Entry 3 - To San Marcos de Tarrazu

San Marcos de Tarrazú, 13 August 2007, 10:15 pm

This morning marked the beginning of the day for us to head to San Marcos de Tarrazú, the area where we will be spending the next two weeks doing our field research.

I woke up around 5:30 so I could take a walk through the beautiful gardens at the hotel in the early morning sunlight.  At 7:00 I met my fellow participants for breakfast, and shortly after 8:00 we checked out of the hotel and headed out together to our first stop, the amazing INBioparque, a project of the National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio). 

This “theme park” is actually part discovery museum, part zoo.  We saw snakes, spiders, tarantulas, scorpions and poison dart frogs in their terrariums.  We saw two wild iguanas up very close, some turtles and several birds I’d never seen before.  There was a spectacular butterfly farm where we walked through the butterflies’ habitat while dozens of them flew around us, and a petting zoo with goats, pigs, a cow, and rabbits.  Finally, we walked through several gardens with indigenous plants, including a model community food garden, displays of plants and trees used for medicinal purposes, and finally fruit and nut trees.  And our personal tour guide Pablo explained the many varieties of animals, plants and trees—and he paid particular attention to the trees that were prevalent on coffee farms, especially those that provided natural shade.  Each step of the way had experiential educational displays describing what we were seeing, and how they interacted with one another.

Before the tour, we watched a movie on the history of Costa Rica, why it’s so important to be paying attention to biodiversity now, and what humans can do to stop and even reverse the negative impacts we have had on the environment.  It ended with a quote by the African ecologist Baba Dioum: "In the end, We will conserve only what we love, We will love only what we understand, We will understand only what we are taught."

At the end of the tour we watched a dramatic show on the nature preserves and national parks of Costa Rica.  We stood around on a balcony while a suspended model of Costa Rica hung below us.  The room went pitch black, and then a light showed a place of interest, while a description of the place and an interesting legend played on the speakers.  INBIOpargue was an outstanding way to start the day, and this expedition.

For me, the highlight of this day was while walking through the trees, I got to touch my first coffee tree and coffee cherries.  It was quite an experience, both for me and for Nancy, the Starbucks representative who is on this tour with us.  She and I have been waiting many years to see coffee in its natural habitat.

We boarded the bus and headed on our journey to San Marcos de Tarrazú.  Along the way we stopped at a local restaurant for a meal of comidas tipicas, typical Costa Rican food.  Three of us on this trip are vegetarians, and we are having no trouble finding delicious (and plentiful) food.  As always, the staff everywhere is genuinely hospitable.  We are having the chance to get to know one another and start developing friendships for two weeks of very hard work.

After about an hour’s drive, we arrived in San Marcos.  Here we checked into our hotel, a simple but clean place called Hotel la Cascada.  We got our pick of rooms and after a quick settling-in, we headed straight for the research lab at Coopetarrazú.  Everywhere we drive, the mountains are just covered in green coffee farms, miles and miles, as far as the eye can see.  The tops of the mountains are hidden by low clouds, and after the afternoon rain ended, we were treated to a dramatic lightning show for the rest of the evening.

When we arrived at the lab, we enjoyed a cup of coffee from Coopetarrazú while Sebastian and Natalia gave us a briefing of our trip and a history of coffee in the Tarrazú region.  They let us know that this expedition has three objectives: to obtain real research results, to have us learn about sustainable activities and specifically how coffee sustainability can be a model for other systems, and for us to understand how our research is going to help the community and stakeholders, particularly the farmers.

Natalia’s father Jorge owns a coffee farm, and offered his expertise during the presentation.  We got a lot of information about how we will be spending these next two weeks and the information was put into context for us. During the presentation, two other men stopped in to say hello to us and welcome us to Tarrazú:  Carlos Rivera, the principal manager of Coopetarrazú and Ricardo Zuñiga, the coop’s agronomist.

After the presentation, Natalia’s family had arranged for us to have dinner with them at their house.  Jorge and Natalia took us to their family’s house, where we met Natalia’s mother, Alba, and her brothers Chris and Jorgito.  The meals were delicious and we were treated like family.  We all had rice and mashed potatoes, carrots and chayote.  The vegetarians were served a delicious dish of garbanzo beans, while the rest ate chicken.  Our drink was a juice made from the organic blackberries the family grows on their property, and dessert was arroz con leche with blackberry compote and a sweet fig.

Also at the dinner was one of the participants from the last expedition, Anna Maria, who had had such an amazing time that she stayed on for 10 extra days.  She assured us what we already knew: that we were in for a lot of work and a life-changing experience.

After dinner, we walked around the family’s grounds with flashlights (the sun is bright at 5 am and sets by 6 pm) to see some of the local critters and eat fresh fruit off the citrus trees on the family’s property.

I walked up to Alba before we headed back to Hotel la Cascada, and, in my best Spanish, grabbed her hand and thanked her for dinner and for her family’s hospitality.  She squeezed my hands for several moments before saying with incredible sweetness and sincerity, “Con mucho gusto, amigo. It is my pleasure.  Mi casa es su casa.”

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