Poás Volcano

The second stop on our all-day tour was Poás Volcano.  Costa Rica has several active volcanoes, and Poás is just one of a few that visitors are able to see.  

After our visit to the coffee plantation we continued up the side of the mountain range until we got up into what Hawaiians would call the wao akua.  This is the range really high up, usually shrouded in mist, where only the gods dwell.  This is what it felt like at the lookout for Poás   

There was a short trail up to the lookout, and as we walked along it I felt alive!  I love being up in the high mountains!  The air is thinner, but for some reason, it invigorates me!  I loved every single minute of being up there! 

The volcano, unfortunately, was complete obscured by clouds.  We could not see it at all.  But I really didn't care.  I just loved that I was there.  

I walked off on another path and although the vegetation looked dead, it reminded me a lot of walking through Koke'e.  It had the same feel to it.  

The smell of sulphur was strong in the air, and althought the flora looked like Hawai'i, the fauna was very different.  I saw squirrels and hummingbirds, and all kinds of other birds that I can't possibly name.  

It had been raining when we first arrived, but as our time there progressed the rain retreated, so birds started coming out in an attempt to dry themselves off.  I managed to get this hummingbird as he sat there, posing for me:  

I had to zoom in a lot, so the picture really doesn't do it justice.  In person, the colors were so irridescent and vibrant...  He (or she?) let me take 4 pictures of him before he suddenly disappeared.  

By the time I got back to the buslet (busito), my whole body was buzzing and my eyes were wide with excitement.  I love being in the wao akua, and especially in a place that looked so much like home but was still so vastly different.  

One thing that is different is the way people treat places such as this.  We in Hawai'i really are unique.  Because we don't have any natural predators in our islands, our people developed a reverence for the forest that allowed us to be quiet and reflective while in such places as the wao akua.  When we walk in our mountains or even our rainforests, we have the luxury of being silent.  

Other places are not like that.  Places like Costa Rica has large predators, like jaguars.  So when humans walk through the forest, they have to make some noise to let the predators know that they are coming.  

See, most predators really don't want to meet up with humans if they can avoid it.  Unlike other prey, humans fight back, and we're pretty wily about it too.  

So, when you walk through the forests in the continents, you have to make noise so that they leave you alone.  

But in this modern age, this character trait leads to what seems like, to me anyway, a kind of disrespect for the place.  I was up in this beautiful, peaceful wonderland, and all the people around me were talking loudly, making all kinds of noise, and not even really looking at what was around them.  It looked like they did not have an appreciation for the majesty of the nature that they were being given the priviledge to see.  

I am, of course, making assumptions about what I saw, and I know this.  So the point really is this:  cultural differences give us different perceptions.  And I am very glad of the way that people of my culture view places such as the wao akua.  

So that's my two cents, and my round up of my visit to Poás Volcano.  Next up is La Paz...  

Aloha! 

Grad Student Travel Journal: The Ride to Tortuguerro

There has been so much happening here that I can barely remember everything, let alone have time to blog about it.  But I most definitely am still trying!  In fact, I've had to start taking notes on my phone throughout the day just so that I can remember all the cool things the guides have been telling us.  

I need to give a quick shout-out to the tour guides here in Costa Rica.  So far, we've gotten some really high quality guides!  Donald, from our all-day tour on Tuesday, was excellent, as I had stated in my previous blog.  Alberto, from our city tour, was very entertaining, and now we have Stephen, who is with us for three days.  

Stephen is simply fantastic!  He actually has a BA from, I think, USC in Marine Biology, and an MA, if I recall correctly, from Cornell.  He didn't tell us how he ended up here in Costa Rica, but he did say that he was teaching at a university here.  Then one day a friend told him, "hey, why don't you be a tour guide?  It's just like teaching."  Which, it is, as I can attest to, being a former tour guide myself.  So Stephen did it, and now it's starting to become a full time thing. 

We are now on a three-day tour to Tortuguerro, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica.  The tour bus, this time a "real" tour bus, complete with cushy chairs and a bathroom in the back, picked us up at the Marriott at 6 a.m.  It was so hard leaving the comfort of the most perfect hotel beds that early in the morning, but now at the end of the day, I can definitely say it was all worth it.  

It took us about an hour to get out of the town because we ended up having to pick up other guests at different hotels, but once we got out of the big city, it took us only about a half an hour to get to the top of the mountain range that divides Costa Rica into the Pacific side and the Caribbean side.  It was all misty up there, with some variable rains.  

After driving for maybe about an hour, we stopped at our breakfast station.  They served us a partial "typical" breakfast...not partial in that it was small, but partial in that the typical Costa Rican breakfast consists of Gallo Pinto (rice and beans), eggs, and fried (candied?) plantains.  Here's what it normally looks like:

But today the plantains were absent.  And, in all the breakfasts we've had so far, the eggs have been scrambled, but today they were easy over.  

