Repent and Expatriate

What is the new American Dream? I think I've found it.

The white house and picket fence of old-- idyll, but too idle for today's generation-- has been replaced with something more active, though just as quaint and innocent: the coffee shop. Not Starbucks, but something at once new and nostalgic; the homey, earth friendly, indigenous art on the walls kind of place, where people gather in the dim natural light and listen to sounds of the rainforest (or use the free wi/fi-- whatever).

Here at the coffee shop in Nicaragua where I'm writing this, the owner roasts his organic homegrown beans daily. He talks about the ecological consequences of Nicaragua's proposed canal, and the socioethical consequences of gringos taking over political control of a tropical paradise such as this. It's as wholesome as whole wheat bread; but before all this the owner was an oil company executive. It makes me think of Global Village back in Raleigh, with its organic shadegrown yada yada; the owner there was a marketing exec for Slim Jim before being reborn into environmentalist coffee. (I generally wouldn't compare Slim Jim to Shell Oil, but the factory that exploded several weeks ago and left a toxic cloud over North Carolina makes me wonder).

Neither shops fills a real need-- Hillsborough Street averages about one coffee shop per block, and here in Nicaragua the appeal is more about being around other gringos and escaping the need to speak spanish than anything else. So why coffee? I think it represents some kind of repenting. How could the warm, smiling face serving up delicious iced mochas from fair trade coffee possibly be associated with assassinations in Nigeria (Shell finally settled last month for $15 million) or stolen indigenous lands in Ecuador (the Cofan are still fighting this, both in court and in the rainforest)?

Or maybe, cynically, it's just the pursuit of profit in our new "green" economy.

Riding the Bull

Whitewater rafting is a chaotic first time experience. Whereas most tourist adventures are pretty straightforward-- zipline over this canyon, rapel down this waterfall-- whitewater introduces a dizzying number of varials. The river changes day to day, especially here in Costa Rica where a majority of the rivers are dammed for hydroelectric purposes, and flow is controlled not just by daily torrential rain, but by some guy sitting in an office at the dam upriver. Factor in the earthquakes that move around the river´s rocks, and that passengers are relied upon to help propel the boat-- and you´ve got quite a situation.

While commands are simple (paddle forward or back, stop paddling and throw yourself into the boat), following them while being smacked in the face with waves isn´t. If you can hear the commands over all the screaming. And sometimes you go to paddle and find the water just dropped out from under you-- or else the raft just bounced several feet off a rock. So its disconcerting to hear the guide talk about the ¨other¨ river in the region, the one that families and newbies start on. That river is definitely not Rio Toro, Bull River. But then, who doesn´t want to say they rode the bull?

Arenal, you´re just a--nother...

Dark, winding mountain roads at night, in the fog, in a volcanic countryside. High speeds. Red reflectors lining the road, lit up by the headlights, beckoning like a runway airstrip-- the illusion of flying melding with its metaphor. An accident on the other lane, and the driver wipes the inside of the windshield with a rag; as if he too just realized the potential consequence of manic latin american motoring. Turn onto a gravel road, the sole interior light flickering from a shorted circuit, in tune with the road. Each jarring pothole giving you a flickering chance to see this night´s companions: three germans, three americans. No names. And it strikes you as odd, for just a moment, that all this seems normal.

The driver pulls onto a bridge and stops, cuts the lights. To your left-- lava, spilling down a distant slope, like hot ashes dancing on the highway from a dropped cigarette.

From L.A. with Pepper Spray

Met a german girl tonight who is bringing pepper spray back as a souvenir and gift, because it is illegal in Europe and quote: ¨yeah, pepper spray is awesome.¨

The Forest at Night

The white faced Capuchin monkeys climb high into the trees to settle in for the night. After a long day of leaping from limb to limb--the longest day of the year, today-- they seek safety from the predators awaking below. Actually, a majority of the forest's creatures are becoming active as the cover of night closes in; sloths begin their slow migration, armadillos shuffle blindly from their dens, tarantulas stalk prey from the mouth of their caves, pit vipers unravel and slip to the forest floor to wait for rodents. The cicada's deafening drone gives way to the rhythmic chirps of crickets. Never quiet and never dark-- fireflies flash at regular intervals, while bioluminescent inchworms are seen sporadically. Lightning on the coast adds to the display, illuminating orange and purple clouds in the distance. The greens of the day, ubiquitous in Costa Rica, fade to rich hues of blue and deep, impenetrable black. Hidden somewhere in this blackness lurk the jaguars that grace the covers of books and countless postcards in Costa Rica's gift shops.

The star of this night, however, is neither rare or creepy, nor cuddly or colorful. The leafcutter ant-- or several million of them-- steal the show with their prodigous work ethic; laboring without stop through the night to serve queen and colony. The smaller ants clean the leaves of parasites and fungal disease, the larger soldier ants guard the colony entrance and protect the workers travelling a hundred feet or more to reach that entrance. The average sized workers, which give the species its name, cut and carry leaves many times their size over huge distances, for the several months they are alive. Deep in the colony (this one was about 18 feet deep and probably the same in diameter) the leaves will incubate a special fungus found only in leafcutter colonies, and its sole source of food.

The fungus cannot exist without the ants, the ants cannot live without this fungus; a whole society is formed around this beautiful relationship. But within a decade, the queen dies and the colony disappears, like so many rays of sunlight beneath the canopy.

Green Coast Mystique

Less obvious than the banana and palm oil plantations that line the coastal highways are government subsidized teak farms. These expensive hardwoods are planted close together, forcing the saplings to compete for light by growing straighter and taller than they would naturally. This allows longer boards to be cut with less effort, and results in fewer knots and weak spots.

