bananas look pretty, the people at the farm explained that measures such as placing cushions in between the bananas while they are growing does nothing for the flavor or to protect against bruising, it is simply so the bananas look absolutely perfect. Its extremely labor intensive and made me feel a little bad for only selecting perfect looking bananas. The banana trees themselves were amazing too, the entire life cycle of a banana tree is around 40 weeks so once the fruit has been cut off they cut down the tree and the now dead banana tree is fertilizer for the offspring which immediately takes its place. The whole experience felt like being on one of those tv shows that show you how things are made and I enjoyed going behind the scenes in banana production.

The longest bridge in Costa Rica, Tirrimbina

Immediately following the banana tour we drove 3 hours to Tirrimbina, a biological reserve in la Virgen in the north of CR close to the border. At Tirrimbina we had a bat tour in which we learned to disregard the bad reputation bats have and got to see some of the bats that had been captured by researchers earlier that night. The bats were actually super cute.

The next morning we went on a chocolate tour!! on the tour we stopped and went through every step of the chocolate making process sampling each stage of course. At the end I was gifted 15 chocolate seeds which would have bought me a chicken or something back when chocolate seeds were used as a form of currency. After the chocolate tour was over we went for a walk in the rainforest, ate some termites (they taste kinda like pepper and kinda like carrots), and hiked about until about 1 pm when it was time to return to San Jose.

Pretty Orchid

Today I slept in for the first time since Ive been here and went to an orchid fair with my host mom. It was ridiculously pretty, orchids are the national flower here and some truely unique ones grow here including one that has giraffe spots! After the fair we stopped by the local park to listen to a band play. They were a beatles cover band who didn't speak english so some of their lyrics really made my day such as their rendition of "Where is her son" as opposed to "Here comes the sun" We then returned to the house for afternoon coffee and a catch up on my new soap opera "El Clon" which is so incredible that I intend to dedicate an entire post to its glory when the season finale plays.