Two weeks down, three to go

So we're two weeks into our program in Costa Rica, with three to go (I know I told everyone it was a six-week trip, but apparently my days of acing calculus and memorizing calendars are behind me, and I can no longer count to ten). The TESOL program folks left this Saturday morning, which included the only two people outside my program who have made any effort to talk to me so far this summer -- there's an odd clique-ishness among the English-speaking staff, the naturalists & the overall program staff and whomever else, and other than my specific program's director, who is fabulous (and a sci-fi-loving 80s pop culture fiend), the Internet has provided pretty much all of my adult companionships and conversations since getting here. It'll be interesting to see who shows up for our little Saturday night fiesta and/or our Sunday movie night (Goodbye Lenin and Km. 0 (Kilometer Zero) are the program.

We leave next Friday for Puerto Viejo, on the Caribbean coast, close to the Panamanian border. That trip is mostly for relaxation and to see this small, funky town and savor its reportedly pristine beaches, in the heart of the country's Afro-Caribbean community. Interestingly, all the ticos we've met have warned us that it's a little bit dangerous there, but the other University folks who have traveled there have had a blast and had no comment about safety. Whether those reports of danger are related to the fact that I have not seen one person of predominately African descent in Costa Rica so far (except for those on our University's programs), I can only speculate. Besides the beaches, our Puerto Viejo itinerary includes a tour of an organic chocolate factory and a trip to Punta Mona -- Monkey Point -- which is reportedly somewhere beautiful but I don't know much about it). A couple of us may go rafting again as well on our free day.

Saturday morning's excursion was lower key than ziplining or rafting the Rio Pacaure, but it was still fun -- we walked over to La Finca Bella, a 15-year-old cooperative, organic farming community here in San Luis, where one of our students is homestaying. Her family runs a trapiche, growing raw sugar cane and processing it into liquid form. We all got to walk through the stands of sugar and then work the machine, and enjoy both chewing on raw sugar and drinking a little bit of the raw sugar cane juice. The students clearly came away impressed and having had a better time than they had expected. (Well, except for the four students who struck out on their own this weekend for a trip to a town on the Pacific Coast, on a trip they originally tried to keep secret -- except for desperately needing help from the Research Station staff to actually plan how to get there, where they'd stay, and so on. ¡Ay, niños! Repeat after me: children are our future...)

The students are -- mostly -- well accommodated to their homestay families, calling them "madre" and "padre" and "hermano" and "tio" and so on, and getting used to not having the level of creature comforts they have in the States (A couple like to shower at the main campus site, or have arranged slumber parties with their friends who are staying with families in nicer houses). It's especially interesting to watch these 19- and 20-year olds interact with local residents their age who already have a couple kids and are working away, and are not part of the long, drawn out transition to adulthood that U.S. undergraduate life creates.

As promised, it is the rainy season, and we oscillate between stunning blue skies and downpours with some regularity. The humidity isn't too bad -- I'm certainly enjoying a far milder summer than I had before I left Athens or that I'll return to to finish packing. I am most definitely ready for some different cuisine (I see that Puerto Viejo has Thai food... yay!) -- the cafeteria workers does heroic labor in feeding all the visitors three times a day, seven days a week, though they tend to prefer beef and pork to chicken, to my exasperation, and three more weeks of rice and beans is not the end of the world. They do provide fresh fruit every morning -- pineapple, watermelon (with more flavor than usually found in the US), papaya, sometimes bananas or plantains. (A South Beach-friendly country this is NOT -- Carbo Rica is more like it. Once I'm settled in Boston, I'll get back on the regimen). Dessert, served at every meal, brings out the creativity of the kitchen staff, and we've had everything from sweet potato pie with an egg-white topping to homemade ice cream and fudge to a host of other sweets. They are served in far smaller portions than North Americans are used to, and there's a lot to be said for just having a small taste of those delicious desserts than the huge slabs of cake or mongo portions of ice cream we all know and often crave. Though tonight's banana bread might just require a trip back to the kitchen...

