We are in Costa Rica!

4/2/2011

Johnston

(globalcitizenshiptravel@gmail.com)Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:37:57

The flights were great overall, although an unruly passenger delayed us getting out of Houston - he was verbally abusing a flight attendant and had to be removed from the plane. Cost us 40 minutes!

The weather in Costa Rica is 80 degrees and the sun has just come back out. From about 2-5 pm each day, the sun goes away and it rains or stays overcast. This is the end of their summer here, so each day has a few overcast hours. But who can complain about 80 and sunny the rest of the time? :)

Mr. J

12 Comments

Willecke

04/02/2011 07:48

Wow! An incredible day yesterday (check out the hundreds of pictures we uploaded to the current trip gallery). We started off early by heading up the Poas Valcanoe to take advantage of the nice weather and were rewarded by a rare clear view of the entire crater--something that happens about 25% of the time or less. Our guide Jorge and I discussed how our position along the pacific ring of fire united our two countries, especially our state of Washington, in that we both have to deal with the vulcanism and earthquakes that come with the location. After taking in the magnificence of the crater we headed over to the Waterfall Gardens Park, which is a lush cloudforest/rainforest park that houses many species of animals found in Costa Rica (of which we posted pictures of most), including some big cats, snakes, many of the big bird species like the Tucan, monkeys, and more. The waterfalls were spectacular.

Today we are off for our canopy tour, the trip to the Coffee Plantation we postponed in order to take advantage of yesterdays weather at the Poas Volcanoe, and a tour of the capitol city, San Jose. We plan to post most thoughts and images tonight.

Janet Mead

04/02/2011 11:23

Costa Rica sounds and looks amazing (your photographs are spectacular)! Thank you for posting!

Shannon & Melissa

04/02/2011 21:15

Dear Ling and Morse Parents, (and other parents as well!)

Today was amazing. Like Mr. Willecke said, we went on a Canopy Tour. You can not believe how spectacular it was. We went on about 21 zip lines and you would kill to see the view. Melissa compares it to the jungle in Avatar. If you're thinking of glowing flowers and a life giving tree, you can imagine what this place looked like. No, not really. It was nothing like that but just as amazing all the same. Caught up in the excitement of hanging hundreds of feet above ground with a simple harness to keep her from falling, Shannon didn't realize that, in the tropics, if you don't wear sunscreen, you get burned. She now sporting a nice sunburn on the tops of her shoulders.

After the lovely canopy tour, we enjoyed a lunch next door (which included traditional rice and beans along with the best strawberry smoothie/juice. ever.) We then ventured to the city of San Jose and first toured famous landmarks, including a 19th century opera house. The architecture was phenomenal. Next we shopped and bargained at local markets before heading over to Pizza Hut to end our day in the city.

At the hotel now, tranferring to Tortuguerro at 6:15 tomorrow morning! Joy :)

Love,
Melissa & Shannon

Willecke

04/03/2011 01:30

We are putting some of the zip-line video on youtube--check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/davidwillecke?feature=mhum

Willecke

04/05/2011 00:27

Put up pictures from the last 2 days in Tortaguero National Park. Its 12:30am and the power just came back on after a few hours of outage--sorry about the delay. We spend the last several days cruising the canals and learning about the wildlife of this region of Costa Rica--birds of many kinds, cayman, crocodiles, frogs, monkeys, sloths, and more! We also learned about the climate, how the locals use the different plants such as palm trees for construction materials, visited a pre-school and donated some supplies, and last but certainly not least, celebrated Rashell's birthday!

Shannon & Melissa

04/05/2011 07:31

Dear Moms and Dads and Aliens Up Above,

After we were wierded-out last night when the lights went out, we woke up this morning only to rush packing and then wait next to the reception desk where Shannon and I are now sitting, waiting for breakfast and departure from Tortaguero.