We only had about 40 minutes for breakfast, so we ate quickly because we were at some kind of veranda restaurant that opened up to a path that led to a bridge that crossed a large stream, and then into the rainforest.  

I didn't walk too far into the rainforest, but I was charged just by being there!  It felt just like home...except that I had to look out for any dangerous critters.  That's a new experience for me.  

Shirley, my colleague, on the rainforest path. 

I've got a very short video of what the forest sounds like.  There are these beetles that make this loud sound, and Stephen said that they're "nature's warning system," because if there is a predator near, they get silent.  

[I'll insert the video when I get back home. The wifi isn't strong enough at my current hotel.]

He also said that they make the trees "rain."  These beetles spend over half their lives underground, and as they progress in their growth they crawl up the tree into the branches, then cling there...and urinate. If you're standing under the tree, you might think it's rain, but actually you're getting peed on by beetles.  

I'll give more fun facts in another blog.  For now, I want to share with you about the rest of the bus ride.  This road, that took us back down the mountain and towards the Caribbean, is full of pot holes.  The first thing that Stephen did when we all got on the bus this morning was warn us about that, and let us know that our driver, Luis, is an expert at navigating this road.  He was absolutely right about that.  Luis was just amazing.  As he weaved left to right, we hardly felt the bouncing.  That guy really knows what he's doing.  

On that note, we've had some superb drivers as well.  The driving here is nuts - no lanes, and there seems to be no real rules either - but all of our bus drivers have been fantastic!  Even with cars speeding past and cutting in front of us, even having to cross tiny bridges in big vehicles, even driving along roads with a cliff drop on one side and a car passing on the other, these drivers never made me feel like I was in danger.  They made it all look easy.  

Anyway, we were in a great big tour bus, and at one point we had to stop to wait for all the other tour busses for the day.  Stephen made sure to tell us why:  because at that point along the road, the busses have to travel in a caravan so that the tour guide in the first bus can get out, hike up his pants, and cross the bridges if they are flowed over with water, just to make sure that the bridge didn't wash away.  

He said, "folks, you know Jungle Adventure in Disneyland?  Well, this is the real thing."  

Perhaps it was lucky that our windows in the bus were so high up that we couldn't see all the bridges we were driving over.  But there were some side bridges, so I imagine this is what they looked like: 

In any case, Luis never made me feel scared.  He handled that great big bus AND those tiny bridges with so much ease that I even forgot that there was any danger.  

With the ride seeming so treacherous, it was really surprising to get to the end of the road and find this huge bus depot.  There were hundreds of people coming and going...all the tourists who were leaving on the busses that all of us arrived in, and all of us getting onto ferry boats to get to Tortuguerro.  

So began the second part of our trip - the water bus.  

I've been on the tour boats in the ocean before, but never on a river, so that was cool.  This river was smooth today, so it was a really nice ride.  Plus our new driver, I think his name was Bernardo, is from the area, and was able to spot all kinds of wildlife along the way.  We saw a red-tailed hawk, which doesn't happen, so we were very lucky.  We also saw a few vultures, and another bird that I think is known as the needle-nosed duck.  I'll have to go look that one up.  

But my favorite sight:  seeing a spider monkey crawling up an 'ulu tree.  

I have to download the pictures from my point-and-shoot camera, so I'll revise this post later when I can get to those.  

We were on the water for maybe an hour before we finally made it to our hotel, the Mawamba Lodge.  We got here right around 12 noon.  We had already had such an amazing day, that I can't believe there's even more! 

I'll write all about the lodge in the next blog post.  

Aloha! 

La Paz Waterfall Gardens

La Paz Waterfall Gardens was the last stop on our all-day tour, and it does not disappoint.  It is a privately owned park, and they declare themselves to be a sanctuary for animals that have been rescued from trafficking or abuse, or hurt in the wild and found.  There are signs up that say that these animals are kept in the park because, for whatever reason, they cannot be returned to the wild.  

While this does sound like a very good cause, there might be a caveat in there.  More about that at the end of this post.  

There is a trail that leads you through the park, from one sanctuary to the next.  Our guide led us throughout the park, so we went first to the bird house.  There was a gray hawk, a few vultures, and even a falcon.  There were a bunch of green macaws, of the smaller variety, as well as a bunch of smaller birds that I couldn't get the names of.  There were some scarlet macaws too, but again, not the really large ones.  

The really exciting part was the toucan house.  This is the where they let tourists take pictures with the toucans.  Here's mine: 

I know that there is a whole bunch of animal exploitation issues to explore here, but I do have to admit, this was really cool.  

Next we quickly ran through the monkey house, where they have two of the three endemic species to Costa Rica. (I won't name them, because I've already forgotten...oops!)  

