December = Springtime in Costa Rica

What a thrill! We had a Blue Morpho butterfly flutter through our backyard yesterday afternoon. What a gorgeous creature it is with its iridescent azul upper wings. A friend said that the butterflies are returning in force now that springtime is here and the rainy season is mostly over. That’s good news for us as we love watching the amazing variety of mariposas here in Costa Rica. Of course, the visiting Blue Morpho was gone so fast I had no time for a photo so I’ll just “borrow” one from the Internet.

There was no problem identifying the fellow as we recently visited the Butterfly Farm in La Guácimo when our friend Marcy was here and learned all about the Blue Morpho as well as many other types of butterflies and moths. Although there are numerous such facilities in Costa Rica, this particular location not only breeds and cares for butterflies, from caterpillar to chrysalis through their magical transformation into beautiful winged fliers, but they also export the embryonic form, the chrysalis, all over the world to botanical gardens, other butterfly farms and nature centers. It was extremely educational and quite a treat to have the lovely creatures light on our clothes or arms.

Another wonderful feature of our new neighborhood are the incredible sweet flower smells that arise in the late afternoon and evening. I have located the source of the odors, in the white flower boles of tall plants nearby but a Google search failed to turn up the name of this tree. Every evening lately at about five o’clock, the air is filled with a rose-and-jasmine fragrance that just takes your breath away it’s so sweet. I’m led to believe that the smell attracts nighttime pollinators, such as bats and moths.

We seem to be blessed with some of the best of Costa Rica’s flora and fauna here in Santa Eulalia, including a young raptor we spotted in a tree on our latest walk. Then there was the three-foot long iguana I spied waddling along across the street today as we waited on the bus with some of our neighbors. I pointed him out to the others but no one was concerned. Just part of the local color. Welcome to Costa Rica. Ho-hum.

December marks the one-year anniversary of my trip back to California last year to put my dear horse and good friend Mojave down. After a very intense and poignant dream about him a few days ago, I have appreciated even more some of the horses that live nearby, such as this little yearling colt. He lives alone, it appears, in a large pasture down the road from us, and when we approached his enclosure he trotted eagerly over to say hello. I think he’s a bit lonely as he was most appreciative of my brief affections and followed us along the fence line when we turned to go.

Coffee plant Christmas tree - click on to enlarge

Much of Santa Eulalia is agricultural with acres of edibles nearing maturity. The coffee plants seem primed for the Christmas season, ripe red berries suspended like so many ornaments. Papaya trees are heavy with fruit and the feathery flowers of the sugarcane dance in the wind. Peanuts are laid out on canvas tarps to dry in the sun and our own naranja (orange), mandarina and limon trees are filled with fruits. 

Field of Papaya

Preparing peanuts for market

Add to that the many friends we have made here and you can understand our contentment. And if we needed anything more to please the senses, we got it on Thursday at new amigos Francis and Brian’s jam session. With Francis on keyboard and singing, local musician Barry on saxophone and young Daniel on guitar, Layne and I added our vocals on several songs as we all whiled the afternoon away. 

Tomorrow we’ll visit them again for a huge neighborhood party they are hosting to celebrate the sale of their southern Indiana property. We’ve found a good spot here in Santa Eulalia! Pura Vida!

We Brake for Water Buffalo!

Watch out for the water buffalo!

We’ve been back in Costa Rica just over a week now and it sure is good to be here. This is the first July we’ve spent in country and we can understand why it’s called the “green season.” In the six weeks we were gone, the trees have filled out in lush splendor, flowers are in bloom everywhere -- even more than usual -- and the air is alive with butterflies. On our first walk last week, we passed a large roadside patch of zinnias and the number of butterflies of every description, large and small, black and yellow, brown and orange, red and white, was just astounding! I recorded this video and hope that you can spy all the wings fluttering from blossom to blossom. The musical background is the neighbor’s radio. Talk about abundant flora and fauna!

A local cornfield

Local gardens are bursting with the bounty of fruits and vegetables as well. It seems like the corn stalks increase a foot or two every day and huge squash leaves spread wide across the ground. Banana trees are majestic with their large new leaves and still-green fruit. If this is the rainy season, it’s not too bad. Most days the rains don’t start until mid- to late afternoon and mornings are sunny and nice.

