My Green Life

For our honeymoon, my husband and I wanted to go on an adventure somewhere neither of us had been. James planned everything, but we both wanted a trip that would involve eco-tourism: hiking, canoeing, kayaking, scuba diving, surfing. So, we headed off to Costa Rica to support a country that is protecting 25% of its land from development and hopes to protect even more in the future.  The following is an account of the first section of the trip (there will be three total).

Day 1: We left Dulles airport at a brutally early time of 6 am, but this meant we arrived in San Jose, Costa Rica in the early afternoon which meant time to do some exploring and research. Our first challenge after arriving at our hostel was to find food. James speaks very little Spanish, and I speak just slightly more than that. But, we found a “soda” that sold cheap casados (chicken, rice, beans, fried plaintain) and were able to make it by on what we knew. Then the typical wet season rains approached and we hunkered down for the afternoon to get our bearings. We got some food from the supermarket then played some Wii soccer to round out the evening.

Day 2: We woke up for an early 7:00 pick up to trek by van through the very rough mountains where we learned that drivers are a little loco. They are very aggressive, but there seem to be very few accidents (surprisingly). We arrived safely in Monteverde late in the morning and checked into the Don Taco Hotel. We exchanged about $80 to 55,000 colones at the very well guarded bank at which point James was spoken to in Spanish and returned a stunned, blank stare at the security guard with a large gun at his side. He proceeded to piece toghether the fact that he was not able to take our backpack into the bank. We wandered around the small three-block town, had some ice cream, explored some art shops, and took a siesta (we do that a lot you will learn). Then it was dinner at the Tree House Restaurant which is literally a restaurant built around a living tree. You had to duck your head to avoid the large tangled branches. Dinner was tasty and since the nightlife in Monteverde is pretty nonexistent, it was early to bed.

Day 3: We had a leisurely morning with breakfast at the hotel. Then walked about 45 minutes to get to the Childrens’ Eternal Rainforest. Here we saw a snake in the tree, toucans, great views, and the section we were in was only 80 acres of the total 55,000 acres the Childrens’ Rainforest contains. We headed back for lunch at the supermarket then in the afternoon we went on the Don Juan coffee plantation tour. A couple of fun facts we learned about coffee harvesting: from berry to coffee, it takes one year. It’s quality not quantity for Costa Ricans whose coffee was voted fourth best in the world. A lot of manual labor is required to ensure the quality with very few machines utilized. Workers make 10,000 colones (about $20) a day, and most are Nicaraguan. The ox cart is a national symbol of CR because it is how they transported coffee originally. One unprocessed green coffee bean has the equivalent amount of caffeine as 5-6 cups of coffee. Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia by a goat that ate the beans than acted a little crazy. Roasting of the beans was also accident-the silo holding the beans burned down and the people liked the smell of the cooked beans.

Day 4: Another early morning then off to our canopy tour. We went on the Sky Walk with several hanging bridges to see the canopy of the forest. We saw a quetzal which is the symbol of Guatamala and its threatened status makes it a rare sight to behold. We learned that if you get lost, you should find a group of monkeys and eat what they eat since our digestive tracts are similar. Then we joined a group of about 15 (mostly American) tourists and rode the gondola to the top to begin our zip line adventure. We climbed up about 100 stairs to a very shaky platform with some pretty fierce winds to start our fist line. Once you were clipped in and on the line, the ride was smooth and enjoyable, lasting close to 30-45 seconds. I got stuck once and had to pull myself about 30 feet to the end with my arms. We had some great views of the canopy on these lines! Then we returned all the gear, rode back to our hotel, relaxed, and had another dinner of casados before we packed and headed to bed. Then in the morning it is off to La Fortuna of San Carlos…

Green weddings are becoming more of a trend and gaining popularity, the Christian Science Monitor reports, and my husband and I just helped to perpetuate the trend. Although we could have done more to make it even more environmental friendly (reused a dress, offset the carbon used, had organic/local food), we did what we could to raise awareness among our guests and reduce our footprint. To do this at our outdoor wedding we used compostable plates and cups (http://www.worldcentric.org) when not using rented china, we handed out potted seeds for our guests to take home and plant themselves, and we had the ceremony where the majority of our friends and family lived to cut down carbon emissions.The wedding was a big success, and hopefully the environmental focus will rub off onto our guests.