From there it was the butterfly house.  I have very mixed feelings about this.  

First, it was super cool.  Butterflies.  Everywhere.  

But that's where the mixed feelings come in.  They literally were everywhere.  Including on the floor.  You really have to watch where you walk in here if you don't want to kill a butterfly.  It made me a little anxious the whole time, watching the floor while at the same time wanting to be all excited by the butterflies flying around my head...  

[I have to download pics first before I can include them here. I'll update this post once I get back home.]

I think overall I'd have to declare that "cool" wins out over "anxious," but still, I would have liked to enjoy without worrying about murdering an innocent and beautiful butterfly.  

From there we went into the hummingbird sanctuary.  Those buggers fly so fast that you need extra special camera equipment to catch a still shot!  So I just took a couple of short videos instead.  

They've got all kinds of hummingbirds, and they whiz past your head like miniature airplanes!  It is very exciting.  

After that was our lunch stop, just in time after a long and exciting day.  You could tell that they cater to tourists a lot, because they had mostly food that Americans respond well to, like hot dogs and french fries, along with other higher class fare.  But there wasn't any local food, except for plantains.  

I must take a moment to mention the bathrooms.  The sinks are designed so that the faucet water looks like it's coming out of a stone face, like a waterfall.  And the knob to turn the water on is disguised as a rock.  It was very creative.  

After a much needed food and rest stop, we continued on.  There was a snake house, but we skipped it and went straight to the wild cats.  They had a cougar there who was not too happy about getting its picture taken.  There was this woman who kept following it around with her iPad...and it was obvious that she had already gotten either a lot of pictures or a lot of video of it, but she didn't move away!  She kept standing there, inches from the glass, with the cougar just inches way from the glass on the other side.  

There was a large crowd of people waiting to see the cougar, but this lady just refused to move.  And the cougar was getting angry.  Its ears went flat back and it started to growl, but that lady just would not move.  

This is one of the downsides to a park like this.  I understand that these animals have been "rescued," but how much better are their conditions if now they are to be entertainment for humans who have no sense of how dangerous this situation might be under other circumstances?  

From there we went to see the jaguars, and this question became more prominent than ever.  They had a male and female jaguar, but they were in separate enclosures (a.k.a.cages), and the female was definitely bothered, maybe in heat.  She kept pacing back and forth across the front of her glass, growling, and looking across at the male.  The male was looking back at her, holding her gaze.  Then the female lept up to the upper level of her enclosure, where there was no glass, only bars.  It was pretty incredible, because those bars were not that high up, and any human over 5' 10" could have simply reached up to them.  The female was sticking her paw out through them, and I could just image some stupid guy taking that chance...  

Although I truly did not enjoy seeing these magnificent creatures locked up and on display, I do have to admit that I might never have seen a jaguar otherwise.  A lot of the indigenous people in the Americas worshipped the jaguar, and now I know why.  You can just see the power in them.  I can't even explain how it felt to see them up close...  

I did not take any pictures of them.  It somehow felt wrong to do so.  There were crowds of people around them, all acting like spoiled children trying to get the closest shot, and I did not want to join those ranks.  I simply wanted to admire these jaguar, and honor them for what they were.  

After that excitement, we went last to see the frogs.  It must have been the wrong time of day, though because I only saw a green poison dart frog.  

There were others to be seen, but they all hid from us.  

It had been pouring over us since lunch, so everyone was rushing through the sanctuaries a bit faster than they otherwise would have, and I was no exception.  The thing about rain, though...is that it makes for a spectacular waterfall.  

There were four waterfalls in the park, and we went to the two tallest.  The first was called [name] and the second, and tallest, was called White Magic.  Here's my money shot in front of Magia Blanca:  

[Sorry! You'll have to wait for the camera download for this one! I'll update this post as soon as I get home.]

This was so worth it.  

After this we were soaking wet, from both the rain and the spray from the waterfall.  And I was super, super exhiliarated.  

I am so glad we did this tour.  We had a long drive home - over an hour - and we were all soaking wet, but no one really complained.  It was a great group, there was a lot of cameraderie, and even though thigns didn't turn out perfectly, they did turn out well.  And I had the time of my life.  :) 

Aloha! 

Grad Student Travel Journal: the WHA

In case you haven't read my earlier post, I'm here in Costa Rica for the World History Association (the WHA) annual conference.  

It started on Wednesday afternoon, and went all day on Thursday and Friday.  I've barely had time to sit and write since then...mostly because I've met a lot of great people, and so I've actually been socializing.  That's a new thing for me.  

The "orientation" on Wednesday was only for first-time attendees and some long-time "mentor" members to get to know each other.  One of the first things that the host said was that this group is the fun historians.  His words have held true.  I can honestly say, this is the least stuffy "professional" conference I've ever been to...and I kind of like it.  

