Dispatches from the Field & Project Summaries
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 7, part 2 – School for Field Studies, Costa Rica
March 22, 2010
Following our morning visit to the El Pino coffee farm, we headed back down the winding road to film some scenes of downtown Atenas. Like most Latin American towns, Atenas is centered on a main park or plaza where much of the action takes place. Rather unusually, the various paths through the park were captioned with inspirational messages – mottos to live by. However, as the only Spanish speaker on the team, I suspect I was the only one to appreciate this oddity.
After shooting downtown for an hour or so, we arrived back at the Center for Sustainable Development Studies in time for a late lunch in the dining hall, followed by an interview with Director Gerardo Avalos. We were filming an introduction to SFS with Ola Russell at the main gate to the Center when the SFS students returned from a field trip to San José. Of course filming a documentary is never a matter of just pointing a camera at the subject, pressing record, and being done with it. I had no idea before joining the team just how many takes would be required to get things right. Between fumbled words, background noises, distracting insects, and other interruptions, filming introductions and interviews was often quite a lengthy process. After several attempts, Rob and Ola finally got the introduction nailed down – only to have the student bus drive up, engines rumbling, back from a field trip to San José. So much for that successful take! Eventually, however, the introduction was completed, and the guys moved on to filming the students in class and doing various farming chores around the Center.
With all the students back at the Center, dinner that evening was a lively affair. Afterward, many of the students headed into town to participate in a soccer match with local residents – just one of the many ways in which SFS students have the opportunity to interact informally with the Atenas community.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 7 – School for Field Studies, Costa Rica
March 19, 2010
Gerardo Calderón and his family run a shade-grown coffee farm, Finca El Pino, on a hillside not far from the town of Atenas in the central highlands of Costa Rica. We visited the farm with staff from the SFS Center for Sustainable Development Studies, which has been working with El Pino and other members of the local coffee producers’ cooperative since 2005. SFS helped three of the nine farms in the cooperative to obtain organic certification, and for the past year and a half or so SFS Professor Achim Häger has been conducting research at the Calderón family farm, studying the environmental benefits of various plants and agroforestry methods. The research gives SFS students hands-on experience with scientific research and sustainable agriculture, and provides information that the Calderóns can use to improve their production.
At the farm, Gabriel Calderón (son of Gerardo) took us on a tour of the plantation. Hiking the trail on the steeply sloped hillside was like entering a special kind of jungle. The Calderóns have chosen to grow a diversity of plants that goes well beyond the requirements for organic certification. In addition to providing shade for coffee plants, the other trees and bushes protect against erosion and attract beneficial insects that pollinate the coffee plants.
After our tour through the coffee plants, Gabriel and his father demonstrated how they sift and process the coffee “cherries” before bagging them for sale. Our visit ended with typical Costa Rican hospitality as Gerardo’s wife, Sole, served us homemade bread and lemonade. Ryan – the only coffee-drinking member of our team – also sampled the farm’s coffee and pronounced it delicious.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 6, part 2 – School for Field Studies, Costa Rica
March 18, 2010
After a short flight from Tamarindo we arrived back in San José, where we were met by a driver from the School for Field Studies (SFS) Center for Sustainable Development Studies. From San Jose it was about a 45-minute drive into the Central Highlands to Atenas, a medium-sized town known for its fruit production. The SFS Center occupies a hillside spot overlooking the Rio Grande Valley a couple of miles from downtown Atenas.
SFS operates unique experiential study abroad programs for college undergraduates through its five field stations in Costa Rica, Mexico, Australia, Kenya, and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Each center has a different environmental focus. SFS programs provide students with hands-on learning opportunities in field research, conservation, and community-based development. In Costa Rica, students live in dormitories at the Center for Sustainable Development Studies and attend classes in the Center’s indoor or outdoor classrooms, as well as off-site in field locations. We stayed in the dormitory’s intern wing and took most of our meals in the Center’s dining hall with the students.
