One Friday morning in Jacó Beach: Our group of seven Academia Tica students was being picked up in front of the apartments by Alan, our tour guide for the day. A 45 minutes drive southbound along the coast led us to the beginning of a narrow path through private farmland. First we passed chicken and horses, then the trail continued through the forest, crossing some little streams. Finally we reached the waterfall that made its way down through the jungle like a stairway for giants. Beautiful to see…and now what? I thought the hike would continue to the other ones – since the only thing I knew about the waterfalls back then was: there are at least 3 of them. And it did, just not in the way I expected. Alan began to climb up the rock wall beside the waterfall. We all watched him disappear as he jumped into the pool above. So we left our things at the bottom and followed him up. The second waterfall filled a nice deep pool where some of us dipped in (or in my case: half accidently slipped in). The others were already on their way up higher.
“Once you are up there, the only way down is to jump!” Alan pointed out to us with a provocative twinkle in his eyes. Hesitating and still not quite sure about jumping down the not entirely vertical rock face, I climbed up next to the waterfall holding on to roots and little ledges. Once up there you could see the third and fourth waterfall with their round pools caved out of the dark rock around. The view down into the jungle was amazing! After another swim in the refreshing clear pools and a little massage of the top one of the waterfalls, it was time for the way back down.
Academia Tica students relaxing in the refreshing pool between two waterfalls.
Jumping from the upper waterfall was really fun. One by one we climbed to a spot where you could just let yourself fall into the pool a few meters beneath. The more than 5 meter jump into the last pool was a bit more thrilling. You had to stand on a little ledge where only your heels could fit and from that point jump forward since the rocks were not that steep. But we all did it – there was no other way, right? At this point big respect for Bob, one of the students in his seventies, who enjoyed it as much as everyone else! Full of adrenaline some of us jumped over and over again while the others were relaxing in the pool or tried (and partly succeeded) climbing up beneath the waterfall not being able to see where your hands could grip since the water kept lashing down onto your face.
Perfectly content and definitely with an unforgettable experience more we later made our way back to Jacó. What a fun and unique day.
¡PURA VIDA!
Fresh clear water making its ways through the forest at “Las Cataratas Las Pilas” near Parrita.
In the tangle of cacophonous green that is Carara National Park, two types of forest meet, a mix of plants, animals and insects found nowhere else in the world.
This convergence of Costa Rica’s dry Northern Pacific region and its much wetter Southern Zone is host to half the known animal species in a country famed for prodigious biological diversity. For a while this year it was also host to an unlikely combination of young people, half from the United States and half from Costa Rica, all volunteers.
This group arrived at Carara much to the discomfort of an iguana family that had taken up residence in the bunkhouse. The impressive green lizards stomped around the metal roof and glared from the rafters as the people set to work building infrastructure and breaking down cultural barriers during week-long “campamentos.”
Throughout July, six of these work parties were organized at three national parks through a not-for-profit partnership between youth leadership organizations Casa de La Juventud of San Isidro de General, Perez Zeledon, and AMIGOS de las Americas, headquartered in Houston, Texas. During the project, 14- to 29-year-old volunteers from the U.S. and Costa Rica were overseen by slightly older AMIGOS supervisors and CASA coordinators, who reported to a pair of project directors under 30.
“It’s a very egalitarian organization, where everyone’s point of view counts,” said Airon Corrales Vargas, a 26-year-old coordinator from Tambor, Perez Zeledon.
Airon is a student and teacher at La Universidad Nacional, who first got involved with this program after AMIGOS worked in his hometown. His family has hosted numerous North American volunteers over the years.
Typically, AMIGOS partners with organizations in Latin American countries to place young people from the U.S. with unpaid host families in rural communities like Tambor, where they spend two or three months working on a project identified by the locals. These projects take as many forms as there are places in the organization’s network, from improving public spaces to developing after-school programs. Spanish language skills are a must for participants. Costa Rica is distinct from other AMIGOS programs in that it is the only country in which volunteers leave the host communities to work alongside local youth within a national park system.
But one of the many residents at Carara National Park in July.
One group tarried along the trail at Carara during a morning hike. It crossed a bridge and descended concrete stairs built by the prior campamento. A few people rested under a recently repaired shade structure as a venomous toad hopped out of sight.
“Look!” breathed Jeffry Lopez Navarro, a 14-year-old from San Carlos, Perez Zeledon, redirecting all eyes upwards to where two dark forms clung to a trunk many stories overhead.
“The one way above is a bird’s nest and the one below it is a bee hive.”
In Carara tall trees like this cut straight to the heart of a tropical sun, while an array of shade-loving shrubs blanket the spongy forest floor, a melange of rotting stuff laced in delicate fungal mycelia. In between grow the epiphytes, plants that live on other plants. Even with all 36 campamento participants stomping along, it was hard to look into the vegetative weave without seeing something move. Human ears attuned to the dart of lizards, the yowl of monkeys, the flutter of butterflies, the flapping of wild turkeys or the total silence of a huge spider, ever wakeful on its low-hanging web.