What I love most about it is that the WHA is not limited to college-level educators and historians.  There are public middle school teachers here.  There are community college teachers here.  And at the same time, there are world-class historians here who have published multiple books that are used in classrooms across academia.  But everybody is just plain real.  There's no snooty professors who think they're too good to talk to the grad students, or book authors who are posed to refute anyone who even slightly disagrees with them.  This is, by far, the most comfortable bunch I've experienced.  

Consequently, I've had more conversations with people I just met than I have at any other conference, ever.  Everyone here is just so friendly and ready to learn more.  I love that!  

Granted, a lot of the scholarship still isn't where it should be when it comes to indigenous perspectives, but the way I figure it, that's why I'm here.  That's become one of my kuleana.  

On that note, I gave my presentation today.  It was titled "Pacific Explorations, Again:  Reclaiming Ancient Routes between Polynesia and South America."  Basically, I highlighted our voyaging gods, chiefs, and histories to show that we were well capable of sailing to the Americas.  Then I used place names along the western coast to suggest that we did, in fact, sail there.  Then, I did an interview with one of the Pwo navigators, Chad Babayan, and asked him all kinds of practical questions about sailing, to once again strengthen the argument that we went there.  

Everyone was very impressed.  I got a lot of compliments, and a lot of "are you publishing a paper on this," and "I can't wait to read the book!"  I also got some help with my theories...

In my presentation, I point out a few place names along the western coastline.  One is Puna island off the coast of Ecuador.  I told them what Puna means in Hawaiian (water source, but also figuratively, knowledge source), and afterwards I had someone come up to me and say that the island is indeed at the mouth of a river.  

I also speculated that the Ica region of Peru is intriguing, because it is located along the coast, and the word ika means fish in most Polynesian languages.  Afterwards I was told that this region, Ica, is one of the best fishing regions in the world.  

Coincidence?  or Contact?  

Anyway, this conference was well worth the trip.  It was so well-planned; there were only four panel sessions throughout each day, with half hour breaks in between.  This schedule was so great, because if you've ever been to a conference before, you're usually kinda beat and too full of new info by the third panel.  So it was nice to only have four per day, and lots of time in between to rest and process. 

Plus, this hotel is simply fabulous.  I'll post pictures later.  

Anyway, I've made a lot of contacts, and got myself networked (I am soooo not a schmoozer, so this whole making an effort to network thing is very new to me and still an uncomfortable activity).  I can say with absolute certainty that this conference was so worth it.  

Tomorrow we have another tour, which leaves at 6 a.m. so I've got to wrap this up.  More to follow when I can! 

Aloha! 

Doka Coffee Plantation

The first stop on our all-day tour on Tuesday was at the Doka Coffee Plantation.  They're reputation is as one of the gourmet coffee producers of the world, and are right up there along with Kona coffee.  They are one of only handfull of producers who take the time to process peaberry coffee, which I'll touch on later.  

A lot of the terrain (geography and flora) looks just like Hawai‘i, except that I can't see the ocean. But the mountains look so familiar! 

Costa Rica is located at just about 10 degrees North latitude...although its seasons are Southern Hemisphere.  (I need to find out why that is...)  It is considered a tropical climate, just like Hawai‘i, so all the same plants that grow at home are here as well.  We're currently in the rainy season, and sure enough, it rains every day at right around 1:00 pm.  It's a heavy downpour, and it lasts until about 6:00 or so. Then, although it does not rain at night, there is always lightening.  

I have not been able to see the night sky at all since I've been here because of the regular cloud cover, so I feel like I don't know where I am. I can't get oriented. 

But all of that has nothing to do with coffee, so I digress.  Coffee needs certain conditions to grow, which is why only certain locales can successfully grow exceptional coffee.  Primarily, it needs the right climate.  Like Hawai'i, Costa Rica has volcanic soil, and upland regions that are high enough to produce the most fertile region of volcanic soil.  If I remember correctly, this is at about the 6,000 foot elevation zone.  Volcanic soil alone can be very acidic, but at a certain height range, it gets affected by other things that provide it with nutrients that will balance out the acidity, and that's what makes it especially fertile.  

I know I'm explaining this badly, but I hope it at least makes sense.  

Once at Doka, we first had breakfast, where we were able to sample their three main types of coffee.  First, was the dark roast, which is the Espresso Italian.  The medium roast was their specialty, the Peaberry coffee, and the light roast was simply called House Blend.  I think someone told me that the light roast actually has the most caffeine in it, because caffeine is burned out through the roasting process, and the light roast gets the least roasting.  I don't know if that one is true or not...  

As it turns out, roasting a coffee bean only takes 20 minutes, and if the leave it in longer, the beans will burn.  For dark roast, they take the whole 20 minutes; medium roast only takes 17 minutes, and light roast is 15 minutes.  It is such a small difference in time, but you can visually see the difference in the beans.  

