A trip abroad can teach a person so much, but I feel that I have learned more than what I expected of myself in Costa Rica. I anticipated learning a lot, but I feel that I learned the most everyday practical information in this class more than in my on-campus classes at IU. All I can really say is that this has been the trip of a lifetime, and arguably the hardest time I have had on a “vacation”. This is my first time out of the country, and this is not at all what I expected of a trip abroad. All of the things that make Costa Rica different from the United States are amazing, but my favorite part was how environmentally friendly every single thing is.
My first accouterment this week as changes for modern-day society would be at the Arenal Observatory located in La Fortuna. At Arenal, they managed to keep the level of boujie and comfort and maintain environmental stability. Coming from La Selva Biological Research station, we experienced the open nature, but not as much accessibility and comfort. As for the resort in Tortuguero, the level of comfort was there, but it felt disingenuous in its conservation actions. Therefore, Arenal was the perfect balance of these two aspects. The incorporation of nature and hospitality reminded me of vacations I am more used to, like beachfront houses. Nature was just a window away, and seeing the volcano from that close was breathtaking. Therefore, something that we, as Americans, could work on would be to find these little cottages in the woods to really grasp nature in a more hospitable location. With this being said, Arenal was more of a landscape adventure, rather than wildlife incorporated. My disingenuous feelings resulted from the fruit hanging from the trees outside the dining room. This felt as if they were drawing birds and other creatures in, rather than letting tourists experience that for themselves. The first thing that it reminded me of was the way we view animals in zoos, rather than roaming freely. It is such a different feeling seeing animals in their natural habitat rather than drawing them in every day to be a tourist trap.
Secondly, during our stay at the Monteverde field station, I got to see a different side of sustainability. The thing that struck out most was the meals, and how homey the environment was. The meals were more family-style, and we partook in part of the cleaning-up process. During this process, we emptied our meal scraps from our plates into metal bowls. This stuck out to me for two main reasons. One is being able to see firsthand how much individually and as a group how large our food waste was (depending on the meal because some were so good there was barely anything left over), and composting. When that food was being disposed of, it was not being thrown in altogether into the trash can. Instead, it was being composted and added to the garden as fertilizer. This is much different from anywhere in the United States, comparing both dining halls and everyday trash at home. I have never been in an environment where the excess food is scraped separately from the rest of the garbage, and it just shows how we can make a five-second change that can really impact our environment.
After leaving the Monteverde field station, we then moved to the homestays. This was interesting for me to see how a family is able to make sustainable choices instead of in a more large-scale organization. In our case, we had a similar bowl for food waste, and she used it in her garden. This felt very full circle since we ate the food from her garden, then contributed food (very little because everything was so good) back into the soil to be repurposed. In addition to this, we had our separate water cups. With these, we all had little name tags on them to not get confused with each other and allowed us to not waste in order to have a clean cup again. She would also at the end of meals take our leftover water, if there was any in our cups, and use that to water her garden or plants. This simplistic conservation of water and food shows what an everyday woman and family can do to help improve the environment we live in.
In the end, we went back to our stay at Valle, which was a little bit longer for some of us, since we were sick. Even though I was feeling ill, I got to see a little bit of how Valle was able to do everything at such an exquisite resort. All of the food served there was farm-to-table, and they had animals and gardens around from which everything was grown and raised. Also near the dining room, they had an herb garden from which all of the seasonings and such came from. Not to even mention, none of the establishments we stayed in had air conditioning, which goes to show how accustomed we can become in just three weeks without this. Even writing this from home, I have been a little chilly in my house and have turned the temperature up to remind myself of a bit of Costa Rica.
In all of this hands-on learning, the lectures also helped me recognize these issues that we Americans face if we do not make a change in the future. In particular, Professor Libby’s exercise on the 6 degrees of climate change was very eye-opening. We may not see signs now, but the worst is lurking around the corner. Even making these slight changes like composting and turning up our air conditioning as a society, and as a world, can drastically change the course of history for our future generations.
As always, see you next time Costa Rica!
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