Costa Rica-Bus 3535

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Blog Number 8

Hola!

Today we awoke to a delicious breakfast at our eco lodge and then a meeting with the owner of the eco-lodge. She told us about the struggle they’ve had to get the eco lodge up and running. She also explained that they’ve only owned it themselves for about 6 years and that there were a lot of financial loopholes to jump through for them to get it and keep it. I was very impressed by their determination to make the eco lodge a success. They knew it was a great idea and a great location and even though they didn’t have enough money, someone else had faith in their idea and helped them and now they have a great little eco lodge set up! It was such a great experience to stay there and see the different types of sustainability. After our meeting there was an opportunity to go to a waterfall. I actually didn’t go, but I got to see a lot of great pictures of the waterfall! I chose to stay by the pool and get a little tan and take a nap! After everyone returned from the waterfall visit, we started getting ready to go to visit the maleku tribe! The maleku tribe is an indigenous tribe of Costa Rica. There actual village is located in another area, but we were able to see a lot of their traditions and customs at the reserve we went to. We were also able to purchase souvenirs made by their people as a way of earning income! They showed us a bunch of different masks and they each had different meanings. My favorite mask of all was the mask with the two macaws. This mask symbolizes mates for life. I chose to buy a small shell with this symbol on it for my grandparents because they have been married for 54 years and are very happy together! The reservation was very beautiful and lush and had a lot of interesting wildlife and insects and other funny little animals.(ducks with funny head puffs!)

Blog Number 7

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The next day we woke up and milked a cow! We were very sad to leave after meeting this great family and having delicious food, but it was still exciting to set off to the next location on our adventure! The homestay visit was a very humbling experience for me. It was eyeopening in the sense that there are people who live out there with a lot less than us that are happy and content in life.

The rest of the day was dedicated to…DRIVING! For about 5 hours! …but finally, after all the driving, we arrived to the most beautiful hotel I had ever seen with the best view of a volcano in the whole wide world! It was an ECO-lodge in la fortuna, and it was absolutely gorgeous! The pool by itself was marvelous! We immediately ran to our rooms, out on our suits, and jumped in the pool! It was so refreshing! Then we went to a great restaurant recommended to us by Javier and ate good food and drank a pina colada out of a pineapple! Lastly, we got to visit an amazing hot spring! Boy was that relaxing after all the days of business visits and staying in san marcos! I felt like a new person after we left that night! We also got to enjoy a delicious dinner provided by the hot springs place. We ate steak, fish, chicken, salad, rice and beans, and got to drink a really good fruit punch with dinner. We got to meet a lot of different people there and enjoy a really neat experience. This was my first time going to hot springs, and I hope it won’t be my last!

Blog Number 6

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Second day in homestay: Our homestay mother and father were sooo cute! And soooo SWEEET! They were very accommodating and seemed to have essentially all the same necessities that we have. It was VERY hot in San Marcos. It is probably the hottest place I have ever traveled to. Even our host mother, Felicia, said that she has lived there for 18 years and still isn’t accustomed to the weather! We slept great the first night and woke up around 6. The first thing we saw in San Marcos was the pineapple fields and the other crops they harvest. I thought it was very interesting that the farmers hand plant each pineapple! They only make 3 colones per pineapple! After the tour, our host father showed us his barn and how they made cheese everyday. He also chopped open a coconut for us so we could try the milk. It tasted NOTHING like coconut in the US. We enhance the flavor so much! After that we got to see all his cattle.. They poop…A LOT! Then we got to rest for awhile and eat some lunch and take a nap. Later we got to play soccer with Christopher and his friends in the evening and then we left to see a beautiful view of a river in the community. After a full day we passed out at around 8 or 9 oclock!

Blog Number 5

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YAY! ITS FINALLY HERE! Today we are leaving San Jose to see a volcano, a coffee plantation, and travel to our first homestay! This was the part of the trip I was really looking forward to! It was a lot of driving, but ABSOLUTELY worth it. The volcano was crazy to look at! The top of it look green almost. It smelled very strongly of sulfur and was smoking like crazy. We were told that it erupted 18 times the day before! Buttttt it didn’t erupt for us L We also walked to a lagoon that had a GORGEOUS view and some really beautiful birds (which Javier spotted of course) and then we walked back and bought some souvenirs and food at the store near the volcano.

The coffee plantation was amazing! They let us sample some of their coffee upon arrival, and then we started the tour. I thought the process of how they made coffee was very interesting, but a little outdated compared to the systems in the US. It works for them, though, and that’s what matters. The most interesting part of the tour to me was the explanation of the peaberry. The peaberry is the best coffee bean of all. It is grown inside of a cherry and then the cherry is peeled away after they are picked. It is a whole bean as opposed to a half bean like the others, and that is why it is considered to be the best! The pickers get paid by the bucket and can only make up to 24 dollars a day. A lot of them travel from Nicaragua and live on the plantation until the picking season is over. The plantation houses them during their stay so they don’t have to pay for lodging. I would still LOVE to go and pick for a summer despite what everyone says about me never doing it!!!!! haha

The drive to the homestay was about 3 or 4 hours. We got there after dark and the dirt road that we took to get there was like 30 miles long! What a butt massage! We arrived very late and went right to sleep after settling in!