Then came the sloth, seemingly caught mid-chew as it gazed down from the highest reaches of a tree. Unmoving and camoflauged by a symbiotic moss that grows on its gray coat, it looked a lot like a branch with eyes.
Meanwhile, a termite colony ceaselessly sculpted fallen wood. Hundreds of black caterpillars folded into the creases of a wild cashew tree. “Maybe doing something reproductive,” someone guessed. And the ants. Everywhere ants: boring into packed red earth, clipping tons of electric green leaf matter and carrying it home over the 12-lane micro-super-highways that crossed the trail.
“Those ants carry leaves back home, where they turn it into food, a kind of fungus the colony eats,” explained 23-year-old Allan Chinchilla Naranjo.
After the hike he leaned against the wall in the common area of the bunkhouse, musing about Carara and what it’s like to have two volunteers from the U.S. live with his family in San Pablo, Perez Zeledon, where they grow sugar cane and coffee.
“Of course there are things that are difficult. Understanding each other, for example, because they are learning the language. But the girls came to my house and became like my sisters, like my nieces and my cousins,” he said.
For Allan, this experience dismantled a lot of stereotypes.
“We thought all Americans eat a lot of McDonald’s, but in reality McDonald’s is everywhere. The girls seem to like typical Costa Rican food, you know, rice, beans, plantains and salad,” he said.
But for Lizzie Mombello, a 17-year-old volunteer from Kansas City, Missouri, many of the stereotypes she heard about Costa Rican culture are panning out.
“I read a lot of articles before the trip, which described Ticos as polite, generous, loud and knowledgable about their country. That all seems true. Though, even in the US, every state, every place is different and I am learning that here,” she said.
Volunteers leave their mark at Carara National Park in Puntarenas, Costa Rica.
The trip to Costa Rica was her first time on an airplane, her first time away from her own family.
“Luckily, my Tico family is very similar in a lot of ways. I have three siblings at home and my family here has three siblings. The house gets loud and there is always something happening,” she said.
And if there was a dull moment at Carara this reporter did not see it.
In addition to widening three kilometers of trails, moving more than 400 rocks the size of coconuts, shoveling untold amounts of organic debris, pouring concrete, mending a roof, wielding machetes with aplomb, repairing wooden railings and cleaning choked gutters, the group made time to play, to plan, to name the iguanas and some of the rocks, too.
During Lizzie and Allan’s week, fellow volunteers created an obstacle course. As the designers gleefully explained its requirements, the sky opened up, drenching everyone to the bone. Veins of mud flowed where there were once paths. The undaunted took their marks, rain only cheering them on.
Imagine the full force of heaven upon you as you hold a silver spoon in clenched teeth, balancing a lime on the end and walking through a muddy ditch. Then jump into a barrel full of dirty water, belly crawl under a wire through a gravel trench, high-jump halfway up a tree, spin around a broom stick ten times and in this state try to kick a soccer ball through a goal no wider than an umbrella. Next, scramble barefoot up a 30-degree slope slicked by plastic and soap, then tie one of your ankles to your partner’s and hobble 50 or so meters. Hooray! You made it to the finish line! But this is not so much a symbolic tape to be victoriously dashed through as a high, taut rope to be jumped over, using only your partner for help.
There was some confusion over which team won this race, dreamed up by a commission of six volunteers tasked with planning recreational activities during the week. Other commissions facilitated training in first aid, tool use, cultural education and multimedia projects. They all took turns organizing nightly meetings or “asambleas,” and helping the volunteer cooks from Perez Zeledon prepare for and clean up after meals.
“We try to put the campamento in the hands of the volunteers,” said Alessandro Broido, a Texas-born 25-year-old Senior Project Supervisor with AMIGOS and the only paid participant at the campamento.
“The intention is to create an inclusive space where everybody can express their ideas and share whatever they want to bring to the table,” he said.
After the obstacle course, mud streamed from clothes, skin, hair, smiles. Some people took showers, others just stood in the downpour until it rinsed them cleanish. That night Lizzie reflected on the experience, chunks of dirt mooning under her fingernails.
“Every person has different capabilities. For some people jumping over the rope was easy, for others it was running up the slide. Everyone comes from a different place and that’s what makes them who they are. A lot of my being here is about helping me find myself, about finding out what fascinates me. I think that is people and language.”
Events this month include traditional festivals, great movies, interesting fairs, diverse music and dance performances from all over the world.
Movies
Cine Magaly: This month a series celebrating female perspectives, “Cine con Lentes de Mujer,” will screen every Saturday at 1 pm in the Club Magaly, including “Caramelo” and “El Piano”.
