Lets get this straight. I didn't have a very good picture of the place we were going despite the fact that I had been there three weeks before. So just where did we go? Back to the Caribbean that's where! First things first we stopped by a banana plantation to learn a bit about what it looks like to work and live in those conditions. We learned that North Americans will not eat bananas that are under 8 inches long, or that have brown spots on them (which is only on the skin due to natural sap- the cure? put plastic between each layer of bananas as they grow... not a waste at all). We learned that the smaller or misshapen bananas are sold locally and any that are legitimately damaged are now sold to a German company which makes them into baby food (instead of throwing them out). Basically, oh the things us first world people will require in the way of perfect bananas. Overall it was a fascinating tour of a very productive and ethical production facility.
Pineapple fields on our way to the banana plantation
Banana flower
Just in from the field- washing
Processing
As we made our way through the port city of Límon and on through Puerto Viejo to the small town of Manzanillo, I realized we were in for a treat of a weekend. We had a nice walk on the beach in the dark on the way to dinner, where I took a few night shots to see how the stars would turn out. We had a great dinner at a place called Maxi's (Ceviche. Otra ves). Afterwords we headed back to our little cabins for the night and crashed.
Stars were out!
Awesome hostel/cabin place
We woke for breakfast at 7, hung out on the beach for an hour then began our hike (which is where we go from the expected to "whoa. this is cool"). We hiked starting at 9:30 in the morning and spent hte next 4 hours covering about 3 miles south of Manzanillo, to our destination for the night, Punta Mona (http://puntamona.org/). On the hike we had an excellent guide who pointed out many different species of flora and fauna along the way. Here's a picture or two of what we saw-
Tito our guide! (whose favorite saying was, "HELLLOOOOOO people, follow the black guy!)
Cacoa
That leaves us at Punta Mona. What is this place? A permaculture farm. What the heck is a permaculture farm? As the owner, Steven, described, its a place where you live from the land by taking care of it and allowing it to provide for you. "Maximizing hammock time." Steven loved this phrase, and said that it is the basis of permaculture. The farm is completely off the grid (no electricity or services), and provides for most of the needs of the people there (they still buy some supplies such as rice and some building materials). So what do you find there? Here's a brief list- 1,000s of varieties of plants, ducks, chickens, beach, hammocks, two main buildings with residences for owners and guests, a greenhouse, a water collection system, solar panels, Afro-Caribbean influences, delicious food, composting toilets, kayaks, and yup this is where the hippies come in (among many other things). Steven and his wife live on the property and enjoy connecting with nature. Sarah is very into natural medicines and is very knowledgeable about the area and the plants that are on their property. Steven is into the food production of the place as well as promoting permaculture ideals. (He made sure to inform me about a permaculture farm on Orcas Island- field trip anyone????).
Punta Mona!
We spend the night there kayaking, making fresh chocolate out of Cocoa beans and eating a delicious all organic dinner. In the morning we toured the parts of the farm that we didn't see and spent some time 'connecting with a certain plant' as Steven liked to say. (We picked one and described it and then he told us about the uses of the plant). It was an early morning and we were on the trail home by about 8:30. We hiked out a more direct route, which only took us about an hour and a half (in the rain!) We made piled back into the van quite wet in Manzanillo, and headed out to our last stop before returning to San Rafael. Just a few kilometers outside of Puerto Viejo is an indigenous people group on a reserve. The group is named the Bri-Bri and have lived in that area for hundreds of years. Like most indigenous people they are struggling with the globalizing world around them- they are loosing their dialect, they are loosing native traditions, and they are loosing their 'protected' land. It was fascinating to see that they had taken up conservation efforts to combat these issues in certain ways. Over the past 18 or so years they have bred 35,000 iguanas on the property in order to try to reestablish the population in the region. We also got a traditional story of the beginnings of cacao which was fascinating as most traditional tales are from indigenous people.