Blog Number 4

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WHEW! Finally a more relaxing day! Today we are going to visit the University of Costa Rica and going to the National Museum of Costa Rica. My first impression of the campus of UCR was wow! What a gorgeous campus!...but then I took a closer look and saw that it was very dirty and there was a lot of graffiti and trash! I was especially surprised by the trash because of Costa Rica’s attempt to go green. I was also a little shocked because our campus at ASU is very clean and we aren’t even the greenest campus. The butterfly garden we visited was absolutely magical and the courtyard in the middle of the economics building was gorgeous and open and totally unexpected.

The museum really wasn’t as interesting as I thought it was going to be. I think in the US we put a lot more time and effort into creating a museum with a lot of interesting things and a lot of information about everything. I thought it was a lot larger than it actually was, but the exhibits really weren’t very extensive. When we first went in, I couldn’t figure out why it was so cheap , but then I realized how few exhibits there were and thought maybe that was why. All in all though, it was a nice visit compared to business visits and was also right next to a great market!

Blog Number 3

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It’s day number three and we’re up again at 5am, and the sun is already shining. Today we are going to be visiting three hospitals: Clinica Biblia, CIMA, and Blanco Cervantes. We will be observing the differences between public and private hospitals and also taking a closer look at medical tourism.

The first hospital we visited was called Clinica Biblia. The hospital was about 80 years old and literally looked like it had been built two years ago! It is, of course, a private hospital and very nice looking. This hospital is very popular for medical tourism because there are nice rooms and many beds for people to recover in after surgery. The hospital is expensive for Costa Ricans, but compared to hospitals in the US, it is dirt cheap! The rooms were extremely nice and very spacious. I was interested to see the neonatal unit. The rooms had a bed for the mother and child and then had a separate room for sitting, feeding, resting, and watching tv! This room was only 500$ a night! That type of room in the US would have been 2 or 3 times that amount.

The second hospital we visited was the public hospital. BOY was it the complete opposite of Clinica Biblia. I felt very unsafe when we drove up to the entrance. We were told to be very careful with all of our belongings because someone might try to steal them from us! This hospital was very big and very crowded. The rooms were a lot smaller and most of them had two beds! This clinic was for the public of course. Costa Rican citizens pay 9% of their income for all of their medical expenses. I thought it was very interesting that ALL medical expenses are covered by this money. So basically if you had cancer and you went to this hospital, they would have to treat you for it no matter how expensive it was. In the US we have to pay for everything separately and most surgeries or treatments are VERY expensive!

The third hospital we visited is called CIMA. This hospital is VERY big on medical tourism. They have many different units and their surgeons actually try not to work in groups, which is quite different than in the US. This hospital was in a more remote location compared to the city and was surrounded by developing hotels. This is a great business opportunity for them because guests coming for medical tourism also have places to stay before and after surgery to recover. We ended this lovely visit with A LOT of rain!!

Blog Number 2

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It’s day number two and we are up bright and EARLY! At 5am this morning the sun was shining right through our window and the city was already lively and pumping with cars and people! That is so different in comparison to the US! No one is up and walking around until around 7 or 8 am! We have two visits today. Our first visit will be with TICO Electronics, and our second one will be with INCAE. I don’t really know anything about either of these places, but I’m interested to find out what they are all about! So far we’ve only driven around really dirty and poor areas of San Jose. I really hope that we can see other places that are more developed and less dangerous!

TICO Electronics was a very interesting facility! I think it is so neat that they do everything by hand! It is amazing to see a company that was so small, grow into something very efficient and successful. They seem like very nice employers that look out for their employees, and they all seem like a big family! The working conditions of the facility were very nice. There were many fans and music so the workers don’t get overheated or bored. The employees also take breaks every hour to stretch their wrists and arms to prevent carpal tunnel injuries and arthritis! There were also many different parts of the building where they focus on different parts that they are manufacturing. I absolutely cannot believe they make all these parts by hand! I was a little disappointed by how much the workers were paid! It was only 4 dollars an hour! No one would be able to survive on that salary in the US, but I guess it’s different because the cost of living is a lot lower in Costa Rica. I believe he said they manufacture 30,000 parts a week! That seems impossible since they’re making the parts by hand, but these workers make them so quickly! I thought this was a very interesting company to visit.

INCAE had the most BEAUTIFUL campus I have ever seen! It is the number one school in Latin America and rated within the top 25 universities of the world. Something that you MUST know about this university is that it is NOT a Costa Rican University! I thought it was very funny how much emphasis the presenter put on this. Apparently it is a common misconception people have that they would like to avoid. They are a very prestigious university that is very careful in their selection of students. They accept students from all countries and have no more 20 percent of each race which is pretty impressive. I have never heard of INCAE before, so I was not surprised to find out that they do not advertise. They figure that people who find them and graduate from their rigorous program will spread word of their amazing school and eventually more people will be interested in applying. I was very interested in their method of teaching. He described it as a “cratic” method. He also compared the university to Harvard. I thought it was interesting that he asked about the movie “Legally Blonde” because in the movie, they describe the method of teaching at Harvard as a “cratic” method as well. SO ha! That movie can teach you some things! I really enjoyed hearing about their different programs for the master’s degrees. I know just from speaking to this man one time that I would NEVER be able to endure this ridiculously hard program!