Paths that lead to the most profound destinations, to moments of illumination or change, have nothing to do with actual travel, but rather a mental geography.
--Graham Greene
|
2/16/93 San Jose, California to San Jose, Costa Rica
|
I have not traveled alone for 25 years. It was 1967, my second trip to Europe, just after two years as a Peace Corps teacher in Togo. I rode across France and Spain on my new BMW motorcycle. By the time I reached Lisbon I heard that the draft board wanted me back in the U.S. No graduate school and a few more years of government service in a different tropical country.
Now I'm heading for San Jose, Costa Rica, for a short vacation. I am traveling cheap and light: riding the bus and staying in hotels that average Costa Ricans use and eating in modest restaurants. A tame trip to a popular destination, judging by the number of travel books in the book store. Half the people I mention this to have been or want to go there. A couple of months ago a German tourist came to San Jose, California, expecting to be met by her daughter who lived on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and had been waiting at the San Jose, Costa Rica airport. A hotel clerk who spoke German helped her catch the plane to the correct San Jose.
The ticket agent for my flight had been there in late 1992. Her impressions: 'I overpacked. We traveled a lot and we met people.' Gesturing at another agent, 'She met a bartender. We had a blast.' Hmmm...
My flight goes through Reno, Dallas, and Miami, and I arrive about noon. I was surprised how full the flights were on all the legs. We passed over the Bay of Pigs, Cuba, and as we reached the coast of Costa Rica, a scattering of small clouds began at the beach and thickened as we headed inland. As we landed I thought of the opening of the Sean Connery movie 'Cuba' where he's rolling a cold glass of rum and coke across his brow as the plane touches down in 1957 Havana. People cheer as we touch down, more out of happiness to be back than because of the flight. No time at all in customs (for North Americans). No inspection at all. The ICT (Costa Rican Tourist Institute) has a little booth with maps, tabloids, the Tico Times (an English Language newspaper), and pamphlets. The man working there was incredibly helpful, and telephoned a couple of hotels to find me a room. Instead of a $10 cab ride, I catch an Alajuela to San Jose bus for about 35 cents. If you have more than a suitcase or backpack, use a cab. It ended up that the Costa Rica Inn which had not responded to my fax nor answered their 800 number in the U.S. had a room for $20. It's clean but a bit dark. The streets are jammed, and the sidewalks are narrow. Quite a bit of traffic with pedestrians having no special leeway once they venture into the street. Lots of American fast food containers in the gutter, but overall I have a nice first impression.
InfoNugget: In 1971 the National Museum claimed 21,000 people supported themselves by robbing graves and selling artifacts.
I'm sure someone has studied the effect of American, Japanese, and European demands for tropical hardwoods. Teak farming is one of the many investment opportunities/schemes in Costa Rica. The Swiss are helping to design a $15,000,000 8000 acre teak processing plantation in Nicoya on the Pacific coast. Teak can be harvested in 7 years, and a new shoot will grow from the stump.
|
2/17/93 La Selva Biological Preserve
|
I took a taxi to Moravia (300 colones) to the Organization of Tropical Studies HQ. At 8 a.m. a Toyota diesel van left for La Selva about 90 km. and 90 minutes away. It passed through Braulio Carrillo National Park and then through farm land to the 1500 hectare preserve. OTS is a consortium of 44 academic institutions that promote research in tropical biology. In 1992 there were over 18,000 overnights by visitors to La Selva.
Jack Longino teaches part time at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and has a project collecting and cataloging ants using parataxonomists. The argument is that there is not enough time for the few experts to gather everything before it becomes extinct, so there is a need to train amateurs and paraprofessionals for six months or so to collect specimens. The lab has several Macintoshes on a 4D database, and each entry can have a scanned image from the microscope. Another building houses a Sun Sparcstation running GIS software, and the staff is trying to get an ethernet hooked up so the two systems can communicate.
After a tour of the station Jack and I walked around the preserve for an hour or so, and he gave me background on the land and the program. I saw some peccaries (little bush pigs), a tiny poisonous eyelash viper--colored bright ocher, and of course lots of insects including a huge black stinging one known as the 'bala' or bullet ant. It was about an inch long. Jack picked it up with tweezers and the ant held the ends closed for five seconds before releasing its hold.
Food is served cafeteria style: salad, rice, black beans, carrots, steak, and cookies. About 50 people were in the hall at any one time. Young researchers joked and told tales of eccentric collectors of yore. I have not studied biology. I don't know the names of birds, and it was refreshing to feel stupid and have lots of people supply information on a great breadth or depth of topics.