Other than a cloth bookmark embroidered with a quetzal (the national bird of Costa Rica, which I have yet to see, but hope to when hiking in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve at some point soon) made by the mother at the farm this morning, I have not bought any souvenirs yet. I think a trip into Santa Elena for a small bit of shopping is in the works for Monday, and at least, I want to pick up a Costa Rican national soccer team jersey. Am also debating what would make good gifts for friends (requests are especially welcome from any very close friends who happen to be getting married while I'm in Costa Rica...); other than a trip to the local doctor to be confirmed as having bronchitis and the resulting prescription drugs, I've spent amazingly little money so far (of course, my food is paid for and I'm at a research station 8km from town).

The bronchitis is slowly improving -- Friday's 1.5km hike on El Camino Real wasn't too rough (mud was a bigger issue than my chest congestion), and Saturday morning's walk uphill to La Finca Bella was rougher, but the healthy and thin 20-year-olds were huffing and puffing too, so I don't feel too bad. As far as going to the doctor, he spoke reasonable English, which was helpful, though he was also, well, a doctor with pretensions of grand importance -- apparently, one can get those either from Duke University's School of Medicine or El Colegio de Médicos y Cirujanos de Costa Rica. Another instructor had a far worse time meeting with him; I just got attitude, a reminder that I need to lose weight, and what's apparently the Costa Rican medical cure-all: a shot in el culo. Thankfully, my program's health insurance will cover all my prescription drugs in full, as the $53 doctor's visit took care of the deductible in full.

Well, that's it for this Saturday afternoon update - I'll post this when the Internet tubes are all cleared up, and wish everyone a great weekend.

This is what it sounds like / when the bears fly*

One of the most renowned highlights of Costa Rica's ecotourism industry are the "ziplines," the networks of cables, pulleys, harnesses, and platforms that allow you to "fly" (that is, "zip") though the treetops, offering a profoundly unique perspective from which to view the forests. Walking on the wood bridges -- or better yet, hiking on the ground -- is better far better for trying to spot the birds, the monkeys, or the rest of the amazingly diverse fauna of this country (Costa Rica has more bird species than the US and Canada combined, and almost six times the number of species of animals per 10,000 sq km than the US... thank you, Lonely Planet Costa Rica). Nonetheless, the ziplines are a breathtaking experience, speeding through the treetops at (I'm guessing here) somewhere between 15 to 30 mph, and I did see one fleeting flash of yellow as I sped past -- thank the heavens, not into -- a butterfly at those speeds.

On Sunday, we spent three hours ziplining at the Selvatura park, on the edge of the Monteverde National Cloud Forest Reserve. Selvatura features 15 cables, which ranged from 250 feet long to over 1000 feet long, plus a "Tarzan" swing two-thirds of the way through the park. At the top of the first platform, my deep and abiding fear of heights kicked in, but, although I apparently lost all color in my face, I refused to give in to mounting sheer panic, and (after waiting for one or two other people to go), I got strapped in and shoved off. I was substantially calmer even a third of the way into that first cable ride, although I over-braked & stopped about 25 feet from the platform; one of our groups' guides came out & easily pulled me in. After riding the second cable, they added a chest harness, since, well, I'm not the most petite zipliner, and from there, my form improved dramatically, and I was able to enjoy rushing through the forest canopy far more. (On the first really long cable, the guide volunteered to "taxi" me, basically wrapping his legs around me & doing all the work while I literally just laid back and enjoyed the ride. I think he was concerned that I'd get stuck again, but after that, the guides realized I could take care of myself, and I zipped along on my own).

The "Tarzan" swing scared everyone the most (virtually everyone was somewhat terrified all along the way, while trying to act cool all the while, until "Tarzan" came along, & their cover broke). Basically, you're strapped in, and pushed off the hill to swing back & forth. Virtually everyone screamed or grunted (I'm a grunter, for the record), and with the very tight harnesses and the 20 foot drop, the undergrad guys discovered why they should have worn briefs, not boxers (there were several curses about so much for ever having children). Not surprisingly, my mass generated greater acceleration, & I swung back & forth a few extra times -- one of the pictures shows the guides trying to catch me with the mongo rubber band, after attempts to grab me by the feet failed -- one shoe flew off, then the other, as I kept on swinging back & forth.

By the last couple of cables, it began to rain, and on the last, long cable over a sweeping rainforest valley, the rain started coming down hard, battering my face on top of the air rushing past as I rode along. Words barely do justice to the sensory experience.

