There's No Way This Bus Will Fit There...

So after our recent trip to Arenal, Monteverde, and Manuel Antonio, I have finally been able to really get a glimpse of the ecotourism in this country. Costa Rica rakes in about $1.92 billion per year just from ecotourism. This money was supplied by the 1.9 million visitors in 2007, over half of which were from the United States. Due to the large number of people visiting Costa Rica, it is ranked numero uno among Latin American countries in tourism, and second if you throw in the Carribean. This is quite the feat seeing as Costa Rica is much smaller than many Latin American Countries, but they are able to thrive due to their many protected national parks and natural attractions. There are, however, some complaints among tourists. The two main complaints are road transportation (at 113th in the world) and safety/security (pulling in at 128th in the world).

When it comes to problems I've witnessed first hand, I'd have to start off with tourist litter. In Arenal and Monteverde, litter wasn't a problem, but I feel that people were more closely watched over on tours and such by their guides. In Manuel Antonio, where there are not many guided tours, people are more free to move from their hotels to a restaraunt to the beach as often as they want. As stated, the typical touist can be assumed to be American, and sadly, Americans seem to have no remorse when littering. I remember seeing random bottles, cups, paper, etc. laying on the side of the road or next to the sidewalk, and it really took away from my experience (as if the rain didn't enough). I'm just not used to seeing those types of things in the more natural areas of Costa Rica. San Jose, on the other hand, litter is decently common on account of this rotten city being a... rotten city. Although I ran into some slight trouble at Arenal, I'm usually not worried about being robbed outside of the city. Here however, when it gets dark, I never travel alone. Finally, when it comes to the transportation aspect, I must say that if a tourist comes to this country and rents a car, you're an idiot. Cab drivers know their way around to most general landmarks in San Jose, and although the bus rides are very long for such short distances (relevant to how long it'd take in the U.S.), it's usually easy to sleep or lounge on the bus while waiting 5 hours to drive 150 miles.

Llueve Muchisimo

So apparently I'm not going to see the sun for a couple more days as we are in the middle of a tropical depression which could soon develop into a tropical storm and mess up areas north of here. Which could lead us to not enjoying our eco-tourism trip this weekend!  With my luck it's going to rain for 4 days straight when I get home out of spite.  Mother nature and I are about to throw down.

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Naners

Bananas. Apparently bananas are a very important part of Costa Rican exports. In fact it was the leading export until tourism took the number one spot in recent years. Costa Rica is still the second largest exporter of bananas behind Ecuador, with somewhere around 115,000 hectares of banana plantations. The main company that exports bananas is Dole (or the United Fruit Company). Some ecological problems, however, are presenting themselves with bananas. For example, the bananas are shipped in blue bags, which can commonly get tossed into the ocean where turtles will mistake them for jellyfish and choke on them (dying, of course). Also, the United Fruit Company had to shut down several of it's operations because of lawsuits from their pesticides running into water supplies or the ocean. Workers are finally paid fairly. United Fruit Co. at one time had about 12,000 illegal workers who they would pay a wage far under the standard minimum wage set by Costa Rica. Once punished by the courts for this, all workers on banana plantations (to our knowledge) are paid fairly and given fair hours. More to come later on this topic...

Absurd Vacation

I suppose you could call this entire study abroad thing a vacation, but we actually have vacations away from vacation, so to say. This past weekend we went to Arenal volcano and Monte Verde. I suppose I´ll give a brief summary of our adventures.



We arrived Friday night after a four hour bus ride to our hotel at Arenal volcano. We weren´t really close to volcano... on account of the volcano being active. The first night, we got there and immediately went to the Baldi Hot Springs. This place was an absurdly nice resort where they utilized natural hot springs to make pools out of. How nice? Well I have some pictures which you can´t see until I post them, but I do have a measure for you. I bought a beer for $6.50 and two pina coladas for 10 bucks a piece. That´s right, $26.50 on three drinks. I also put my head under in the hottest hot spring, which is quite the accomplishment because the hottest one is about 152 degrees. Either way, it was a blast. Then we just hung out in a random hotel room for the rest of the night... nothing too special.



Saturday, we woke up and started out at a hydro power plant. First we saw the dam itself, which was sort of cool. I´ll have pictures later... once again. Later on we actually went down stream to the generators to see where the magic happens. Apparently the water travels several kilometers through large pipes from the dam into the generators. They were actually pretty cool looking. Afterwards we went horseback riding, which was absolutely unreal. It wasn't lame like in the states where you sit on a walking horse... you actually could get the horse up to a full on gallop. I'm sold on getting a horse later in life. Anyway, we rode said horses up near the waterfall, where we proceeded to walk down way too many stairs to reach the waterfall. Once there, we were hot, and the cool water felt amazing (not to mention the waterfall was gorgeous). After the waterfall we just got dinner then went out. Standard chill night.

