Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The last few weekends have been spent going on beach trips to the Pacific and Caribbean. Here are some stories and photos from those trips!
Friday, April 8
We all met at the central park in San Rafael at 6:00 am on Friday morning and loaded into the large van. We all piled into the van, only to find that we were one seat short. Perfect. We were on the road by 6:45. We made a pit stop at a grocery store called Maxi Bodega. We all piled into the store, and were stared at by all of the workers. I don’t blame them; we are quite the group, especially after a long early morning bus ride. We loaded back onto the bus and headed to our first official destination, which was a banana plantation. The plantation is located right across the street from a large playground. As we got off the bus, there was a plane overhead spraying pesticides on the plants. It stopped spraying as it flew over the parking lot we were standing in, but I worried about the health of the children who play in the playground right across the street. We were given a tour of the plantation, and walked through the banana orchard. The boss at the plantation told us about the plants and how the fruit is cultivated. The bananas are sold to companies like Dole, and all of them are shipped to the United States.
The bananas are put in the blue bags for protection while they grow
Harvesting bananas is a lot more work than I imagined. The banana stalk is covered in a blue bag to keep bugs and birds away from the fruit. They grow for several months. When they are harvested, special pads are placed between each row of the fruit so the bananas don’t bump into one another. The fruit is then chopped from the tree, carried to a pulley system, and hung from the system so it can be pushed into the boxing center. Each banana stalk weighs around 50 pounds. The bananas are then put through a series of baths and preservatives to keep them from ripening too quickly. The workers in the banana plantation receive around $15 per day for all of their work. Seeing all of the chemicals and such that goes into the fruit before and after it is harvested made me a little queasy. And why are the farmers only paid $15 a day?
After we left the banana plantation, we headed to our hostel in Punta Uva. It was pouring rain when we arrived, not surprising since it’s the rainy season on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica right now. The hostel was called Lodge Arrecife, and it was located literally right on the beach.
A little blurry, but this is where we stayed
Upon our arrival we all promptly changed into our swimsuits and ran into the Caribbean Sea. The water was incredible! It was a deep shade of blue green, and I was amazed that I could clearly see my feet standing on the ocean floor below me while I was in water well over 5 feet deep. We swam in the water until the sun set, then dried off for dinner. I ordered sea bass for dinner, and it was probably the best fish I have ever had. It was literally fished from the ocean that evening. You can’t get a fish fresher than that! The fish was served to me in its entirety, and Bean told me that I had to eat the eye. So we each took an eye, toasted to the life of the fish, and ate them. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve eaten, and I was surprised that it didn’t have much of a taste at all. After dinner we all hung out in the dinner area for awhile. I talked to the owner of the hostel. His name is Stan, and he is from somewhere in Europe. He lived in Canada for 12 years and then moved to Costa Rica and started the hostel.
My dinner!
Saturday, April 9
We woke up early the next morning to watch the sun rise over the ocean and ate breakfast on the balcony of Lara, Bean and Emily’s room. They made us gallo pinto (beans and rice) and scrambled eggs.
On the beach at sunrise with Alexandria
Aaron, Alexandria, me and Anne
Sunrise on the Caribbean
We all walked to the bus stop shortly after breakfast, and waited for the bus in the rain. Bertie, our biology professor, showed us some interesting plants by the bus stop. When you touch their leaves, they fold up and lay down, it was so cool! We boarded the bus and took a short drive to Manzanillo, a small ocean town of about 500 people. From Manzanillo, we headed to a small off the charts farm called Punta Mona. Here’s the catch. There aren’t any roads that lead to Punta Mona. The only way to get there is to hike.