In other news, the entomologists arrived on Sunday, and with their pith helmets and their little tubes to trap bugs and with their disconcerting excitement about catching beetles and praying mantises and what not, I feel like I've walked into a "Far Side" cartoon just waiting to happen. Additionally, on Monday evening, one of the naturalists caught a living version of the Extremely Large Frog^TM (we'll just call him Jeremiah... he was a friend of mine) whose unfortunately compressed counterpart I stepped into the other night. Jeremiah's body was bigger than my hand, and with his width, he looked like a small, ribbitting, slimy rugby ball, with legs (that's it, his name is Jeremiah Gilbert... that'd be an in-joke for the ruggers...). Apparently, Jeremiah Gilbert and his kin secrete some toxin, but the naturalist couldn't get J.G. to squirt on demand. I certainly prefer the frogs decompressed, with their organs appropriately contained, that's for sure.

*What, you expected "If a bear zips in the woods..."?


The Selvatura Park


Walking towards the ziplines


I'm riding WHAT into WHERE?


getting strapped in


Pushing off


Getting going, #1


Getting going #2


One of the guides


A student on the "Tarzan" jump


Me Tarzan, You Bear


This is what it looks like / when the bears fly


Bear catching, a new Olympic sport?

OK, that was gross

Saturday night's theme appears to be "ewwww...":

1. I discovered a very large moth roasting, indeed smoking, in one of the light fixtures in the faculty house.

2. Stepping in a huge pile of freshly squashed frog (by a car or the like, not by me) -- not really the highlight of the trip.

Just be glad there are no pictures tonight. Really, trust me on this...

Snapshots from San Luis

Walking towards the main site



The famed morpho butterfly of Costa Rica



A hummingbird in a bush near our cabin



Children from the local village dancing at the main building



Sunset over the San Luis Research Station

settling in at San Luis

Well, I said I was looking for a furry roommate...



In addition to my first encounter with a tarantula, on Monday, I watched a gecko dine on various small insects, saw a cockroach almost as long as my hand, and ran into a praying mantis that I'm pretty sure did some stunt doubling work as a Cardassian warship once upon a time. There's plenty more mundane fauna all around here in San Luis**, from the horses at the stable just down the road to plenty of cows and dogs, and the rather large iguana hanging out at the tourist stop along the Pan-American Highway also deserves a special mention. This morning, a rather spectacular purplish-blue hummingbird was flitting around a bush on my way back to the faculty cabin.

We arrived here yesterday at the San Luis Research Station in time for lunch, after a 4 1/2 hour drive up from San José -- mostly on the one-lane Pan-American Highway that is the backbone of transportation through Latin America, then turning off for the last 30km or so on unpaved roads through the Tilarán mountains, just on the Pacific side of the continental divide. The stunning views of the lush mountainside, with the clouds sometimes below the peaks, and the occasional glimpse of the Gulf of Nicoya, left the grime and congestion of the capital far, far behind. (As one student gasped, "Wow! It looks just like the brochure!")

Classes start later today, so yesterday, we got to settle in and get our first tour of the campus, which we are sharing at the moment with some TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language) students from our University, biology programs from Hendrix College, and miscellaneous other biological researchers, plus the dedicated support staff. Our students live on campus through Saturday, at which point they'll meet their homestay families, with whom they'll live for most of the rest of the program. The faculty, on the other hand, are sharing a rather nice cabin - the other two professors on our program are sharing the very large bedroom, while I have the small one to myself.


* since I wrote this, the cleaning staff has come to our cabin, & mi nuevo amigo, la tarantula, has gone to a better place.
** To clarify my earlier posts: we are actually in San Luis, a village of 380 people, sitting about 6-8 kilometers away from each of Santa Elena and Monteverde, neither of which is especially large but both of which at least make it onto maps of Costa Rica.

going down to the river

Having spent my first in-country post reflecting upon the neoliberal penetration of Costa Rica and the disquieting way that serving the consumer desires of North American and European tourists, I have to note that we spent Sunday in full tourist mode - and I had one of the most amazing days of my life doing so.

We boarded our bus by 6:30am and set off from San José. We passed briefly through the colonial capital of Cartago, passing the ruins of a colonial church destroyed several times by earthquakes, and by the spectacular Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, the nation's holiest shrine. The church sits in the shadow of the Volcán Irazú, one of Costa Rica's numerous active volcanoes. From there, we wound our way northwards into the Talamanca mountains, passing the Volcán Turrialba, which had been thought to be extinct until just a few years ago. Surprise...

