dhogaza
Posts: 497
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote | | I take it you were just hanging out in Costa Rica? |
Naw, that's a sloth just hanging out :)
I was visiting the technical institute of costa rica, in cartago (east of san jose) for a couple of days, and afterwards some colleagues and I headed off to the pacific coast and hung out and relaxed.
The colleagues are non-birders, so more swimming and hiking than birding or nature photography was on the agenda, but I didn't mind, particularly. Bath-warm salt water in November feels pretty good to an Oregon boy like me ...
Costa Rica's nice, I've spent time in Guatemala, Mexico and Ecuador and while culturally Costa Rica's far less interesting (i.e. not much indigenous influence), I have to admit I enjoyed being in a latin american country where there's far less unescapable abject poverty than the other countries I've visited. Very low violent crime rate, 98% literacy rate, no army, universal health care of reasonable quality, strong (though imperfect) efforts to conserve biological diversity, and the San Juan city police actually spent 15-20 minutes driving around the city trying to find a restaurant for us (which, as it turned out, didn't exist) because, as one told us, "I've been taught that the job of a policeman is to serve the people".
(OK, cops on the coast are known to shake down speeding tourists, pickpockets and other petty thieves rival Amsterdam for skill, there's too much timber and other poaching in the park system, the current government seems to favor development over protection of breeding marine turtle habitat, etc etc - it ain't nirvana)
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