Rural Costa Rica
For me thee is something refreshing about stepping off of an airplane and havoing to walk down the stairs to the terminal. It is like saying "This is the middle of nowhere, I have arrived." The aiorport in Liberia was even better because I was stepping into an airport carved out of the jungle and walking into a terminal that did not even have walls. Just a series of covered areas to break the sun. This is my new favorite airport.
The first and most permanent impression of Costa Rica is how uninhabited it is. I was expecting this of the Philippines but instead found it here. Costa Rica has about 4.5 million citizens and maybe a half million temporary foreign workers. Large areas of the country side are completely undeveloped or else occupied by plantations. We saw several sugar and cantelope plantations.
Whether you are traveling on a back road or a highway, it is very common to see cattle in the road in Costa Rica. The majority of the cattle are brahmas from India.
We saw a lot of plantations in Cost Rica, in particular growing sugar cane and cantelope. Most of the workers on the plantations are from Nicaragua.
When the sugar is ripe it will have a tassle on top like corn does here. When the cane is ripe they will set the field on fire to burn off the leaves. The burn the field art night because it is easier to keep track of the fire in the dark. The next day they will harvest the sugar.
Cantelopes are grown on plastic to keep them clean. When they are half ripe the workers will enter the field to turn them so that they ripen evenly on both sides.
