Experience a la Tica

Tag: National Parks

The Best of Both Worlds

Academia Tica has two campuses. Both are situated in classic, well-maintained houses, surrounded by beautiful gardens and staffed by teachers trained in Instituto Cervantes methodology. But beyond the school walls, Jacó and Coronado as are different from each other as the beach is from the mountains.

Coronado

Coronado refers to a canton or county, half a dozen neighborhoods and villages that climb up the hills outside of Costa Rica’s capital city. It is literally in the middle of the country, equal distance from the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, from Panama and Nicaragua. Eons ago these temperate highlands were formed by volcanic eruptions. Today part of the forests have been cut into pasture, producing food and dairy products for the valley below, a metropolitan area of 1.8 million people, nearly half the country’s total population.

The church is at the heart of Coronado, a short walk from the school.

With a geography that relates as much to cloud forests as urban plazas, and a cultural identity linked to cattle ranching, Coronado is a mixing point. Parts of it look like country scenes: herds grazing emerald seas, grandmas selling cheese off front porches, families with backyard trout ponds serving up the freshest fish imaginable.

Yet, there are unmistakable signs that for thousands of commuters, city life begins here. Walled modern homes abut cow pastures. People brunch and work on their laptops at a gourmet bakery and coffee bar. A family-run soda sells typical “casado” plates: heaps of rice, beans, sweet plantains and salad for about $2.50 USD; while the menu and prices at nearby Papa John’s Pizza chain could be anywhere in the world. In the town’s busy center, life revolves around an impressive neo-Gothic-style Catholic Church.

Hand painted sign for a fresh fruit and vegetable super near the Coronado school.

The National Theatre is one of many cultural meccas close to Coronado.

The bus costs about 60 U.S. cents. It can take you in two general directions: up or downhill. Up heads towards Las Nubes, a village appropriately named The Clouds, known for cool climate, incredible views and agriculture. Here you can go horseback riding, catch your own lunch or visit a pristine cloud forest. Further up is Cascajal and Monserrat, the latter immersed in the dense cloudforests that limit with Braulio Carrillo National Park. Down leads to central San José, epicenter of urban culture and government, where dozens of theaters, busy markets and museums await.

Because Coronado is relatively unchanged by foreign tourism, ordinary stuff like buying food, going out for coffee, getting a haircut and practicing common courtesy are all part of everyday life and your Spanish language education. Buy fresh fruits and veggies every week at a farmer’s market that brings producers from all over the region, or pick up your goods at a small shop down the street with a charming hand-painted sign.

Jacó Beach

Jacó is the nearest popular beach to San José and an easy morning drive from Coronado. The 2.5 mile long sandy beach break offers consistent swell year round, with bigger waves to the North and smaller, beginner-friendly waves to the South. Tethered to this famous beach are innumerable restaurants, hotels and bars, along with hospitals, major stores and most any amenity one could look for. Many students customize their schedule with Academia Tica to include stays at both Coronado and Jacó Beach.

A few generations ago, Jacó was home to a few dozen families, rice fields and roving cattle herds. People tumbled in and out by rock road, taking a ferry across the crocodile-infested Rio Grande de Tárcoles to access distant hospitals or go to the movies in bigger towns to the Northeast. By the mid-20th century people here began to rent palm-roofed cabañas to visitors from the Central Valley and abroad. Today Jacó is book-ended by luxury resorts, a smooth highway delivering visitors from all over the world. People come for the beach, the party scene and the wild places still a stone’s throw from this rapidly developed hub for Pacific Coast tourism.

Enjoying the warm water and friendly waves in Jacó Beach.

One of many colorful characters in Jacó.

Just 25km/15 miles North of Jacó you’ll find Carara National Park, a protected tropical rainforest, which has one of the biggest wild populations of colorful scarlet macaws. It is not just a heaven for bird lovers. The park is home to some of the country’s largest American crocodiles, sloths relaxing high up in the trees, different monkeys, frogs and birds.

One of the country’s most famous (and smallest) parks, Manuel Antonio, is located about 65 km/40 miles South of Playa Jacó. Exploring the lush green rainforest and remote beaches on the many trails, you will easily spot mammals like lazy sloths and cute squirrel monkeys as well as frogs, iguanas and many kinds of birds.

Jacó Beach has consistent waves for all levels year-round.

Jacó Beach is not only surf. Close to the town (and the school) you can go zip-lining, take a dip in watefall ponds, enjoy the nightlife, go rafting or just sit back, relax and enjoy a cold drink in the tropical setting.

Academia Tica recommends that you try a bit of both locations and experience all the differences in culture, people, nature and just the general town dynamic. This will defninetively help you get a more integral view of what Costa Rica is, always with the same quality of Spanish tuition!

November 18, 2014
A crocodile kind of day

If the crocodile cares when a tourist throws a coconut at him from the Rio Grande de Tárcoles bridge, his face betrays nothing. He lunges and snaps instinctively, but promptly discards it, coconuts being among the few things an American Crocodile won’t eat.

Still, there is no trace of disappointment in his reptilian eyes, no sigh like annoyance in the breath he may surface to draw only once every hour, nothing spiteful in the way his back scales (called scutes) ripple muddy water, patiently circling. For all humanity throws his way, the crocodile remains inscrutable.

By now, the American Crocodiles that hang out under this famous bridge in the Pacific Central region of Costa Rica are accustomed to diverse offerings from above, some tasty, some inedible, all launched by humans who stop to gawk from the relative safety of the bridge. Near this aerial viewpoint, the entrance to Carara National Park offers access to primary rain forest, waterfalls and ideal crocodile habitat, just a few minutes drive from Jacó. Biologists estimate more than 2,000 crocs inhabit parts of the Tárcoles River basin, a system that flows all the way from the volcanic highlands near our Coronado campus to the coast near our Jacó location.