Just like Mr. Willecke said, we have spent the past few days immersed in wild life. I would say "think of Avatar," but Shannon already did that for me in the last post :) Seriously though, it was very different from anything most of us have seen, and we enjoyed paddling the canoes ourselves in the morning and spotting monkeys hanging in the trees in the afternoon. Mr. Willecke and Mr. Johnston both enjoyed the canals especially, as it gave them yet another opportunity to compare wildlife photos, spit out technological phrases none of us (including one of them!) couldn't understand, crush each other in photography, and capture the most raw nature we have seen on this trip.

Almost time for breakfast!

Love,
Melissa & Shannon

Willecke

04/07/2011 21:55

I posted pictures this morning from our visit to the Pineapple plantation. The tour took us out in a large tractor with a trailer to visit people working in the fields. This particular plantation grows only organic Pineapple which it sells to the Dole fruit company. It was interesting because it was simultaneously a small local company and also intimately connected to globalization (a phenomenon not new for Central American fruit growers). We learned first hand about some of Costa Rica's labor force, which in the case of fruit picking is over 60% Nicaraguan migrant and seasonal labor. This particular plantation, with its focus on organic, eco-frieldly products, also used unionized workers and espoused their desire to run a fair and just business. Despite discussing these heavy geo-political issues, the guide was funny and awesome and the Pineapple was the best any of us have ever had--we picked some of it right out of the field and cut it up and ate it while driving around in the tractor! I think the pictures convey the taste quite well--check it out!

Willecke

04/07/2011 22:06

I have posted pictures from our rafting trip yesterday (we also did some rappelling, for which I will try post pictures tomorrow morning). The water is low this time of year, requiring lots of paddling to get the boat lined up for the never ending series of rapids with little break in between. We worked hard and enjoyed floating through some of the slow sections in our life jackets. We stopped half way for a snack of fresh fruit and spotted wildlife during the slower, last half-hour of the float, including basilisk lizards, an iguana, various birds such as king-fishers, and a three-toed sloth! In yet another study of the dilemmas of eco-tourism we learned from our river guides that Costa Rica has dammed so many of its rivers to provide electricity for its economic growth that rafting opportunities are not what they once were. In such ways, tourists run the risk of contributing to the modification and even damage of the things they come to enjoy. Its a complicated world and I think the students got a first hand look at the various interests, values, and players involved!

Willecke

04/10/2011 08:53

After much struggling with the internet and the web page I have updated pictures from the last several days. 180 rappelling pictures took a while, but they are there, and our activities the last 2 days on the Central coast as well.

One of the things we were wondering about after the Canopoy tour was what would it be like down in the jungle--on the forest floor? The rappel tour answered that question for us. To get to the waterfalls we rapelled, we had to walk down a creek because the jungle was so dense. Looking around gave us an interesting perspective on the various strange animals; there adaptations to the jungle environment make sense when your navigating down a treacherous creek that is nevertheless the easiest way to travel through the dense forest. Fortunately, we had some adaptations of our own--ropes, pulleys, and pitons! Between the descent in the creek-bed and the rappels down the 3 waterfalls we must have descended several thousand feed in a couple of hours--what a trip!

Willecke

04/10/2011 09:04

For our first day in Jaco we took an outrigger trip along the coast for birdwatching and snorkeling. Unfortunately the water was rougher than normal and we had to forgo the snorkling, but we had a great soccer game with the guides--wow, can our kids play soccer. Even in this Latin American soccer culture we impressed the guides, who got scooled by our student's fancy footwork more than once! Some of our students played on the guides team to even out the numbers, but our all students team won 3-2 after about an hour of slogging it out in the sand. I know many of our seniors read a book about soccer as a universal language in the modern world and I could help but think of the truth of that during this excursion (only the head guide spoke English well, the rest was a careful and slow exchange with the other guides limited English and the various levels of Spanish amongst our students). I hope there is some insight here they can take with them for their future studies of other cultures.

Willecke

04/10/2011 09:10

I should have mentioned that on the way from Arenal to Jaco we stopped at two really cool places, one was a waterfall park where we swam in the plunge-pool and the other was an overlook for Crocodiles--big ones--check out the pictures in the photo gallery!

Also, I loaded up a bunch of additional images I got from students, so look through the older galleries for new images!

Warren link

09/24/2012 10:37

Many thanks for information

We are in Costa Rica!

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