WHY ALL THE FOG AND RAIN?

When considering a vacation in a tropical locale such as Costa Rica, we tend to dream of sunny beaches, swaying palms and drinks with paper umbrellas in them being sipped as sun sets over the waves.

Why then, constant reader, might you ask, does my Facebook page mentions so much rain, wind and fog?

In a word:  micro-climates.  In some other words, remember the sunny beaches are just found on the coastlines in most parts of the world and there is more to this fair country than their coastline.

I'm staying, on this trip, in what is close to a cloud forrest.  In the middle of a coffee plantation. Coffee loves warm foggy temperatures better than hot sun.  The beans ripen slowly, starting out almost lime green, they go thru phases from grass green thru orange to scarlet and finally at a rich dark brown they are ready to be picked.  By hand.  One bean at a time.  Coffee beans grow in clusters but each bean ripens individually so the cluster may be picked over several times before the entire handful is harvested.

The cloud forest reminds me of the Pacific Northwest.  Today started out socked in fog-I wasn't able to see across the yard.  About 8:00 AM, the sun began to burn off the fog and for an hour or two there was some sun, some warmth and I quickly got the clothes I'd washed out on the line to dry.  Looking down the ravine to the casas on lower parts of the ridge, I saw women in many of them doing the same thing.

Further down the hillside, however, the fog sat in thick pockets of soupy morass.  The road I walk went in and out of the fog as it wove down and up and through the terrain.  Across the valley towards Volcan Poas, much remained hidden but the tip of the volcan had begun to peek out of the fog.

<insert pic of poas here>  

By lunch time today, the fog had gone but the major storm clouds rolled in for the usual afternoon drenching.  All of us with clothes on the line...well I'm the only one with a 'line' for the most part, it's clothes on the bushes, fences, railings and in the trees...were rushing to get the dried things in the house before the afternoon rains began in ernest.  And boy did they!  The wind was rocking the trees, I lost connectivity once again and leaves and branches were blowing over the yard.  We had some lightening and thunder and it was a good time for a nap or to clean up the house, which I decided to do as Bev returns in a couple of days.

When I was starting dinner, marinating a chicken leg and thigh in fresh 'orangeish like juice' and pepper, cutting up the cauliflower and nibbling on the last of todays plantainoes (fat bananas that you fry) the skies cleared and the sun came back out!

I took Dobbie and Suzy for a walk as he had been either inside with me or hooked to his lead all day and needed to stretch his puppy legs.  The pathways were all muddy but the fields were beautiful after the rain.

And as always the sunset was magnificent -  sorbet colors of orange and raspberry tonight that the camera just can't catch-they are so subtle on the undersides of the clouds that a picture just shows grey.

<insert tonights sunset pic here>

So-thats why it isn't always sunny in the tropics-but no matter.  It's a mighty fine place to be.

COFFEE BEANS uno

My morning walk, about a mile to the road, meanders thru coffee fields which are in the process of being picked.  It's coming close to Christmas time here and the coffee plants are truly typical Christmas colors of bright red and holly green.  Only the red beans are picked the first time thru-it's all very manual labor intensive too.  

Coffee is picked by Nicaraguan families-men women AND children who, along with a pack of dogs flood the fields down the road every morning at dawn.  Which is about 5 AM.  I have no idea where they sleep, but I think it's in the fields someplace.  They all haul plastic bottles for water to drink as, although the mornings usually start out foggy, by 10 AM the sun is up and quite hot.

My hostess, Bev, was quite concerned about the 'Nicco' pickers.  She cautioned me to make sure the doors were locked and to not talk to them-as though I could.  She also said to bring the hose into the garage so they wouldn't use it to fill their bottles with her water.  She did not want them on her property and was quite upset that they had a right-of-way down her driveway and along the front of her yard..but she chose to build in the middle of a coffee field, so I figured she sort of needed to accept that the laborers would be coming every year at picking season.  One of the reasons she chose to go back to the states this time of year was to be away during picking season...she has a very real fear of the pickers.

I, OTOH, don't.  As far as I'm concerned, allowing them to take the water from the hose is simply a polite way of behaving.  As I am up feeding the dog every morning as they come thru, I greet them with a 'Buenos dias"  and gesture towards the hose saying "?Agua?"  Some of them use the hose and some don't.  The dogs greet Dobbie and sometimes he gos with them to the field, if I don't chain him up first that is.

This sort of casual waves, good mornings and so on continue as I walk the mile thru the field towards the  road to the bus stop.  All of the workers look gaunt and work their tails off, filling big bags full of the red beans, then hauling them to the driveway for a tractor to pick up.  The kids have just as large of picking sacks as the adults do..sort of  slings that go over one shoulder and form a large pouch at their waist or knees, depending on the size of the picker.  Their hands move so fast-there is a limit to the number of green beans that they can pick..every green bean is a coffee bean that won't ripen and they are penalized for it.

After the upper couple of feet of plant have been picked several times over a couple of weeks, another worker comes along and lops off the top couple of feet from the coffee plant to allow sun to reach the lower beans.  The trimmings are gathered up and used for campfires in the field and they always smell like roasting coffee in the nights when they are burning.

Watching the process has given me an appreciation for the cost of coffee-especially since I know that the average worker here makes $2.00 US a day as a picker and the kids are not allowed to go to school as they aren't citizens.  There are no houses for the workers, nor medical either.  Most of these families have come from villages where their houses have been torn down or burned out by drug lords.  They cross the border by night and work on the sly in Costa Rica.  It seems that we aren't the only country with illegal migrant workers.  Most Costa Ricans would not do the stoop labor these families are willing to do either.

I believe from now on I'm going to buy Free Trade coffee only-where I know the laborer has been paid a living wage.