Our guide’s name was Omar. On the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, the majority of the people are Afro-Caribbean. Omar spoke English very well, and had so much knowledge of the region; it was great to hear him explain every plant we passed on our journey to Punta Mona. We walked around Manzanillo for nearly an hour going through people’s yards while Omar went to random bushes and picked leaves for us to eat. We smelled flowers that are used to make expensive perfumes, lemon grass, citronella, and others. At various times he would grab a leaf off of a bush and pass it around our group for each person to taste. Some of the leaves we tried were oregano, cinnamon, and others. Once we left Manzinallo and began our hike, Omar pointed out huge wasp nests, plants of every shape and size, and insects. My favorite was the Golden Orb spider. They are named after the golden color of the web they spin, and they were everywhere. At one point Omar stopped next to a web, grabbed a spider, and asked who wanted to hold it. I figured that it wouldn’t bite since Omar was so confident in just picking it up right off the web, so I volunteered. It was so awesome! The spider continued to spin its web as it crawled over my hands, and I was surprised at how strong the web was. Nearly everyone in our group held the spider, and we continued on. Along our walk, we heard howler monkeys up in the trees, and could see them when we reached a large clearing.
This flower smelled exactly like perfume
Golden Orb spider. Don't worry, they aren't poisonous and can't bite
Howler monkeys in the trees overhead while we hiked
A Golden Orb spider in its web
A walking palm. It literally "walks" to areas with more sunlight
We took a break at a beach, and Bucky, Danica, Bree, Ray and me took a short hike up a rock to overlook the sea
The view
Omar cut open a coconut with a machete and sliced it for us to eat
The stinky noni fruit
The hike was pretty intense in some places, and since it was the rainy season on the Caribbean side, it was very muddy, too. We were hiking up and down hills of mud for the majority of the hike, and yes, I fell and got mud aaallll over myself. It was more like very moist clay, so it was nearly impossible to get it off of me. Lovely. Omar continued to point out random things alone our hike. He picked up a round fruit called a noni fruit that looked like a big ball of cheese and told us to stick our fingers inside. Then he told us to smell our fingers. It was one of the most rancid smells I’ve ever smelled, seriously, so nasty. Later on in the hike, we came upon a bush of small red berries. Omar told all of us to pick one, and to try it. Everyone took a small bite, but I made the mistake of taking a small bite and letting the juice drip on my lips. What we all thought was a berry turned out to be one of the hottest peppers I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. That thing burned my mouth and lips SO bad! I was not a fan. Our hike into Punta Mona lasted about four hours, and when we arrived, the first group of students was already there eating lunch. The food was incredible. We ate an organic lunch of pita, hummus, falafel, durian, and cheese.
Lunch
Let me stop for a second and tell you a little bit about Punta Mona. Punta Mona was started several years ago by a man named Stephen. It is a completely off the charts place, like I said, and all of the food eaten at Punta Mona is grown on the property. All of the buildings on the property are made from old trees that have fallen down. There are over 7,000 different species of plants on the property, and Stephen and His wife Sarah know the name and function of each one. Several of us were bitten by mosquitoes while at Punta Mona, and Sarah went out into the garden and came back with some leaves. She told us to break them open and to rub them on the bites, which we did, and the itching went away immediately. It was so cool. Most of the energy used at Punta Mona is solar energy. All of the drinking water and shower water is water collected from rainfall. The toilets are composting toilets. All of the human waste is collected in a bin below the bathroom facility. After someone uses the restroom, they have to put one or two scoops of sawdust down into the toilet. The waste sits for four months, and after that time it turns into perfectly good fertilizer. Ah the circle of life.
The composting bathroom at Punta Mona
After lunch, Stephen gave us a tour of the farm and told us about several of the plants. At one point, he showed us a plant and told us to take a leaf off from it and eat it. The leaf was fairly bitter. Then he told us to try a fruit from another tree, which was bitter as well. Then we came upon a tree with red berries and he told us to each take one and eat it. Then we returned to the previous two plants, and Stephen told us to eat a leaf and a fruit. The leaf and fruit were sweet! Stephen called the red berries we ate “Miracle Fruit.” It makes things taste sweet, and everything we ate for the next hour or so had a very sweet flavor, it was the strangest thing. Stephen had such a passion for everything in his gardens, I loved hearing him talk about each individual plant.
That night, we roasted fresh cacao beans and made chocolate. We had to roast the beans, peel off their shells, crush them, mix them with fresh sugar cane and coconut, and then crush them again. Then we made small balls of the cacao and rolled them in fresh coconut. They were SO good, oh man. I could have eaten those things all night, but it was literally pure cacao, which has a ridiculous amount of caffeine. I started to feel a little buzz after eating just two of them and decided to stop.
