Misc.

Who knew poinsettias grew in the wild?
Louis had to jump the ravine.
Nati in the field.
Our box of magic tricks.
Christine thinking outside the box.
Charlie doesn't feel like counting cherries.
Coffee cherries.
Jason participated in the Nike Human Race 10k marathon.

Downtown San Marcos.
Nati takes a siesta at the lab.
Nati.
My room, this evening.

The Naranjo farm and other odds and ends

Guess what?

I'm tired again tonight and feel the need to catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Today we worked in the fields. This time, our goal was to complete six transects on two separate farms near El Salado.

William Naranjo's two acre farm was our first stop.

The 45-year-old farmer greeted us as we pulled up to the assigned meeting place. He smiled and shook Jose, our driver's, hand. He told us the road to the farm was going to be difficult and rough due to all the recent rain.

Our caravan of three vehicles decided to proceed up the steep and muddy mountain despite the warning.

We had a lot of work to do.

After some of hemming and hawing, Jose threw the Mitsubishi into four-wheel drive and courageously navigated us through one of the worst roads I've ever seen as far as mud goes.

At last, we made it to a drop off point where we could begin our work.

We finished our day as a downpour arrived. It wasn't an easy one, but it had been productive. Naranjo had invited the team over, so we joined him and his family for sweet bread and watery coffee.

Just like that, another day had come and gone. I can't believe its been a week already.

Tomorrow will me more of the same... a.k.a. coffee farm mapping, farmer interaction, and plenty of good laughs.

Enjoy.

William Naranjo.
Machete Man II.
Naranjo tells Jose that the drive up will be steep.
Louis chose not to look over the edge.
Finally, we made it to a safe spot for the cars to turn around.
The mud was pretty bad.
Everyone focuses on one step at a time.
The view of surrounding coffee farms from the top.
Amongst the coffee bushes there are a lot of spider webs. This one looked nice in the morning light.
We took our lunch break once we finished Naranjo's farm. Our tortilla-rice-beans-potato-egg, beef-plantain dish was fantastic.
The team didn't really feel like working on another farm.
Carmen Naranjo, William's daughter, watches us sip coffee from the door jam to the Naranjo home.
Deserted soccer cleats sit near a bench at a soccer field near Naranjo's home.
The Naranjo mutt.
I thought this was a bit ironic.
Lights out for me!

All in a day's work

Today, I felt like a "fotoexpressantonio," whatever that means.

I knew it was going to be jam-packed, but I didn't know it would be 1200-images-jam-packed.

We began our day again on the coffee farms. This time we started earlier so we could avoid the rainfall and preserve our sanity.

By the time we arrived at the field, the weather was awesome and the light was beautiful.
Machete man was clearing brush as I started down the hill towards our transect. I'm told they sell these at the grocery store for coffee farmers.

I think I'll have to check that out for sure.
Jason Ambrose, who is a marketing guy at Starbucks in Seattle, is one of our leaders. He is very good at organizing people and tasks and creating a smart work-flow. I'm impressed by his ability to remain calm in the midst of utter chaos.

He's pictured here with our empty data sheets.
We happened upon this frog while just about ankle deep in slippery mud. When we toured INBIO earlier in the week, we were warned about the infamous, poisonous tree frogs the shouldn't be "licked" (who does that?).

I took this image, and resisted the urge to taste the little guy with my tongue.
Today's farm was in a beautiful area surrounded by other small farms. I learned from Sebas yesterday that farmers try to plant distinguishing foliage to help them identify the boundaries between their farms.

I liked the farmer's choice.
We stopped working around 11 a.m., two hours earlier than yesterday, and just in time to see the president of Costa Rica (yes, I said THE president) at an auditorium in San Marcos.

The gathering was for the Chinese ambassador to Costa Rica... ironically the Chinese are interested in Costa Rica's coffee too.

And the Costa Ricans put on quite a show for the Chinese.
Something tells me adolescent-age children aren't interested in traditional dancers.
According to Wikipedia (always a great source, I know) Óscar Rafael de Jesús Arias Sánchez (born 13 September 1940) is the current President of Costa Rica, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his efforts to end civil wars then raging in several Central American countries.

I couldn't get over his eyebrows.
Outside the venue, a little boy was feeling as bad about the puddle at his feet as I was about my caffeine headache.

I shouldn't have stressed over that.
While walking back to the lab, I tried my hand at the shooting-from-the-hip technique through San Marcos.

I think I need to practice it. Joe, why aren't you here when I need you?
Our day wasn't over yet. We hopped over to Coope Dota, another coffee farmer's co-op, to tour their facility.

We felt so good about the coffee we were about to have that we decided to jump for joy.
Forty percent of coffee gathered at the co-op is sold to Starbucks. The dried, green beans are bagged in burlap at this warehouse and sent to Starbucks roasting plants around the world.
Here are the beans after they've dried.
At Coope Dota, there is a small roasting operation for the 10 percent of coffee that is not sold elsewhere.

The smell from this roaster was so good. I truly wanted to make this photo a scratch and sniff sticker like I used to have when I was a kid.
The finished product looks something like this.
Yes, I finally had my cup of coffee. It was straight from the roaster at Coope Dota. Frankly - shh, don't tell Jason this - it was the best coffee I'd had in a long time, even better than Starbucks.

Slip and slide

Today I decided that I'm not good at capturing the experience of the coffee farm worker (a.k.a. Starbucks/Earthwatch winners) photographically.

Fortunately, I have more time to figure out how to do it.

We arrived at our first field by 7:15 a.m. this morning in an attempt to out run the rains, which have intensified due to the hurricanes pounding the gulf coast.

Manrique Calderon, 31, led us up the steep, rocky road to the work site in the middle of his 9-acre coffee farm. He hopped off his four-wheeler and enthusiastically shook our hands.

After making brief introductions, we headed off to work.

And work it was.

It wasn't the grueling, manual labor I thought it would be (and had mentally prepared for.) It was a different kind of work.

The first part of the day wasn't too hard, and with the exception of the biting insect encounters, we fared pretty well.

We were working in teams of two or three, doing our different duties, calling out measurements of coffee bush height, how many berries per branch, and calculating density.

By the time 10:30 a.m. arrived, we were knee deep in tasks, and had become quite efficient in our own individual systems.

Then it came, just as we were moving to the steepest part of the farm where a 50% slope was our work surface.

The rain began to fall.

And the work became hard. Very, very hard.

And that was that. I ditched my camera for a rain jacket and continued working until we headed to the office for lunch at 1p.m.

The rest of the day was spent watching the continual downpour, eating rice and beans, entering data, and consuming large amounts of coffee.

Tomorrow, we begin again.
The group contemplates the work load.
Sebas, right, show Manrique how the GPS unit works.
More preparations.
Nati emphasizes the importance of the metric system.
Jason Ambrose, left, notes measurements.
Nati counts the coffee cherries.
Deborah, center, takes a breather.
Charlie, left, looks for his partner while Sebas assesses the situation.
The real calm before the storm.
Harmony, left, and Charlie pose post field work.
Deborah's trip manicure didn't fare too well after the first field day.
Alex, left, and Chris get to play with the soil samples back at the research center.
Jason, right, and Chris enter shade tree data.
Too much data entry leads to too much... well, you know.