By Kelly Galaski

Have you ever experienced a vacation that stayed not only in your memories, but in your heart?  Have you had the chance to interact with people, to get to know locals and feel a part of their family – an authentic cultural experience?  I had this opportunity last year in Costa Rica and my life is forever changed. I have more than friends there now, I have a home, with a family that cares for me like their own.

When I first arrived in Costa Rica in January 2008 I found myself in a kitchen surrounded by rapidly-speaking Spanish family members and felt pretty lost and a little scared. But from day 1 I was treated like a special guest. And each day I was able to communicate more, and meet more people – neighbors and friends that made me feel welcome in these small communities of Santa Elena and Quizarra, in the Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor.

The Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor is named for the famous ornithologist, Alexander Skutch (a bird biologist) that lived in the area on a private farm-turned-nature-preserve for 60 years studying the diverse bird and wildlife of the area.  The “corridor” is the area between two nature preserves, the Los Cusingos Bird Sanctuary – where Skutch lived, and the Las Nubes Forest Preserve – a cloud forest donated to York University for conservation and research. There are several small farming communities all connected by coffee and sugar cane farms, small community centers, soccer fields, churches and schools.  The people here love to host volunteers, students and birdwatchers, and anyone interested in preserving their beautiful environment and learning about their culture.

I was fortunate to stay with two families, the Hidalgo-Blanco family and the Valverde-Godinez family, as well as spend lots of time with Luis Angel Rojas at La Escondida “the hidden farm.” All in all I had 4 sisters, 3 brothers, 2 nieces, 2 nephews and two sets of parents/friends!  They filled me up with yummy breakfasts of eggs and “gallo pinto” – Costa Rica’s native dish of rice & beans, Lizano sauce, cilantro, celery & red pepper all mixed together. I had lots of lunches of garlic fish fillets (my favorite), pastas, fried plantains and “frescos” – fresh blended juices. There was also no shortage of fresh avocados from the tree outside and other fruits and vegetables from the farm. And I certainly can’t forget the “cafecitos” (pronounced cafe-sitos), which means literally little coffees, which are afternoon coffee breaks that I had almost every day around 3 o’clock chatting with my “mom” and friends.

Walking along there were always offers of rides from neighbors, and invitations to community meetings, festivals, and dances. The communities are small and friendly, everyone knowing each other, so it is one of the safest parts of the country.

Till this day I keep in touch with the friends I made there, who helped me learn Spanish, and made me feel like a part of their world in rural Costa Rica.  Since being back I have wanted to help more people experience this special place, as well as give back to these wonderful people. So I helped create an itinerary that brings people to the area for a couple of days, to stay in a small cabin on a private sustainable coffee farm,  “La Escondida,” where toucans and monkeys come to play in the mornings and evenings, among tons of other colorful bird species.  Travelers can meet the “mom” I lived with, Sidey, and have a traditional food cooking lesson learning how to make tortillas or another dish. They can go with a local guide through the Los Cusingos Bird Sanctuary and spot white-faced capuchin monkeys as well as see Alexander Skutch’s home and ancient mysterious petroglyphs. They can also visit another good friend Pablo, on his farm “Santuario Filaverde” where he gives a tour of his primary forest that he is trying to protect from encroaching pineapple plantations. See the full description of the trip, Costa Rica Cultural Experience, here which can be modified to suit individual tastes.

Another opportunity for those that are looking to volunteer for a longer period of time, for the summer between years of school or just for an international experience, a “Teaching English and Environmental Conservation” voluntour was set up with uVolunteer.org. Students or other volunteers can stay with a family and help out the schools and community groups who are trying to learn English by providing lessons as well as work with a tree nursery group on conservation activities – all while learning Spanish and experiencing the real heart of Costa Rica.

For further information on visiting the area, contact us at GreenSpot.travel, we would be happy to help you contribute to this special community.

 

Since so many of the green hotels and ecolodges that GreenSpot.travel loves to recommend to clients have been winning awards for their efforts, not to mention receiving rave reviews for service as the latest TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards show, we’ve decided to tell you a little bit about why we choose the hotels we do and what makes them green and great.

Green initiatives range from physical building features like solar panels for heating water, low-flow toilets and showerheads, furniture made from recycled materials, to waste management such as recycling and composting. Many of the lodges also contribute to conservation through either donations of revenues, or by protecting land through private nature reserves. Going beyond environmental initiatives, several lodges contribute to their local communities by supporting schools and purchasing local products such as materials and farm produce.