University Cinema: After the semester is over the series of free movies at the University continues with the “Month of Architecture and Cities.” Every Thursday and Friday after Aug. 14, 6:30 pm at the Auditorium of Law (San Pedro).
Fairs
Let the exhibitors at the travel & tourism fair help you plan your next Costa Rica excurision, Aug. 21, from 11 am – 5 pm at the Hotel Sleep Inn .
Looking for a new book to practice your Spanish? The International Book Fair opens from Aug. 22-31, 9 am – 8 pm, at the Antigua Aduana in San José.
The fair “Diseño Gourmet” may be a good chance to buy some unique souvenirs and see how design and gourmet make a great match, Aug. 2, 8 am – 4 pm at the Shopping Center La Paco in Escazú.
The boys chorus from Vienna (“Wiener Saengerknaben”) will give concerts in Escazú (August 22nd) and in the National Theater in San José (August 24th). Photo by Simkultur
Music and Dance
The opera “Nabucco” by Guiseppe Verdi, epic retelling of the biblical story of King Nebuchadnezzar will be played in the National Theater on Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 5 pm until August 10th.
The National Festival of Contemporary Dance features one to three renowned acts daily August 5 – 10, 8pm at alternately at the Teatro Melico Salazar or the Teatro de la Danza.
The “Wiener Saengerknaben”, a boys chorus from Vienna, will hold a free concert on Aug. 22 at 7:30 pm, Plaza Tempo (next to Holiday Inn) in Escazú. Hear them at the National Theater on Aug. 24 at 5 pm. Part of the “Festival de Música Credomatic.”
The Afro-cultural Festival continues with different music and dance performances, starting with the Limón Roots Awards Aug. 20 at 7 pm in the National Theater in San José. The grand final of the 10-day festival is the Gala Parade, Aug. 31 in Limón.
The annual Gospel Festival “Let it Shine” features various choruses and artists, Aug. 30 at 7:30 pm at the Teatro Popular Melico Salazar.
Traditional & religious celebration
Experience authentic Costa Rican culture during a popular celebration in San Ramón de Alajuela, including a procession with about 60 images of saints brought to the center of town, traditional festivities with live music and typical food, from Aug. 30 – 31.
Feature image of the National Festival of Contemporary Dance by La Nacion.
As I tentatively sip a watery concoction of cacao, almonds and chili, the possibility that this bitter-spicy beverage is even a form of chocolate seems remote, let alone that under my crinkled nose froths the ancient precursor to all chocolate as we know and love it.
But history is a lot like taste — surprising, born of the bitter stuff and prone to unlikely combinations. Chocolate makes a great case study. While the chocolate we know today is more closely associated with European machines, West African soils and global appetites, the origins of cacao are in preColombian Latin America, where it has been grown, revered and served unsweetened for at least a millennium.
On a recent day at Sibú Chocolate, an artesanal chocolatier and cafeteria located a short drive from Academia Tica Coronado, most of us discretely push aside the little cups filled with Montezuma’s spicy recipe for orgiastic fortitude, eyes fastening instead on a selection of truffles, each like a tiny sculpture molded to exacting specifications artfully arranged on gleaming white plates.
But there is to be no gobbling of the gourmet chocolate on this tour. Restraint reigns as we listen to Julio Fernandez, co-founder of Sibú and Costa Rican historian, deliver an in-depth lecture. He prompts us to try each truffle as his story touches upon its origins. We are thousands of years into the story of chocolate before a Dutch chemist figures out how to produce it in solid form, like those so temptingly arranged on the table before us. Fernandez enlivens this long story with artifacts arranged all over Sibú’s garden cafeteria: from sticks and stone mortars to baroque oil paintings, WWII pin-ups and some chocolate-flavored product picked up at a local supermarket, for strictly anthropological purposes, of course.
“This is not chocolate,” Fernandez shakes his head disapprovingly as he holds up the plastic bag. This gesture becomes more frequent as his narration moves into the 20th century, when global demand turned more and more chocolate into product.
Founded by Fernandez and his American partner George Soriano, Sibú goes against this grain. “The (Sibu) concept is bean-to-gourmet-bar, and it has quite a few benefits. With higher-quality, handmade cacao, Soriano says he can ask a higher price and fairly pay farmers,” explained a recent report in the Tico Times.
The eight different varieties of chocolate we try during the tour all come from cacao beans grown at a single organic plantation on the Caribbean coast. The aim is to be uniquely sustainable while crafting flavors that are uniquely Costa Rican. Fernandez says Tico chocolate has a bolder, more bitter taste than African chocolate, though it is less resistant to pests. Despite their cutesy names, like “frosty pod rot” or “witch broom,” certain molds have led to the near collapse of the cacao industry in Costa Rica over the last thirty years, causing farmers to turn to livestock raising and other forms of agriculture, accelerating deforestation. (Cacao thrives in the shade and can be grown in a biologically diverse ecosystem, though some research suggests that these benefits can be relatively short-lived when coupled with pressure to produce high yields every season.)