Roasting the cacao beans
Fresh coconut
Cacao hands
The finished product to the left
All of us working in the kitchen
That night we went on a beach walk to see sea turtles come to the beach to lay eggs. We all took off with our muddy hiking boots and head lamps and stomped through the forest. Our guides were walking SO fast, so it was more like a brisk walk/jog. On the beach we weren’t allowed to have our headlamps on, so we had to stay close to the person in front of us as we jogged in the pitch black. It was a little freaky not being able to see anything, but thankfully no one fell or got hurt. We reached our spot on the beach to watch the turtles after about 45 minutes of jogging, and sat down in the damp sand and waited. And waited. And waited. And then we waited some more, and then ran to another part of the beach. Our guide told us that we were near the Panama border. I figured in the last two days, we had hiked a total of about 15 kilometers in the last two days. My poor legs were so tired. We sat down again on the beach in the darkness and waited some more, and I fell asleep, oops. We never ended up seeing any turtles which was disappointing, so we ran back to Punta Mona in the dark and went to bed.
Sunday, April 10
The next day, we woke up fairly early, ate breakfast and had another tour of the Punta Mona property. It’s about 80 acres of lush vegetation, and I think I could be there for a year and still not be there long enough to explore everything. The fact that Stephen and Sarah know all about each plant and where they are located still blows my mind.
Punta Mona
Flowers and bugs
Punta Mona is so green!
Listening to Stephen talk to us about Punta Mona
The humidity caused my camera to fog
The beach at Punta Mona
We packed up all of our belongings and got ready to hike back through the jungle to Manzanillo. There was a miscommunication, however, and two boats were sent instead of one to carry Jenni and her kids Justin and Ravi and husband Adam back to Manzanillo. So we all took boats back to Manzanillo. We piled in, and pushed off the shore of the Punta Mona beach, and waved goodbye as Stephen stood on the shore. Then the sky opened up and we were drenched with a mix of salt and rain water. It was absolutely wonderful! Then the clouds parted and the sun shined on us and the water, turning it to the most brilliant shade of blue green I have ever seen. We were literally Pirates of the Caribbean. It was so surreal. I mean really, I was on a speed boat in the Caribbean Sea with a group of some of the most incredible people I have ever met during a tropical rain storm, on our way to a town of 500 people, which is the largest town for miles, leaving from a place that one can only get to by hiking for four hours or by boat, where they grow their own food and use solar energy, and I was there for school. Who gets to do that? That probably made absolutely no sense, but I was just in total awe of my surroundings. The teal ocean water, the taste of salt on my lips, the smell of rain in the air, the ocean cut Caribbean coastline filled with lush green vegetation- if I could relive any moment of my trip so far, it would be this one. This is what I will think of when I remember Costa Rica. We arrived in Manzanillo and ate lunch at a local restaurant. Then we hit the road again and headed back to San Rafael.
Thursday, April 14
The next weekend we took a trip to the Pacific Ocean. We boarded the bus in San Rafael and headed West this time. Our first stop was Punta Morales, which is along the coast of the Nicoya Bay. Here the National University has its marine sciences campus. Shortly after our arrival we lathered on layer upon layer of sunscreen and went to the beach to hear Bertie talk about the mangrove plants that lined the coast. I’m not taking the biology class, so I joined Lara, Emily, Bean, Jenni, Adam, Ravi and Justin on the beach. It was very hot, but wonderful. We all decided to take a dip in the ocean. Bean and I were standing in the water talking with Lara and Emily when I felt a sharp stinging on my neck. Almost immediately after I clutched my throat and started saying, “ow, ow, ow,” Bean jumped and started it too. We went out of the water and realized that we had both been stung by a jellyfish, me on my neck and Bean on her back. It was not a good feeling, let me tell you. We took some antihistamines to keep the stings from swelling too much, and they totally knocked me out. I took a 6 hour nap until dinner. After dinner we listened to a speaker from the University. He told us about the bay and how the water has been affected over the years. It was very interesting. After the talk, we all went back to the beach to celebrate Danica’s birthday. Josh built a fire using Deet bug spray, a match and drift wood. Soooo sanitary and good for the environment. One problem, the tide was coming in and he built it really close to the shore line. So I built a fire pit a little ways away and we moved the fire to a more dry location. We made smores out of nutella, cookies and marshmallows. Yum! We were all exhausted after that, so we went to bed.