Sunday, we woke up and took a van to a boat, the boat across a lake, and then another van to our hotel in the rain forest. The cool part about this lake is that there's a town beneath it. The last major eruption of Arenal was in 1968, and everyone in this town either died or left. So later, they built a dam on the river, the valley flooded, and the city went under water. Cool eh? Anyway, once at our hotel we did the coolest thing ever: zip-lining through the rain forest. First the zip-lines were standard... no more than a couple hundred meters. Then we did the tarzan swing, where you jumped off a platform and swung from a rope suspended from a tree branch probably 6 or 7 stories above the ground. Needless to say you swung far. the final three zip-lines actually went from one mountain to another over the valley between them. These were breath taking. The final zip-line was 600 meters long, and you would find yourself about 60 feet above the canopy of the forest. It was absolutely awesome. Later, we went on a night walk through the rain forest. However, we were all wet from the rain during zip-lining, and were very uncomfortable in the rain in the rain forest. It wasn't too bad though. We saw a variety of plants and insects, and we also saw a tarantula native only to Costa Rica. That was pretty cool. The next morning we were awake at 6 am for another rain forest walk to see different animals that would come out during the day. The problem was that it was still raining, so most animals weren't out. However we did see some rare birds that were pretty sweet. After that we took the ol' bus home, chilled for the rest of the day, then left again Tuesday morning for Manuel Antonio.

Manuel Antonio is a national park (and more importantly, a beach) on the Pacific coast. Sadly, it took four hours to get there, and it rained the entire time. It was okay though, because the rain was cold, but the water was really warm. It's hard to get a swimming pool that perfect of a temperature. So we got some booze, posted up on the beach and jumped in the ocean. We tried our best at body surfing. There were a few times that I'd make it about 20 yards, only because some of the waves were upwards of 8-10 feet high. It was a lot of fun. Then the trouble started when we realized a bar had a happy hour were you could get two drinks for the price of one. The drinks included pina coladas (my favorite), margaritas, daquiris, and rum and cokes. After many rounds of those delicious drinks we went to the hotel for a bit in preparation for the club. However, I got tired at the club and left with a few others earlier than everyone else. A good move on my part because I desperately needed to catch up on sleep. Then basically, we woke up today and took the 6 hour bus-ride home. Unreal week thus far. However, we have an exam tomorrow and I actually don't get to go out tonight so I can finish up another chapter and a half of reading. Later.

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Bored as Hell

Como estan ustedes?

So I'm typing this at Veritas, bored before we leave for Monte Verde in about an hour.  I'm in the Mac computer lab (unreal), and there are windows on every wall in all of the 6 computer labs.  So I have a clear shot at the hot Tica sitting directly on the other side of this window behind my computer.  Moving on, due to constant inconvenience, I still have not had time to upload pictures onto the internet.  When I do have time, for some reason or other I won't have everything I need.  I'm a jackass and left my USB cable at home, so I need to find tricky ways.  Anyway, this topic is stupid.  What else is stupid, is how a terrential downpour just started, and my umbrella and poncho are across the street at the other university building.  That's going to be awesome.  If you stand in this rain for more than 5 seconds, odds are, you're soaked.  

That whole paragraph was pointless... onto cool stuff.  I'm rambling a lot on here because I'm an idiot and stayed up until 3:30 last night, but the bar we were at was pretty awesome.  First off, it was huge.  The dance floor was a rectangle lowered down in the middle, and all around it are tables.  The bar is at one far end of the bar.  It was a very classy place.  In fact, it was the first place anyone has gotten ID'd at, and then we were patted down upon entrance.  Either way, I actually danced for a song on the dance floor with a girl that's randomly studying abroad here from UC.  Then I proceeded to go to the bar because I'm still awful at Latin American dancing.  We did the old salsa... and I was embarrassed.  We also met another girl who goes to Miami!  She's randomly studying abroad here for 3 months and had no idea that there were 27 other people from her school here for a month.  Small world eh?  Well the trouble started when we found out there's a karaoke bar on the second floor... Yeah imagine 9 drunk Americans in a Tico bar singing (and by singing I mean screaming) Bon Jovi Livin on a Prayer.  Then we sang Sweet Caroline, followed by all the girls singing Like a Virgin (which garnered a lot of attention from the local dudes).  In fact, the locals were telling us, the american guys, to try to get the girls to make out.  Silly Ticos, the girls never do that stuff (with a sarcastic tone).  

