Monteverde

Since this was my last week-end for a while in Costa Rica and since we just got two new interns from OISE, I decided to visit Monteverde where the rain forest is. Naturally, when we got up this morning to go Zip lining, it was raining. In fact, the managers strongly suggested our three teachers buy raincoats for $8 each so they would not be miserable. They dutifully bought the rain coats as suggested, which guaranteed the sun would be out within minutes!

St Elena and Monteverde are not that far from Guanacaste but admittedly the roads are terrible, although I imagined worth based on what everyone was telling me previously. We made the route rather easily, I thought, after a leisurely three hour ride. When we reached the hotel around 6 pm, I was shocked that the two 25 year olds wanted to take a “power” nap and the other teacher, 50 years old, also went to sleep for a while. We had decided to see what the local dance club was like and I was really looking forward to seeing what Costa Ricans did in the discos since they love to dance so much. I was quite surprised when I went to wake everyone up about 9 that they were still sleeping and were simply too tired to go out. What is wrong with this picture when a 60 something outlasts a 20 something and 50 year old? They also took the zip line today and since I already did this a few months ago I opted to walk the few kilometers through the cloud forest and walked the whole circuit. When we were done, I was ready to go to a different park and walk again but they were “too tired”

Technology, by the way, is wonderful. I asked one of the interns, who is constantly on her phone/web thing who won the baseball game. She texted her boyfriend in Toronto who duly reported that the Blue Jays lost 6 -0 but asked her why her sudden interest in baseball. He said, you were never interested in baseball in Toronto and now that you are in Costa Rica why the sudden interest?

The cloud forest, by the way, was really spectacular. I loved all of the ferns and vegetation growing on the trees and the constant rain and humidity makes this fascinating to walk through. There were 8 suspension bridges that were really neat to look across and down into the forest. Had anyone more energy we could have visited coffee plantations, a frog pond, orchid garden, butterfly gardens and so on but the energy level was simply not there.

We did visit the Quaker school and I was amazed that kids were playing soccer on a Sunday, volunteers were repairing the roof of the building and teachers were preparing lessons. I guess the trick is to have a committed group of volunteers who have similar belief systems. The guy heading up the “buy the rainforest” campaign was also there and he explained that in Costa Rica, when you have a property, if you find uninhabited land you can mark out your homestead. Actually, one or our teacher's from California did that during the 1960’s and has really been self-sufficient for the past number of years.

I head home on Wednesday and don't imagine I will see that many forests around Toronto, but hopefully will get to see anyone who actually reads this blog. See you soon.

The Ugly American

I am not going to tell you what Latin American country I am in in case this is picked up on some search engine and I would not want to embarrass anyone, but I will tell you that I now understand the expression the ugly American. I got an invitation from the American embassy to attend an opening of a joint United States /Latin American project. The invitation, by the way, came from the American Embassy, not from the Latin American joint venture. All of the principals spoke and said the usual, but what struck me like a bolt of lightning was the fact that the new American Ambassador spoke in English. Surely to God Obama could have found one campaign contributor who spoke Spanish! I found the fact that the Ambassador spoke in English condescending at best and insulting at worse. Even if she spoke Spanish, which she apparently did not, surely she could have put in some Spanish expressions.

The other issue was the poor job she did of speaking with a translator. I learned last year that when you speak with a translator, you give the whole idea first and then you stop and let the translator speak. She stopped, like I used to, after every phrase which could be two or three words. The translator has no hope when you do that other than botching up the translation.

Yesterday, by the way, I continued my road show and went to the town of Nicoya in the Nicoya peninsula, about two hours, mas o menos, from where I live. I went to a little restaurant for lunch and met the Chinese Costa Rican owner married to a German Costa Rican. When I asked the German when and why his family came here he told me that they had been living in Costa Rica for 80 years and control all of the cocoa export. I scared his wife when I asked” ni how ma” because she was embarrassed that she did not speak Chinese and moved away but how serendipitous that they were married to each other, the mixture of Chinese and Swiss living in Costa Rica and ending their family traditions because they did not have children.

I am coming home next week for the month of May to try and sell our school to Toronto high school kids. I think we have a great product since our school is on a 72 hectare farm and we tons of interesting outdoor interactive stuff. It would also benefit our 10 high school students to have some interaction with the outside world. We are getting two OISE students next week but hopefully I can generate a little more interaction than this!

Saved by the Nacion

Saved by the Nacion. I knew I had the national paper in my car for something! I went to a park off the beaten track today to see birds and hopefully alligators! Palo Verde is twenty eight kilometers down a beaten road that made you wish you never started but frankly I kept driving because I wanted to take a boat ride and see the alligators and birds. When I got there I turned off the car and went inside to pay the guy. Unfortunately, I found out that because of the dry season there was no water to take a boat on! When I turned my car back on five minutes later all I heard was the sickening click, click, click of the battery. Then I did not even hear that! What was I going to do? It was about noon, the temperature was about 40 degrees and the money collector did not even have a car, let alone cables. I asked him when the next car might show up and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, maybe a few days!!!

Thankfully it was Saturday and I had the Nacion, the national newspaper of Costa Rica and lucky for me it was the Saturday edition which is huge with all of the advertisements and so on. I opened the hood, pried off the clamps from the battery and used the Nacion to clean the clamps with a little water supplied by the guy. I saw that battery was obviously leaking so I wanted to make sure all of the connections were clean. After working on the car for about 30 minutes I finally got it started… or was that a mirage brought on by the waves of heat?

What actually happened was that by some miracle some reporters from the Nacion came by ( I knew the newspaper played a role here and they even had cables, some beautiful tools and off to work they went. Somehow, a mechanic even showed up as they were working, believe it or not, and they finally got the car started.

Rather than go into the park, I travelled back to Liberia and went to the nearest gasoline station, in fact the only gasoline station, to turn off the car to see if it would start again. The good news is that it did start and I give credit to where credit is due…The Nction. The bad news is that I had a flat tire! I just happened to be parked in front of the tire guy who kind of mentioned I should look at the tire which just happened to be flat).

What is absolutely amazing is that the Rosetta Stone program I am working on just happened to be on flat tires this week so I was fabulous. I could negotiate with him to fix the tire, sell me a second hand tire and look at the battery ( discargado) but guess what, he did not have a second hand tire so I am left with my bald tire. I may even go new this week but not sure how to say this since it was not in the program.