[will post photo here after I download them from my camera!] 

They walked us through the whole process, which now had me wondering what's the difference between a seed and a bean. We always say "coffee bean," but it grows in what looks like a very small fruit...and fruits have seeds.  It has an outer skin, and a very thin layer of the fruit-like flesh, then the bean (seed?) is in the center.  

Anyway, there are usually two beans in the fruit, but sometimes there is only one, a "mutant" bean, that forgot that it was supposed to separate.  Most coffee producers discard these, because they represent only about 5% of the crop.  However, if you process them, they make a very fine coffee.  This is what is called the Peaberry coffee.  Only the really elite coffee producers grow them, mainly because most won't go through the expense of producing something that will end up being only 5% of the total.  But, because only a few producers will roast Peaberry, it has become a gourmet coffee.  

The harvest season is four months long, and the beans must be picked by hand because the fruit are ripe at different times.  Their harvest season is from November through February, and they conduct only one harvest per month.  The choicest beans, what becomes the premium coffees, are harvested in the first three months.  These are the choicest because the pickers only take the absolutely ripe fruit.  They're not allowed to pick fruit that aren't quite ripe yet.  When processed (but before roasting) these beans look almost white.  They are stored in large bags until they are sold; coffee dealers buy these unroasted beans.  They can be stored for up to one year and still be good.  

[will post photo here after I download them from my camera]

In February they do two harvests, one at the beginning of the month, and one at the end.  During the first picking, they are allowed to pick fruits that aren't 100% completely ripe, but are mostly ripe.  Once processed, these beans turn out yellow, and is considered medium grade coffee.  Then, at the end of the month, they pick whatever fruit is left, regardless of whether or not it is ripe.  After processing, these beans are dark yellow, even nearly black.  This is considered the lowest grade of coffee.  

Our tour guide took us through the entire process, but I won't go into that here.  I will say, however, that he explained it all very well, with a lot of easy to understand detail, which was in itself impressive because English was not his first language.  

The fruit have to be run through a machine to squeeze them so that the outer skin will break.  Then they flow into bins with water so that it will soak for a while to get the skin and the inner "slime" off.  Then, after a couple of days, the beans are run through a washer to get all the rest of the "slime."  From there, the exposed beans are taken outside to dry, and must sit there for a couple of days.  People have to physically turn the beans over every half hour, so it is a laborious process.  Then, after those two days, the beans are put in a huge dryer to make sure that they are absolutely dry.  

That's the whole process.  Once they are dried, they can be stored, as mentioned before, for up to a year before being roasted.  

The plantation sells the beans like that, and it is up to the purchaser (who is often some foreign distributor) to roast the beans themselves.  

So, now you know everything that I know about coffee production.  The tour ended, of course, at the gift shop where, like good cattle (oops!  I mean tourists), we all bought gourmet coffee.  

After this stop, we went to Poas Volcano.  I'll write about that experience in a separate blog. 

Aloha! 

Grad Student Travel Journal: Costa Rica, Day 3 - Overview

Today was such an adventurous day that I feel like I have to break it up into smaller blog posts, otherwise the one would simply be way too long.  

So this post is just the overview.  Here goes... 

We had to check out of our lovely, homey hotel at 6 a.m. in order to catch a cab to another hotel, in order to catch a tour at 7 a.m. that departed from that new hotel.  Even check out was an adventure.  

If you've traveled internationally you know that most places offer free breakfast with your stay.  We didn't know if we'd get to eat before the tour, so we arranged to have breakfast at Hotel Le Bergerac before we left.  But, the dining room doesn't open until 6, so all they could give us was coffee and toast...which was perfect.  

Except that there were about eight other people checking out of the hotel at the same time, and they hadn't thought ahead like we did, so when they saw us eating and not them, they had to start requesting things too.  Things got pretty chicken-without-a-head-ish for a few minutes there... 

We also requested a taxi to pick us up at 6, and it was there on time, but it was a small car.  Apparently they were not aware that our party was three people, all with luggage.  So we had to get a little creative with one of the bags.  It became a very long and squishy third "person" in the backseat with us.  

We got to the new hotel, the San José Marriott (which isn't actually in San José; it's in Alajuela), where they stored our bags for us before the tour.  Then, we had to figure out where our tour was leaving from.  

All of this, and it wasn't even 7 a.m. yet. 

The tour bus could not really be called a bus.  It was more like an elongated van.  The center aisle was maybe a foot wide, and I think that might even be generous.  It was definitely "cozy."  People did have some difficulty getting in and out.  I think this tiny "bus" initially made some people nervous...but the skill of the driver soon made us all forget about that.  Once underway, we hardly even noticed that we were riding in a toy.  Plus, our group ended up being awesome, and by the end of the day the coziness of the bus just contributed to more of us conversing with each other, no longer strangers.

