ORIGINAL JOURNAL

Limon - July 26, 209

Well this last weekend might have been the most ambitious one since I've been here. For our ecotourism class, our teacher decided it to be a good idea to head down to the Limon province of Costa Rica. We had a very specific agenda, and each day had it's adventures...

Day 1: FRIDAY

We left the school at 1:30. So the journey began, with a 5 hour car ride to Puerto Viejo, howver, it took a little longer because we decided to take a small detour to check out the town of Limon: the coastal city center/export headquarters of Costa Rica. This is also a landing spot where Christopher Columbus landed when he explored the Americas. But enough history, to the stories.

As many might think, or as many do think, all I do is go to beaches and hang out and drink beer and speak some spanish to the locals. It is you people that are going to enjoy this blog post, because it is exciting.

We stayed the night in Puerto Viejo, and that night, I sat out on the porch saying goodbye to the first town that I stumbled across when I was a still so new to Costa Rica. As I pondered what my life would go back to when I returned to the states, I didn't realize what was in store for me the next day.

DAY 2: SATURDAY

Today was interesting. We had plans to meet a guy who lived in a tribe deep in the woods, called the Bri Bri Tribe. We met up with German and headed up into the tropical rainforest for a long hike ahead of us.

As we trudged on through la selva we came across a fallen tree, in which there was no way to head around it. So onward went German, with his Bri Bri instincts pumping through his genes, jumping right into the brush, trying not to hack away too much with his 3 foot machete. I followed, reluctantly. I'd seen enough Discovery channel to know that these forest yield danger. I swallowed my pride and moved on, navigating through deep brush, as the vines tried to hold me back. The ambiance was broken when Nate, the guy behind me yelped a distinctive, "Ow, what the hell?!".

That did it. I finally realized exactly where we were standing. I tried to gather myself as I turned around to see what we were about to deal with, moving away branches and vines, until my thought process was rapidly accelerated with a sharp pain in my arm. Something was stinging me, and I didn't want to stick around to see what the humming noises were. I yelled out like a fire alarm, "THERES WASPS IN HERE!" and managed to slip out a few more-vulgar words as I scurried through the unknown foliage and over came Nate, as we both caught a vine and hit the ground, trying to evacuate the apparent Tropical Fire Wasp nest.

After the attack we managed to trek our way through another route. We nursed our wounds, and I tried to ignore the burning sensation running through my arm, and before we new it, we'd found a viper chillin right on the trail. So we took pictures of it. I let out a sigh of relief because I didn't tough that tree for balance as I walked through the rainforest...

After the snake incident, German showed us how to make tattoos from a funky little fruit he cut out of a tree. We marked ourselves, hoping that the 15 days German told us it would last was actually legitimate.

After spending an hour or so at the reserve, we headed back down to the road, only seeing a few poison dart frogs, perezozos, and spiders as big as my hand. It had been an interesting day, I thought, as we headed back to Puerto Viejo for lunch.

DAY 2: SUNDAY

Today was quite simple, we did community service in the forest for an organization. I ended planting 80 Palm trees and we all put in a group effort to help plant and reforest the actual rainforest. It was a good day.

This marks the end of my journey in Limon. Like always, there's many stories about how I slept in a bed full of mites, or how the man driving us home drove like a mad man, and even how German made us some delicious tea, made from god know what plants (I loved it). I'd love to elaborate on each and every crazy fruit I ate this weekend, but I don't even know what they were. And the only way to describe the taste of an organic banana picked straight from the plant, but you'll just have to try it someday.

What a weekend.

Critique

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Costa Rica has been a pioneer in nature and ecology tourism orientated towards the use of wildlife areas for quite some time. The country learned how to take advantage of the resources while protecting them at a young stage (Estado de la Nacion, 2004). This is something that I have ben learning over the course of these last three months.  When we critique this particular trip, we find all aspects of a great ecotourism case, the hike on saturday with German, the volunteer work at the Yue, local sodas and Baptisms down in the river. This is why we find so many 10's in this case, because each cultural experience was very educational and pertained to the environment. 

Everything from the destination to food seems to be a high scoring category, but one thing that I believe holds me back from achieving an even better score of an A in the Hard-Core category would definitely be the private transportation we took to get to Limon, especially because we used it so much as well. If this aspect would even be changed to taking a bus, or a biodiesel car, then I believe we would have an almost perfect score in this trip.

Each experience in this trip was great. Spending time on the beach all the way to the indigenous reserves was a fantastic was of seeing all angles of Limon. The opportunity to see the different hotels and how some utilized an ecological method and how some didn't was pretty cool. I really enjoyed the trip last weekend, and I'm really happy that I managed to get a good score on this one.  

EVALUATION:
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Transport: (private transport) 5
Food: (local soda) 8
Housing: (Yue) 10
Destination: Limon 9
Cultural Experience: 10
Education: 10
Environmental Impact: 10
Division of Labor: 10
Human Rights: 8
Indigenous Involvement: 8

Total Points: 88/100

Ecotourist Impact:
Hard-Core Tourist rating B+