When we arrived at SFS we were met by Gerardo Avalos, the director of the Costa Rica program, and by Ola Russell, who had flown down from the school’s head office in Massachusetts in order to facilitate our visit. They gave us a tour of the Center’s grounds, including the orchard, organic garden, and chicken coop – all places where students have opportunities to participate in sustainable farming activities.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 6 – Leatherback Trust, Costa Rica
March 18, 2010
Our last morning with Leatherback Trust began with a boat trip on the Tamarindo Estuary, a mangrove forest ecosystem that essentially serves as the filter for the entire Playa Grande area. Mangroves stabilize coastal lands and are important feeding and reproductive habitats for a wide range of bird and aquatic species. We visited the estuary with a guide named Enrique, one of many Playa Grande–area residents who used to collect leatherback turtle eggs for food but now make a living through conservation-oriented activities.
Enrique took us up the Tamarindo River deep into the heart of the forest, where red mangroves spread their fantastic root systems, camouflaged crocodiles lurked in the river and on its banks, and countless birds including ospreys, hawks, herons, and kingfishers perched in the trees and along the shore. As we headed back to our disembarkation point, we passed a tree filled with howler monkeys. Suddenly, Enrique began imitating their sounds – so realistically that the monkeys responded as if he were one of them!
We finished up our time in Playa Grande with an interview with Rotney Piedra, a biologist and the director of Las Baulas Marine National Park. From there it was off to Tamarindo Airport for the flight back to San Jose and on to new adventures with our next project, the School for Field Studies.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 5 – Leatherback Trust, Costa Rica
March 9, 2010
Our second day with Leatherback Trust was Turtle Festival Day at Playa Grande, with local residents turning out in force to watch the parade wind down the main road through the village to the Las Baulas Marine National Park headquarters. The parade featured students from the region and beyond (including the Bullis Charter School group from California) holding banners with conservation-oriented messages. “I AM THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD BUT I AM IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION,” read one. “NO TO EXTINCTION. LET’S SAVE THE LEATHERBACK TURTLE,” said another. The parade was followed speeches, skits, and musical numbers by local people of importance and the different school groups.
After the festivities we interviewed Laura Jaen, a guide at Las Baulas National Park and president of the women’s association of Matapalo, which works to promote environmentally sound behavior and education. Afterward Rob and Ryan headed off with some of the researchers from Leatherback Trust to watch them excavate a former nesting site and count the number of eggs for an estimate of how many turtles had hatched there.
We wrapped up the daylight hours with an interview with Jim Spotila on the beach at sunset. As Jim recounted his experience working with turtles and his experience in founding and directing Leatherback Trust, we attracted the attention of a beachgoing tourist, who came up and stood listening to Jim’s story. He turned out to be a visitor from Canada who overheard Jim’s comments and wanted to express his sincere gratitude for the work that Leatherback Trust is doing. “Your work is the reason we decided to stay here rather than over in Tamarindo,” he told Jim. “We appreciate everything you’ve done to keep this place undeveloped and safe for the turtles.” After everything we had seen and heard during our time at Playa Grande it was gratifying it was to hear such a spontaneous endorsement of Leatherback Trust’s work.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 4, part 2 – Leatherback Trust, Costa Rica
March 8, 2010
Conservation begins with education. That’s why Leatherback Trust has made education and voluntourism two cornerstones of its work at Playa Grande. The organization hosts numerous student programs each year and offers volunteer opportunities for adults through Earthwatch. As it turned out, our time with Leatherback Trust coincided with the annual visit by the sixth graders of the Bullis Charter School in Los Altos, California.
Shortly after our arrival at Playa Grande we headed for the elementary school in the nearby village of Matapalo for a ceremony welcoming the Bullis students. The school band played, some of the Matapalo students performed folkloric dances, and the Bullis students presented gifts they had brought and received a Matapalo School banner signed by students. While at the school we checked out the computer lab funded and organized by Leatherback Trust and interviewed the school principal, who spoke about the critical importance of environmental education.
