Only in Pueblo Nuevo

Now that I'm back in San Jose, I've been able to add photos to some old blog entries, so check them out!
 
I’ve heard from numerous people about the “Only in Costa Rica” Facebook page, on which people can share stories or photos of uniquely tico events, like crazy motorcycle drivers and unfortunate misspellings on signs.  I thought I’d write my own list of unique experiences I had in Pueblo Nuevo, my field site.

 Only in Pueblo Nuevo…

…Have I spent a Saturday afternoon chatting with my extended host family, while making guava jam over a wood-fired stove.

…Have my host parents taken me on an early evening walk to the underwhelmingly-named “mirador” (lookout), which is a picnic shelter on top of a huge hill with a stunning view of Tortuguero National Park and the Caribbean Sea.  

At the Mirador with Yeimy and Anyell

…Have we stopped on the way back from our walk to pick a snack of sour guavas (eaten with salt) and admire a family of white-faced capuchin monkeys.

… Has my mid-morning snack been “agua pipa” (coconut water) chopped down from the tree with a machete and sipped from the shell, and the sweet/sour pulp sucked off of cacao seeds.

After you finish drinking the coconut water, you can cut it open to eat out the white "meat." This time I was at home so I ate it with a spoon, but out in the field I would use another little piece of the shell to scoop it out.

…Have I had a field of yucca in my backyard and guava, cacao and coconut trees in the front.

…Is nearly everyone in the town related to everyone else.

… Have I watched so many “telenovelas” (soap operas).

… Have I lost a $200 GPS device in the middle of the forest, searched for an hour without success and returned home in desperation, only to return with my host father who found it easily!

… Are motorcycles and bicycles the primary mode of transportation; I’ve often seen an entire family squeezed onto one vehicle.

My host parents Liliana and Marcos on their motorcycle at the Mirador

…Does my schoolwork consist of hiking around a cacao plantation (that more resembles a jungle than a farm) and digging in the dirt.

…Have I spent four hours (which was four hours less than the other workers) helping to scoop cacao seeds out of the pods by hand at the request of one particular cacao buyer.  The work that took forty people eight hours to complete by hand is normally done by just two people in the same amount of time using modern machinery.  Fifteen years ago, however, none of the machinery that is currently used existed, and all of the cacao processing was done by hand like this!

This was the pile of cacao pods that my group scooped out.  It probably took us about four hours to finish this pile.

…Is the sound of a rainstorm amplified many times by pounding off the metal roofs of the buildings.  With a really heavy downpour, it’s so loud that it’s difficult to hold a conversation or watch tv, so most people just end up taking a nap until it passes.

…Have I learned how to ride a bike while holding a shovel and burlap sack full of supplies (the trick is to stick the handle of the shovel underneath the straps of your backpack).

…Does a perfectly clear, sunny day or starry night by no means mean that you can leave the house without a raincoat or umbrella.

…Are the mosquitoes at least three times bigger than mosquitoes in the US; almost completely resistant to DEET as well as clothing; and inexplicably intelligent, able to sniff out gringa blood from miles away but leaving the ticos in peace.  I’m pretty sure some people here think I have varicela (chicken pox),  haha. 

…Are pet stores completely unnecessary.  No dogs or cats are spayed or neutered, so there are plenty of them to go around.  Pet parakeets are plucked off of the trees in the neighborhood.  Geovanny, a sloth researcher on the cacao farm, even has a pet toucan named Pascual!

Pascual the toucan.

…Are there more bars (1) than grocery stores (0).  Oh, wait, never mind… that’s Wisconsin too!  Actually, that’s a lie; there are several pulperías, which are like small convenience stores where you can find basic groceries… I just really wanted to make that joke.

Pueblo Nuevo: the bar is the blue building on the right.

I’m back in San José now, which is a big city and has many of the conveniences (and inconveniences) of the United States.  My time in Pueblo Nuevo was a chance to live a very different lifestyle, and while at times it was hard, I’m so glad I got to experience the tranquilo life in the campo. 

The Women of Pueblo Nuevo

My research here in Pueblo Nuevo is strictly biology related, and earthworms are the most complex animals that I study… but it’s hard not to be a bit of an anthropologist while living in a place that is so socioeconomically and culturally different from my past experience.  One aspect of life here that is fascinating to me is the role of women.  I’ve gotten to know several women in the pueblo, and have been very interested to find out about their lives.  