Onward, we now have 54 minutes until we leave.  I should be in a hotspring with a beer/pina colada in my hand in about 6 or 7 hours.  In fact, I think I'm going to whip out my ron (rum en ingles) for this awful 4 hour bus ride.  I'll give some updates on the various activities... hotsprings, zip lines, the volcano, the rain forest, and my near fatal snake bite that I'm going to try to avoid.

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Cafe Libre

Today we went to yet another coffee farm. This one, however, was more of a tourism locale than an actual coffee plantation. It was very developed... too developed in fact. Sidewalks took you around to see the plants, and the entire tour was actually a rehearsed performance by the three tour guides. In fact, they actually gave a performance in a theater which was behind the gift shop and restaurant (which had delicious food). This theater was big too. There were about 40 people in the tour group... and we probably filled 20 percent of the theater. They legitimately put on a show too... props, costume changes, obvious scripts with bad jokes, video during costume changes (which required another worker to run the video and slide shows which were ever present). It honestly got annoying after a while... which is when I figured out what the main difference between the two coffee plantations we visited was. First, let me explain more about today´s plantation, Cafe Britt. Cafe Britt (or at least the Cafe Britt plantation we visited today) grows organic coffee. Organic meaning they use no chemicals to harm the environment, or as little as possible, in the production of their coffee. This is the first difference between the two farms, being that the other plantation is not organic. The benefit of being an organic farm is that people who are environmentally aware will typically buy products with an ¨organic¨ label somewhere on it. The downfalls are the further increased costs as compared to the increased profits (as discussed in the previous coffee post). However, I think these two farms are somewhat the same, only because I´m willing to bet some money that Cafe Britt has other plantations at other locations which are not organic... at all. All of this leads me to my conclusion on the primary difference between these two coffee places, which I´ll assume you, the bored ass reading my post, has probably figured out:
Del Cafe Tal was a coffee farm with the sole intention on making coffee, while Cafe Britt (once again the branch of Cafe Britt we were at today) is solely based on tourism. It is obvious that they have probably spent at least, and I emphasize at least, 3 or 4 times as much money on tourist capital at that farm compared to their coffee producing capital. We saw one building solely devoted to making coffee, and for an operation of their apparent size, it was not brewing much coffee to justify how large their organization is. Also, I hardly saw many coffee fields, probably due to all the tourism buildings blocking my view. So I may be mistaken. There were several buildings we didn´t enter... which easily could be for coffee, but I don´t think they´re very relevant to the main coffee production process. Now recall how I mentioned that the food was good at their restaurant (which was large) which was attached via a circular coffee bar to the gift shop with everything from actual coffee to Costa Rica t-shirts and stuffed animals. Now, one of the main reasons for my belief that Cafe Britt´s plantation was really a tourist attraction moreso than a coffee producer.
Do the math for yourself. Forty people (29 of us, including professors), each of whom paid probably between 30 and 50 dollars for this cheesy, but informative, tour. For math´s sake we´ll take the mean of $40. Next, I was leading the group when we were moving from the theater to the gift shop, when I noticed an entire center shelf set devoted to large bags of their five dollar coffee bags. When we were leaving the gift shop to eat, I noticed that probably one third of what had to have been approximately 600 bags of coffee remained. Now lets throw in another 500 dollars in sales for the people who bought bags and had them delivered home (not off the shelf), and we´ll throw in a modest $100 for random souveniers bought by stupid people willing to get ripped off. Doing quick math, our grand total in sales for our tour alone reached upwards of $4200 American dollars. Pretty good in Costa Rica for a couple of hours of work.

In conclusion to this monstrosity of a post, I enjoyed our trip to the smaller, family owned Del Cafe Tal far more than the trip to the commercial tourism site known as Cafe Britt. It was much more laid back, and more importantly for me, natural. I loved the hiking about a mile to get to the main house (Daisy´s, the owner´s, home) up and down the mountain on a dirt road. All around us was vegetation unlike any I´ll ever see in brutal Ohio. I can´t say that I could write a post solely about Del Cafe Tal and also tag it as a tourism post, but I think I have justified the tourism tag with my analysis of how their methods proceeded and tricked stupid tourists, like me, into buying a bunch of shit that we don´t really want or need. That was an unreal sentence (give me props... a four line long sentence that´s not a run on? I´m awesome). Anyhow, no one will probably read all the way down here and probably shouldn´t unless su nombre es Saul Adelman o Glenn Platt. Muchas gracias, y que los ticos aqui dice, pura vida.

