Avian Dreams/Realities

I have had a few bird dreams lately, possibly as a result of eating chickens I have known.  The most recent was this morning, as I dreamt that my Mama Tica (Yolanda) was in the shed, killing a panicking duck for us to eat for that night's dinner.  Strangely, upon waking I discovered that she had essentially done the opposite by saving and caring for a runt chick that wasn't being cared for by its mother hen.  Every morning is a wrestling match between murky dreams and sun-spangled reality.

Today we have a rare reprieve from the daily whirlwind grind.  We have the whole afternoon and evening off, ostensibly to finish our internship proposals, but I finished mine yesterday so I'm enjoying the prospect of a free afternoon.  I will probably walk over to Santa Elena in order to pick up a few supplies for our upcoming two-week trip, which begins on Sunday.  We will be spending time in many towns along the length of the Pacific Coast, including San Isidro del General near the southwestern Osa (Bear) Peninsula, a few towns along the Gulf of Nicoya (NW), and even a field station on Isla Chira (3 days).  I am excited to see more of the country, especially since we will have the opportunity to visit many places that wouldn't be available to tourists.  The trip is focused on thematic content related to water and energy production/consumption, and we will be visiting a geothermal plant, a biofuel station, and a few hydroelectric plants.  We will also be studying turtles, doing some birding in Palo Verde National Park, and visiting some mangroves.

Tomorrow we will collecting, identifying, and drawing conclusions from bioindicative macroinvertebrates, which basically means mucking around in some nearby streams and collecting bugs (hooray!)  Sure beats the hell out of pounding three cups of coffee through four hours of lectures.  And then on Saturday we go to a reserve for another day hike to learn about plant dispersal/pollination mechanisms and play in a waterfall.  Experiential learning is the best education.  I often find myself discouraged with the daily word/talk grind and the routines of university life.  As one of my favorite poets/authors, Jim Harrison, once wrote, "Why cast Robert Redford in your life story if all he's going to do is sit there and piss and moan at the typewriter for two hours in expensive Eastman color?"  This semester is already proving to be a healthy and refreshing break from the mental infrastructure and verbal gymnastics of ivory tower academia.

Clamming in a mangrove > pontificating on the Freudian implications of 19th century British literature

This will likely be my last post for two weeks or so, as I will have little to no computer access on our trip, but I'll likely have plenty to relate via interweb upon our return.  Here's to the quick onset of spring for all of you in the temperate stretches of los Estados Unidos.  Pura vida!

Update: I just got back from Supercompro, where I purchased a few trip items.  One of said items was a slim bottle of organic rosemary shampoo!  How awesome is that?  Just goes to show that there are many untapped market niches just waiting to be exploited for marginal gain.  Take heart, entrepreneurs one and all!  Expect it to hit shelves in the U.S. by 2012, because let's be honest, how could a product with such universal appeal NOT leap to international market domination?  All kidding aside, I am looking forward to using this shampoo.  I love the smell of rosemary, and we often put sprigs on our stoves during the bitter homestead winter to spruce up the cabins.  Now I get a chance to lather my hair with it!

Butterfly Killaz

I had to give a twenty minute oral presentation in Spanish on Friday.  Although it seemed pretty daunting, in retrospect it was cool to recognize how much of the language I have learned in just two weeks.  Our class is just four students and the professor, Jose, who tends to be quite a character.  Much of our time is spent simply discussing various topics in Spanish, and Jose manages to steer the conversation effortlessly, slyly integrating new vocabulary and grammar that we are working on.  Anyway, I decided to give my presentation on the Homestead, which ended up making it pretty easy for two reasons.  One is that there is a lot to say about it, most of it interesting, and the other is that since I have already had lots of practice explaining it to my host family, I already have most of the requisite vocabulary (e.g. "We poop in an outhouse," and "Showers are a rarity").  Looking through pictures to choose some to show, I felt pangs of Homestead nostalgia and wished I could visit.  Then I remembered that it's the middle of gloomy Ohio winter and I was cured of such wishes.