Most of the women in Pueblo Nuevo marry very young, as young as fifteen (actually, many of them are not legally married to their partners, which I think has to do with the expense of a marriage license.  They still refer to each other as “my husband” and “my wife,” though, and at least in the case of the cacao farm where I do my research, even women who are not legally married to workers are covered under the health insurance policy that all employers are required under Costa Rican law to provide for employees and their families).  They have children very young as well, and the vast majority are homemakers.  They wake up before sunrise to prepare breakfast and lunch for their husbands, most of whom work in cacao, banana or pineapple plantations nearby.  The rest of the day is spent getting children ready for school, preparing lunch, doing laundry (my host mom probably does laundry three or four times a week), cleaning the house, preparing some coffee and snacks for their husband’s cafecito when he gets home from work, making dinner, and putting children to bed.  

Machismo is much more obvious here in Pueblo Nuevo than in San José; in San José I’ve met many women who are professionals, and men who cook dinner… my host father here can’t fry an egg or even make a pot of coffee to save his life!  Still, it seems like that attitude is slowly changing.  Many women are sick of having to ask their husbands for money every time they want to buy something, and they have come up with ways to earn a little money of their own.  My host mother Liliana, for example, sells products from catalogs to women in the town, and sews handbags to sell as well.  She also has a few months of beauty school experience (she dropped out after giving birth to her first child, because the hour-long weekly commute wasn’t realistic), so she paints nails or gives hair cuts for 1,000 colones ($2) each.  This way, she has a little money of her own to buy perfumes and shampoos for her and her daughters, or to get herself an occasional treat at the pulpería when she’s out for a walk.  Her dream is to go back and finish school, so that she can run a small beauty salon out of her house.  My host father has a really hard time understanding his wife’s desire to earn her own money.  He feels like he makes enough money at his job for his family to live comfortably, and he can give Liliana money when she asks for it, so there’s no reason for her to work.  He’s not intentionally sexist; that’s just the example he was given by his own parents.  

There is a small group of women in Pueblo Nuevo who are pushing the envelope even further to break free from their machista society.  The Mujeres de Amazilia, who I mentioned in an earlier post as the women who cooked us a delicious lunch when the ACM group visited Finmac in February, are really a wonderful success story.  They are a cooperative of women who buy bulk organic chocolate from Finmac (the organic chocolate farm where I’ve been doing my research), and work long hours in the kitchen of a converted house on the farm to make delicious chocolate bars.  This system is really fascinating to me, because not only is it helping the women of Pueblo Nuevo to achieve financial independence, but the production and sale of chocolate bars here in Costa Rica keeps the profits within the local economy.  A good bar of organic chocolate is expensive to buy in a grocery store, yet most countries where cacao is grown (in Central and South America, and Africa) are impoverished, and many cacao farmers struggle to make a living.  Why?  Because the cacao beans themselves are a commodity crop that is bought very cheaply and processed in Europe or the United States.  The people who make the money aren’t the farmers, they are the processors.  Hugo, the owner of Finmac has an economic advantage because he has the machinery to process the cacao beans into bulk chocolate.  In this way, he adds value to his product and is able to make a greater profit margin when he sells it.  The Mujeres de Amazilia take the chocolate one step further, actually making a finished product.  

And the product is really good: they make bars of dark chocolate and milk chocolate, with add-ins like dried ginger, almonds, peanuts, and coffee.  They’ve perfected their technique over the years, even receiving lessons from Madison chocolatier Gail Ambrosius, who has visited Finmac several times to work with the Amazilias!  The chocolate bars are gaining popularity in the country, and tourist destinations like the Tirimbina Biological Reserve have begun selling them in their gift shops.  This is really good news, because at the moment there are only about twelve Amazilias, and they don’t really have room for anymore.  However, with their increasing success, they’ve been able to raise enough funds and secure a government loan to build a chocolate factory on the property!  With more space, they’ll have more production capacity, and will hopefully be able to provide work for even more Pueblo Nuevo women.  It’s really cool to see such a success story in such a small town!

So, that’s the story of the women in Pueblo Nuevo.  A traditional machista culture with some strong women determined to exert their independence and change their role in society.

The Maiden Voyage of my Birthday Present

This year, I got a brand new backpacking pack for my birthday.  What better place to break it in than Corcovado National Park, labeled by National Geographic as “the most biologically intense place on earth”?  Tim, Lauren, David and I decided to take advantage of Semana Santa (Easter week) to backpack for three nights in this amazing place, and it was an unforgettable experience.