As a single, I had to sit next to another single, which ended up working out really well.  I made a new friend.  Her name is Janet, and she is an archaeologist and professor from Michigan.  We had great conversations all day.  

The tour made three main stops, which I'll cover in separate blog posts, because I have way too much to say about each of them.  

Our tour guide was Donald, and in my own professional tour guide opinion, he was very good.  We ended up being on tour for ten hours (!), which can be killer on a tour guide...but he truly handled it well.  He gave great information, lots of details, and explained things very well.  I should also mention that everyone on the tour was with the World History Association conference, so it is quite a feat to satisfy the curiosity of twenty two historians for ten hours straight.  But Donald did it, and he did it with great patience.  

He also spoke English very well, and did so from the first moment that he met everyone...which is part of what makes this next part interesting.  At one point in the tour we made a brief stop just so people could get out to take a panoramic picture of the view.  

Only a few of us chose to get out, but while I was out, he came up to me, and speaking only in Spanish, told me that I looked like I was Latina, and asked where I was from.  It was a bit strange, only because I had been on the tour all morning, and been speaking English, so he had no reason to think I would understand him.  But, I did respond in Spanish, telling him that I was from Hawai'i.  From there we had this short little conversation about the fact that I look Latina, and that yes, I was aware of that, people tell me that often, but that I'm not Latina at all.  

Every time I travel outside of Hawai'i, people think I'm Latina, so I've heard that many times before.  Whenever I'm in a foreign country (including Europe) people usually start speaking to me in Spanish first.  If I can, I always answer back in Spanish, and when I actually know what I'm saying, my accent is pretty good.  So there have been a few times in my life when I'm having a conversation with someone, and when we finally get to the part where I have to admit that I don't understand, they're a bit surprised.  

That hasn't happened on this trip yet, because I forgot to study my vocabulary before I came, so my Spanish is super rusty right now.  But everyone has started out in Spanish with me, and today I did manage to have an entire conversation with Donald the tour guide, although it was in broken Spanish.  And even though my lack of language proficiency was obvious, he still insisted that I could be from Costa Rica.  

I guess if I ever wanted to leave Hawai'i, I could easily blend in in any Spanish speaking country.  

That kind of thing is fun for me.  It's nice to throw off people's expectations some times.  

Anyway, we finally got back to the hotel at around 5 p.m., cold and soaking wet, and checked in to the Marriott.  It is a huge step up from Hotel Le Bergerac...and we sincerely need to thank our donors for providing the funding for us to stay here.  I haven't taken any pictures yet of the hotel, but I will tomorrow.  For now, just think Spanish colonial, and huge.  

I got into my room, got into the hot shower as quickly as I could, and warmed up after our chilling but absolutely wonderful afternoon.  I'll share all about that in another blog post.  

And, although the fatigue was setting in, my colleagues and I decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.  My colleague is a Hard Rock rewards member, and she makes it a point to go to every one and get the stuff that says the location.  Plus, as she has informed me, the Hard Rock Cafe chain is owned by the Seminole tribe of Florida, so whatever you spend there goes to Native Americans.  I can get behind that.  

Plus it was super cool to see Hard Rock Cafe, San Jose, Costa Rica.  

So...it's eleven o'clock night, and this is the first chance I've really had to sit down and write.  I'm exhausted, but I've still got so much to share from today!  I guess the rest of the blogs will have to wait until tomorrow.  But here's a brief preview: 

Doka Coffee Plantation - everything you (n)ever wanted to know about coffee production. 

Poás Volcano - in my opinion, the Costa Rican version of the Wao Akua...and my communion with a hummingbird.  

La Paz - Birds, especially a friendly toucan; butterflies, hummingbirds, monkeys, wild cats, snakes, poison dart frogs, and a couple of super huge, super strong waterfalls.  

It all equals to an awesome day.  

Aloha! 

Grad Student Travel Journal: Costa Rica, Day 2

One of the great things about traveling for conferences is that I'm with other geeks like me.  

We spent about 4 hours today in a museum.  In one single museum.  

Yup.  Geeks.  And proud of it.  

Today is our only "free" day, in the sense that, starting tomorrow, all the rest of our days here are regulated by some kind of schedule.  Tomorrow and Wednesday we have reserved tours.  Then the conference begins Wednesday afternoon, and goes all day Thursday and Friday.  Then on Saturday, we have a three-day tour scheduled to take us to the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica.  Essentially, starting tomorrow, our time is no longer our own to waste as we wish.  