Campfire on the beach
Friday, April 15
The next morning we loaded up all of our things, piled back on the bus, and headed to a small fishing village called Tarcoles. On the way we passed over a bridge crossing over Rio Tarcoles. This bridge is nicknamed the Crocodile Bridge because of the crocodiles that live under it. The bus pulled over, and we all unloaded to look at the 30+ crocodiles. Some Ticos came over with raw chicken and began throwing it at the crocs, who went nuts over the meat. It was insane. We all loaded back on the bus and continued to Tarcoles.
Just a few of the crocodiles in the river
Rio Tarcoles
Here’s some background info on Tarcoles. Tarcoles is a small fishing community of about 2,000 people, depending on who you ask. A group from the community noticed that the waters were being over fished, so they started a fishing co-op to help preserve fishing as a livelihood for future generations. The people in the co-op do things like use a certain size net to allow small fish to escape and limit the number of fish they catch. In return, they sell their fish at a local market, have a special place to store their boat motors, and buy gas for a cheaper price.
We arrived at the main building of the co-op and sat down to a presentation about the community. A woman named Jeanette and her husband David gave the presentation. We were all sitting under shade, but it was SO. HOT. Later on we found out it was around 92 degrees in the shade, and the added humidity from the ocean didn’t help. We took a short break from our talk and were served fresh crevice, which was quite delicious. After another talk we were assigned to our host families for the night, and I was assigned to stay with Joanne with Jeanette and David! We gathered our things from the bus and walked around the block to their house for lunch. Joane and I spent some time talking with Jeanette about the co-op and life in Tarcoles. It was really interesting to hear her perspective. We met back as a group around 2:00 and received a behind-the-scenes tour of the co-op. Then we all went to a rocky area of the beach and went clamming. Jeanette’s mother, who is in her 70’s, does this every day for hours on end. I was sore after bending over for 20 minutes, I can’t imagine doing it all day. After about 45 minutes we had gathered enough clams for us all to have a sample. My friend Nick, who is a vegetarian, found clams and then hid them again because he felt guilty about digging them out of the sand to be eaten, what a guy haha.
Ceviche
We could hear the scarlet macaws squawking in the trees, and they were so beautiful!
Eels at the fish market
BIG fish!
Some of the hooks the fishermen use
Motor storage
Me and Ray on the beach looking for clams
Sunset on the beach
We returned to the co-op to boil the clams. I tasted the water that they were boiled in after they were done, and it was soo delicious, I can’t describe it any other way than as a mixture of warm salt water with a taste of seafood, so just trust me that it was good. The clams weren’t too bad, a little chewy, but they had good flavor. We all returned back to our host homes after our evening snack.
Boiling the clams
Yummm
Joanne and I watched some soccer and CSI on tv with Jeanette and David. Joanne was in our room getting ready for bed when we all heard her let out a huge scream. As it turns out, Joanne is deathly afraid of spiders, and there was a rather large one crawling up the wall of our bedroom. David went in and swatted it away, but that wasn’t enough for Joanne, she wanted that thing DEAD. So when she found it again, she asked if she could kill it, and then promptly smashed it with a shoe. I looked at David, and said, “New rule. Whoever smashes a spider in this house has to eat it.” He laughed and thought that was a great idea, Joanne didn’t.
Saturday, April 16
The next morning we lathered on layers of sunscreen and got ready to go fishing. I was so excited, I love fishing! Joanne and I went in a boat with David, Jeanette, Lindy, Bertie and Jim. What a crew. We pushed off into the ocean and boated out quite a ways, and David lowered a large net into the water. Then we continued to boat out a little further and dropped our lines into the ocean and waited. For the longest time I thought my hook was just bouncing along the bottom of the ocean, but when I reeled it in there was a fish on it! I decided to let it go, but unfortunately when we threw it back into the water it just layed there. And layed there. And layed there. Oops, sorry fishie. I’m guessing I made a pelican or something very happy later on. Not long after, I caught another one, and this time I kept it. After about an hour of fishing all of the fishing boats headed to a boat in only beach. It was so beautiful, and the water felt great after a hot morning on the boat. We stayed there for an hour or two, then got back in the boats to collect our nets. Our net had a small fish, a jumbo shrimp, and a sea bass. We put them in the cooler and headed to shore.
