Na, na, na, guanabana
Moon was the first one to sing that song, before any of us had even seen a guanabana. By the end of the trip, we were humming it in our sleep. We traveled the country, from the Nicoya Peninsula to the south Caribbean coast, out in a radically new place with new people, most of whom I had not met before arriving in San Jose, thanks to my quarter away at Friday Harbor. I would return from that southern country with new friends and ideas, sunburnt and vaguely addicted to rice and beans.
My tripmates and I came to Costa Rica with different perspectives, I quickly realized. I saw the country as obviously first-world, wealthy, and well-developed, a point which some of my fellow students disagreed with. It's relative, of course, and I suppose therein lies the explanation for our different views: I grew up visiting Bangkok and Thailand, markedly poorer, although still fairly developed and possessed of an obvious middle class. I cannot speak for what they experienced, but I know that I regarded Costa Rica as an example for the US in many cases, a country that, admittedly, has various social or political problems, but which is in many ways a leader for environmental preservation and restoration. Some of the methods I saw for combining nature and industry complement and contrast projects I would later work on, lingering in the back of my mind as outlines for how agriculture and aquaculture can become sustainable in a rapidly changing world. It mirrored the Arctic, too, in the way that the environment and everyday life intertwined, making it impossible to deal exclusively with one or the other. Most of all, I appreciate the conversations and relationships I had with people there, both from UW and from Costa Rica. Both the professors leading it, Dr. Moon Draper and Dr. Jon Herron, are men I respect immensely, and the local professor who met us there is a terrifying competent individual both with science and a machete.
My tripmates and I came to Costa Rica with different perspectives, I quickly realized. I saw the country as obviously first-world, wealthy, and well-developed, a point which some of my fellow students disagreed with. It's relative, of course, and I suppose therein lies the explanation for our different views: I grew up visiting Bangkok and Thailand, markedly poorer, although still fairly developed and possessed of an obvious middle class. I cannot speak for what they experienced, but I know that I regarded Costa Rica as an example for the US in many cases, a country that, admittedly, has various social or political problems, but which is in many ways a leader for environmental preservation and restoration. Some of the methods I saw for combining nature and industry complement and contrast projects I would later work on, lingering in the back of my mind as outlines for how agriculture and aquaculture can become sustainable in a rapidly changing world. It mirrored the Arctic, too, in the way that the environment and everyday life intertwined, making it impossible to deal exclusively with one or the other. Most of all, I appreciate the conversations and relationships I had with people there, both from UW and from Costa Rica. Both the professors leading it, Dr. Moon Draper and Dr. Jon Herron, are men I respect immensely, and the local professor who met us there is a terrifying competent individual both with science and a machete.
Left: a horse at a sugarcane farm. Right: myself, with a herbarium I found at La Selva Biological Station.
The Osa
The Osa Peninsula was a wild, wonderful place, a rich jungle chattering with noise and alive with all manner of things. It was cushier than I expected --- I think I may have low standards --- but it abounded in hidden life, and our guide was an intrepid biologist who had done field work in the area for years. He had a mischievous bent, and at one point introduced us to a type of wasp that, when killed, releases pheromones that put the rest of the colony into attack mode. He caught one and showed it around, then crushed it and shouted, "Run!" I had already taken off by that point, because I pull stupid pranks myself and can recognize the lead-in. Another day, he brought us to a swimming hole. It rained as we started to leave, a proper thundering downpour, and the trail turned into a creek below our feet, warm yellow water running in miniature rapids down towards a dark gray-brown river. What did I learn? No point in bothering to keep your clothes dry. Even if the rain doesn't hit them, the humidity will render them oddly damp no matter what you do.
The farms
I do not know all that much about farming. Logging and fishing are familiar to me, and I can list the struggles and successes of those industries, no problem. I was thus fascinated by the farmers we visited in Costa Rica, and their own stories about trying to preserve biodiversity while still making a living. One, a dairy farmer, reminded me of the Sinlahekin ranchers and the grazed-out wildflowers. Cows can wreck a place, and I was impressed at how healthy her cows and land seemed, although perhaps dairy cows are naturally kinder on plants. A sugarcane farmer was slowly making his farm self-sufficient, with a small woodland, a couple of animals, and a manure system that routed the methane produced for lighting flames. A coffee plantation build windbreaks that doubled as biological corridors. My god, their coffee was good. I still don't know too much about farming, but I have a lot more hope that agriculture can be made to coexist with nature.
Left: a poison dart frog at La Selva. Right: a red-eyed tree frog somewhere or another.