Since it is World Environment Day and crocodiles are pretty timelessly fascinating, we decided to take a little extra time on our way between schools to loiter on the bridge connecting our campuses and consider one of Coast Rica’s most ancient predators, both fearsome and fragile in today’s world.

The average adult male crocodile is 4.3m (over 14 ft) long. He can live 70 years. His diet consists primarily of fish, but can include pretty much anything fleshy that crosses his path, coconuts excepted. He does not rely solely on eyes or ears to find food, but can sense its precise location using dome receptors — little black dots visible around the sides of his jaws. This sixth sense is a fortunate adaptation for the Tárcoles crocs, who may be literally blindsided by climate change.

Lately longtime observers of the river have noticed increasing cases of blindness in adult male crocodiles. Scientists initially hypothesized that contamination from cities and farms must be causing some kind of blinding infection. However, initial investigations (i.e. five people capturing, hog-tying and sitting on 1,200 lb. crocs while a veterinarian warily checks the eyes), revealed that blunt trauma is a more likely cause than pollution. It appears only adult males are going blind, seemingly due to gnarly injuries sustained in fights with other adult males.

Meanwhile, the gender dynamics of the Tárcoles croc population are changing. Where there used to be about three females for every male, now it’s more like 1:1. Theory goes, the decline of a female-dominated society is leading to more eye-poking feuds between males during mating season.

But why the sudden uptick in male crocodiles?

The sex of a crocodile is determined by temperature: the warmer the nest, the more the males. Leading crocodile experts believe that climate changes, particularly localized effects caused by deforestation in the Tárcoles basin, are causing warmer temperatures in the crocs’ nesting habitat. Less trees may mean more male crocodiles, more fighting over female crocodiles, and eventually, no female crocodiles at all.

From the Tárcoles bridge our coconut-throwing kind might imagine these enormous reptiles are living much as they did in the age of dinosaurs. However, rapid environmental changes instigated by humans are in fact changing their reality, perhaps disastrously. We scan the muddy banks of the river, looking for females jealously guarding nests dug into verdant cover. The babies will be born soon, entering the world with the first heavy rains. At first nurtured as a tight-knit clan by a protective mother, at five weeks they are capable of hunting insects and small fish and will eat each other should the pickings get too slim.

Sea turtles are less famous for this kind of unapologetic survivalism, but like crocodiles develop with temperature-dependent sex determination and face possible extinction by climate change, in addition to habitat destruction. Programs exist on both coasts to bolster turtle conservation efforts, for which our students routinely volunteer.

-Emily Jo Cureton

Sunrise over the Rio Grande de Tarcoles, where thousands of American Crocodiles make their home.

June 5, 2014
Into the volcano! (one of them anyway)

The distinction between earth and sky seems more an ongoing negotiation than a fact from atop Irazú, the tallest active volcanic peak in Costa Rica and an easy half-day trip from Academia Tica’s Coronado campus.

There are more clouds below us than above on this dry May morning. They unfurl at our feet like plush white carpets reaching all the way to the Caribbean Gulf on one side and the Pacific on the other.

The view from a ridge line above the principal crater at Parque Nacional Volcan Irazu, the highest volcanic peak in Costa Rica, an easy and incredibly scenic day trip from Academia Tica Coronado.

On a clearer day we could see two oceans at once, a staggering perspective unique to this place in Central America. But even in the company of clouds and intermittent fog we can take in all of Central Costa Rica, a dense mosaic of rain forests, farm, rivers and mountains, home to over 500,000 thousand species of life and counting.Looking away from the limitless horizon to the black sand underfoot. Eyes plummet 300-meters down to the bottom of Irazu’s principal crater, a monumental hole in the ground painted lifeless grays and blacks by the same process that created the brilliant greens surrounding us, highly productive and populated agricultural regions.

Irazú formed in the Pleistocene era, (between 2 million and 12,000 years ago). In the past 100 years the volcano has experienced seven eruption cycles, the latest occurring from 1963-65, when debris choked rivers and flooded the city of Cartago. San Jose (and nearby Academia Tica) are a much safer distance away, though one account recorded 20 inches of ash falling on parts of the city during the 1963-65 eruptions. While often pictured with an ephemeral lake, Costa Rica is in the middle of a dry spell (by tropical standards), and the bottom of the crater is dry and visible this year. This ever shifting topography masks two roiling magma chambers another 3000 meters below the surface.

Tempted to try out ground as nebulous and inviting as the sky, but signs warn us that gravity slides can result from the slightest disturbance of the barren slopes. The national park here provides drive-up access and paved paths to the principal crater, utilizing a relatively stable terrace on the south side called Playa Hermosa, where hardy plants and animals stake claim on the volcanoes first habitable areas.

Scraggly tufts of grass dotting Playa Hermosa eventually thicken enough to host picnicking Tico families, low shrubs make a tenuous comeback, and then the first fierce little Myrtle trees post up. Sparseness ends abruptly at a tree line so dense we can only hear the human visitors laughing, scrambling and clamoring within it. Climbing into this forest on the edge of desolation, we startle hummingbirds and lizards galore, ascending to a ridge above the principal crater where we are rewarded with even more epic views of this strange and wonderful place.

Uniquely accessible for an active volcano, Parque Nacional Volcan Irazu is an easy day trip for students at Academia Tica, who can go with an organized tour group or independently via bus, rental car or taxi. Irazu is but one of many volcanoes that forge the highland backbone of Costa Rica.

May 27, 2014