Yesterday we had our first Costa Rican Natural History session, which took the form of an all-day hike and presentations on the wide variety of plant growth forms that abound in the cloud forest.  My group focused on canopy trees, sometimes also called emergents on account of the way they pop up out of the canopy.  We saw some pretty incredible views and hiked to the highest point in the region (at an elevation of around 6,000 feet).  Interestingly, the TV towers for the Monteverde Zone are up on that ridge, which means that in the rainy season the technicians have a hell of an ATV trip up flooded dirt roads at 70 degree slopes to do maintenance work.  The roads are not very good here, generally speaking.  The country is only the size of West Virginia, but it can take a full day or two to get from one place to another because of the state of the infrastructure.  Although our focus was primarily on plants, we saw some birds, lizards, and millipedes too.

We also used fancy compasses and trigonometry to estimate and compare the heigh of several old growth trees.  Here is a scientific measurement action shot:

In other news, my friend Sam's host dad runs a canopy ziplining tour company and generously offered us a discount for a tour, which we took him up on this morning.  In addition to ziplining, we swung on a huge "Tarzan swing," rappelled down to the forest floor from the canopy, and climbed back into the canopy through a ropes course installed inside a strangler fig tree.  Even as someone who isn't too afraid of heights, it was pretty humbling to stand on the small platforms in the crowns of giant trees and sway with them when wind gusts came through.  On one particularly long "zip," Mirasol (fellow student) struck and killed a butterfly in mid-flight, which gave us pause to think about the casualties of ecotourism.

I got my first choice of internship, so I'll be experimenting with worm "tea" (i.e. poop), trying to find a way to make it mimic the nutrient ratio of synthetic fertilizer currently being used at a nearby hydroponic greenhouse.  I'm excited to work with Orlando (the farmer) and learn all about hydroponic horticulture.  OK, time to finish an essay.  Hasta luego.

Neverland Sunset

Hello blogosphere.  During this past week, my afternoons have been consumed by hours and hours of Espanol, but the mornings have been devoted to a wide variety of internship presentations by several people who are doing cool stuff in Monteverde in the realms of native plants, conservation, environmental design, alternative building methods, eco/agrotourism, and sustainable agriculture.  We had a few hours this morning to select our top three choices and write a preliminary proposal/application.  The internships I chose were:

1. Working at a nearby hydroponic greenhouse, experimenting with "worm tea" (i.e. poop) in an effort to create the right balance of nutrients so that it can be substituted for the synthetic fertilizer the farmer is currently using. (note: most beautiful/organized greenhouse I have ever seen, saw the biggest and most incredible beet I have ever encountered)

2.  Working with an engineer to learn a new construction technique pioneered in Iran called SuperAdobe in order to build a big retaining wall at the Study Center in order to prevent erosion into a nearby stream/eventual property damage.

3. Working with same engineer to design and implement a rainwater harvesting system for the roof of the Study Center.

I should find out tomorrow which I'll be working on for four weeks later in the program.  The engineer, Ayal Bryant, is super cool and I'm thinking about asking him if he has any upcoming builds/other projects this summer he could use a hand with.  We'll see...

In other news, I saw a great sunset the other evening.  In a fortunate set of circumstances, the roadside directly across from the CPI language center where we take Spanish classes is one of the best overlooks in Monteverde and we leave CPI just before sunset every day.  Consequently, several of the past days have found most of us gawking and snapping photos for ten minutes after class.  Two days ago the coloring in the sky and the view of the Gulf of Nicoya and its islands to the west looked like something straight out of Peter Pan.

This coming Saturday we have an all day hike up to/in the Cloud Forest Reserve, our first Costa Rican Natural History class session.  It should be great, since I've been looking forward to the chance to do some hiking and actually get in the forest to explore.  Then on Sunday several of us are taking a walk on the more touristy side of things and doing a Zipline Canopy Tour, which should be awesome.  Well, the mountain evening chill is blowing in through the door of the Study Center, so I'm headed home to some warm beans and rice.