We stopped for breakfast at a restaurant high up in the Talamancas, enjoying our first taste of gallo pinto, the spiced rice and beans dish that is a national tradition for every morning, as well as some of the local pineapple from what has recently become the world's #1 exporter of the tropical fruit. From there, we headed northwards into Limón province, stopping on the side of the road to take photographs of a sloth hanging in the trees that our driver had noticed. Eventually, we began a slight descent, to head off on the real purpose of the day's trip: whitewater rafting on the Rio Pacuare.

Words can barely capture how spectacular the Pacuare is (hopefully, between my disposable camera and the CD we all pitched in for, I'll eventually have photos worth posting). We had three rafts (three out of the eleven organized by our tour group), and spent an amazing day going nearly 20 miles downstream through 52 rapids, including numerous class III rapids and perhaps five class IV rapids. Our guide, though not someone I meshed with personally, knew the river remarkably well, & steered us along, not only without losing a single person into the river (unless you count the student who was twice pulled into the river by another guide who clearly was smitten with her), but spun us around in such ways that we suddenly found ourselves facing - or in the spray of - some of the breathtaking waterfalls that cascade into the Pacaure. At times, the cliffs made you feel like you were in a tropical version of Lord of the Rings, local wildlife included toucans and vultures. At one point, right after lunch (more local pineapple and watermelons, plus wraps with ingredients all prepared by our guides), we passed an indigenous village - of the Awari, if Lonely Planet can be trusted - and our guide steered us over to drop off the leftover lunchmeats for the Awari kids.

Late in the trip, we passed through the pass at Dos Montañas, a narrow gorge with a wooden footbridge half-crumbled maybe 40 feet above us (one student speculated whether one of the Indiana Jones scenes had been filmed there). This was perhaps the most scenic spot of that 20-mile stretch of the Pacaure, and the students were horrified and stunned to discover that the Costa Rican Electricity Institute has been trying to dam the Pacaure right at that spot for some years now, a move that would flood the river basin and the indigenous villages, and destroy one of the world's greatest places for rafting. For the time being, local protests plus a glut of energy from other sources have stalled the project for the foreseeable future, but our river guide warned us we couldn't take the river's future for granted. It is fascinating to watch - not surprising, but fascinating to watch this in action - how locals can effectively leverage appeals to tourists on their behalf, as they can now argue more and more convincingly that the importance of the Pacaure to the ecotourist economy makes saving the river and dropping the dam plans once and for all is economically logical. This, of course, is also a lovely experiential introduction to my class.

We put in right past an old rusted bridge where local kids were jumping off from 20, 30, 50 feet and more up into the Pacaure. After drying off & changing, & buying the requisite souvenirs, we got back in the bus, and headed back to San José, this time for a longer time in the Caribbean lowlands of Limón, before climbing into the Braulio Carrillo National Park (which looked more like the Pacific Northwest than the tropical lowlands just a few kilometers back), crossed into Heredia province before re-entering the capital, right as we passed the Saprissa soccer stadium, home to both the most famous club in Costa Rica (for which the stadium is named) and to the national team. By day's end, we were utterly exhausted and thoroughly satisfied.

¡Bienvenidos a McWorld!

On the list of topics for a possible first blog entry about arriving in Costa Rica, Schlotsky's Deli did not make the Top 10. Yet as we deplaned at Juan Santamaría Airport, the first thing we ran into was a Schlotzky's Deli cart, replete not only with sandwiches but a faux-mural of a Latin American man putting bread into a large brick oven, as if Diego Rivera had sold out and been hired to graphically brand the competitor to Subway and Quizno. Of course, we saw perhaps three Subways and one Quizno on the drive from the airport to La Amistad, our b&b near downtown San José. Heck, we hadn't made as far as customs control before we had passed two Burger Kings and a Papa John's. Once on the road, we discovered that Denny's appear as commonplace in San José as Waffle Houses are in Georgia, and if you're wondering where all the KFCs went, apparently, the colonel's beloved franchise now stands for Kosta Rican Fried Chicken.