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Coffee overview #1

So we went to the Del Cafe Tal (I think) coffee plantation today to check out whats going on.  First off let me say that I enjoyed it thoroughly.  I´m tired of being in this city all day every day... and I loved finally getting out into a more natural area... even though it was a farm.  It was nothing but gorgeous landscape there, and this just excites me to go to the other places we plan on visiting.  Sencondly, we were surprised to learn that we weren´t even supposed to go to this coffee farm.  We were supposed to go to a small one... but luckily we ended up at the plantation that makes the number 1 ranked coffee in Costa Rica.  Of course I bought a pound of it to bring home.  They gave us free coffee and it was absolutely delicious.  I took pictures... hopefully to be posted soon.  

On to the business/school part of things... unreal.

This particular plant... unlike I speculated... actually completed all processes necessary to make the final ground, roasted coffee on the plantation.  They have 7 workers year round, and that number climbs to around 70 during harvesting season.  Due to the fair trade act, these workers are ensured a good pay for the work they do, whereas without the act they could work for hours on end with no sure pay coming to them.  I believe that their coffee used to sell for only a few dollars per pound (our translator wasn´t the best at... translating), but since being voted #1 in Costa Rica, prices soared to $15.00 per pound.  I got it for 10 bucks... unreal.  Their primary customer is of higher status, usually in the United States.  Some is sold in Costa Rica, but only to the richer population, being it is so expensive relative to other prices here.  Their coffee is also one of the top coffees worldwide... being close to Starbucks and decently behind the African coffee that is eaten by animals, shat out (pardon my language... all right not really I don´t care), picked out of said poo, processed further, then sent to extremely high class coffee shops where it can be purchased for about 40 bucks per... cup.  New York people are foolish for ever wanting poo stained coffee.  Del Cafe Tal tried following our program´s advice and going organic several years ago as well.  They were an organic farm for about three years... but their profits increased much less than their costs increased, forcing them to abandon the ec0-friendly organic strategy our course emphasizes.  However, due to this move and perhaps some good fortune, their coffee is more delicious than ever.  

I would also like to note that the owner of the plantation had an unreal old-school Land Rover that I wanted to turf some yards with.  As one of my colleagues pointed out: I would feel compelled to push as much coke as possible if I drove that vehicle.  (Joking of course.)

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Cafe en Costa Rica

Its raining again... and Im on another computer with weird punctuation.

Nontheless, tomorrow our adventures will take us to a smaller, family owned Costa Rican coffee plantation. Im not sure exactly what to expect based on its size, but I hope to take some home with me being that Costa Rican coffee is known for its great quality and high caffeine level. Not to mention apparently the government sets a lower controlled price on the stuff... and I like coffee in general. I want to see exactly how big this one is and how many workers they have for that size of a plantation. Apparently the average good worker will pull in about 12 cajuelas, or baskets of coffee beans, per day, each weighing in around 15 pounds. I would not be happy if I had to do this... on account of each coffee bean has to be hand picked. The wages are standard at these plantations... each worker gets between $.60 and $1.50 per cajuela. Apparently these are typical wages of most agricultural plantations here. The beans are then shipped off to a processing plant, which we wont see... oh well. I also kinda want to talk to someone whos been there a while... if the plantation itself has been there a while. By a while I mean since the early 80s when apparently coffee prices plummeted. This was probably when coffee became less of a major export here. Now its about the 5th most popular export from Costa Rica, down from number one or two. Anyway... this post was boring... but it gets me some puntos en mi clase. Ill probably post again later being that this is actually my new hobby since I dont have Guitar Hero.

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So how about some updates on all the fun stuff we've done so far?  Sunday we basically took a tour of the city.  We drove past the president of Costa Rica's house.  In fact we were 20 feet away from the actual house... no security guards... nothing.  Two cameras maybe.  It's unreal how laid back it is here.  We also walked around the city just looking at our new temporary hometown.  We also took note that almost no roads have names.  Also almost no houses have addresses.  Everyone gets around by landmarks... it's crazy.  To tell a taxi where our host family's house is... I have to say something like 100 meters south of a street south of the university.  Seriously... no addresses.  The town was pretty cool looking.  It's really amazing how open things are here.  You'll walk past bars with no front.  A gate closes over the entire front of the bar when it closes, and the entire front of the bar is open to the sidewalk.  It makes sense since it never gets cold... they don't need to trap in heat.  The university even has a lot of random open areas just down the hall from the computer labs and such.  I'll post some pictures later when I find a way to get them off my camera onto a computer without my cable.  We have ideas... it might just take a couple days.  

