December 2008 – travelogs

Leaving San Francisco

We left home at 7:30am for our 9:30am flight out of SFO. Everything went smoothly, except Eric’s been fighting a cold and Kevin started getting sick last night, and is feeling worse this morning. We had a three hour layover in Dallas that ended up being closer to four due to delays from high winds at the airport closing two runways. At least DFA is more like a mall than an airport, so keeping occupied wasn’t an issue.

Another four hour flight and we were back in San Jose, but this time Costa Rica. Kevin isn’t getting any better, so we’re not making plans for any wake up calls tomorrow.

My passport – proof that they let me in.

Our Hotel

The tour starts with a meeting tonight, so we have the whole day to ourselves. The guys slept until 1 pm, hopefully beating back some of their colds. Quesadillas for lunch around the pool, and then Sarah, Eric and I headed out for some touring of our own. Kevin stayed back at the hotel to keep fighting off his cold.

We took a cab to the National Museum and learned some of the history of Costa Rica and Central America. The highlight, though, was visiting their butterfly garden – an enclosed area with about a dozen different butterflies, interesting native plants and some exotic spiders and other insects thrown in.

I’m not sure what kind of a tree this is – the plaque under it said Jacaranda, but I don’t think they grow these beans.

These giant caterpillars are about 4″ long. Sorry, don’t know what they become.

The underside of a Morphos butterfly

The top of a Morphos wing. It was lying on the ground like that, honest!

Yellow Aphids. I’m used to green ones.

After the museum and butterfly garden we took a walk around the plaza. It was a busy Sunday afternoon, but we were happy to grab a cab and head back to the hotel.

More napping, relaxing and hanging out ’til dinner, then our intro meeting with Paul the tour guide. It looks like there will be about 46 people on the tour, from all around the US.

Back in the room, Sarah and I were flipping around the TV channels, half in Spanish and half in English. We ended up watching the climactic chase sequence from one of the Dirty Harry movies on TMC. Clint was racing around Oakland and San Francisco offing bad cops in the process. After fifteen minutes Harry sent one of the cops into the San Francisco Bay – peering over the edge of the aircraft carrier’s wood runway he delivered a classic Dirty Harry line… only we couldn’t understand it. Fifteen minutes of Dirty Harry, and we didn’t know it was in Spanish!

Coffee Plantations

The tour officially kicked off this morning with our guide, Paul, and bus driver, Marcos.

Today’s primary adventure was a trip to the Poas Volcano. The hour long bus ride wound across the valley through three different cities, then up the volcano to 8800 feet, about a mile above the valley floor. Along the way we passed through miles and miles of coffee plantations. We learned a lot about this beautiful crop. For example:

All coffee grown in Costa Rica for export must be Arabica.
In the ‘30’s (?) the government gave away land and coffee plants to families that wanted to start a farm. The goal was to create a major coffee industry, but to have it be owned by many citizens, not by a few large landholders or companies.
The best coffee is grown between 4000 and 6500 feet elevation and it loves volcanic soil, making these slopes of Costa Rica ideal for the crop.
Costa Rica grades their coffee in three levels. Level 1 is the finest and commands the highest price. Level 3 is not allowed to be exported, and is generally what the Costa Rican population drinks. Level 2 is also exported, but is a lower grade than level 1. Much of Level 2 goes to Columbia and Brazil, where it is mixed with their lower grade beans to bring the overall quality up, and thus the price.

Welcome!

Goodbye San Francisco, Hello San Jose

San Jose, Costa Rica

Dirty Harry

Coffee Lesson on the Road