Here is a great video that takes you on a green tour of Arenas del Mar, a luxury beach resort in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, to give you an idea of how the best ecolodges are blending comfort, service and sustainability. Arenas del Mar’s extensive sustainability initiatives can be found here. It is one of the hotels included in GreenSpot.travel’s Luxury Adventure in Green.

Enjoy the tour!

GreenSpot.travel loves to hear about and showcase organizations who are working hard to benefit people and the planet. In countries that have sea turtle nesting beaches, often there are challenges to keeping those nesting places undisturbed and healthy.  In some cases there is illegal poaching of sea turtles, in other cases development inhibits the ancient, mysterious creatures from coming ashore for their regular reproduction routines.

Organizations that work toward the conservation of sea turtle nesting sites such as SEE Turtles know that their work is essential in the preservation of these areas so that sea turtles can flourish.

Director Brad Nahill and his team at SEE Turtles have a mission to contribute profits to conservation, providing necessary income to communities that surround the sea turtle nesting sites. He shared his latest news with GreenSpot.travel:

“Building on a successful first year, the SEE Turtles (www.seeturtles.org) conservation tourism program is relaunching its website with a new look and expanded offerings.  Visitors to the website will find a variety of new trips to participate in sea turtle conservation and research in beautiful surroundings.  SEE Turtles creates partnerships with leading tour operators and organizations to promote travel to sea turtle hotspots where a modest amount of tourism can greatly benefit conservation efforts. Each trip generates donations for turtle conservation and creates alternatives to turtle poaching or irresponsible fishing in small coastal communities in Baja California Mexico, Costa Rica, and Trinidad & Tobago.”

Thanks to Brad and SEE Turtles for another great example of how green travel can create positive impacts.

Make sure to check out SEE Turtles’ 10 Tips for Turtle Watching!

 By Kelly Galaski

I have to admit, the first time I went to Costa Rica I was surprised that the food wasn’t that spicy. This was the first real independent traveling experience of mine back in 2002 and I ignorantly thought all food from Central America and the Caribbean was going to be spicy.

Well, there are certainly lots of ways to make it spicy. You can add fresh hot peppers usually sitting on the table, or Chilero sauce which is similar to Tobasco but more flavorful. But the real subject of this is Salsa Lizano. Now Salsa Lizano is actually a brand name, but it is synonymous to a flavor that is at the same time really yummy and really Costa Rican. It’s not super spicy in terms of ‘heat’ but it adds flavor to rice and beans that can’t be beat.

You can read more about it here on Epicurious.com, a devoted foodie site where Lizano lovers have come to share their adoration.

 

There is a battle going on. Years ago when I visited Tamarindo it was starting. Foreign-owned condos and large all-inclusive resorts conveniently located near the northern international airport at Liberia are taking over a place where massive leather-back turtles are finding less and less peace and quiet to do their nesting. A place where alerts for bacteria in swimming areas due to lack of infrastructure for hotels is a problem. Jacó, also on the Pacific coast in the middle of the country is experiencing a lot of the same. The awful picture of the condos going up all in a row amid the trees right on the water is an example. Costa Ricans didn’t create this mess. Costa Rican development while some may say has happened in a haphazard and unplanned way, has at least taken surroundings into account. Buildings in Dominical for example, are set back behind the natural vegation, making the beach framed by a wild backdrop of palms. 

When we were there last year we were sad to see the changes.  On the one hand, prosperity has come to the region. There are work opportunities for a lot of people. But unfortunately, prosperity has taken its toll in other ways and it could have been designed in a much more sustainable way.

The lodges we love to celebrate and recommend to our clients are examples of sustainability that not only have taken into account the impact building a hotel has on the natural environment, but also the daily operations, the electricity usage, the water usage – especially important in drier zones which Tamarindo is having to deal with now, and the waste production.

Another important factor to think about is who is benefitting from large-scale developments? Are the staff members Costa Rican? Is there any other benefit they are receiving besides some (low-paying) jobs?  If a lodge is contributing to its local economy it should be purchasing products including food and building materials locally. Many of the lodges we recommend to our clients such as Harmony Hotel, Finca Rosa Blanca and Lapa Rios support one or more local schools in addition to major contributions to biodiversity conservation.  