Of course, for our own pantry we hope to get back to buying from the local organic cooperative market, now run by our friend Nathalie on the model of community markets in her native France, offering small or large size baskets stuffed with the week’s best buys. In addition to the veggies and fruits, she sells organic goat cheeses, Swiss cheese, jams, chicken and fish, eggs and dark chocolates. Yum!

Atenas recycling in action

And while we’re on the subject of organic farming and other important environmental issues, I recently wrote a column for The Costa Rica News about a relatively new effort here in Atenas to collect and recycle tons of materials, such as plastics, glass, paper, cardboard, to prevent them from ending up in landfills. Señor Alfonso Quiros V, chief of operations of W. Recicladores, CR, S.A., has recruited dozens of local volunteers to help his small staff in gathering and sorting recyclables the first Wednesday of each month at the Central Park in Atenas. He’s providing the same service twice a month in Grecia, the larger town up the hill from us. Such efforts are so important in protecting the amazing biodiversity and beautiful ecology here in Costa Rica. As Señor Quiros said to me, “It will take some time to educate the public and our youth on how critical this is, but we will continue to work toward that goal.”

Such projects are extremely valuable in helping Ticos understand the long-term value of preserving their magnificent country’s fragile environment. But one of the most promising developments in ecological progress here is the creation of a new political party focused on protecting Costa Rica’s vast biodiversity and ready to move the battle into the political arena. Formed in 2004 by reporter Carlos Arrieta and retired English teacher Rodrigo Arias, the Green Ecological Party has set its sights on winning a seat in the National Assembly representing the Cartago province where they got their start and have their strongest support. The party has put Arrieta forward as a candidate for office twice before, in 2006 and again last year, but failed to win a seat. He and Arias are optimistic that as Ticos’ political awareness of environmental issues grows, voters will demand strong governmental policies to protect Costa Rica’s ecology; party members hope that 2014 will be their year for a win. 

One of the main planks in the Green Ecological Party platform is banning plastics in certain Costa Rican industries in favor of biodegradable materials. They support mandatory environmental education programs in schools as well as the creation of an environmental “police force” to guard against litterers, polluters, illegal loggers and others whose activities degrade the environment.

 

On a lighter note in closing this post, I’ll mention a couple of funny animal incidents we observed lately. The second rider’s unusual mount is a water buffalo! As we were walking down the road, we saw this fellow along with two horseback riders jogging down the sidewalk then crossing the highway to continue along a side road. I’m sure my horse would have been freaked out to share the road with this creature but the Tico horses seemed less concerned with him than with a rough place in the sidewalk.

Roscoe and Layne socializing on the deck

Vicious Bassett Hound

And finally, meet Roscoe, the landlord’s young pit bull who often comes to visit us as we relax on the front deck in the late afternoon. He gives the breed a good reputation with his lovable nature. In fact, he’s so easy-going that a neighbor dog, an elderly Bassett hound that seemed an unlikely attacker, got the best of poor Roscoe on our back patio recently, biting him in the butt. Hard to imagine but the old guy gave the pit bull puppy a sore tail end!

Pura Vida!

Life in Costa Rica: Birds, Bees and Other "Bugs"

         For the last week, we’ve been fighting off bugs around here, both the creepy-crawly type and the cold and sore throat type. Poor Layne came down with a horrid cold complete with the stuffed up head, sneezing and rattling cough. I hesitate to ramble on about such mundane matters but the experience taught us a few lessons about life here in Costa Rica and that, after all, is partly the purpose of this blog.

         It has been years since either of us had a cold so we were unprepared for this attack. My guess is that at the well-attended food festival last weekend Layne encountered a Costa Rican “bug” for which he had no immunity and it hit him hard. So for much of last week I played nursemaid, running into town day after day as I tried to find medicines that would give him some relief. This was no easy task because the brands we are used to in the States are either unavailable here, are sold under a different brand name, or as I learned, are very expensive due to the duties on imported goods.