Well over the past two days I've seen some interesting things and learned a bit about the culture of transportation here in Costa Rica. On Sunday one of the other students, Nanda, and I went down to the artisans market in the capital San Jose. Nothing to eventful on the way down and an enjoyable time people watching and checking out the shops for about an hour. On our way back though we hopped on the bus and began to wind our way back through San Jose on our way back to Heredia. We made a few turns and drove a block or two before stopping seemingly randomly on the left side of the one way street we were on. It took a bit of time to figure out what was going on, but just as I realized what was going on Nanda said, 'I think our bus driver is buying a shirt!' Sure enough, he had gotten the attention of the shop keeper and asked him to pick out a certain size of one of the shirts in the window of the shop and proceeded to pay for it through the window of the bus. Tonight, on the way back from campus Bean and I were stopped in an awkward Y in the road just outside of San Rafael. We waited. No one moved. Finally we recognized that two cars had likely gotten into a fender bender and were still in the middle of the intersection. We got around the mess in 4 or 5 minutes but there certainly was a lot of honking and flashing of lights by all parties. Bean proceeded to explain that here in Costa Rica, when you get into an accident you stay right where you are until the insurance person comes out to photograph the damage and take down information. Literally just wait. Wherever you are. She relayed a story of last January when she was driving a van of freshman down to a service project and was stopped dead in the road on the Monte de la Cruz while two cars waited for their insurance people to get there. its a two lane road with huge ditches on either side and the two car accident managed to take up both lanes so they were literally stuck. On another note, off to the beach again this weekend and very excited for it!
So as we approached the second to last free weekend here in Costa Rica, I was excited. Why you ask? well this video may have something to do with it!
Yup! We spent Saturday morning ziplining through cloud rainforest up at about 7000 feet elevation (I'm voting that Whitworth install one that ends in one of the ponds). Here's a few more pictures of the mornings activities-
(remember to click on pictures to enlarge)
So off we went. Following an fun zipline tour we came back to a delicious lunch at my tica family's new 'soda' (small restaurant). We then spent the afternoon filming some video to respond to our fellow Whitworthians up north! Senior post Michael Taylor put together a little dance for our annual kickoff to basketball season (called Midnight Madness). So first his video, then our response!
Saturday evening we went down to the church that a friend and recent graduate of Whitworth goes to in a town called Escazo- La Viña (website). What next? Well that's when I came home to eat a quick bite and then edit the dance video.
Sunday morning came and as a way to wake up a little quicker I bumped my head on the windchime on our back porch, which dislodged a few small wasps from the nest I didn't know existed on the chain above. One of the wasps fell into my collar and while trying to shake it out fell down my back inside the shirt. Moral of the story, getting three wasp stings is an excellent way to wake up!
I made my way to the soda for an excellent omelette with gallo pinto and a tall glass of pineapple juice. I met up with Nanda and we headed down to San Jose to an artisans market to do a bit of exploring and finding a cribbage board for me (gotta love the artisan markets).
Now as an exciting end to my weekend, its time to write a paper and work on other homework... Oh well, what a great way to spend a weekend!
A small group spent the weekend exploring the beaches of Puerto Viejo and Mansanilla last weekend for two nights to celebrate Nanda's birthday. It was an incredibly relaxing time and we all really enjoyed the warm weather/water and time with good friends. Here's a few pictures from the weekend-
Over the past few days and into next week Travis, Louis and I will be working on building an aquaponics system to go in our newly completed greenhouse on campus. For now I mostly have pictures of the new greenhouse, but a few from collecting rocks for the new system (I will fill in details of how it works when I have better pictures)-
Rocks collected for aquaponics Greenhouse is filling up! Getting ready to clean the rocks
Finally, Flannel Friday hit Whitworth South with gusto! Enjoy a few pictures of the afternoon and a little video!
Even Lindy walked into our classroom with flannel on this morning
Long last it has come time (it was probably time weeks ago...) to finish out the last few days of our Nicaragua trip. We did some other stuff then hopped back in the bus and came home.
Yup that's a new national park for my list!
