Tag Archives: Costa Rica

Costa Rica Culture and (Coffee) Cultivation

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Costa Rica’s long cultural history gives life there today its special flavor. Yes, smartphones and satellite dishes are ubiquitous, but they exist alongside healthy remnants of the past. We didn’t see any of the remaining villages of several pre-Columbian tribes that sparsely peopled the landscape that became Costa Rica. However, our Tropical Comfort Tours guide Jose told us a lot about them in the car ride on our “culture day.” When the Spanish came in the 1500s, they were most interested in the mountain-dwelling tribe, the Boruca, who they hoped might have more gold. They brought with them their religion, and the country remains heavily Catholic.

Liberia Church

Immaculate Church of the Conception, Liberia

Liberia Church Altar

Altar decorated for Lenten services

Late one afternoon we took a cab into the provincial capital of Liberia (a 40-minute ride) and observed a jam-packed Ash Wednesday service. The cross-shaped piercings on all sides of the church let the breezes through, and the priest’s vestments billowed dramatically. The altar has been prepared to look like a grotto, with an entombed Christ in the center in preparation for Easter. The photo captures only a small portion, including a man in black still working on the lights. I’ve never seen anything like it!

Costa Rica pot

We were delighted with a demonstration of traditional pottery-making by a young man from Guaitíl. The pots from there are made on a hand-operated wheel and include representations of local plants and animals, as well as symbolic elements that date back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The pot I selected features a bold toucan.

 

A Coffee Quiz

We toured a coffee cooperative that takes beans from many small local farmers and combines them for processing and export. How much do you know about coffee?

  1. coffee roaster

    Coffee Roaster

    The tall coffee plant variety grown in Brazil must be mechanically picked. This is faster and cheaper, but is the quality better, yes or no?

  2. In Costa Rica, an expert coffee bean picker makes about: $10 a day; $20 a day; $40 a day.
  3. When coffee beans are processed, the defective, unripe, partially worm-eaten beans are separated out and: thrown away; used for planting the next crop; sold to the food industry for use in candies, cookies, liqueurs, etc.
  4. Dark roast coffee has more caffeine than light roast. True or False?
  5. Who produces the best coffee: Colombia, Costa Rica, or Hawaii?

Answers: 1. NO! 2. $20 a day. 3. Sold to the food industry. 4. False. 5. All three!

Costa Rica house

Surprisingly, in a country with no military whose people are legendarily congenial and non-confrontational, so many people even in remote areas have outfitted their windows with bars, erected chain-link fences around their property, and not uncommonly topped them with barbed wire. We ate at a seafood restaurant in Liberia (Tierra Mar) surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire.

(All photos by the author.)

Our Costa Rica Hotel? ¡Pura Vida!

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Andaz balcony

Hotel room balcony

Scottsdale cousins arranged accommodations for our recent week-long Costa Rica trip. We were tag-alongs, so in a show of agreeability just went with their choice. At the last minute (24 hours before our flight time), they unfortunately had to cancel. This was not because they’d done a more careful accounting of the hotel costs, which conceivably could induce a cardiac event in the unwary. We stayed with it. The Andaz Peninsula Papagayo Resort where we stayed is a high-end Hyatt brand, and there are a few Andaz’s worldwide. This one was worth every penny.

The 153 rooms have many thoughtful design features. I liked best the balcony with its view through the trees down to the bay. Early in the morning, with the howler monkeys howling, the tropical birds screeching, and a cup of coffee steaming, to sit outside in 75-degree temperatures was heaven.

¡Pura Vida! Is the untranslatable motto of Costa Rica, which suggests enjoying life at the max, and it’s certainly the watchphrase of the Andaz resort staff. When Costa Rica eliminated the military in 1948, those monies were diverted into improving the citizenry’s quality of life. Best health care system in Central America. Best educational system (free to an extent that would warm Bernie Sanders’s heart-cockles), and highest literacy rate. Schooling includes English. If I worked at it, I could find older members of the gardening staff who don’t speak English (Me, with big smile: “Plantas están muy bonita.” Him, with big smile: “Sí” and thinking, “what the heck did she just say?”). My linguistic provincialism is routinely embarrassing.

