A New World Within Costa Rica!

Limon

Our first trip outside of San Jose as a group of 50 students was very eventful. Many paradas(stops) on the way to our final destination to check out some of the crops that are like gold here in this rich coast. The coffee plantation was the first stop and it was amazing to hear about the history of this ever so popular crop and also hear about how each bean is hand picked. The field workers get paid a certain amount for each laundry basket sized basket that they fill within one day.

Many interesting thoughts from these two individuals about government, poverty, life, the earth, and creation.

We also were given a tour of the DelMonte Banano plantation. We saw each step that needs to be taken before those actual bananas end up in the Super Walmarts in the states. In order to get the bushes of bananas off the trees, one man rides on this zip line looking thing takes down 25 bushela and actually straps himself into a belt and runs the bananas into where they can be washed, hand selected by appearance, have those stickers put on them and then boxed perfectly into 40-41 lb. boxes.

Limon has two ocean side ports where 80% of the exports and imports go out of the into the county. However, this area, mostly populated by black carribean persons is one of the poorest areas in the country. The Carribean Sea is beautiful there and they rely a lot on tourism as well. We stayed in a hotel (not the nicest place ever, but sufficient) and had conferencias with a local woman politicial and also an indigenous woman from the Bribri tribe. Many interesting thoughts from these two individuals about government, poverty, life, the earth, and creation.

After a good 5 hours of conferencias, we headed to the playa and had some R & R, a picnic lunch, the construction of a beautiful sand igloo, playing soccer on the beach with some locals, taking pictures of the monkeys that freely swung in the limbs in the trees, and we finished the our time with some fresh pina and chunks of coconut.

Later on that night we had a dinner arranged with a bunch of young students from churches in the Limon area. There was a live band, lots of dancing and una buen tiempo was had by all.

The weekend was like a vacation, because we didn’t have classes, but it really was like a different world there. Lots of new experiences, new friends, and new things to think about as I look at life in a Latin American perspective.