Just kidding! I don't actually have all the details down of the stuff we did for the last few days though so here's the most important parts of the rest of the trip. We spent an entire day in the Masaya region of Nicaragua just about 30 minutes outside of Managua. First things first we toured through Parque Nacional Volcan Masaya starting in the visitors center. I found it interesting how nice the park was and how up to date and nice the visitors center was in comparison to the rest of the country that we had seen. After we left the visitors center we hopped into the van which took us up to the top of the volcano. We donned hardhats and flashlights and walked down to a series of lava tubes and spent some time 80 meters under ground in a tunnel! Pretty awesome!
Cave entrance
That's a tree root that goes much farther than the 80 meters we went into the cave Cool to see how it just grew on the side of the wall!
End of our road
Here's the group
Playing with light
Afterwords we headed up and took a look into the crater of the active side of the volcano and spent a few minutes taking some fun pictures!
Beautiful park I'd say
Classy cave people on the walk back
View down on the parking lot and the stairs to the lookout where we took pictures into the volcano
Looking into volcan Masaya
Following our trip to Volcan Masaya we went down to Papa Murphy's for Josh's birthday then to the market in Masaya to wander around and pick up a souvenir or two. Later in the afternoon we headed up to one of the most powerful places that we went to on our entire trip in my opinion. We visited a fort called Coyotepe which was built in the late 1800s but was used all the way through the 1980s as a prison and fort for the various dictators and governments during that time period. We toured the outside first then paid for an official tour down in the lower levels of the fort. Going down a steep ramp into the first level underground was quite interesting, we turned a dark corner to find a few small windows in the top of the walls around us. Our guide informed us that something like 400 prisoners were held in these cells at one time. It was an eery feeling as the white walls were pocked with bullet holes and covered in graffiti. We came out the other side of the more or less five sided fort not far from where we had entered. Walking back toward the entrance we approached a locked gate and were told that we were going to go a level lower. While originally this was not the lowest level, it is now as the lowest (which was primarily used as a mass grave and high security area) was filled in years ago. We were led into the depths of this prison and found ourselves in different types of cells that were each described to us in turn. Three held large groups of prisoners, one held prisoners in complete darkness all day (one man was said to have lived there for three years), one held prisoners in a barely lit room for indefinite amounts of time, and the final one was the hardest. We stood in the place where torture occurred. We saw what has been scientifically proven to be bloodstains on the walls. We heard echos we smelled stench and we saw darkness. We walked back into light to the stories of our leader and his family who lost innocent loved ones to the war. Stories came out about both the government and the rebellion dumping bodies into volcan Masaya as a way of disposing the bodies without evidence. It was certainly not an easy afternoon. It was incredible to hear these stories from people who were easily alive during this time. They could tell us what the heard at the time and then compare it to the realities later discovered.
View from Coyotepe to volcan Masaya
Bullet holes and graffiti
Walking through the upper level of the prison
So little light in the lower level
Blood stained walls
We made a visit by the US embassy in Nicaragua the second to last day and found it very professional and closed to open conversation about relevant topics of interest. We asked some questions but the representatives gave straightforward somewhat bland 'stock' answers. One of the more interesting comments made by one of the individuals was 'it's ok we know they're not communists.' While I know the Cold War ended 20 something years ago, it was still interesting to see this sentiment. It was of relevance as the current president was running for a third term (and won in the election last Sunday) after changing the constitution to allow for the third term. Overall it was a interesting view into the world of US foreign service and I wish we had had a bit more time to chat with them and hopefully get some better/more personalized answers. A happy picture note to end on- we had a party for Freddy and Josh's birthday one evening and had a great time with Freddy's family!
We spent the last part of the trip visiting an organization that deals with HIV/AIDS in Nicaragua and several other places around Managua. We hopped back on TicaBus to head home and had an uneventful trip home. We all took something very different away from the trip. It really challenged each one of us and pushed us to take a look at everything from more than one perspective. If you have made it through each of these posts about the trip (I owe you a high five x5) hopefully that message has come through; we need to take a look from other viewpoints whether its US foreign policy, theology, tradition, cultural values or historical perspectives. I am reminded of a statement I heard from a Spokane area pastor during a leadership class at Whitworth-
Listen redemptively, respond compassionately, engage transformitavely. Do it intentionally. –Rodney McAuly