After visiting some of the beaches with Jim during the afternoon, we spent the evening at Leatherback Trust’s research station hoping for a chance to film a turtle laying its eggs. Together with national park guides and local residents, Leatherback Trust researchers and volunteers patrol the beaches every evening for at least four hours during the nesting season (October-February), watching for turtles. Our team joined in for some patrols and discovered just why all the researchers are so physically fit. Walking up and down the beaches for four hours every night is quite a commitment.
Unfortunately no nesting turtles appeared that night – the season was drawing to a close so our chances were reduced – but we did receive word late in the evening that hatchlings had been spotted emerging from a nest on Playa Ventanas. Together with Jim we rushed there and spent about an hour about 15 tiny turtles poking their heads out of the sand and emerging from the nest and then “swimming” down the beach in the direction of the ocean (more or less). An absolutely incredible experience!
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 4 – Leatherback Trust, Costa Rica
March 8, 2010
If there’s one thing you’ve got to be prepared for as a member of a Green Living Project expedition, it’s early mornings. Day 5 was no exception, as we left our overnight hotel in San Jose shortly after 5 a.m. to catch our Nature Air flight to Tamarindo, on the Pacific coast in Guanacaste. Nature Air, a Costa Rican airline that was one of three winners of National Geographic’s 2009 Geotourism Challenge award, is kindly providing all our domestic flights within Costa Rica (and even to Panama) and waiving all surcharges for excess baggage – a good thing, given the amount of gear we are lugging!
Our small 19-seater plane whisked us to Tamarindo in a little over an hour, including a stop in Liberia, northwestern Costa Rica’s transportation hub. With the door to the cockpit open, Ryan and John had a great time filming the pilots at work. We were the only passengers to disembark at the basic little airstrip in Tamarindo, where we were met by Dr. Jim Spotila, co-founder of Leatherback Trust, which works to protect the leatherback turtles nesting on the beaches around Playa Grande, across the estuary from Tamarindo.
Leatherbacks are the world’s largest sea turtles and are truly prehistoric creatures – according to the Moon Guide to Costa Rica, leatherback fossils dating back 100 million years have been found. Adult leatherbacks are typically up to six feet in length and weigh up to 1,500 pounds. The turtles migrate across great distances and come ashore for short periods of time between October and February to lay their eggs above the high-water mark on Playa Grande and adjacent beaches.
Jim, a professor of environmental science at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, has been involved with turtle conservation in Costa Rica for decades and has a wealth of information to share about leatherbacks and about the challenges of creating and supporting a national park on Costa Rica’s increasingly popular northwest coast. He and Leatherback Trust co-founder Dr. Frank Paladino of Indiana Purdue University were instrumental in the establishment of Las Baulas Marine National Park, which protects several of the turtles’ nesting beaches. Unfortunately the park is threatened by development – we saw countless Century 21 signs advertising land within the restricted margin of the beach – and proposed legal reduction in size. Leatherback Trust is working to combat both threats and to improve the survival rate of hatchlings through nest monitoring and other activities.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 3 – Rios Tropicales, Costa Rica
March 7, 2010
Wet is the word that best describes Day 3 of our expedition to Costa Rica. With as much water coming at us from the sky as from the rapids, we set off in rafts down the Pacuare River together with guests of Rios Tropicales. Most Rios guests raft in to the lodge, the majority on two- or three-day packages that included lodging and meals, although others do the entire rafting trip in a one-day excursion. Together we all set off from the Rios Tropicales lodge shortly after 11 a.m.
The Pacuare River boasts mostly Class III and IV rapids, and the water level was fairly low at this time, making many of the rocks more prominent. I grabbed a paddle and joined a group of Polish travelers in a raft under the command of a guide named Henry. 
The steady rain didn’t matter much in terms of rafting, except after lunch when we all got a bit chilled, but it did make things extra challenging for the rest of the team, who had to keep their camera equipment dry as they filmed our descent of the river from the back of the two gear rafts rowed by Rios Tropicales guides with oars. Somehow the guys managed it well enough that the cameras were still intact at the end of the trip. Along the way they got some great footage of the Rios Tropicales guests (and me) charging through the rapids.