Having yesterday to catch up on sleep and today to do whatever we wanted was great planning.  I am so happy that it worked out this way.  We had a tentative plan today to start out around 9 a.m., then walk down to the Jade Museum, and maybe also catch one of the butterfly farms.  But my phone for some reason has not automatically adjusted to the local time (as it usually does when traveling), so I woke up an hour later than planned.  

One of the things I really appreciate about my travel companions is that they were totally fine with my phone's deviousness.  I really appreciate people who can just go with the flow when that's what the situation calls for.  

We got started around 10:00, and walked from our hotel into town.  This was when I noticed for the first time that all the hotels in this area are guarded by locked gates.  In fact, we couldn't depart from our own hotel until the concierge came and unlocked the gate for us.  

Yes, this might be a comment on the society in this city, but it also doesn't say the same thing that the same situation would say in America.  I don't really know how to explain this, but traveling in "third world" countries (I so dislike that label) is different.  Just because there's a gate around the hotel doesn't necessarily mean that the area is unsafe.  But it does mean that you should probably watch your belongings. 

We walked around the city for less than an hour in search of the Museo de Jade.  In that short time we encountered three large parks, all with several statues in them commemorating some kind of historical or public figure, or some kind of historical event.  I took pictures of some, but this one is my favorite:  

Yah, they seem really proud to honor Coronado.  

As a Hawaiian, I imagine they feel the same way about him as we do about Captain Cook, or President McKinley.  

I loved how many parks there were along the way.  The variety of plant and bird life is just amazing, and we even saw a woodpecker along the way.  Apparently those are not all that common in town, so that was a good find.  (It flew away before I could take the picture.) 

We actually ventured much farther than we needed to because we were working off of an old map.  We found the closed Museo de Jade, which looked like a small, tucked away room in the corner of a financial building.  The New Jade Museum, as we found out, was located a few blocks back in the direction that we had come from.  So we had another leisurely walk and found more interesting things along the way, like this mosaic under a bridge: 

I have no idea of what it depicts, but I was impressed with the fact that they created a mosaic...under a bridge.  

When we finally found the museum, it was well worth the walk.  As stated earlier, we spent about 4 hours in there.  It spanned five floors, with each hall addressing a specific theme.  The first was mainly a display floor for all the jade objects one could imagine.  The second floor was about the jade itself - where it comes from, how the indigenous people used it, and how it was sculpted and carved to their purposes.  

Most interestingly, the kind of drill that the natives used to make indentations and sometimes even holes is the same structure as Hawaiian drills.  

 

I created a photo album on Facebook with just the museum pictures, so if you're my friend you can view the whole thing.  If not, look up the Museo de Jade.  I don't know if they've posted pictures of their collection, but if they did, it's worth browsing. 

Anyway, after leaving the museo we searched for food and drink, and while we were getting that it started to pour.  

Apparently it rains every afternoon here in Costa Rica.  And it's not just a light rain.  It was pouring.  

So, overall, although it is also a tropical place, it's a lot colder than it is in Hawai'i. Plus, it is their winter here (rainy season).   I was not prepared.  I wish I had brought a couple of long-sleeved shirts... 

But the rain also gives us time in the middle of the day to relax...like a siesta.  That's always a good idea.  Americans need to learn how to siesta. 

That's about it for day 2 in Costa Rica.  We're heading out to dinner soon, and after that, turning in early.  We have get up around 5 a.m. to be ready in time for our tour tomorrow.  

Aloha! 

Grad Student Travel Journal: Costa Rica, Day 1

I have always loved to travel, and no matter what profession I might be doing in my life at any given time, I always try to find any travel opportunities that the work might offer.  

As a graduate student, such opportunities come in the form of academic conferences.  

I'm working on my PhD in History, and really, the only reason why anyone would put themselves through such academic rigor (torture?) is to eventually work as a Professor at a university.  Part of the professional expectation in the ivory tower of academia is to produce work that is either completely new, or something that is a unique and unexplored take on an old topic...and the best way to put your radical new ideas out there is through these kinds of conferences.  

Well, as a Hawaiian in the world of stuffy old history professors, I've got the niche on radical, new ideas.  ;)

I went to a conference for another History society back in January, and was shocked to see that the "old white guy" stereotype is still alive and well in this arena.  Things are changing, but it's still going to take a while for equality, indigeneity, and alternate perspective to permeate this world.  After being at that conference, I am proud to say that things have changed much faster in Hawai'i than they have at other universities across the U.S.  

Hawai'i has been largely marginalized in the arena of History, mainly because anyone outside of Hawai'i does not believe that Hawai'i's history is relevant to them.  Today's perception of Hawai'i is primarily as a tourist destination.  But, Hawai'i's history has so much more relevance to the world than just white sand beaches and hula girls.  When looking at imperialism across the world, one must look at Hawai'i. When looking at ethnic diasporas, Hawai'i is vital.  When looking at gunboat diplomacy of all western nations, Hawai'i fell victim many times.  And when looking at the rise of nations across the world (because they ALL transitioned from monarchies to democratic-type governments), Hawai'i is an excellent example to examine and analyze such processes.  

