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.

Well, I survived my first day at TEC! I did 7 hours today of intense Spanish, mostly about engineering and computer science. These would have been complicated conversations in English since I don’t know that much about the metaverse or semi-conductors, but they were especially challenging in Spanish. Even people here who speak really good English chose to speak Spanish to me. There were no breaks. It was great experience but exhausting.

I started the morning by meeting almost all of the Computer Science department. They had a presentation in English but were very enthusiastic about giving it in Spanish instead. I don’t understand everything that people say, but I understand enough to respond appropriately most of the time. They had some of their students do presentations as well, and two of them presented in English so they could practice English. They were really nervous, but they did a good job and it was fun to watch. The students are working on a project to create an automatic watering system for small green houses that also dispenses fertilizers for people who are growing some of their own food. They are trying to develop something that people could manage with cell phones. After that, we toured the computer science lab facilities, which are quite nice.

After Computer Science, I met with someone from International Programs and I got the agreement UNI has signed with TEC. It’s my responsibility to get that back to UNI safely.

Lunch in the university cafeteria was very interesting. The food is not fancy and there aren’t a lot of choices, but it was very healthy and flavorful. Beans and rice are on the menu for absolutely every meal. I had rice, with a chicken and white bean soup, a small salad and some really good fruit juice. The juice here is real juice, not the colored sugar water we have in the US. The faculty can also eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in the cafeteria and most of them do. There is a real community there. Students come by to say hello and the faculty sit together and chat. It was really fun! The food is inexpensive so it’s really a convenient option for faculty and students. Students (maybe faculty too) can bring containers to take food to go if they want to eat it later in their rooms. I sat with a group of faculty from a variety of disciplines and had a very fun conversation.

After lunch, I spent 2 hours with the engineers. That was challenging. One of them spent a lot of time in Australia so speaks very good English and still preferred to talk to me in Spanish about microchips and other varieties of electronic engineering. I followed relatively well enough to respond appropriately, but you have to be really good in a language to follow all of that. I got a tour of their lab facilities before moving to the mechanical engineers. Same thing there except they don’t actually speak good English. My brain was fried by the time that was over.

My last meeting was with the Spanish department. They also speak very good English but also spoke to me in Spanish. At least they spoke more slowly and I understand more about language education than semi-conductors.

I was supposed to go to dinner with one of the faculty here but I offered to eat in the dining hall. I wasn’t sure I could manage 2 more hours of Spanish at dinner. Plus, the dining hall is a more interesting cultural experience and I like the fruit juice. There are no desserts, just good Costa Rican food. Fortunately, I brought my own chocolate and a box of tea.

After supper, I wandered around campus and took some pictures. This is a technical university that started out a solely an agricultural school. They still have a considerable ag component and many of the students come from farm families. They recently started a crocodile farm, and they plan to start harvesting meat and leather before too long. The idea is to train students to run their own crocodile farms. Crocodiles are not endangered animals here. There are lots of them. The crocodile pond is surrounded by trees that are full of white birds. Apparently the crocodiles keep other predators away from the bird nests and the birds are safe as long as they don’t get too close to the water. They also have a new deer farm here, but I don’t know if they plan to use those for meat or if they are just studying them in an effort to increase the population. Hunting here is completely illegal. There is also a butterfly farm but I haven’t seen either of these.

I have a new house mate who is just moving in. He’s in the room across from mine. He’s here to capture crocodiles for the crocodile farm. He came in camo and wadding boots. That sounds like a riskier job than the one I have.

I have another long day tomorrow, then I’m coming home on Friday. This has really been a really good, interesting trip, but I’m going to be ready to come home, especially after 3 mights of cold showers!

Yesterday was our last full day in Manuel Antonio, and essentially, my last day on vacation. We all took the day kind of easy. I swam a lot in the pool where I met a lovely family from Barcelona and a young couple from Los Angeles. She was an ER surgeon and he was a lawyer, so high achievers. I also got a massage. The women at the massage place were super nice, and I left smelling faintly like watermelon and kiwi. There was a sloth hanging on a rope while I swam and I got some decent pictures of it. We also got some family pictures before we went out to eat.