Getting the boat ready
My fish I caught
The beach we stopped at for a swim
Love at first sight
Then Joanne and I went back to David and Jeanette’s house to cook our fish for lunch. They tasted wonderful, fresh seafood is the best. We loaded up our things shortly after and said out goodbyes. Jeanette said goodbye to Joanne and Raquel, aka me. For some reason she thought my name was Raquel the entire weekend.. I’m not sure why. I felt too bad to correct her, so I just answered whenever she called my “name”.
Fish for lunch
Joanne and I with our mom, Jeanette
On our way home from Tarcoles, we passed another tourist bus filled with college student gringos, so we had fun waving at them through the windows. Anne had a pretty intense game of rock, paper, scissors going with one of the kids in the other bus, it was hilarious. Then we stopped at a convenience store on the side of the road to get some ice cream. For some reason there was a DJ playing very loud music in the parking lot. Why a DJ was set up in a convenience store parking lot is beyond me, so we all had a huge dance party while we ate our ice cream. We definitely almost caused a traffic accident as several cars slowed down as they drove by to watch. We must have been quite a spectacle, a group of 25 gringos dancing around on the side of the road in a parking lot eating ice cream. One guy even pulled his car over and took a video of us. We’re probably going to be famous on YouTube now or something. I got home and passed out for the night, I was soo tired.
Sunday, April 15
The next day was Sunday, so I went to church that morning and spent the rest of the day napping and watching movies on TV. That evening I met up with Anne and Amelia to go to, you guessed it, another beach! We took the 7:30PM bus out of San Jose to Manuel Antonio, a place that a lot of people told us we needed to go to while we were in Costa Rica. We decided to avoid the whole hotel thing and stayed at a hostel. Good decision. It was only $10 a night per person! That included the use of a kitchen, pool, wifi internet, hot water, towels, breakfast, and a bed. Perfect. The bus ride took about 3 hours, so we went to bed when we arrived.
Monday, April 16
We woke up the next morning and ate breakfast, then headed to the beach. A man staying at our hostel told us it was possible to walk to the beach, so we figured we would try it. Bad idea. It was sooo hot outside, and the walk was a lot longer than we expected. But it was all worth it once we climbed out of the jungle and walked out onto the sandy beach. We hiked across some rocks and found ourselves a private cove, it was lovely. There were hermit crabs everywhere; they were so fun to play with. Bright red crabs darted around the sand too, when they gained up enough courage to crawl out of their holes. The water was so refreshing, and the waves were a lot of fun to crash around in.
We finally made it!
Private beach!
These guys were everywhere
When the tide started to rise, we headed back across the rocks to the main beach. The tide completely rose around 2:00, and when I say completely rose, I mean it. There was literally no beach left, the ocean came right up to the road. We walked around some of the shops, but everything was way too expensive for my taste. We stumbled upon a gelato shop that was absolutely delicious. We each bought a cone of gelato made from real fruit and sat inside the shop and enjoyed it. Once the tide went back out we went back to the beach again for awhile, then returned back to our hostel to swim in the pool. The sun was beginning to set, and right across the street from our hostel was a breathtaking view of the ocean as the sun was setting over it. We made spaghetti with tomato sauce, peas and garlic bread for dinner. It actually turned out pretty good.
Sunset over the ocean across the street from our hostel
Dinner!
After dinner we decided it was bed time.
Tuesday, April 17
Tuesday morning we woke up around 6:30 and headed straight to Manuel Antonio National Park. The park costs $10 to enter for the day, and it was so worth it. To get to the beaches, you first have to hike through some jungle. You can pay extra to have a guide with a special telescope take you through and explain some plants and point out animals, but Anne, Amelia and I decided to play the “I’m-a-poor-college-student” card and stop a few feet behind groups every so often and listen in, or look in the same general direction they were looking in. It was great! And we saved money. We saw all kinds of animals walking into the park. Sloths, frogs, butterflies, birds- the wildlife in Costa Rica is beautiful. Instead of going to the beach right away, we decided to go on some hikes before it got too hot. We took one to a high point that overlooked a peninsula, and it was a beautiful hike. We saw more animals, like tapirs, crabs, lizards, iguanas, and more butterflies. The view from the top was incredible, too.
