I’m finishing up my last day in Costa Rica. I’ll get breakfast in the university dining center in the morning, then head to the airport at 8am. My flight is supposed to leave about 2:20pm, and hopefully there won’t be any problems. My brother’s flight was delayed for hours and it took him almost 24 hours to get home. His family left Manuel Antonio at 6am on August 6 and made it home at 4:30am on August 7. Hopefully the good parts of their trip will eventually win over the memory of the horrible trip home.
My last day of meetings here was really good and much easier than yesterday. I met with the head of the business program first thing this morning then I met with the head of the Humanities department, then the sciences. I understand all of those areas much better than engineering so they were much easier conversations. Marlon, my counterpart here, took me to lunch at a lovely cafe owned by one of the professors here and his wife. The food was really good. This afternoon, I had a fascinating tour with the head of the agriculture department. He got his Ph.D in Australia and preferred to practice English with me rather than speak Spanish. The facilities here are relatively new and fairly high tech. I’ve been really impressed by the kind of research and community outreach that the university is doing. It’s a small university in a rural area, but their agriculture research, in particular, is phenomenal. They have put a lot of effort into building labs and creating projects that assist local farmers in very advanced ways. They are doing a lot with genetic engineering of plants, identifying agricultural diseases, artificial insemination in livestock. I also toured one lab that has equipment that simulates the entire digestive track of cows so they can research which types of foods in which quantities are best for production. The woman who gave me that tour got asked to do the tour on the spot. She said she’d be happy to do the tour but made it clear that she didn’t speak English and wasn’t going to make an effort on my behalf. Once she saw that my Spanish was decent enough, we had a very pleasant conversation about the research her lab is doing.
There is a fairly large group here from the National Conservation Department. Last night, they told me that they were going to capture crocodiles and I thought that’s probably something they did a lot. As it turns out, they are all here to learn how to capture crocodiles. They learned the theory of catching crocodiles today and tomorrow is the actual catching of them. The one I talked to is from Corcovado, which is in the far south. It’s supposed to be beautiful there. The guy visited Canada and hated it because there’s not enough biodiversity.
I got to visit the crocodile farm this afternoon. There were two ponds of baby crocodiles. My guide said that they looked really cute, but even the babies are incredibly strong. Apparently, one of his colleagues picked one up a while back and almost lost a finger. Baby crocodiles are below. When the females have eggs, they have to be separated from the rest of the crocodiles because they become so aggressive. They are very dangerous at that time.
I had planned to go swim in the pool after supper, and I spent $15 on a stupid swim cap. Now it’s storming, so I can’t go. I had stew at the student union and tea and chocolate when I got back to my room. I need to pack, and probably go to bed early. Tomorrow will be a long travel day even if everything goes smoothly.
Traveling with Emily! 