The Raw and the Cooked

Greetings, blogosphere.  I didn't have a picture of my niece, Naomi, to post last Thursday, but now I do, so mission accomplished.  Several noteworthy things have happened in the past few days.  First off, a sloth decided to call our yard home for a few days, which led my host-father to proclaim it the family mascot.  Unfortunately, it didn't hang around long enough for us to think of a clever name for it, but it did hang around long enough for me to take a few pictures.

On Friday night, a bunch of us went to a little art cafe in Santa Elena called La Carambola, which was fantastic.  The woman who runs the place is named Susanna and it's pretty much just her with hired help during rush times.  She lives above the cafe and has hammocks set up in the yard for people to relax in.  The menu is Middle Eastern, and every Friday night she has some variety of ethnic food special.  We all enjoyed delicious falafel/hummus wraps with a glass or two of optimally priced boxed wine, which was little to nothing like Franzia.  The box was more like the kind of box that soy milk or veggie stock comes in, and it was actually pretty decent.  The place has a wonderful atmosphere and as much as I like beans and rice, it was a nice culinary reprieve.  I went back to La Carambola this afternoon to do some reading and have a glass of ice coffee, and I ran into a few other students.  After we had been reading assorted assigned chapters and articles for a while, Susanna came out to offer us some complimentary watermelon slices (the best I have ever had in my life).

Yesterday morning, we arose bright and early to head to a nearby farmer's market, or la feria.  (Note: the Tico daily schedule is old-school agrarian, leftovers from the days when farming, rather than ecotourism, was the most common occupation.  Most Ticos go to bed around 8:30pm and wake up around 5am, and since my bedroom is practically in the kitchen, I'm up and about by 5:30 most days).  We went to collect data for a lab on community food security.  After talking to farmers and compiling a price list at the market, we headed to a nearby supermarket to compare availability/affordability of staple goods.  Outside the SuperCompro (a popular Tico supermarket chain), we encountered the cultural novelty of a DJ announcing the day's hot sales over a soundtrack of American classic rock.  Several of us introduced ourselves and she enthusiastically allowed us to announce some sales ourselves.  All in all, it was a fun and interesting morning, and I learned some key phrases like "Where are these green beans from?" and "Today only, Yucca root for 900 colones per kilo!"

When I first arrived at my homestay last Sunday, I told my host-mother that I really enjoy cooking, and she told me she'd teach me how to make some Tico dishes.  Unfortunately, our program is so busy I haven't have many chances to try my hand in la cocina.  That changed last night though, when I helped Dona Yolanda and my sister, Malory, make chicken empanadas.  Yolanda had already prepared the chicken and made the tortilla dough, so it was basically just assembly and frying, but it was really fun.  Making consistent, uniform tortillas is an art, and I was amazed at how quickly Malory cranked them out.  Mine were much slower and aesthetically inferior, but they still tasted good.  The meal had a heightened sense of warmth and enjoyment because of the absolutely torrential downpour going on outside.  It's very windy in the mountains here, and at night it sometimes sounds as if the tin roof or even the whole house is going to be swept away like something out of the Wizard of Oz.

An Unrelated Note: My host father has a great fondness for dancing, and one of his favorite movies is his DVD of Michael Jackson's best music videos and live performances.  He thinks that MJ is "un bailando mas mejor" and the world will never again see anything like him.

That's all for now, so I'll sign off with another picture of Pelusita, this time trying to wake up her mother to play (can't resist, kittens are only kittens for so long...)

Slumdog Mountaineer

I have now been in Costa Rica for five days, but it has felt more like ten.  We spent Sunday and Monday getting oriented to Tico culture in Alajuela, a city not far from the capital of San Jose.  Out hotel was beautiful, but not extravagant, with artful apertures to let in sun and breeze.  These slats in the ceilings were two feet wide and as long as the room, and the floor beneath them was actually dedicated to beds of native plants (bushes and small trees, mostly).  The common breakfast here is Gallo Pinto (speckled rooster) and consists of beans, rice, eggs, and queso fresco, a salty and delicious soft farmer's cheese.  An incredible array of fruits and fruit juices are also available for breakfast, given their abundance this close to the equator.  The eggs are the best I have ever tasted, even better than Homestead eggs.  They are always fresh and tasty.  I recently heard that the average carton of eggs in the U.S. goes nine months between being collected and eaten.  Yikes.