I left a beautiful and expensive hotel at 10am this morning and drove 7 hours to the area around Arenal. I’m now staying in a dorm room that smells a little musty on the campus of the Technological University of Costa Rica. Accommodations are definitely not the same, but I have a space the holds 8 students all to myself. It has a shower, a kitchen area, and an AC. I also got the coffee maker to make water for my tea, so all of my essentials are met, and I’m having a wonderful time. There are 4 beds in my room and a tiny bathroom. It would be rough to live here as a student, but it’s fine for me alone. I don’t know if the shower has hot water yet. This area of Costa Rica is absolutely beautiful and the campus is nice. It’s not as fancy as US universities, but it’s well-maintained. You can get a very good education without all of the expensive bells and whistles that we provide in the US for students. There is a lichee tree right beside my apartment and there were parrots flying over when I sat outside for a while before dinner at a local bar with my Costa Rican counterpart.

Tomorrow morning, I’m having breakfast in the student dining center on my own, then I have a full day of meetings with people in programs I don’t know anything about. I start with Engineering and Computer Science. I spent part of my evening watching UNI’s promotional videos about our programs so I can talk about them. I have a page full of notes. Not all of my counterparts here speak English so some of my meetings will be at least partly in Spanish. I’m hoping that works in my favor. Rather than looking stupid because I had to Google search actuary science because I couldn’t remember exactly what that was, maybe I’ll just seem bad at Spanish. I’m still not completely sure what all is incorporated into geospatial technologies or the difference between information science and traditional computer science.

I’ll let you all know how it goes. Right now, I need to see if there is hot water in the shower or not and maybe Google search information science.

Update: That’s a no on the hot water. Tomorrow, I’ll leave the AC off until I take a shower.

Hello All: I did a super fun waterfall hike yesterday and this time, there was a professional photographer so I have some good pictures. It took about an hour to get to the Nauyaca Waterfall. It’s not close to anything, and the last part of our trip was in an open trailer pulled by a tractor because nothing else can make it up and down the side of the mountain we were on. We are on the edge of the Talamanca mountains here, and it feels like everything vertical – either up or down. We hiked down to the waterfalls through a beautiful jungle path. It was a little muddy and slippery but really pretty. The pictures below are the very beginning of the tour.

We hiked down to the first waterfall, where there was a shallow pool to swim and jump into. We also got mud face masks. The guides picked up special rocks that had the consistency of wet chalk and smeared it all over our faces. We had to let it dry then wash it off. It’s supposed to be really good for your skin. I talked to another woman who was about my age with three kids and we felt like we needed a full body experience to peel back more layers of aging. There are also a bunch of tiny glass frogs. Part of my tattoo is a glass frog, but I had never seen a real one. They were amazing! They are called glass frogs because they are almost transparent and very hard to see. These were tiny – about the size or your little fingernail.

The first waterfall is the highest. After that, we went to the lower waterfall, which had a deeper pool but a much swifter current. You could do cliff jumping here, but it looked crazy dangerous and unpleasant. You had to climb up through the waterfall, with water pounding your face the whole time. It was very slippery. When you got to the top, it was a 30 ft drop down, which is a fairly long fall. Landing wrong would be unpleasant at best. I love the idea of cliff jumping, but I don’t really enjoy the feeling of free falling anymore. I did the 5 ft jump, which still had a fairly difficult climb up. I could have gone a little higher, but I’m not up for long falls anymore. Plus, everything was slippery and the rocks were sharp. I’ve got some bruises but nothing serious. There was a family with a couple of fairly young boys. They wanted to do the 30 ft jump, but their dad absolutely refused and didn’t care how mad they were. They are luck he had the good sense to tell them no. The boys got to do the 5ft jump too, which was dangerous enough. They seemed like a nice family from the Chicago area.

The hike back up the mountain was rough but still pretty. It felt like a vertical climb. There is another waterfall in the area much higher up on the mountain. It’s a 5 hour climb to get there and up a little further is a second waterfall with a cave behind it. The cave has been all set up for campers, and people reserve it a year or more in advance. You would need to be an exceptionally good hiker with a lot of strength to do that one.

We also passed a resort out in the middle of nowhere that apparently serves pregnant women who want to give birth in the river or something like that. I’m very support of people who want to avoid drugs and hospitals, but I hope they have a helipad nearby. If something went wrong, we were miles from anyone who could help. The resort also functions as an ayahuasca retreat for people who want to do psychedelic drugs. That’s a growing business here in Costa Rica. I don’t know if there’s any overlap between those two groups?