My area of expertise is more cultural, and even in that, Hawaiian history has a lot to offer.  Westerners have always gone to the places they conquered and almost immediately dismissed any cultural stories as myth.  If the hero of the story can't be verified as a real person, then it has to be fantasy, right? 

But by looking at such stories as myth, scholars have long overlooked the value of what these stories really are.  They are lessons: lessons on proper behavior in the society; lessons on a specific skill set that is important to the society; lessons that help children learn the values of all those who came before them.  

This is the area where History across the U.S. is lacking.  And as a Hawaiian who knows my mo'olelo (stories) as well as my "history" (in the western sense of the word), I've got a lot to share.  

The World History Association (WHA) holds two conferences a year, and I am currently here in Costa Rica attending the second for 2014.  It is my first WHA conference.  I sent in a proposal for a paper several months ago, with a topic that addressed the twin themes of this conference: World Environmental History and Latin American History.  I was thrilled when my proposal was accepted.  One of my colleagues was accepted as well.  

Finding funding to go and stay in Costa Rica was extremely challenging, and to be honest, we had given up at one point.  Then, by some miracle, funding came through at the very last minute.  It was the last week of May when we finally found out that we were going to be able to come to this conference after all.  

Costa Rica is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me, so I am very thankful for this opportunity.  Plus, the added benefit of knowing that it is a professional step up certainly helps put flavor to it all.  

Traveling from Hawai'i to anywhere is a pretty big production. The shortest flight out of the islands is five to six hours, and that's just to LAX.  Anywhere else is longer, and often times will require more than one connection.  It took us just under 24 hours to get here...

...so, my travel log for Day 1 in Costa Rica is not all that interesting.  The time here is 4 hours ahead of Hawai'i, and only 1 hour ahead of California.  We arrived here at 5 a.m. Costa Rica time, which worked out well because we were the only international arrival at the time, so customs was completely empty.  

The plan was to go straight to our hotel, hoping they would let us check in early.  We didn't have a plan B.  Well, we did, but we were really hoping we wouldn't have to use it.  After traveling for 24 hours, the priority was shower and sleep.  

Our route to the hotel was temporarily stalled while waiting for marathon runners to pass by, as we had to cross their route.  So that was an interesting twist to our arrival.  Then our taxi driver took us through the back roads, where we were treated to a view of the dirtiest parts of the city, complete with homeless people (whom I somewhat envied because at least they were sleeping).  

We got to our hotel, which looked like a bonafide oasis after driving through the dingy streets of this industrial city.  It was beautiful, surrounded by all kinds of flowers and trees.  Even though it was just about 6 a.m., the front desk attendant came out to greet us, and helped us with our bags.  

I've always been a pretty lucky traveler, and that luck kicked in.  Of our two room reservations, one room was available for early check in, so we both got in there and freshened up.  I had to wait about 4 hours before mine was available, but the front desk had the great courtesy to call us as soon as it was.  

The rooms are lovely, and very homey.  I have a little private patio.  It's enclosed by a high concrete wall, separating it from the city outside, but inside of this wall is a small garden full of flowers and plants to attract the many exotic birds and butterflies that one finds in Costa Rica (even in the city).  I even have a table with two chairs.  

My spacious room has two king sized beds, and my comfortably-sized bathroom has a skylight over the shower.  I like it...I'm hoping for clear skies tonight so I can star gaze while I shower. 

As beautiful as all of this is, I was too exhausted to truly appreciate it upon first entering.  I had a single focus: shower, then sleep.  When I went to bed, it was only 10 a.m. here.  I woke up here and there to the sounds of cheering, as the people of the city around me watched the World Cup game between Argentina and Germany.  The noise did not bother me at all.  In fact, it was somewhat comforting.  

By the time I woke up it was about 5:30, and it was raining.  I expected Costa Rica weather to be a lot like Hawai'i, since it is also in the tropical zone, but it looks like we'll be getting a lot more rain here than I would at home...which makes it slightly colder that Hawaiian temperatures.  

My colleague's husband also came on the trip, so I met them for dinner at the hotel's restaurant, where we just talked and tried to get our stomachs oriented to the travel and time change.  By the time I got back to my room it was already dark, but the people in the city were still cheering over the World Cup game that had ended several hours earlier.  It's been a long time since I've been in a foreign country during a soccer competition, and I had forgotten how big it is in all places outside of the U.S., so hearing people still cheering after six or so hours was definitely a new experience for me.  

And that's Day 1 in Costa Rica.  Tomorrow we get to play tourist, so I expect to have a lot of pictures to share by then.  

Aloha!