On Tuesday we left Alajuela and set off for Monteverde, but took a detour in order to spend a few hours in La Carpio, a massive shantytown of 35,000 and one of Costa Rica's poorest communities.  The population is largely comprised of Nicaraguan immigrants (many without papers) and in a classic case of Not In My Backyard, the Costa Rican government held the threat of deportation over the folks there in order to quell opposition to the installation of a massive landfill right on the outskirts of the community.  The fumes are pungent and there are significantly more cases of respiratory illness than the national average, especially among children.  We went to a combination women's co-op and montessori school for lunch, where we were treated to a short play about an immigrant family.

Before leaving, we hiked down to a river in one of the poorest sections of La Carpio.  Since there is little infrastructure in most of the shantytown, grey and black water merely flow downhill, unfiltered, ending up directly in the river.  There is also a considerable amount of trash scattered over the cobbles in the shallows.  Despite its absolute filthiness, in the hottest days of the dry season, children still swim there to cool off.

After this sweltering and heavy, but nonetheless valuable excursion, we piled back onto our bus and finished the trip to Monteverde.  The road from the San Luis Valley up into the mountains is an adventure to say the least.  It is a dirt road, but that name conveniently glosses over all of the cobbles and chunks of granite that dot its path.  Upon arrival, we had a brief orientation to the basic guidelines of our homestays and without further delay we met our host families.  My host mother is named Yolanda and works as a ninera, or nanny, and my host father, Lorenzo, is a maintenance worker at a nearby biology center.


They have two daughters, Kathi and Malory.  Kathi and her husband, Jose, live in the basement of the house, and Malory lives nearby, but is around nearly all the time with her adorable three-year-old daughter Naomi (nah-oh-mi).  They have four dogs (Scrappy, Bruno, Chizpa, and Canela) and a cat named Pelusa, which just had a kitten one month ago.  The kitten doesn't have a name yet, so they call her Pelusita.  They also have chickens and a rooster that roam about the yard, so I feel right at home.  Yesterday, we had fried chicken for dinner that I may well have met a few days ago, which was quite good (Dona Yolanda said "mejor que el pollo del supermercado") and I talked with my host family about the prevalence of farmer's markets here.




Last night we watched a scrimmage on TV between Costa Rica and Venezuela (futbol).  Naomi is rarely content to sit still for long, so I kicked a little ball around on the floor with her while the game went on.  Each time before she kicked the ball to me she would shout, "Estas listos por el campionato?" ("Are you ready for the championships?"  I met my host aunt and uncle yesterday evening, along with their kids, which was nice.  I had a brief and halting discussion en espanol with Uncle Samuel about Quakers, whom he opined were "gente muy simpatica" (very kind people ).  I told him I agreed and tried to make a joke about their dog, Muneca, but I'm not sure I got my point across.


The center where we study is beautiful and smells like plants, coffee and woodfire (the latter probably from Johnny's Pizzeria next door), which is good because I'll be spending a lot of time there, as will all of the other students in my program.  There are 21 of us and we'll be taking classes Monday thru Saturday for three months, with the exception of two extended field trips.  I hope we get one or two saturdays off so I can hike over to the Meeting House and play ultimate with some Friends.  The beer here isn't much to call home about, but it's ok.  The most popular is Imperial (el cerveza de Costa Rica), but I have also tried Bavaria Negra and Tona, which is a Nicaraguan lager that tastes kind of like a Belgian.  The Bavaria Negra is my favorite, which manages a darker caramelly flavor without being too sweet.  Well, I should probably go do some book-learning, so I'll leave you with some pictures of the center and the vistas.

