Update

The novelty of waking up at 6:30 everyday is wearing off. None to less I am still having a blast down here. As everyone knows a few Sunday’s a go was super bowl Sunday, and despite being several countries away I was still able to watch the great game on a projector (crazy what globalization has done). After Sunday the week started fast, Monday through Wednesday was filled with about 6 hours of class everyday. When I saw the schedule I am not going to lie I was a little intimidated, but the 18 hours flew by since all the classes were all so interesting.  As Denzel Washington said in Remember the Titians, “I don’t scratch my head unless it itches, I don’t dance unless I hear music, I will not be intimidated that’s just the way it is”.

             In class we spent the majority of the time learning about Costa Rica’s energy profile, which is surprisingly comprised of 80% renewable 70% of which is hydropower.  This makes Costa Rica one of the leading countries in alternative energies.

             After hitting the books hard for a few days we took a wonderful trip to Monetverde. This adventure started at 4:45 Thursday morning and was filled of excitement. The drive up there was three hours long on a single lane bumpy turny road with several hundred-foot drop-offs less than a foot away from the road with NO GUARDRAIL! If that didn’t keep you awake the breath taking views certainly would. While there we studied the tourism industry there and competed our tropical ecology lab. For my lab I investigated the effectiveness of drip-tips on leafs in the cloud forest, seeing if the size of drip-tip effected the amount of moss that grew on the leafs.  I spent three hours measuring the area, and amount of moss on leafs with a caliper (results will follow in next weeks post). 

            Once we were done trekking through the depths of a very dense moist forest we had a field lecture right in the middle of the reserve on the effects of tourism. Tourism has put Costa Rica in a strange situation. With 200,000 visiting every year tourism has become a good portion of their economy and has played a key role in their country’s development.  At first tourism seems like a great stimulus, but after time the detrimental effects show their face.  Tourism is rapidly growing and is changing small culture rich towns into cities that closely resemble that of an American city.  These changes are uprooting locals, and using massive amounts of resources, for example a golf course down here requires the same amount of water as a town of 3 to 5 thousand people.  In the end we concluded that tourism is an important and essential part of this country’s economy and development it just needs to be carried out in a sustainable way.

            To close out the week me and about 10 other students volunteered at chili cook-off to raise money for a local orphanage.  It was put on by a local community of retired Americans so it was far from a Costa Rican cultural experience, but it was none to less extremely funny to see fifth-teen or so 60 plus American women putting on this event that attracted nearly 1000 people who were mostly all Americans.  Everyone was in good spirits eating chili, and raising money for a good cause.