Getting there certainly wasn’t easy, because the park is located in the Osa Peninsula, in the very south of Costa Rica.  I left Pueblo Nuevo on Friday afternoon, stopped at my San José home to pick up my backpack, and headed out to the bus stop to catch our bus that left at 10:30 pm.  We drove through the night, and arrived in Golfito at 4 am, with three hours to wait until we had to catch a water taxi to our setting off place, Puerto Jiménez.  Thankfully, Iveth (the building manager at ACM) is from Puerto Jiménez and was heading home for the holidays, so she was on the same bus as us and could show us around town and introduce us to her family members.  They even tried to help find us a guide to take us around the park, but unfortunately no one they knew was available.  

We originally were planning on hiking without a guide, but once we arrived in Puerto Jiménez in the morning and talked to some other tourists and locals, nearly everyone highly recommended hiking with a guide in order to fully enjoy the experience.  However, the cheapest price we could find for a guide would have cost us $90 each for the three days…tough to swing on a college student’s budget.  The colectivo (truck transportation to the park) didn’t leave until the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to debate.  We bought groceries, and at Iveth’s suggestion ate lunch at a town fair they were holding to raise money for building a nursing home in town.  Homemade tamales, salad and a natural fruit juice for $2.  Yum!  

Homemade tamale

It was a really tough decision, but in the end we decided not to go with the guide.  Unfortunately, this meant we were without a cook stove (the rest of the gear, like tents, mosquito nets and sleeping bags, were lent to us by ACM) and by that time all of the places where we could have rented one were closed for lunch!  We quick ran back to the grocery store and bought some food that we could eat without cooking (hence the interesting meals you’ll notice that we ate during the trip), then went to wait for the colectivo to take us to Carate, a tiny town right near the entrance to the par.  After a three-hour long bumpy ride, we finally arrived.   By this time, it was about 4:30 pm, so we knew we should head off right away to get to our campsite before dark.  We walked about 2 miles along the beach, in the gorgeous light of the setting sun, and arrived at La Leona ranger station.  We set up camp and made peanut butter sandwiches with bananas for dinner, and passed out around 7 pm – it had already been a looong day!

Beach hiking at dusk

Driftwood on the beach

The sunset from our campsite, which was right on the beach

The next morning, we ate more pb&b sandwiches and packed up camp, heading out on the 16 kilometer trail to our next destination, Sirena Biological Station.  Not even ten minutes into our hike we saw a family of spider monkeys climbing among the trees, and then we knew it was going to be an incredible experience.  We realized that because we had all of our own gear and we’ve been here long enough and gone on enough tours to be able to identify quite a few animals, it probably was the right decision for us to save money and not hire a guide.  Sure enough, we were able to see and identify white-faced capuchins, an anteater, scarlet macaws, and squirrel monkeys (endangered!)  One really awesome moment that made us take off our packs and watch for a while was seeing a family of squirrel monkeys in one tree, so close we could see the expressions on their faces, and a pair of scarlet macaws fighting in the neighboring tree. 

Heading off in the morning

Anteater

The hike to Sirena followed the beach, and the trail was about half along the sandy shore and half in the forest.  A couple of times it was difficult to find the trail again after walking in the sand (high tide does a pretty good job of erasing footprints), but we knew as long as we kept walking along the beach we were heading in the right direction, and we always eventually found the forest trail again.  

The gorgeous beach we hiked along for several kilometers

This was the entrance back into the forest after hiking along the beach; tricky to see!

 We didn’t see as many animals while walking along the beach, but it was fun hiking because it involved some exciting rock scrambling and because we were the only ones on the beach for miles.  That was definitely the only time in Costa Rica I’ve had a beach to myself!  In fact, I think we only ran into three other groups of people in all the seven hours we were hiking.  One group gave us a heads up that there was a pair of tapirs up ahead, which was so cool to see!  It was really amazing to see the animals in this preserved wilderness area, because they were “tame,” but not in the obnoxious way that the monkeys and raccoons in Manuel Antonio were tame, begging and stealing food from people.  Instead, the animals here were just disinterested, as if they knew they had nothing to fear from humans.  This allowed us to see wild animals very close, which was incredible.

Tapirs!

They were so close!

We stopped for lunch on the beach (tortillas with peanut butter, granola and carrots was our lunch staple) and then only had about an hour left to hike.  We crossed one final river, and then arrived at Sirena Biological Station.  It was the weirdest thing after seven hours of hiking in the wild jungle to emerge into a mowed airstrip and find the biological station with electricity, running water, showers, and flush toilets!  We were also very excited for the foam mattresses and covered sleeping platform, which meant we didn’t have to set up our tent and could just sleep under our mosquito nets and sheets – much more comfortable in the heat!  After setting up camp, relaxing on the beach for awhile, and showering (such a luxury on a backpacking trip!) we made our “gourmet” dinner: canned tuna, crumbled up bread and refried beans all mixed together with some lime juice, cucumbers and carrots.  It looked pretty disgusting, but didn’t taste that bad for a last-minute improvisation… at least it filled us up!  And it was better than paying for meals at the station – those cost $25 each.  We went to sleep at about 8 pm, absolutely exhausted. 

