El Colibrí

Costa Rica is home to 54 different species of hummingbird, and as a result they are quite easy to spot. Hummingbird feeders are also popular. They move so fast I've never caught more than brief glimpses of them back home, but here there are hummingbird gardens with dozens of them zooming around. I had no idea ornithology could be non-lame.. Coolest bird ever.

George

I stayed with an American businessman named George who exports beef from Costa Rica to the U.S. and learned some interesting things about the economic situation here in Costa Rica. One thing that probably merits posting is a little about CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Basically, it's a U.S. attempt at opening markets and eliminating tariffs in the name of free trade. Unfortunatly Costa Rican farmers will not be able to compete with American corporations and in San Jose there was anti-CAFTA graffiti all over the walls.

What I didn't realize until talking to George was how bad the consequences would be if Costa Rica votes not to ratify the treaty. Basically the U.S. government would slap big taxes on all imports coming from Costa Rica and all of the major American companies with factories in the country would move to Nicaragua, eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs in a country with only a couple million people to begin with.

Mariposas

Costa Rica is home to over a thousand different species of butterflies and Monteverde has the largest butterfly sanctuary in Central America, so of course I had to check that out. The place was essentially a greenhouse so it was baking hot but it was worth it, especially because a couple tiny renegade hummingbirds had broken in and were zooming around.

Typically, the eggs are laid in host leaves which then hatch into larvae, grow into worms as they eat more and more leaves, finally forming a coccoon and metamorphosing into moths or butterflies. In the sanctuary these coccoons are moved into heated cabinets to protect them from natural predators and the cold, and you can actually see them "hatching."

Monteverde

I'm in a really cool town called Monteverde, another cloud forest town but this time in the north of Costa Rica. It was founded by four Quakers who were jailed in 1948 for refusing to register for the draft during the Korean War and told if they didn't want to obey U.S. law, they should leave. Costa Rica had cheap arable land and had abolished its army that same year so it as chosen as the place to go. The first meeting house still stands, and most of the founders of the town can still be seen in the pews at Meeting for Worship every Sunday.

In the 80s, botanists and other scientists began using Monteverde as a base from which to study the rainforest. Word spread about the region's natural beauty and then the tourists came. It's still a sleepy mountain town but there are more and more vacationers every year. Tour companies have set up shop, buying up ziplines formerly used to study the ecology of the rainforest canopy but now serving as 50mph joyrides for adrenaline junkies, a common tour option throughout Costa Rica which is making bank on the ecotourism boom. I gave it a whirl but they made me cede the brakes to a staffer while taking video.

School Buses

A lot of the vehicles on the roads in Latin America are hand-me-downs from the U.S. and some are so old they'd be eligible for the antique license plates if they were in the States. People really care for their cars here, taking them for regular check ups like you would a child. They close their car doors in the manner you would pat an old friend on the back, and if you don't follow suit people will call you out, especially the taxi drivers. I'm used to closing car doors like I want to make sure they're shut so this was an adjustment for me.

But the part I really like about it isn't the time warp feeling you get surrounded by old cars, it's the public buses that used to belong to elementary schools, complete with bright red stop signs and the scrawlings of long since grown up American school children. This one was apparently from Pulaski County, wherever that is, but now takes people up and down the mountain in Monteverde. There's new graffiti too and in Spanish but "Billy waz here" followed by a poorly drawn middle finger is completely out of my memories of 5th grade.

I Hate Tourists

The bus had to stop for a bit on the way to Monteverde from San Jose because the road had been damaged and a pathetic little work crew of four was patching it with a mixture of clay and rock. All the tourists got out of the bus to complain a lot about how the work wasn't getting done quickly enough. Then one of them had the bright idea to offer to help, providing an opportunity to take photos and act righteous. They gave the shovels back to the workmen rather quickly and continued being indignant despite the delay only lasting about thirty minutes. Apparently the industrious vacationers were just more efficient than the Ticos because everyone had been moaning about how the delay would take hours.

Amigos Ticos

I met up with a couple of Costa Ricans, Mario (center) and Andrés (right) and they're teaching me all sorts of tico slang. Mario is a 20 year old theatre major and a call center employee who speaks English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Andrés is studying massage therapy and is really good at juggling; he's going to work with a group of contact jugglers who get sponsored to juggle big signs with advertisements on them. They're both vegetarian, and they live together in Heredia, a city just outside San Juan. I just cannot get over the kinds of colorful characters you meet while backpacking.

Comida Tica

This is a very Costarricense meal of gallo pinto with eggs, and is really quite good. The tea is actually steeped in milk instead of water. It's tolerable. They also dump a bunch of sugar in which of course doesn't dissolve properly. It's okay though, what they lack in tea they make up for with coffee, one of the country's most important export goods.

Vacas

I will say one thing for San Jose, the weather has certainly been nice. My pictures have been getting ruined lately by the lack of sun in rainy Panama but today I was able to get some nice shots, including some of a public art exhibit. Life sized painted cows were on display all over the city, and some of them were quite entertaining. The first one I encountered was, quite appropriately, a hooker cow complete with fish net stockings in the middle of Parque España.

There was also a flaming cow and my personal favorite, Vacarnicería. It's a pun: vaca means cow and carnicería means butcher shop, although it can also just mean slaughter. I dig on puns so I was stoked to actually understand one in Spanish. There were others but I didn't get any more pictures of them before it started drizzling and I had to go seek shelter in the nearest public building, which luckily turned out to be a gorgeous church with some killer stained class.

Las Putas de San Jose

Everyone told me Central American capitals suck and I have to say I'm not terribly impressed with Costa Rica's. To be fair it's a Sunday so there's not as much going on. We'll see if it gets any better tomorrow morning but right now I expect I'll head out in the afternoon.

Dear god, never in my life have I seen so many prostitutes. Panama city had a sex tourism problem, San Jose has a sex tourism epidemic. This is the Templo de Musica, according to Lonely Planet widely regarded as "the symbol of San Jose" located in the center of a red light district called Parque España.

Cloud Forest

I decided to hike the Sendero de los Quetzales (Quetzal Trail) despite the pretty much guaranteed absence of quetzales given the time of year. I went with the two Brits and an Aussie girl named Talia Sawers since we were all sharing a room and it was certainly an experience to remember. Cloud forest is actually just high altitude rainforest but when you hike through it you feel the rain from inside the cloud. It comes down lighter but thicker, like falling mist, as though the raindrops haven't yet had time to form.

There are barking monkeys, roaring cascades, exotic flowers, and occasionally indigenous people. There's also an obscene amount of mud to trek through, and out of the 6 hours I'd say about 4 were uphill. We'd only brought bread and water and with my gigantic overnight backpack the wet hiking was exhausting. I also slipped while trying to cross a creek that had swelled from the rain and had to walk the rest of the way with squishy shoes and damp jeans. At least they were a little less muddy for a bit afterwards.

The others turned back just an hour before the end of the trail because they needed to return to Boquete but I had to finish in order to continue on to Costa Rica. We parted ways and when I got to the end of the trail I encountered a locked gate with this sign. Luckily it wasn't the way to Costa Rica.

Small World

It's quite common to run into the same people over and over again when you're traveling a particular region since there's usually a route that people follow. What's not common is running into the same people years later and on another continent, which is why I was so shocked to see Rob English and Harriett Campbell, a British couple I met in Kota Kinebalu, Malaysia on my very first backpacking trip. They turned up not only in the same hostel, but in the same dorm room. Apparently they'll be heading north towards the U.S. as well so I'll probably see plenty more of them.