48 Hours

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, I will fly South for the remainder of the Northern Hemisphere winter.  In fact, this will not be the first time an important day of my life has coincided with the Superbowl, as I was born on Superbowl Sunday in 1990.  I guess it's a good thing I don't care much about football (I mean...Go Steelers...yeah!)  I am approximately halfway packed.

An Abridged List of Items I Have Packed

• 1 Energizer headlamp
• 4 waterproof field notebooks (i didn't know they even made waterproof paper)
• 2 pair of quick-dry conversion pants/shorts
• 1 Crystalaire sweatshirt (though the tropical days are hot, apparently mountain evenings can get cool)
• The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
• 1 trusty pair of Chaco sandals
• 1 hiking boot (unfortunately, my other boot is down the street at Sonny's Shoe Repair after losing a lacing hook.  fortunately, although Sonny was rather grumpy about the whole situation, he agreed to fix my boot by Saturday.  As I opened the door to leave, he emphasized that he closes up shop AT 2PM and I was in for a rough surprise if I showed up even A SECOND AFTER)
• 2 packs of black Uniball Vision Needle pens (I am including this hopelessly nerdy item in the interest of unbiased disclosure)

An Abridged List of Items I Have Decided Not to Pack

• 1 Macbook laptop (sayonara Nicco 2.0 + his virtual life)
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (it's just too damn long)
• 1 pair of rainbow suspenders (since i'm unsure of even their cultural acceptability in the U.S., i'm not taking any chances abroad)
• The Collected Journals of Hernan Cortes
• 1 block of Yoder's Hot Pepper cheese (despite its sentimental value as a kind of totemic Homestead symbol, I'm not too sure it would survive the flight; also, I apparently won't be suffering from dairy withdrawal anytime soon...see below)

One of the folks in my program recently emailed everyone a bare bones map of the Monteverde region.  Some notable features: 

El Unicorno Disco: Need to refuel with some tapas and drinks after donating blood at the Red Cross?  No problem, it's only a five minute walk to El Unicorno Disco!  Drink too much at El Unicorno Disco?  No problem, it's only a five minute walk to the Red Cross!

Bajo Del Tigre Nature Trail: Want to get away from it all?  Take a scenic hike on the Tiger Hollow trail, certainly better-named than the neighboring (I kid you not) Natural Valley Nature Trail

Johnny's Pizzeria: Feeling homesick?  Eat a slice or two of New York style pizza at Johnny's!

The Cheese Factory: Just what it sounds like.  "We bring da Monterey, da Chedda, da Gruyere and da Feta!"  yum

Friend's Meeting House: Lost sight of your inner light?  Come explore questions of faith and community with local practicers of humankind's most historically peaceful religious denomination.

Trapp Family Lodge: Remember the end of the Sound of Music?  Apparently those family singers didn't stop for long in Switzerland before carving out a piece of tropical paradise for themselves in Central America.  No Nazis here, Julie Andrews! (most of them self-exiled further south to Brazil)

Laundry La Amistad: Ever wash your jeans and feel like there's something missing?  Add some authentic historical flavor to the usually mundane task of laundering your clothes at La Amistad, which might be named after the famous slave ship that caused politico-legal uproar in 1839 when the crew mutinied and steered it to the U.S.  (Disclaimer: Amistad also means "friendship" in Spanish, so this could just be a regular non-historical laundry establishment called Friendship Laundry, but which one is more fun to believe?)

Meg's Stables/Bat Jungle: "Meg" sure is a shrewd businesswoman, cornering two unrelated market niches at once like that.  Who knew bats, horses, and humans could live symbiotically and profitably in such close quarters?

On a more serious note, the map also shows a cemetery, butterfly gardens, a post office, and a bullring.  This map seems to show that I'm headed to a region that is characterized by a weird mix of colonial/imperial influence (Johnny's, Meg's, Friends Meeting House, bullring) and a thriving ecotourism industry that manages to be profitable and conservationist/preservationist at the same time (butterfly and orchid gardens, numerous ecology centers, nature trails).

I am excited to be on my way to San Jose, and then Monteverde in two days.