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Published: March 18th 2007
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Orosi
Well I must admit, I was a little nervous arriving in my first Latin American country. Got off the plane in San Jose. Good there's my luggage. Great there's someone holding a sign with my name on it to take me to my pre-arranged taxi. The driver doesn't speak any English. Does it stop him from trying to talk to me? Nope. After an hour and a half of driving through green country side and past mostly run down buildings in small towns we arrived in the beautiful valley town of Orosi. This is the place I have pre-booked a Spanish course and my new home for the next two weeks. We drive down the main street, the only sealed road in town, and the driver gave me my tour in Spanish, complete with charades so I could understand him. We turned off down a dusty road full of potholes and arrived 30 seconds later at my hostel. A lovely little building surrounded by a 6 foot barbed wire fence, stray dogs and horses.
The next two weeks were spent learning Spanish, well trying to learn Spanish. The school had a terrible learning environment really - a lovely sunny deck outside a cafe serving cafe con leche with a nice view of the streets of the town.
Much time was spent hiking various trails around town, soaking in the nearby hotsprings & going out for beer & cosadas for dinner with my friends Nadine from America, Bene from France & Gregor from South Africa. We visited an interesting local coffee farmer, known only as Nano, who gave us a cup of terrible coffee (they import the best coffee), showed us around his farm and insisted on us going for a swing on his vine (not for the faint hearted).
Many nights also involved traipsing down to one of the local bars, chatting in Spanish (it's amazing how good your Spanish really is after a few drinks) and telling every man that we spoke to that yes indeed we did all have husbands (each of us individually pointing at Gregor, hoping that they wouldn't notice that we all had the same husband). After the bars closed we would sneak back into the hostel (quiet as mice we were) to fry ourselves up some platainos. Very large bananas, deep fried and covered with salt and sugar. Yum!
A visit to the local coffee factory is a must. Its great to see the entire process that my favourite drug goes through. Each tiny coffee bean starts out looking more like a berry in a field of coffee plants, is picked by a local farmer, goes to the factory and is washed, separated, peeled, roasted amongst many other things until eventually it winds up in a big sack to be sent off around the world. Just before the roasting part you get the chance to take your shoes off and get your smelly feet amongst those coffee beans.
We were accompanied to each of these places by the hostel dog, Guapo, who became particulary attached to Bene. It was quite natural for Guapo to come for a dip at the hotsprings, sitting outside Bene's classroom or under the table in the resturant. In fact the only time that we encountered any trouble was when Guapo wasn't with us, like the guy with the fake gun and the kids who followed us, obviously planning to mug us when we got to the coffee plantation (but we changed plans once we noticed them). Good old Guapo!
La Fortuna
I said goodbye to my new friends and spent the next two weeks travelling around in the north. Firstly to La Fortuna to check out Arenal, one of the ten most active volcanoes in the world. Unfortunately it was raining and cloudy for the whole two days I was there so I could only imagine what it must have looked like through the clouds.
I did go to a great crocodile park while I was there and given a tour by a qualified professional, an eight year old local boy. He showed us his pet croc and the croc with a huge bump on its back. This was due to him throwing a rock at it after it bit him. Left a pretty impressive scar as is necessary I suppose for anyone working that closely with crocodiles protected only by a chicken wire fence.
Monteverde
It was then time for a boat trip across a lake and then a very long and bumpy ride to Monteverde to stay with a local family for a couple of days to experience "real" Costa Rican life. Well nothing really compares to staying with a local family to really get a feel for things. I gave the instructions to the taxi driver - La Cruz, en frente de supermercado, and just hoped that there wasn't more than one supermarket in this town. In Costa Rica, places don't have traditional addresses, in fact the streets don't even have names or if they do, no one actually knows what they are. So directions are always given in relation to places (even if those places no longer exist), like 300 metres west of the post office, turn right at the church, go across the football field and it's the red house, all in Spanish of course. So I knocked on the door of the house opposite the supermarket and sure enough I had the right one. I was greeted by a lovely, warm Costa Rican lady and two of her three gorgeous children who immediately welcomed me into their home, showed me around their modest but beautiful house and introduced me to their goats and dolls. I spent the next few days making crafts in their art studio, playing with the kids, helping out around the house and joining in on whatever excusions they were doing. It was an amazing experience to live with a local family, one that I would highly recommend to anyone.
After this I met up with Nadine and Bene in town, at a cabina, and did the touristy thing. Went out to an expensive restuarant (that's tourism for you) and watched a great band. Checked out the cloud forests, went to a frog museum and went on a tour of the cheese factory with my own personal guide. 20% of the milk used at the factory comes from local farmers who milk up to 25 cows each day by hand. They have to start at 2am so they can finish by 9am when it gets too hot. May I never whinge about getting up early again.
Finally off to the countries capital, San Jose, for my flight to Brazil.
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David
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Nano and orosi
Hello I did a google search for anything on Nano's farm and your blog came up fist. I was in Orosi back in March 2005. I loved it. Stayed in the same hostel as yourself and went to visit Nano a few times and hung out with him in town. When I was there he was telling me of a foriegn friend of his who was going to build place on his land and start up some kind of eco-tourism project. I don't suppose you heard anything about when there? Well I hope you enjoyed your experience there. Your blog was a bit ambiguous I thought. egards David grizz28@hotmail.com