Costa Rica Living. Get ‘real’ in rural Costa Rica
Costa Rica living ‘rural’ can be very rewarding.
Even after a quick visit to this ‘rich coast’ you will understand why it has a reputation as a key travel destination and a place where many dream of living and retiring…
Costa Rica living or retiring can offer you just about everything: Drop-dead gorgeous beaches, rain forests stuffed with neo-tropical wildlife, big hotels with golf courses, little hotels with hammocks, deep-sea fishing, volcanoes and hot water springs and to show you around, there’s a refreshing new tour idea called ‘community tourism’.
Community tourism offers you a different angle on Costa Rica living with the ‘feel-good’ factor of genuinely benefiting rural Costa Rican communities. As a bonus, it makes for an easy and different day out for anyone living here too.
Isabel Hernandez – Rural Living in Costa Rica
Real Places, Real People is the brainchild of California transplant, John Goldberg invites small groups to interact with locals in their homes and workplaces to see what Costa Rica living is all about…
The people you visit do not depend on your tourist dollars although they are a welcome boost to their income – they will carry on ‘Costa Rica living’ and doing their thing regardless. With community tourism you drop in, hang out, have a go, and those ‘real people’ sincerely make you welcome.
I went on one of John’s day trips to the enchanting valley of Puriscal, west of San José. The locals are a mix of Costa Rican farmers and Huetares indigenous families. Narrow bougainvillea-lined lanes, lush vegetation and coffee groves, neat hamlets and forested hills characterize this 1,000 meter high, secluded upland valley.
I was a bit concerned by the recommendation to dress comfortably ready to get dirty, probably wet and be prepared to keep busy. The list of activities was daunting, it sounded like a year’s worth of evening classes crammed into 12 hours – just how was I going to get through basket weaving, potting, hiking, bread making, coffee roasting, a butterfly farm and lunch in a single day and come out smiling?
Easily!
John, affable and enthusiastic, collected me in his 4×4 at 7.30 a.m. with his other ‘guest’, Marcos, a local hotel manager interested in promoting this innovative aspect of tourism. With a background in organizational community development and a previous job in this area for a major banana producer, John decided to fuse this experience with years of being a community tourist junky to develop the “Real Places, Real People”, his rural community tour operation.
His emphasis is on keeping groups small so that the communities aren’t intimidated by the bus brigades, and he also makes sure that his clients aren’t given any artificial red carpet treatment…
Our car wound up and out of the Central Valley, stopping first to visit a simple two-room, two-teacher elementary school at Ticufres, a largely indigenous student body of 76 children.
When school is in, you are invited to help out with the English class.
Our first practical challenge was at Isabel Hernandez’s roadside handicraft store. Isabel is a rather formidable seventy-something Huetar indian with over 60 years of woven baskets behind her. With stern instructions to watch carefully, we were presented with dried, stripped palm fronds to start our lesson, some colored from local natural but secretly brewed dyes.
Now basket weaving might be the stuff for old people’s homes and therapy sessions, but where are those six extra fingers when you need them? At least my effort held up better than Marcos’ which threatened to unravel through the rest of the day.
Next stop at the Antojitos general store, bakery and food stopover with spectacular views across the valley looked to be more straightforward. Very much a women’s enterprise, Lisa Mora and her three daughters bake bread, cook meals and sell anything from bottles of local honey to chewing gum.
Karly was our instructor and no doubts that she is born to the job. “Bueno, okay. Here is how we bake our local bread. Once you have washed your hands, you will help to mix the flour, eggs and other ingredients so that you can help form the pancitos ready for proving and baking;
watch me and then have a go.”
A typical Tico oven – Costa Rica Rural Living
All to the background patter of the history and gossip of the area, duly translated
by John, our misshapen rolls were left to prove slowly near the wood-burning oven.
We chose our lunch menu for later, since there was a date at the butterfly farm.
Owner, Hugo Hidalgo, constructed his rustic shelter of sun-proofed netting over
what he calls ‘weeds’ – the preferred delicacies of the ten or so species that
he raises. And fussy things they are too – each species will only eat and lay
its eggs on a certain type of plant.
We helped collect tiny white eggs from the undersides of leaves as huge blue-winged
Morphos and brown-spangled Galicos flapped drunkenly among us. Hugo doesn’t get
many casual visitors and the profit in butterflies is to sell on the pupae to
a larger farm near to San Jose for export.
To justify our lunch, we completed the morning at Paco Hernandez’s pottery. Tagged
onto the back of his rustic home, Paco has been sitting at his rickety but efficient
home-made wheel for 52 years – same wheel, thousands of pots! He worked his way through a large lump of red clay plonked on the wheel, explaining
the technique and creating several examples of jugs, ashtrays, vases and piggy
bank bodies.
Paco Hernandez – Living Rural in Costa Rica
Marcos donned an apron for his turn – I rudely backed well away expecting flying
lumps of clay, but his ashtray produced a “muy bien” from Paco, unlike my lop-sided
object – not even ashtray worthy. Well, that made Marcos and me equal – I do the
baskets, he can do the vases. Fired in the home-made brick kiln to 1,000 degrees
centigrade, the completed pots take on warm russet and ash black tones and John
collects his groups’ efforts days later to deliver, when possible, to their creators.
Finally, we could return to the Mora girls and devour lunch. A typical Costa
Rican dish called ‘casado’ of rice with black beans, diced potatoes, fresh salad
with either chicken, beef or fish. We scoffed the lot but there was little time
to relax over the excellent local coffee percolated through a muslin bag. We still
had things to do!
Our lunch discussion was choosing between a hike to a local waterfall known locally
for the fine laminas of pure copper that extrude from the rock above the falls
or to look at the fossils in a nearby hillside. Deciding on copper sheeting, we
drove down steep dusty trackways to find Santiago Anchia, local sugarcane farmer
and owner of the land containing the coppery cascade.
A short hike brought us to the falls, not that impressive in themselves – Costa Rica is dripping with waterfall drama – but seeing Santiago’s machete digging up layers of paper thin greenish laminas,
some as big as a sheet of best A4 was extraordinary.
Even more extraordinary is that no-one has ever exploited the mineral. Perhaps
it’s unusable, but it seems typical of this laid-back community that everyone
knows about it, but beyond a mild pride in its oddity value, people just let it
be. We trudged back through the cane field, sucking on sweet stringy sections
cut for us by Santiago’s disturbingly razor-edged machete.