         Last Tuesday, at the onset of Layne’s ailment, our housekeeper Cidia suggested a gel-capsule called Tabcin, a Costa Rican product that comes in two versions, one for daytime and one for night. Unfortunately, the first farmacia I stopped at sold me the daytime version so it didn’t do much to help him sleep. That night his cough was so severe our upstairs neighbor commented that she had been worried about him. The next day I went to another pharmacy and got the nighttime version so we all got some sleep that night. But when I asked for Afrin nasal spray, I was dismayed to pay $10 for a small bottle. Then at Layne’s request, I bought Claritin, known here as Clarityne, and had total sticker shock at the $2.40 per tablet price tag. Since pills are sold here individually or in packets of two, not in bottles of 50 or so, it makes you painfully aware of the per-pill price. It seems we need to find local brands for such products.

         The most effective cough medicine I found for him came from Macrobiotica, our favorite organic, health-food store here in Atenas. After doing some online research, I went there looking for slippery elm or horehound and was pleased when the English-speaking owner suggested an affordable Costa Rican-made syrup which included those ingredients as well as expectorant and immune-boosting products, such as ginger, Echinacea, and such.

         My own bout with the “bug” was short-lived, I’m happy to report. A few days into Layne’s illness, I felt the beginnings of a sore throat. Uh oh, I thought. But with massive doses of Vitamin C and Echinacea, plus some throat lozenges from Macrobiotica, I kicked it. We’re both almost back to normal.

         “Normal” here in the tropics, however, includes other kinds of bugs, namely, the flying or crawling types. As I’ve reported in other posts, we are blessed with many beautiful exotic birds, including some stunning rufous-tailed hummingbirds. (Thanks to Terry Thormin for this photo. These little guys are hard to photograph!) In an effort to attract those iridescent green and rusty-gold beauties to my back patio, we bought a small plastic feeder at the local pet store, also an expensive item since it was an import. But the problem now is the amazingly aggressive small bees, which hover around and even chase away the hummers when they try to feed. After some online research on this topic (what did we do before the Internet?), I tried some of the techniques recommended there, such as giving the bees their own yellow plate of nectar since they are attracted to that color, or just taking the hummingbird feeder down for a few days, on the theory that bugs are stupid and will forget, whereas hummers will keep checking a good feeding spot. None of that worked. Then our landlord came and destroyed what he thought was the bees’ nest, which does seem to have cut down on the sheer number of flying critters coming around, but they are still out there, driving me nuts! I swat them down by the dozens and still they flit around the feeder, intimidating the birds. My next step is to buy a bee-proof style feeder online and have a friend ship it down to me. Still, the hummers do show up, especially in morning and evening feeding times. Today one even flew into the house and got panicked behind the curtain trying to get out. Gently, I managed to catch the tiny thing in my hand and as I let him go, I hoped he was grateful and would come back to my feeder.

       Of course, we do have some lovely “bugs” here as well and indeed, I have been photographing them lately. My efforts were rewarded recently when a butterfly landed on my hand. Luckily, my camera hand was free and I snapped several pictures of the little beauty sitting there quite contentedly. Then this morning the gorgeous Turquoise-browed Motmot paid us another visit, but I failed to catch him in my camera and must rely again on the wealth of photos available online, this one by Noel Urena.  

         Not everything is as expensive here as medicines and bird feeders. When my hairdryer recently quit on me, I decided to take it to the local “Repuestos Electrodomesticos,” or repair shop for domestic electrical gadgets, to see if they could fix it for a reasonable price since I knew that a new imported one would be pricey. The man at the counter said of course, they could fix it. When I asked about price, he shrugged as if to say, “who knows until we look at it?” Then I said in my modest Spanish, “menos de nuevo, si?” meaning it would be less than a new one, right? He laughed and said yes, it would probably be about 2000 colones. That’s only $4! Where could you get a hairdryer repaired for that in the States? That’s part of why Americans have such a “disposable” society: It costs more to repair things there than it does to buy a new one! Here, it’s just the opposite and maybe that’s a good thing.

         P.S. Just as I was ready to post this story of “the birds and the bees,” I noticed a little work crew of ants efficiently carrying a dead moth across the living room floor, right out the front door! Pura Vida, I suppose.