In 1975, three years before the first frosty pod rot epidemics wiped out whole plantations on the Pacific Coast, Costa Rica produced nearly 7,000 tons of cacao beans. By 2012, that had dropped to just 700 tons, a 90% decrease. Meanwhile, production in West Africa’s Cote D’Ivoire increased a staggering 575 percent during the same 37-year period, according to statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Administration. The human cost accompanying Africa’s cacao boom is incalculable, with nearly 820,000 child laborers working on Cote D’Ivoire cacao plantations.
-Emily Jo Cureton
Academia Tica students enjoy some coffee after a tour of Sibù Chocolate in Heredia.Organic chocolate being prepared at Sibú in Heredia, Costa Rica.
When we pull up to his Escazú home, Gerardo Montoya hits play.
Parade sounds fill this sleepy neighborhood in the hills overlooking Costa Rica’s capital city. Crashing cymbals and snare drums punch off time as we walk down the driveway towards a garage workshop where our host awaits, dancing among the monsters he’s created, many of them large enough to swallow a man whole.
He cuts the music and announces:
“Meet my second family!”
There is el Chupacabra the blood sucking goat killer, just chilling next to Martina the spunky abuela. There are grinning diablos crowding long-nosed brujas, witches in cahoots with their equally hideous boyfriends, the brujos. There’s the hot pink-cheeked Rosita, a fat Spanish madam who spends most of her time with the hairless, tirelessly ambitious el Calvo. There’s la Segua, half beautiful woman, half dead horse. Her hobbies include hanging around water and scaring the pants back on unfaithful husbands. There’s Pancho the humble rancher, El Chino the racial stereotype and in the back there is Gerardo, a mask modeled after its maker, the likeness uncanny.
The “real” Gerardo Montoya beams as he explains the family history. His grandfather was Pedro Arias, one of the most famous mid-century Costa Rican mask-makers or mascareros, who defined an aesthetic style still used all over the country to make these paper mâché “payasos,” beloved guests at every popular festival or celebration, prone to spontaneous dancing and the chasing of children.
Montoya founded this workshop about 20 years ago, after hard times drove the family to sell its farmland in Escazú. Property values promptly sky-rocketed. Montoya has said within three years the German investor who bought that two hectare property was offered more than triple the amount he paid. This kind of story is typical of the rapid transformation taking place in this increasingly affluent cantón, 8 kilometers from central San José.
To get to the mask workshop, we first pass “new” Escazú’s towering condominiums, its gleaming skyscrapers and a colossal shopping mall. We don’t stop at Hooter’s, nor at the liquor store with an LED sign called La Bruja. We ascend narrow residential streets lined with locked gates, shiny cars and for sale signs featuring swimming pools. Near the end we pass an historic Catholic Church, a mural dedicated to cattle ranching and a 100-year-old adobe house where legend has it a real witch once lived. Finally, we climb the steepest grade yet, toward the cloud forests of Pico Blanca. Half-way up we arrive at Montoya’s home and workshop, 200 meters past the water treatment plant where he now works as a technician.
That’s his day job, but “…This is happiness for me,” he says, motioning to the masks.
“To sell a mask would be like selling a son.”
Though, he does have seven of them. (Sons, that is.) Two have learned to make the traditional masks, using clay to create molds that are then covered in strips of newspaper soaked in yucca gum, left to dry, mounted on wooden or metal frames and painted. It´s a month-long process before they are ready. Montoya doesn’t sell the masks, instead renting them to municipalities for popular festivals, which abound in Costa Rica. Famous for exemplifying the Central Valley style, Montoya’s masks were even used during the 1998 presidential inauguration of Miguel Angel Rodríguez.
At our tour Pedro Montoya, one of the seven sons, disappears under the skirt of a giganta, her gaudily made-up face and blonde hair a parody of a colonial Spanish dueña. He begins to dance like there’s nothing at all precarious about this situation, flirting shamelessly with our driver and facilities manager, Ricardo.
Next we assume some strange forms ourselves.
Upon reflection, wearing that mask and dancing like a maniac in Montoya’s driveway reminds me of learning Spanish through immersion. The giddiness and the sweat. The sense that whatever I want to convey is distorted by what I can convey. Feeling foolish and realizing that is actually kind of fun. The exaggerated gestures and lack of subtlety. The smiles and the laughter. The art of not taking oneself too seriously.
-Emily Jo Cureton
Academia Tica students masquerade at Montoya’s Escazú studio, home to traditional Costa Rican masks used for festivals around the country.
