As we moved out of La Selva, we also started to shift our focus towards more interactions between humans and nature. We specifically learned more about farming practices and the markedly different strategies that organic versus industrial farms use to cultivate the same crops. This started from a lecture Dr Libby gave on Sunday about the origins of industrial farming in Costa Rica and how large multinational corporations managed to buy up land in Costa Rica to use as plantation land. We learned about how the corporate takeover of Costa Rica was possible in part to the oil crash in the late 70s and early 80s; I asked a question about if this takeover could have been done ethically however Dr Libby went into great detail about how the WTO’s predatory policies and how even without an oil crash, countries such as Costa Rica would have still fallen prey to corporate takeover. However, all this doom and gloom did not appear to be the norm as we would see later on throughout the week.
Our first stop was a local organic pineapple farm which would end up being my favorite tour. The guide was informative and had a connection to the area and also to La Selva through his dad (or maybe it was his grandfather?) and he talked to us about the ways his style of farming organically differed from traditional, industrial farming. Some of the differences he talked about was using chili water as a natural pesticide and using black, plastic bags as a form of water retention for the soil. One of the biggest differences that stuck with me the most was the difference in worker health in an organic versus industrial plantation. Our guide told us how organic plantation workers have to have 2 blood tests done per year while industrial plantation workers have to have 2 blood tests done per month. It was a scary fact to learn about, especially since Sarapiqui is a predominantly agrarian region where most of the jobs are coming from these massive plantations; so not only were corporate activities poisoning the environment, they were also poisoning the people and they were preventing the region from improving itself. After our informative tour we got to enjoy some of the pineapple and pineapple juice that the farm sold and it was some of the sweetest pineapple I had ever tasted, it had me kicking my feet and giggling at how good it was.
The second farm we went to was a farm that specialized in bananas but also grew a variety of other fruits such as avocado and soursop. While this tour wasn’t my favorite, I could also tell that the lady who ran it was very passionate about what she did and her idea to send out banana flour during COVID as a way to promote her farm was a very inspiring story for me. While she did mention a few differences between her farm and an industrial farm, what I took away from her farm was just the passion behind it and the willingness to share it with visitors and travelers from across the globe. I got to use a machete at the farm and I think I had the most horrendous technique of all time because I was barely making a dent in the banana tree. I did redeem myself however with the cooking demonstration by cutting and peeling the bananas for patacones. This was great for me because it seemed like the three times I made some variation of a wellington was paying off in my knife work. I also felt less like a fool during the cooking which was definitely a nice feeling. The patacones and the refreshments they served us at the end were pretty good and it got me through the rest of the day until dinner.
Finally, the chocolate tour. I don’t really have a lot to say on it besides it feeling touristy. I did not feel like I learned anything at all about chocolate farming in Costa Rica at all and it instead just felt like a guided tour of chocolate history that just happened to be in Costa Rica. The tasting was fine but that was all I could say about the chocolate tour. Although I will say, dark chocolate haters beware because it had some of the best dark chocolate I had ever tasted; and before you say anything, dark chocolate tastes really good when you don’t have someone whining in your ear about how it tastes like dirt and is super bitter. After the chocolate farm we spent our last full day in La Selva, and from someone who is writing this from a turtle shaped pool while sipping a mojito, Tortuguero is much more relaxed. The journey to Tortuguero was literally smooth sailing and the resort we are staying at made all of our jaws drop; it felt like we were in a Black Mirror or White Lotus episode. The boat tour we had took us basically all over the park and we were able to see the various animals throughout the park, and in our resort we can’t escape from the animals either as we have capuchins that love to raid the bar; or as I like to call them, drunk monkeys.
However, and call me Dr Libby, I would like to end this blog on a bit of a negative note. The resort at Tortuguero is nice and I’m glad I got to have an experience like this, but personally this form of ecotourism is super disingenuous and to me there’s an apparent sense of a disconnect between the resort and Costa Rica as a whole. People might say that hospitality is a big part of Costa Rican culture, but as someone who has worked in the service industry, hospitality is also a big part of service industry culture. Hospitality at a resort and the occasional “pura vida” is not enough Costa Rican culture for me to feel like I have been able to visit a country organically and thoroughly. Whenever I’m in Cambodia, I feel like I’m living a normal life there because I just live the day to day there with my family and I always feel fulfilled with my visits; I would also like to feel this way as a tourist in other countries instead of feeling disconnected. To me it feels like when people say they’re visiting Mexico but it’s actually Cancun or that they’re visiting the Dominican Republic but it’s actually Punta Cana: it feels like these resorts seem more like playgrounds for rich retirees who want to “feel at one with nature” or for people who want to feel like they’re in an exotic land. Along that point, some of the eco part of ecotourism seems to also be disconnected. The amount of people I have seen that gawk at the random animals like they are some placed exhibit have only added fuel to this little rant. At La Selva, the people who visited were people genuinely interested in nature and were there to learn more about what they were interested in; at resorts in parks such as Tortuguero, the people who visit like to lounge around at the pool, sipping whatever tropical cocktails they ordered all while laughing at pointing at any random animal that passes by. This fact isn’t helped by something that Dr Wasserman said about how the number of backpackers, aka people that are interested in nature and exploring said nature, that come to Tortuguero is falling but the number of retirees is increasing.
Costa Rica isn’t your personal zoo. It is a country, with people and animals and a culture that is different from what we have in the US. If you’re going to visit for ecotourism, educate yourself and learn more about the wildlife, ecosystems, and the various parks in Costa Rica instead of coming here because you saw it on a “Top 10 Places to Travel in Central and South America” list and the resorts looked nice. There are ways to make ecotourism work such as with the pineapple tour and the Tortuguero history lesson. The tour was fun and interactive but it was also educational and you could tell that the guide was passionate and wanted to give back in the form of education and spreading his word. Another cool example was when our guide told us about the history of Tortuguero and how his family reacted to the change. It helped give context to a park that we knew almost nothing about except for the fact that there were a lot of turtles. It helped put into picture how the park has helped the region develop and how local attitudes to the park changed over time. However, there are also ways in which it doesn’t work and one of these ways is with resorts that seem to only care about ecotourism as a front for real tourism, where you just build a resort in the middle of a park with the only connection to educational ecotourism is boat tours. Tortuguero and other places like it are cool and interesting and informative, however, resorts and hotels in the middle of these parks can do more to incorporate education on the ecology of the park in order to give guests a much more fulfilling stay. I could say more, however, I am not sure how to articulate the rest of what I want to say. Rant and blog over.
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