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.