Sirena Biological Station

The "honeymoon suite" that Lauren and I shared

The next morning, we choked down enjoyed the plain oatmeal we had prepared the night before by soaking it in water… eating it with peanut butter made it more palatable, and again, at least it filled us up!  We had one more night at Sirena, so we were able to spend this day leisurely exploring the trails around the station.  On our morning hike, we saw many more monkeys, a couple of “pavones de montaña” (Great Curassow), and lots of giant spiders.  We also met the crew of a BBC documentary as they were leaving from two weeks of filming nocturnal animals from Sirena Station.  Apparently, the documentary is called “Dark” and will be coming out soon, so check it out!

In the afternoon, we set off in search of a swimming hole that a ranger had told us about.  We had some difficulty finding the path, and headed back to ask someone for directions… Lauren and I were walking ahead of the boys, and all of a sudden we smelled this incredible strong, pungent smell.  This sparked my memory of something I’d read in a guidebook, and I realized it was the smell of peccaries (wild boars)!  I looked over and there were two of them right by the path!  We were kind of scared, because we’ve heard they can be aggressive and have been known to charge people in herds, but there were only two and they ran away as soon as they noticed us.  Another animal sighting to check off the list!

We never actually ended up making it to the swimming hole, because the path was difficult to follow and covered with spiderwebs.  We headed back instead to wash up and make dinner: our tuna “casserole” again, with leftover oatmeal instead of bread this time.  It looked even less appetizing than the first night, but really tasted surprisingly good… although everything tastes good while you’re camping!  

The next morning, we woke up early, packed up camp, ate our cold oatmeal with peanut butter, and headed off back towards Carate – we had 20 kilometers to cover that day and had to be sure to catch the only colectivo back to Puerto Jiménez at 4:00 pm, so we needed to start early.  We ended up walking with some new friends we met at the ranger station: Johannes, a German biology student studying at the Universidad Nacional here in Costa Rica who’s been to Corcovado before and was very knowledgeable; his friend Barbara who was visiting from Germany, and their tico friends.  They were good company, and we had a very pleasant hike back.  We laughed when we stopped for lunch and we (the Americans) brought out our jar of peanut butter while they (the Europeans) got out their jar of Nutella… how cliché.  We traded tastes of each other’s and that Nutella tasted soooo good. 

Other highlights of the hike back were seeing a snake eating a lizard – so cool!  We stayed and watched that for a while – and swimming in the Río Madrigal.  

Snake eating a lizard!  You can see the snake's mouth (it's orange and gray) biting down on the lizard's body (white-ish gray)

We got back to Carate with plenty of time to spare before the colectivo ride, and the ride itself was actually really fun because our new friends started singing and we joined in and sang together for a good chunk of the three hour trip.  I’m now convinced that everyone in the world, no matter what language they speak, knows the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

When we got back to Puerto Jiménez, the first thing on our minds was food!  The casado (typical Costa Rican meal of rice, beans, meat or fish, salad, and plantains) I got at the little soda (small restaurant) we stopped at tasted so delicious.  So did the ice cream stop afterwards… mmmmm…

After dinner, we were picked up to go to our hostel, which was really awesome, and we wished we could have stayed there longer!  It was called Celvantes Jungle Lodge, and was just opened three months ago by a couple of guys from San Francisco on 75 hectares in the jungle.  The dorms were in open-air cabins spaced around the property, and they had a really comfortable communal space to hang out with a bar and shared kitchen.  

The next day was a LOT of traveling, from 4:30 am to 7:30 pm on several buses to get back to Pueblo Nuevo.  Lauren, Tim and I subsisted off of a loaf of bread, six bananas, a jar of pineapple jam, and a sleeve of cookies.  Needless to say, I was very excited for some real food and a comfy bed when I got back!  

Animals we saw in Corcovado:

·         Blue morpho butterflies

·         Spider monkeys

·         White-faced capuchins

·         Scarlet macaws

·         Squirrel monkeys (endangered!)

·         Anteater

·         Herons

·         Great Curassow

·         Tapirs (endangered!)

·         Giant spiders with cool 3D webs

·         Jesus Christ lizard

·         Hundreds of hermit crabs

·         Coatis

·         Toucans

·         Peccaries

·         Unidentified snake eating a lizard

·         Crocodile