Quiet day in La Fortuna

Today, most of the group has food poisoning, so we've been at the clinic in La Fortuna for the entire day. Pobresitos. I am feeling a little under the weather, and I'm very glad I'm not sick to my stomach. It is 2:30 in the afternoon and we are finally beginning the four hour, bumpy ride to Jaco Beach. The heat is humid and sweltering. It's difficult to believe it snowed in Iowa yesterday. The photo above is from the Catholic church in La Fortuna. It seems appropriate given the circumstances of the day.

On our second day, we visited a heart of palm plantation, a sugar cane cooperative, and the tropical agriculture graduate school CATIE. The heart of palm plantation showed a demonstration of how heart of palm is harvested. With a mechitae, a small palm tree is cut down at the base. Then subsequent layers of tough stem were removed to reveal the sweet and tender heart of palm. We all passed around a heart of palm core and each took a bite off the end. We also got to sample palm fruits. They were bright orange, and peeling them made out hands turn orange. Unexpectedly, the fruits were salty. In Spanish, the farmer instructed to to bite open the pit. The inside was sweet and tasted of coconut. He told me most Latin Americans don't enjoy palm fruits, but he loves to eat it in the evenings with coffee.

After driving two hours north, we reached a sugar cane cooperative (finca de Cana, please excuse the spelling until I reach a computer). The farm managers told us about sugar can cooperative. It was hot and dry here. The sugar cane refinery looked incredibly dirty from the outside. Men were in the fields harvesting the sugar cane into large stacks and long, tractor pulled carts. Watching them from a distance was surreal. I was speaking with the farm manager in Spanish, and as we headed to the next farm site of the sugar plantation, Dr. Burras asked if I could ride with the farm managers in their truck. What an opportunity! I got to speak with them about the latest volleyball match, a popular thing here in Latin America, and tell them about my studies. The next field site was for research on different cultivars of Cana. I took notes about the cultivation an cooperative sugar production which will be typed up at a later date.

The last stop for the day was the graduate school of tropical sustainable agriculture, CATIE. CATIE was founded in 1942 as part of crop research for WWII by the United States, and has been renowned around the world as an excellent place to earn a masters degree in agriculture. They have the largest agricultural library in Latin America and has some or the largest collections of tropical crops. We observed annitio dye, guava, coffee, and cocao. Industry uses annitio dye for coloring food. We got creative and put the dye on our lips and cheeks.



The best crop we've tasted however, is cocao. I had never seen it before, and Dr. Vialobos cut open a cocao fruit. Inside the coco beans were enveloped in white, membranous, sweet material. It was the best thing I've seen since naranjilla. We bit open the coco bean and were shocked to discover is was purple!

After sampling the cocao, I struck up a Spanish conversation with a Brazilian graduate student, Kaue Sousa, which lasted for hours. We talked about his project in agroforestry, the institution on CATIE, and beginning a life in Costa Rica. Dr. Burras invited the students to share dinner with us, so we carried on a long conversation on the bus. He told me about settling in Costa Rica with his wife and how I should take an internship at CATIE. I can't say the idea isn't tempting! Their school of sustainable agriculture is wonderful, and now I have several friends there. Kaue even went so far as to email me the information about interning there.

At dinner, I spoke with Kaue's wife, Suelen, who spoke Portuguese and some Spanish. She told me about her goals for this year before she begins graduate school: to finish her undergraduate degree, begin teaching Portuguese, and learn English. I could tell from the way she told me about her goals, the transition to life in Costa Rica could be difficult at times. I can empathize in difficult transitions. She also told me about learning languages in Brazil, which sounded not unlike the mentality of the United States. Since Brazil is an economic leader of South America, most do not find it nessicary to learn a second language. Many in Latin America want to learn to speak Portuguese, and she hopes to find work teaching. Learning this about Brazil made me feel less guilty about the lack of language knowledge Americans acquire. I would still like this to change about the Unites States, but perhaps this is a characteristic of large, economically influential nations.

At the end of our visit, Suelen asked for a photo and added me on Facebook. I am so delighted to have these new friends!

Writing on the bus ride is starting to make me feel queazy, so I'm going to elect to watch the scenery pass us by.