Yesterday we went to CINTAS (I'm pretty sure that's what it was...).  Either way, it's basically a non-profit company that tries to attract foreign businesses to Costa Rica.  They gave a presentation on what they do and the nature of their market.  Costa Rica is actually a fast growing country and a great prospective area for international businesses to set up shop.  The country gives a lot of incentives to do this such as no taxation for the first 8 years... but they also have the benefit of being within 6 hours of flying distance from places ranging from Argentina to Los Angeles and New York.  Their building was pretty amazing too.  Basically a fountain or cool architectural design around every corner.  Other than that we did a little work here and there... reading and what not.  Standard day.  

Today we have class about all day.  We're on lunch right now for a while longer.  I got the most sleep I've had since we've gotten here last night (almost 6 hours...).  For those who know me... you know that I'm used to at least 8 or 9 hours of sleep.  Needless to say I'm struggling to stay awake in class, but I'm managing.  Tomorrow we're going to a small coffee plantation to check that out.  Also we're taking a couple of our classes earlier by making a couple days busier to free up an extra day around our free day we already had.  So next Tuesday and Wednesday we'll have off... and I think we're going to take an ad hoc student only trip to one of the numerous beaches in Costa Rica.  Or we're going bunjee (I don't know how to spell that) jumping.  I'm down for either one... but to be honest I've been craving sand, water, and cerveza for quite a while now.  I'll just go where everyone else wants to.  Updates on that will come later.  Adios nerds.

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Hello all,

We just got back from the bar for the night, and it was pretty awesome.  Evan and I tried our best to talk spanish to the tica bartenders, and in return they gave us free drinks.  I feel like we´ll be at that place often.  Other than that, I´m getting to know other people in our group everyday, which makes me very happy.  I think that by the end of this trip we´ll all be good friends... and that´s awesome.  My roommate Nestor has came out with us both nights now, and even he is fitting in well with our group of americanos.  I´m pleased that my knowlegde of spanish is increasing with every day that I´m here.  Once again the tica bartenders spoke strictly spanish, and with the help of Evan, we were able to communicate efficiently with them and both our spanish levels went up slightly.  Tomorrow we´re doing the good old wake up at 745 (I still can´t find all the punctuation marks), thus I think I´m going to go to bed finally.  I´ll post some more updates on the events we´ve encountered on our adventures so far here in San Jose tomorrow.  Hasta luego amigos.  Ten cuidado.  (See I´m working on mis espanol)

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Girls, Don´t wear short shorts

I´ve been in Costa Rica for about two days and I´ve experienced more than I ever could have imagined in this short of a time span. The awesome thing is that I have about 26 more days to go! My living conditions are far better than I had expected. I actually have my own apartment that I share with Steve Gosnell and a Venezuelan student, Nestor. Our host family speaks NO english, but Nestor is fluent in spanish and pretty good in english, so when my spanish fails, he can usually translate well. We actually even have our own apartment above our host family´s store, which is a vet. The people here are surprisingly nice as well. They will see our group of obvious americans while driving by and beep their horn and wave at us. I´m still not entirely sure, however, that they´re not making fun of us in some way. haha. However, people can also be a bit more manipulative and shady here than I had thought. It´s a very odd balance and hard to explain, so I´ll explain it with a perfect story example. At the bar last night, I bought a 1100 colon beer from our waiter, and I gave him a 2000 colon bill. However, he gave me 700 colones in change. Do the math. It´s not enough. Now in my usual fashion, I was ready to get pissed and threaten this guy to not do this (insert swear word here) again. However, Nestor was with me (who knows these Ticos well), and right after he saw me scream the waiters name in anger, he said no no Matt, smile when he comes over. I knew Nestor knew what he was talking about so I did. I was very polite and almost joking with this (insert swear word). He very politely apologized and immediately went to correct my change. No problem. I know he knew exactly what he was doing... it was intentional. However, he was very polite when I caught him and I figured maybe I shouldn´t be so quick to judge people who take advantage of stupid tourists just like I probably would if in his position in the U.S. All right I actually wouldn´t because I´m no hypocrite, but needless to say I bought the rest of my drinks directly from the bar that night. Screw Rafael the waiter. Thank you that is all.

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