I had supper with Brandon and his family yesterday evening, but I’m wiped out by the end of the day and I’m usually asleep by 9pm or sometimes 8:30pm. I’m taking today easier. I’m currently camped out in my hammock, but I’m planning to take my snorkel gear to the beach soon. Brandon’s family should be back from jet skiing soon so I’ll probably do something with them sometime today.

I had a very fun morning whale watching. Unfortunately, I only saw the fin of a whale in the distance. In two weeks, there will be hundreds of humpback whales here, but right now, there are only a few. But, there were a number of super cute spotted dolphins and it was a beautiful day for a catamaran tour. The tour provided a 30 minute snorkeling option, but apparently some guy died a year or so ago so they make everyone wear life vests now. I hate wearing life vests in general and it’s impossible for swimming and snorkeling. I was pretty upset about this at first, until I learned that you didn’t have to wear a vest while using the boat slide. So, while everyone else did some pretty bad snorkeling, I had the boat slide all to myself for about 20 minutes. It was fantastic! I love boat slides. The tour also provided a good lunch with fish, beans, rice and vegetables plus a delicious pineapple.

This afternoon, I swam for a while in the pool then camped out on my balcony watching the animals. There was a group of white faced capuchins in the trees around my apartment. One of them apparently broke into the house on the hill above me and robbed a sugar contained. I heard some yelling and things breaking from that house. There was also a small group of squirrel monkeys down the path a ways, a yellow-billed toucan flew over and there was a big iguana in one of the trees. The wildlife here is really spectacular. Unfortunately, the wildlife has not cooperated for pictures.

Brandon and his family did horseback riding/waterfall tour and had a lot of fun with that. I had pizza with them this evening. Tomorrow, I’m doing an all day waterfall hike that I’m looking forward to. Right now, I’m completely wiped out. I have just a few pictures to post.

Hello All: I’m currently back in Costa Rica for the next few days. Bill wasn’t able to come with me this time because he didn’t have time off work. We will be somewhere in January. Since Bill is not here, the pictures probably won’t be as good. He’s our picture taker. I am here with my brother and his new family, which has been a lot of fun.

I arrived yesterday after a very long travel day. Manuel Antonio is 3 hours from the San Jose airport and traffic was slow so I think it was at least 3.5 hours for me. It’s worth it though because we are staying at a beautiful resort right in the middle of the jungle. I’m currently on my balcony surrounded by trees and wildlife. I can see the ocean from the balcony too. This morning, there was a howler monkey somewhere right outside my apartment. I got up at 5am to listen to the monkeys and watch the sun come up. I took some video from the balcony but apparently I don’t have a plan with WordPress that allows me to post video.

This is the rainy season, so we have to plan activities in the morning because it usually rains in the afternoon. That’s fine though. Tonight it’s a soft rain, and we swam in the ocean for a while even with the rain. It has made everything super green. It’s lichee season here so there are fruit stands everywhere with piles of really good lichees. The mangos are good too.

Today, Brandon and Heather’s kids went zip lining. I’ve been zip lining a couple of times, and it’s fine, but not my favorite thing to do. Heather doesn’t like heights, so she didn’t want to go either. Heather and I walked around the very small town here and got groceries, then we swam for a while in the pool. We also ate at a falafel bar across the street. I love falafels. These were okay, but not the best I’ve had. I saw a baby sloth this morning and Heather and I saw another sloth and some monkeys by the restaurant. One of the monkeys had a tiny baby on her back. It was really adorable! Unfortunately, it’s hard to get good pictures of them.

It was a very pleasant day, but I’m wearing down. I’m going whale watching and snorkeling tomorrow. There are a bunch of humpback whales here with babies. I’ve talked to several people who have seen them, so I’m very excited about this. Snorkeling is supposed to be so so, but that’s fine. I’m not sure what the rest of the family is doing. They had a long zip lining trip today and they couldn’t decide what they wanted to do tomorrow. Having a free day to go to the beach is always nice and they may do jet skis. Hopefully I’ll have whale pictures tomorrow.