Environmental Field Trip, Costa Rican Style

My wife is taking a masters degree and this involved lots of field trips around Costa Rica, I always go with her as it is a fascinating experience visiting wild and unusual places. Yesterday I went to a small farming town called Volcan, yes it is real and the town is basically in a valley and is all peasant farming. It is typical farming for this country, cattle and coffee, but as you are aware this is causing very bad erosion of the soil and huge torrential flooding whenever there is a large storm. All the trees were cut down over the last 50-70 years but it is the lack of tree cover that is causing the problems along with the horrendous action of the cattle on the ground and the coffee method of cultivation with no ground cover. We were meant to meet with the local association to look for some sort of solution to their problems. When we first got there we were a little early so a it was a very hot and humid day we went for a beer. We were greeted with an hand built shed that was meant to be a bar, it was hilarious in its primitiveness, the sign was a spray paint job but who cares. We were then welcomed by the local alcoholic, even though I can speak a little Spanish his slurring and country pronunciation was just garbled rubbish to me and he was asking me if I know “Miguel”, hardly likely, my wife was getting upset by his constant attention as we just wanted just a quiet beer, he was then gesturing with his hands and winking eye that he wanted a drink of my beer, not all of it but just a swallow, as though it was moonshine or something, I was almost in tears at this point, the owner of the bar was then shouting abuse at him and telling him he was going to call the police but this guy knew the local police stations was 50 miles away and ignored him, so he kept winking and asking for my beer and through my laughter I kept refusing and the owner then threatened to give him a beating unless he left, this he did accept and left pretty quickly. I could hardly stand up for laughing and I was wondering if the entire trip was going to be a country style farce. The meeting was for a presentation by the national reforestation society, they were going to answer questions and show some of the information that present landowners are already receiving money from it to plant trees. It was also attended by a couple of landowners from the valley a couple of visitors from the USA, a security guard from the local giant USA pineapple grower and a couple of retired folks from the town. The meeting descended into a rant by one guy about how very smart he is and how important he is and that the committee should be doing something. 3 hours of total crap was spoken. We were then offered by the security guard to show us the entire valley the following day, this we agreed to. We went to the local town about 20 miles away to find a room for the night and at $12 you cant complain, it was clean with cable TV and a new bathroom. We went for a meal at the local restaurant and nightclub, it was a wonderful wooden framed barn style building and very nice. All nicely laid out and we were after small snacks to keep the calorie count down as you can consume millions with fried rice and platanos and fried meats if your not careful. So we had seafood soup and the pickled fish, it is much nicer than it sounds and nothing like sushi, the little girl didn’t want anything then said she was hungry as she watched us eat, so we ordered a chicken sandwich for her. When it arrived it was actually bigger than here, complete with a mountain of fries and dressing and a giant bread sandwich somewhere amongst the fires. She ate a little of the half chicken of meat that must have been in there and Jenny and myself had to eat the rest, just what we didn’t want. So goddam full I could hardly have the couple of beers I wanted to take away the humid atmosphere for 10 minutes, but I did force them down anyway. We had to be up very early the next morning 5 am and then drive to Volcan for the trip. So after 6 hours sleep, very good sleep actually we got up showered under cold water, again a local thing, in this heat most don’t bother with hot water at all. We got to our meeting point with 5 minutes to spare and the local guard turned up in what looked like a scout leader uniform. Very short soccer shorts, a bright green t-shirt a red neckerchief and a small army style hat. He drove us up a dirt road passed many small poor dirt farms, with old people picking coffee beans and boys attending cattle and children littering the road near the houses. This is still a poor catholic country and the average family size is 3 children, far too many for this tiny country. We were getting higher and higher up the mountain but you could see that all the hills were bare of trees and where the cattle had destroyed the land and turned it into bare red earth that was eroding away. We. Got to our get off point and to where we had to walk and it was a bad broken cattle track, we were told that all one side of the valley belonged to a coffee farmer that went bankrupt 10 years ago and it has basically been abandoned and I asked why was there cattle on the hills then, he smiled and said that a rich local guy has been using it as his own land since, putting hundreds of cattle of the hills and maintaining the fences and just using it as he wants, this is how the country people carry on, he also told us that some guy comes into town and then takes people up to the hills and sells plots of land to people even though it isn’t his own land and they have no deeds for it, all very illegal and again a country thing, that is why so many people get shot dead in land disputes. So we have a land owner using another’s land to raise cattle that are eroding the hills, this is a problem that will never be solved, the cattle stop the regeneration of trees and destroy the soil structure. This problem of the torrential floods is a pretty easy one to solve but involves things that only the locals can control. The hills are naked as they say here, all the way up to the peaks of the hills and when it rains there is no control of the wash off, it just roars down the small creaks and into the big river and then this roars down until it floods over the flood banks in the town and floods all the houses. Without any local incentives for the farmers they are never going to plant trees and get rid of the cattle that are destroying the hills. I was shocked by the lack of wildlife in the valley, there were a few birds but nothing of much interest, we were told there were no mammals left, and I saw very few butterflies. The only animal we saw was a small snake, only just hatched by the size of it and as I was taking pictures the guard snatched it up and dropped it in a bag telling us he was taking it for identification.





I wasn’t sure he was telling us the truth but what could I do, it turned out to be a harmless Rose Bellied Litter Snake. We took about 4 hours walking up and down the valley and the weather was great so I really enjoyed it but it was depressing to see the state of this almost remote valley, total destruction of what once was a fantastic valley. We drove back home and discussed the recommendations we could make for the committee, I suggested sending a letter stating “Your Screwed”, but Jenny was equally pessimistic but a bit more diplomatic, it would take the concerted effort of all in the valley to make any difference and then the recovery would take 50 years. Time for me to get a tan then?