Our hike to the viewpoint
What a view!
We hiked back down and took another trail to a beach where we stayed for awhile, but decided to leave because there were too many rocks which made it hard to go into the ocean. We ended up at one of the main beaches in the park, but it was really crowded so we decided to try another one. On our way to the next beach, we ran into a hoard of thieving monkeys. One of them swooped down out of the tree and stole a bunch of bananas from someone on the beach, and another took a bag of chips. They were so cute though! And smart little guys.. I could have watched them forever.
One of the many monkeys
The last beach we went to was lovely, the water was cool and refreshing, and the waves came in rolls and we floated right over them.
The last beach we stopped at for the day
A little friend who came to visit
We headed back to the main strip in Manuel Antonio around 2:00 and went back to our favorite gelato place to get a refreshing treat. Then we headed back to the hostel to rinse off in the shower and change into some dry clothes before our trip back to San Rafael. We had time to spare, so we decided to go to the neighboring town of Quepos to do some exploring. Amelia was going to be in a wedding in the States the following weekend and needed to buy a dress, so we went around to a few different dress shops and helped her pick one out. While she was trying on dresses Anne and I were speaking with the shop owner. She asked us if we were German, and we said, “No, we’re from the States.” She looked at us, obviously surprised and said, “But, you speak Spanish so well..” We thought that was funny, I guess she had some bad experiences with people from the US speaking Spanish poorly, who knows. Amelia chose a dress, and we headed to the bus station in Quepos to catch our bus to San Jose.
Best. Gelato. Ever.
A sloth we saw across the street from our hostel
Our bus was supposed to come at 5:15, so we were at the station at 5:00 to be sure that we would make it. 5:00 came and went, so did 5:05, 5:10, 5:15, and 5:20. No bus. We decided to ask one of the other bus drivers what was going on. Amelia returned from her talk with the driver looking frustrated. Apparently, our bus didn’t stop IN the station, it stopped across the street on the sidewalk. How in the world were we supposed to know that?! So we missed the bus. Perfect. The driver told us our only option to get to San Jose that day was to take the 5:30 bus to Puntarenas, and then take a bus from Puntarenas to San Jose. Fine. Whatever. Just as long as we got back somehow. So we got on the bus to Puntarenas, paid the bus fee, which was only around $4. Thank goodness we missed a bus and not a plane.. or else we would be in a lot of debt. The bus to Puntarenas took a little over 3 hours. The bus from Puntarenas left for San Jose at 9, and we made it with about 5 minutes to spare, phew! We boarded that bus, paid another bus fee, again another $4 or so, and headed to San Jose. Finally. We arrived in San Jose a little after midnight, exhausted. What should have been a 3 hour bus ride back turned into a 6 hour ride. Anne’s elbow woke me up, and when I looked around the bus was nearly empty. I must have been in a super deep sleep, good grief. Unfortunately, all of the busses back to San Rafael stopped running at 11:00, so we had to take a taxi back, which ended up costing about $10 a person rather than a bus fare of about $1 a person. Awesome. All of the taxi drivers know when the busses stop running, so when a big bus from out of town comes in, they all crowd around the door of the bus as soon as it stops, shouting, “TAXI! TAXI! TAXI!” It’s impossible to get off without walking through them. I was still half asleep, so Anne shouted, “SI! A San Rafael!” The first taxi driver to make eye contact with the passenger is the winner, so it seems, so we followed one to his taxi and put our things in the trunk and off we went. The ride from San Jose to San Rafael is around 20 minutes, but one of the main roads was closed so we had to take an alternate route. This provided ample time for us to have a good conversation with our driver. He told us about all of the neighborhoods we drove through, which ones were dangerous, which ones he wanted to live in, and so on. It was actually a very enjoyable ride. I got home a little after 1:15AM, took a shower and went to bed, completely exhausted. It was definitely a day filled with adventure to say the least.