It also allows the teak farms to undercut wild harvested teak prices, lumbered illegally from rainforest clearcuts. (The growing expense is offset by not having to slash roads into the wilderness, and also because many of the the trees clearcut are softwoods with low prices.) If the numbers are to be believed, this practice has cut illegal deforestation by 80%. Wheras its' neighbors are finding themselves with increasingly smaller rainforests, Costa Rica actually has more now than twenty years ago. Which means hopefully the green coast's mystique will last for years to come.

A Life Aquatic

Pluck a starfish from the living ocean, and hold it like a rock in your hand; waves lap the boat and ripples blink at you in procession, but the starfish-- neither fish nor star-- is still and silent like the night sky. Return him and the ocean´s clear eye twinkles to you: a subtle reminder that, we too, once called the ocean home.

The sun broke up the grey sky just as we arrived for snorkeling, illuminating the cystal clear water and giving its inhabitants a graceful shimmer. And so of course the first fish you see, so obviously large and uncrowded between docks behind the restaurant, would be a barricuda. Honestly, the name evokes more than the image, because I would have called him a sturgeon or needlefish and jumped in right there for a closer look.

Thankfully, other passengers on the boat were suitably impressed to point him out before I made a meal of myself. Later, the barricuda would leave his sunning spot, the only piece of ocean in sight empty of fish, and come to the front of the dock where a school of some typical carib fish was ripping meat off a drowned crab. Staring intently through the magnifying snorkel mask, I heard children screaming above water on the restaurant platform. ¨Cuidado! Cuidado! Barricuda!¨

No fight or flight--a puzzled look towards the children then a long look underwater. Nothing. More screams, another puzzled look, step closer, look again under water: barricuda fills up your whole field of vision. Quietly panic so as not to embarass yourself and step behind another snorkeller. No need to get away, just get further away than someone else. The barricuda, apparently bored or untempted by gringo sushi, returns to his sunspot. Leaving us free to explore the reef, marvel at the brain coral, herd schools of fish, and pass under the shadowy docks unhindered, driven by a nervous curiosity.

Zissou would be proud.

La Frontera: Another Day, Another Dollar

Ecologically, borders are notoriously rich in terms of biodiversity. Where a forest meets a swamp, or freshwater mingles with its salty cousin, opportunities abound for life to exploit a niche environment. Econonically, borders are notoriously poor, violent and exploited themselves; think of Tijuana or the Malquiladora zones on the Mexican border.

But political borders offer niche environments to their citizens as well. Take the border crossing from Costa Rica to Panama: after being escorted across a rickety bridge by a local looking for a tip, paying for a visa, and being hustled into buying a ride on a crowded mini-bus because a) there is no regular bus, and b) that bus that doesn´t exist costs the same and takes longer, you learn that to get stamped into Panama (nevermind you already paid for a visa) you need to buy a return ticket to Costa Rica. Return tickets, regardless of whether you want to go half an hour across the border or all the way back to the capitol, cost the same. Nevermind that you´ll never use the ticket because you´re travelling elsewhere in Panama. Nevermind that the border officials know you aren´t going to use the ticket that supposedly prevents you from living indefinitely and illegally in Panama. Nevermind you´ll probably face the same scam returning to Costa Rica-- then you´ll need a return ticket to Panama, forever bounced back and forth like the ball from Pong.

Arguing does no good, reasoning and pleading do no good. You´re a rich tourist and you´ll pay the bribe rather than turn around and go home. Everyone knows what is going on, but refuses to acknowledge their part. The bus hustler complains with you, the ticket vendor smirks under her breath, the border official plays it by the book. (¨I don´t care if you´re going to China next, you need a return ticket¨). We, as tourists, share the experience, but we take it home in different ways: does this justify our own exploitation of others? Or does it make us empathize that much easier?

Going Bananas

First you see the fields, the endless rows of banana trees, the ditches separating them, the planks laid out haphazardly as bridges from row to row. Next, you see the shipping containers laid up in storage, five or six stories tall; first Dole, then Del Monte and Chiquita. Last you see the warning signs; don´t enter this field because of the dangerous chemicals sprayed. And the worker´s shanties laid out haphazardly in the shade of the broad banana leaves. And the kids playing soccer in sight of the warning sign. You won´t see the resulting health problems from a bus window, but I can see myself only buying organic bananas in the future.

Novelty

Because my plane came in 10 hours late and no restaurants were open, and because I skipped my free breakfast to frantically search for an internet cafe and my separated travelling companions, the first food I had in Costa Rica was a bag of ham pizza flavored chips, bought for a long bus ride. (For the record, yes, they tasted like ham pizza. Or rather like pizza flavored chips with ham added. Which is to say, they tasted like ham pizza flavored chips. A lot of words to say nothing).

It was a novelty purchase. But it made me notice the number of people texting on the bus; these weren´t rich people-- they lived in little tin roof buildings on the side of the road, with clothes hanging out to dry and rusty dead cars in the yard. Cell phones and texting must require some measure of sacrifice. Is it a novelty for the culture, or a legitimate need? Cell phones are being held up as a modernizing force in Africa, one that will liberate people and lift them from poverty. Is that possibly true? Or just slick PR from Sony and AT&T? I´m always amazed at airports by the way businesspeople stay so busy on their Blackberries, organizing and rescheduling and ¨touching base¨. But where there is no business, can cell phones be any more than a lazy way to pass the time?

I don´t think I´ve ever seen a local reading on a bus. I don´t know if books are unavailable, or if reading is not a priority. Maybe the people are semi-illiterate.

My first impression is that cell phones should not be driving social change. Looking at my own life, however, of all the monthly bills I´ve given up-- rent, electricity, water-- the cell phone has stubbornly hung on. Is that desire for communication and connection an innate urge? Or an unhealthy addiction?