On the Road

Coffee plants growing beneath the shade of eucalyptus trees.  We saw a bazillion coffee fields today, in addition to bananas, avocados, tomatoes, pineapple, cacao and sugar cane.

A precariously perched home on a steep hillside, of which all the land seems to be.  Notice the fog rolling in as we enter the rainforest.

A catholic church in a village we passed through.

A sloth hanging  high up in the trees...didn't come out too well with my camera but he sure was lazy up there!

One of a zillion leaf-cutter ants making their way through the forest.

Howdy folks!  Yet another full day, yee ha!  We finally left the what were often stifling confines of San Jose and hit the road, and how thankful I was!  I was ready to leave the big city and see some of the countryside, what in my mind CR is really known for.  After a 2 hour drive east of San Jose we arrived in Turrialba, a tiny village at the base of Parque Nacional Monumento Arqueologico Guayabo, or Guayabo Archeological Site.  Costa Rica, despite it's strategic location connecting 2 huge continents, has not hosted many indigenous cultures at all.  Guayabo is the only national site that has been excavated as an archeological site.  Indigenous people lived in this location starting in 1500BC and mysteriously disappeared in 1500AD.  We toured their monoliths, petroglyphs, and numerous structures of foundations and roads.  It's amazing to see how much of it has been altered given the rate of decay of the rainforest.  Guayabo is at 3300 feet and is very much in the rain forest, receiving as much as 200 inches of rain a year.  Appropriately, it rained on us quite a bit.

The real highlight for me at this stop was the leaf-cutter ants.  They are these huge colonies of ants, numbering in the billions, that build colonies in the soil up to 3 stories high!  They cut leaves and are seen marking in a long row through the rainforest understory delivering the leaves to their colony to attract bacteria which they feed on.  Local peoples actually use the ants to stitch close wounds that they have.  The put the ant over their wound, the ant bits down with their super powerful mandibles, the locals tear the body from the head, and the head remains with the jaws clamped down to keep the wound closed.  

Tonight we arrived at and are staying the next 2 nights at EARTH University, a university with an emphasis on sustainable agricultural techniques.  The President and Provost of EARTH University were kind enough to talk us group of teachers tonight after we arrived.  This unique school is a private, international, nonprofit university specializing in educating leaders of tropical developing countries in sustainable agricultural techniques.  In addition to educating 400 students in sustainable methods, they also maintain a fully sustainable and organic farm selling their fruits to stores worldwide.  If you've ever bought a banana from Whole Foods you have bought a banana grown here at EARTH University.

Go Devils!

Hoping everything is well back in the USA!