Most of the buildings have polished tropical hardwood floors that are very beautiful and simple. The rest of the construction is wood and screens and some louvered windows. I'm sitting in the main meeting room where Deborah and Dave Clark, the co-directors of La Selva, are giving an intro lecture to young ecologists from Spain and 15 countries in Latin America. It's in Spanish, and I find that it really stretches my vocabulary.
After 6 p.m. the jungle noise increases, and darkness is almost total. You are lost without a flashlight. My room overlooks the river and seven kinds of beautiful birds hang out near my window. There are hundreds of kinds of birds and 58 varieties of snakes. Everybody here is collecting and naming the species within their focus. A couple from U of Costa Rica said, 'We might as well do the flies, nobody else will.' People use a variety of sheets and tents and funneling devices to get specimens. A black light on a sheet is sort of like television here. You turn it on and see what flies out of the night to land on the sheet. Turn it off in the morning.
|
I met a guy from the Bronx Zoo, hunting for snakes. His friend, a mason, practices Karate in the early morning on the riverbank. Both are very unpretentious New Yorkers. When we return from hikes, we compare notes, and because they know where to look, what stones to lift, they seem to have more to report. Today they saw toucans and spider monkeys, and I saw some agoutis--rodents about the size of a cat. One fellow saw an ocelot, and that was pretty rare.
I spent some time reading the La Selva Advisory Council 1992 minutes. Most of their funds come from the National Science Foundation (over $1 million per year) and as the place has grown they are trying to plan for the future when researcher space will not meet the needs of all the applicants. There is pressure to handle more eco-tourists, do more high tech research, but they will need a systems manager to help them keep their networks running smoothly: to link up the Macs, DOS, and Unix machines and improve their connection to the Internet. Now it consists of BITNET accounts on the U. of Costa Rica VM machine in San Jose.
Before dinner I took a short stroll and became encased in a tube of water demarcated by the diameter of my umbrella. It was an awesome downpour for 30 minutes.
You really have to like green to be happy here. The gradations of green take on new meaning, and the relief provided by the bright flowers and birds is most welcome. Randall Downer saw 37 species of birds today. I don't know how many I saw, perhaps 15, but I'm glad I brought the binoculars. If you come to Costa Rica, bring a pair.
|
This morning a researcher from Harvard chewed out a tourist in our cabin complex because he was talking. The rule sheet reminds us tourists that some people must work at night and sleep by day, but this guy claimed he had not read the sheet.
I walked by the river along orchards, garden plots, and some old farm huts rotting into the jungle. La Selva annexes land as they can afford it. Encroachment by farms is a big problem because many of the species need huge areas to roam. On my return I heard and saw about six toucans. Amazingly beautiful, even at a distance.
After lunch the Toyota van took ten of us back to San Jose in two hours, with a heavy rain pounding the vehicle. I hiked to the bus depot for San Isidro de el General and got standing room on the three hour bus ride over the highest pass on the Central American highway. Unfortunately, mud covered the outside, and the passengers fogged up the inside, so I did not see any grand views, just the pink and orange vestiges of a dramatic sunset over the Pacific Ocean.
San Isidro is the biggest town in the south. Hotel Chirripo is on the town square and is noisy but only costs $7 a night. Lots of handsome young people stroll around the town square or cruise in their pickups, Land Cruisers, and other 4WD vehicles. I ate in a Chinese restaurant and had a simple but tasty chop suey with chicken. Surprisingly, the owner's mother ordered a dish and then used a fork to eat it. I asked him if they used chopsticks, and he showed me a few pair and asked what they were called in English.
The square in San Isidro is surrounded by many little stores--clothes, hardware, video rental, toys, electronics, and furniture. I am impressed by the number of bakeries. Three girls staffed one by the hotel: one served, one rang up the bill, and the prettiest one talked on the phone and was only paying attention to the guy on the other end of the line. She wasn't really with the rest of us, judging by the expression on her face.
I got some guanabana ice cream for about 90 cents. It was in a very elaborate high-tech place in the square. Inside were toys and a slide for kids. One girl sat at the computer screen and placed orders, another served the cones.
That night I used ear plugs for the first time because the scooters were quite noisy. the plugs were not too uncomfortable and did dampen the sound. My bus was going to leave at 5 a.m., just half a block away. I was heading for San Geraldo de Rivas at the entrance to Chirripo National Park. |
|