About halfway through the afternoon we stopped for lunch on a beach. The crew flipped over two of the rafts to create tables where they laid out quite a spread of bread, cheese, sandwich meats, vegetables, fruits, and other snacks. In keeping with Rios Tropicales’ sustainable tourism philosophy, the guides made very sure that no garbage was left behind, even going so far as to separate out compostable waste from regular trash.
We arrived at our takeout point near the town of Siquirres late in the afternoon and were taken to the Rios Tropicales office, where showers, coffee, and cookies were available. It felt great to get back into dry clothes after a full afternoon of soaking, but we were exhilarated after our whitewater adventure and impressed with the high quality of the whole Rios Tropicales operation.
Central America Expedition 2010: Day 2 – Rios Tropicales, Costa Rica
March 5, 2010
What do a local school, an Internet cafe, a snake exhibit, a butterfly garden, reforestation, a waste management center, and a sustainable tilapia farm have in common? They’re all projects that Rios Tropicales, one of Costa Rica’s leading river rafting companies, is supporting or developing in the community of El Tigre, located at the top of the Pacuare River Gorge.
We visited El Tigre on Day 2 together with Rafael (“Rafa”) Gallo, the founder of Rios Tropicales and a pioneer in sustainable and ecotourism since long before they became buzzwords. Unfortunately someone forgot to tell the weather gods that it’s supposed to be the dry season in Costa Rica, so it rained just about the entire day, slowing us down and making it difficult for us to visit some of the projects Rios Tropicales is supporting. Nevertheless, we had a busy day of filming at several sites, beginning at the local school, where Rios Tropicales has been helping to improve the facilities. Next we headed down the road to the house of Javier Mora, sustainability manager for Rios Tropicales and a community leader in El Tigre. With support from Rios, Javier is building an Internet cafe as a source of income for his wife, Patricia, and daughter, Helen.
We also visited two tourist attractions that Rios Tropicales is helping to develop: the Serpentarium, where Rob got a kick out of handling a smallish boa constrictor, and the Pacuare Butterfly Garden, where Mario Achoy Vega has created a peaceful oasis around his two passions, butterflies and plants. Rafa and Rios Tropicales hope that El Tigre will become a replicable example of sustainable community development; in fact, Rios Tropicales is currently working with the country of Bhutan on developing similar projects there.
By the time we had visited the butterfly garden it was getting late in the afternoon, and Rafa wanted to make sure we had time to hike down through the jungle to the Rios Tropicales lodge before it got fully dark, so we headed downhill through lush rainforest along a well-maintained trail. Although no wildlife crossed our path, it was quite an experience to hike through the darkening forest. 
Just as we could no longer avoid turning on our headlamps we emerged at a suspension bridge across the Pacuare River. Crossing over we arrived at the ecolodge, where the scenic riverside setting, comfortable rooms, good food, and the constant sound of the rushing Pacuare River made for an excellent night’s sleep.
Central America Expedition 2010: Arrival in Costa Rica
February 21, 2010
Green Living Project’s new expedition to Central America is underway! Our team of four – GLP founder and host Rob Holmes, videographers Ryan Claypool and John Hudak, Jr., and I, writer Annika Hipple – flew in from various parts of the U.S. and met up in San Jose, Costa Rica. After winter in the U.S. the tropical climate here feels like a different world, particularly for John, who couldn’t be happier to flee the 40 inches of recent snowfall in New York.
This is GLP’s fifth expedition overall but our first to Central America, and we’re looking forward to checking out some of the exciting sustainability-related projects underway in three different countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. Over the course of 20 days we’ll be visiting nine projects ranging from sustainable tourism and community development to marine conservation, agroforestry, and renewable energy. First up: Rios Tropicales, one of Costa Rica’s top river rafting companies and a leader in conservation and sustainable community development. Stay tuned….