Over the years of living and traveling in Costa Rica, we have discovered alternative places that our clients love because they are places that are still in balance, where wildlife flourishes and the people touch your hearts.  We like to support those making efforts to maintain Costa Rica’s natural beauty so that we can continue to travel there knowing our travel choices are making positive impacts.

See more on the Star Tribune’s The Price of Paradise.

Agriculture in Costa Rica has been the recipient of negative news recently, specifically in relation to its pineapple export. We thought this would be a good time to highlight a positive story on organic farming that recently appeared in Natureair’s in flight magazine,  Nature Landings.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the farmers of Costa Rica began to search for organic methods of planting and harvesting crops with the intent of benefiting from the fruits of the land without using chemicals and other harmful practices that could damage their harvest.

This is how organic agriculture began to take force, and slowly but surely it has today become a viable and productive alternative to traditional agriculture, one that aims to position itself as a means of producing quality and healthy produce that is economically feasible, respects nature and is a great ally to conservation efforts. 

According to data derived from “The Costa Rican Organic Agriculture Movement,” the internal demand for organic produce increases about 20% every year, which demonstrates that efforts dedicated to promoting this type of production are bearing fruit. Furthermore, Costa Rican organic production is recognized both nationally and internationally.

In Costa Rica some 9,000 hectares are dedicated to the organic cultivation of approximately 30 different products.

Read more on Nature Air’s blog.

See GreenSpot.travel and the mysterious spheres on the latest 2009 Condé Nast List of 32 Dream Trips

What’s big and round and hangs out in the ground? Frankly, no one is quite sure, but whatever they are, about 300 of them have been found and they date back to 400 B.C.E. The mysterious (and strangely alluring) stone spheres of Costa Rica have been uncovered primarily in the southern Diquis Delta, with some found as far afield as the Isla Del Caño. Made of a granite-like rock called granodiorite and topping out at two meters in diameter and 16 tons, these giant marvels raise more questions about ancient native cultures than their discovery has answered. Who made them? How were they made so precisely (some are 96% perfectly spherical) with what must have been rudimentary tools? How were they moved 25 to 30 miles from the sites where the rock was quarried? And the number one question with a bullet – why were they made?

There’s no shortage of theories about the spheres. Local legends suggest that the makers had a potion that softened the rock, and that each sphere houses a single coffee bean. If you’ve ever had Costa Rican coffee, that might seem like a fitting tribute, or perhaps an obsessive level of attention to freshness. More recently, archeologists have noted the stones’ proximity to burial sites and theorized a memorial or spiritual significance.

Workers employed by the United Fruit Company were among the first in the modern era to discover the spheres as they cleared land for banana plantations, and those fellas were convinced the spheres were full of gold. Solution? Drill holes and blow the spheres to the heavens with dynamite. So much for treading lightly on the land. Some of the reconstituted victims of their handiwork can be seen at the National Museums in San José. Other people believed that the spheres made excellent garden ornaments (the sizes vary from a grapefruit to the behemoths already described), so an actual count of all of the stones has never been made, and preservation has been a struggle.

We’re fascinated by these monumental marbles, and we hope to draw attention to the work being done to study and protect the spheres in their original settings. GreenSpot.travel trips have included stops at a major excavation site with tours led by the archeologists leading the effort to understand the role (and the roll) of these uniquely Costa Rican wonders. Call or email us (info@greenspot.org) if you would like to learn more about including the spheres in your travel itinerary.

So dinner last night was at La Cascada, probably the best known restaurant in the little town of La Fortuna that sits near the base of the Arenal Volcano . Our steaks were pretty good but a little tough (which is pretty common for a steak in Costa Rica) Over the years, this restaurant has been everything from the top restaurant in the area to a place where you probably wouldn’t even want to stop.

One place we always spend time at in our trips to Costa Rica is the Arenal Area, because Irene’s family lives here. And one constant of this area is that aren’t enough good places to eat. I know we’re supposed to be the experts and we try a lot of places, but if anyone has tips on where they had a good meal near Arenal, please share.

We move GS operations to CR at least a couple times a year, so we have the chance to explore some of the exciting new adventure and adrenaline experiences available, as well as find out which ones aren’t living up to their billing and see how some of our favorites are holding up. We get a chance to talk to and have fun (check out the verb vacilar in Spanish) with our Costa Rican friends and colleagues, and we also take some time to visit some of the places that our travelers visit regularly, experiencing first-hand the latest and greatest that our favorite lodges have to offer. Somebody has to do it…

Remember to post any good Arenal dining recommendations here!