Andaz lobby

The beautiful welcome lobby’s vaulted ceiling is lined with river reeds and it’s wide open, letting the breezes (during our stay, strong winds) blow through. That’s where you find the knowledgeable and extremely conscientious concierge staff. They set us up with tours to the places we wanted to see and kept us up-to-date as conditions changed. Their goal was to make sure we had a good time, and in that they were beyond successful! The food at the resort’s three restaurants is excellent—even the buffet breakfast. We watched the Super Bowl in Spanish at the tapas bar.

The spa is elegant, and the grounds and infinity pools, also built into a steep hillside, are beautiful.

 

Andaz pool

Infinity pool built into hillside

The hotel has two beaches on the bay, but when we wanted the Pacific Ocean experience, a free shuttle drove us to the beach club. There’s also a gym and golf course availability, which we didn’t use. Don’t let the steep terrain of the Andaz’s 28 acres put you off. A golf cart will come immediately to take you anywhere on the grounds you want to go. We walked up and down the steep paths and by week’s end, it was getting easier.

Beach

We probably would stay closer to the cloud forest on a return trip and save ourselves some long van rides, but as a place for a getaway and a once-in-a-lifetime vacation? Priceless.

Million-dollar bonus: stars at night, by the bushelsful.

(All photos by the author.)

All the Monkeys Aren’t in the Zoo

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White-faced monkey Some of them, like the fellow in the photo at right, just fled the balcony of our Costa Rica hotel room. A week in this Central American paradise is an opportunity to see a huge diversity of wildlife. Only about half the size of the U.S. state of Ohio, Costa Rica has 1/20th of the world’s biodiversity: “nearly 8% of the world’s bird species, 10% of the world’s butterfly species, 10% of the world’s bat species and 20% of the world’s hummingbird species,” according to our highly-recommended guidebook by James Kaiser. In all, a quarter of Costa Rica’s land has been set aside in national parks and preserves to maintain this astonishing homeland for so many creatures.

On our too brief week-long visit, we didn’t have to go outside the hotel grounds to watch both white-throated capuchin monkeys and see (and hear) howler monkeys. Our hotel grounds on Guanacaste province’s Papagayo peninsula also was home to white-nosed coatls (coatimundis), which the locals call raccoons—their familiar relatives both zoologically and behaviorally—two kinds of iguanas, the green and “black,” lizards of various sizes, diverse butterflies, and many birds that I could hear but could not find in the trees. Every morning I watched a hummingbird take a morning sip from the flowering the trees outside our balcony.In the nearby waters we saw flying fish and snorkelers described puffer fish, sea urchins, and bright tropicals.

Jesus Christ LizardA boating excursion on the Tempisque River in Palo Verde National Park gave us the chance to see the so-called Jesus Christ lizard, whose webbed toes allow it to “walk on water” for distances of 10 to 15 feet, very handy when escaping a terrestrial predator. The real reptilian attraction of the river tour is, of course, the crocodiles. Aided by the low tide, we saw them in grinning profusion. The 12-foot beauty pictured at bottom was quietly sunning, seemingly oblivious to the gawking boat passengers. Then she decided to have some fun by rolling into the river and drenching the humans with muddy water.

The river trip was led by our excellent guide Jose from the aptly named “Tropical Comfort Tours” and an eagle-eyed boat captain. They were able to spot for us numerous local animals tourists’ untrained eyes would have overlooked: all three species of night herons, all three species of white egrets, the little blue heron (whose presence signals river health), and many more. En route to the river we saw wood storks, flocks of parakeets, the white-throated magpie-jay, and crested caracara (my spotting).

Crocodile Even though I’d spent a week researching, reading about, and memorizing the look of the country’s various poisonous snakes, did not see one. (Yay!!) High winds caused the authorities to close the mountain and volcano parks that were some distance from our hotel, because of the risk of falling trees and poisonous fumes from a rumblingly active volcano. (Silver lining: the winds kept mosquitoes and other bugs away.) These protected gems contain much of Costa Rica’s biological diversity, including hundreds of orchid species. We have to go back!

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