We considered flying, but that would have cost around $300 each round trip. We found we could do the trip by Tica Bus for well under half that, plus the bus lets you get a look at the countryside in between. And of course the carbon footprint for bus travel is much smaller. The direct bus leaves San Salvador at 3:00 a.m, makes a mid-day stop in Managua, and gets you into San José around 10:00 p.m.
In San José we met up with Monica Lazo, one of my co-workers from Don Bosco who has been working on her PhD through a Costa Rican university. She hooked us up with Rosmery and Hampi, a sweet couple who rent rooms to students in their home out in the suburbs, about 5 km from the center of San José. We stayed a night there, then caught a bus to Turrialba a couple hours from the capital. There we looked up Lauren Fins and her husband Dave Potter. Lauren is a fellow Fulbrighter I met at the orientation session in Washington, D.C. last June. She's developing a course on the genetics of cacao at CATIE, a rural development research center that focuses on agroforestry. Dave and Lauren showed us around the beautiful campus, which is surrounded by a botanical garden and thousands of acres of experimental plantations of cacao, coffee, and all kinds of other tropical perennial plants.
We spent a night at their big house on the CATIE campus. In the morning we got to meet with Glen Galloway, director of CATIE's graduate programs. He told Basilia she's a great candidate for their master's program in watershed management. He even encouraged me to consider working on a bioenergy research project at CATIE if I were to accompany Basilia to Costa Rica while she works on a master's there.
Our next stop was Cahuita, a small town on the Caribbean coast located right next to a national park on a point jutting out into the sea and surrounded by coral reefs. I'd been to Cahuita almost 20 years earlier with my friends Mike and Laura. I was happy to find the place mostly unchanged, still a quiet backpacker destination that has not morphed into a 5-star Club Med-type resort. We rented an incredibly cute and comfy cabin just outside the park for $40 a night, tucked among trees frequented by howler monkeys and toucans. The grounds were pocked with holes, each one home to a land crab. When we sat still on the porch, all the crabs would come out to prowl for food.
We spent two nights in Cahuita. The weather was rainy most of the time, but eventually we decided to go for a soggy hike in the national park. Just inside the park we met a local resident who works for the park as a guide. He offered to show us around, which turned out to be a great thing, as he showed us all kinds of animals we would have overlooked: two-toed and three-toed sloths, capuchin monkeys, giant iguanas up in the high branches of trees, snakes, and giant hermit crabs.
In the coastal jungle of Cahuita National Park
From Cahuita we headed back inland to San José. We spent one day just exploring the city. It's mellower and less chaotic than other Central American capitals, and there are a few streets converted into pedestrian malls in the city center that are downright pleasant to walk on. It is amazing how much nicer of a place a big city becomes when you take away the cars.
Our last day in Costa Rica Basilia was feeling burnt out. I caught a bus by myself to the Poás Volcano national park. At first the weather was too misty to see the volcano crater, so I hiked around looking at the cloud forest flora and fauna. Just before it was time to catch the bus back to San José, the mists parted and I got a great look into the steaming crater.
On Saturday we took Tica Bus back to San Salvador. One of the highlights of the ride was seeing the 40 megawatt Amayo wind farm in southern Nicaragua. The narrow isthmus between the Pacific Ocean and Lago de Nicaragua seems to create an ideal wind micro-climate. In addition to the big 2 MW turbines, I saw many family farms in the area with wind-powered well pumps or small wind electric generators.
Amayo wind farm as seen from the window of a speeding bus
Our first day back in San Salvador was wedding day for my co-worker Francisco and Kyle. Another of my co-workers René and his wife Kirian drove us up to the wedding at a sort of country club up high on the slopes of Volcán San Salvador. I was pressed into service at the last minute to read the ceremony in English, echoing the Spanish original recited by the priest hired for the occasion. The reception was lots of fun, with good food and drink and DJ dancing. In the middle of the celebration, a samba drum group came in and rocked the place for twenty minutes or so. Basilia had a great time of course. We realized we need to get out and dance more often.
Basilia and I with UDB friends and family at the wedding, Kyle and Francisco right behind us
Today was my first day back on the job. I went with Federico Machado and Anselmo Valdizon from UDB to FUSALMO, a foundation that runs a neighborhood sports facility in Soyapango. The director and the head of maintenance showed us around the place. They're concerned because they're spending $4,000 to $5,000 a month on electricity, most of which seems to be for outdoor lighting for basketball courts and soccer fields. We´re going to try to work an energy audit of the facility into the syllabi for one or more engineering courses, the idea being to teach the students auditing skills while helping FUSALMO reduce costs.
No comments:
Post a Comment