Flight 245 from Atlanta to San José foreshadowed our arrival in this local outpost of McWorld, filled as it was with a very large Methodist mission group from Radford, Virginia; students and teachers from a Friends middle school in Baltimore; and, well, us. Who was missing from our flight? By and large, los ticos -- that is, what Costa Ricans call themselves -- appeared few and far between, and the few ticos arriving at Juan Santamaría sped past the chain restaurants and through the one line for costariqueños at custom, while we waited in a far, far longer line to go through any of the four checkpoints for visitors. Clearly, for los gringos, it will take a lot of effort to see Costa Rica above and beyond the tourist economy -- which, after all, has supplanted the historic coffee and banana economies as the key to the nation's prosperity.

And we're off...

I'm sitting in the lobby of the Marriott-Atlanta Airport, quickly checking email and logging in before the big adventure begins tomorrow. I got everything packed, cleaned at home, & everything's ready for my six-week sojourn. We'll be at the airport tomorrow at 7am, meeting the students & taking off for San José at 10am (I did get my plane ticket re-booked correctly on Tuesday, thankfully, so there's no extra adventures of me having to cross over most of Costa Rica's territory to meet everyone).

Don't have a lot else to add - this has been in the works for the better part of a year now, and has been almost all logistics up until now... so now it's finally feeling real, leaving for the cloud forests, & getting ready to co-lead 15 students for six weeks is finally here, and all that. I'll report when I have internet access, with stories and observations aplenty, no doubt.

geographical context

For those of you not familiar with the geography of Costa Rica, let me note a few things:



* Monteverde is the home of the San Luis Resesarch Station, where I'll be for most of the next six weeks.
* San José is the capital, where I'm supposed to be flying into on Saturday.
* Liberia, in the northwest, is where I'm booked to fly into on Saturday, a travel agent mistake I discovered this morning, and am working to rectify.
* The Rio Pacuare, home of some of the most dramatic whitewater rafting in the world, is where I'm supposed to be on Sunday if I do get to fly into San José instead of Liberia. The Rio Pacaure is to the east-southeast of San José, near Cartego.
* Puerto Viejo, to the south of Puerto Limón on the Caribbean coast, is not on this map, but is where we'll be spending about four days, after the July 4th holiday. Puerto Viejo is the heart of Costa Rica's Afro-Caribbean community & culture.
* Quepos (& nearby Manuel Antonio & Jaco) are some of the most popular Pacific Coast resorts, especially for gay tourists with their gay dollars & euros. I won't be making it down there on this trip.
* The Arenal volcano, near Monteverde, is where we will finish our trip before flying out of San José on July 22.

Georgia Magazine article

Somehow, the original link I posted to the Georgia Magazine article on the UGA Costa Rica program seems to have disappeared in one of the edits. So here it is directly:

http://www.uga.edu/gm/artman/publish/0706costarica.html

¡Bear Left in Costa Rica!

Georgia Magazine (June 2007)
Originally uploaded by BearLeft

Six days from today, I will be leaving Athens, Georgia for six weeks in Costa Rica, where I'll be teaching at the University of Georgia's campus in San Luis, on the edge of the Monteverde Cloud Forest. I'll be one of three professors on the Spanish Language, History, and Culture Program, and I'll be teaching a new course, Beyond Banana Republics: Rethinking the Americas -- that is, a survey of political, cultural, and social relations between the United States and Latin America. We'll have 15 students, roughly, who'll each be taking an upper-level Spanish language course and either my history course or a literature class.

I'm launching this blog to keep family, friends, and other interested readers up to date on this great adventure. 17 years ago, I began keeping a paper journal when I was a summer study abroad student in Leningrad, in what was still the Soviet Union, and I remember quite well how that summer was critical for both my personal and intellectual growth. Now, as a professor, I'm hoping that this opportunity allows me to help undergraduates grow in similar fashions, and marks the beginning of my longer-term involvement in international study abroad programs.

To introduce the program, I'm blogging the June 2007 Georgia Magazine's cover story on UGA Costa Rica - it's a pretty good summary, even if it skips the somewhat shady origins of how the University purchased this 160 acre site, and it doesn't feature our specific progam.


Disclaimers
The views and opinions expressed in any of these posts here are solely those of the author, and should not be taken as those of the University of Georgia (including the Department of History, the UGA Costa Rica Program, the Office of International Education, and the San Luis Research Station), or of any other organization or individuals.