I’ve been promising updates on some more of the cool stuff from Costa Rica, but the last few weeks have been crazy. I spent my week off in Costa Rica checking out some new stuff for next year’s trips, changing some stuff for the last trip this year, and spending some quality vacation time. The last trip in Costa Rica was a bit of a whirlwind followed by a rush to get everything cleaned up, packed up and stored before returning to the States.

I landed MSP last Tuesday and hung in Minneapolis for about 36 hours before packing up my car and driving to Vermont, where I’ve been since Saturday night. I’ve been enjoying some time hanging out with friends and doing all I can not to think about work at all.

I briefly mentioned Rancho Margot in one of my past blogs. It is a self sufficient, organic ranch that sits tucked into a valley between Monteverde, the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest, and Volcan Arenal.

The Children’s Eternal Rain Forest (CERF) is a large reserve that borders the Monteverde reserve. In 1987 a group of students in Europe decided that they could do something to help with the destruction of rainforest in Central and South America. They worked to collect a huge amount of money, money that was used to purchase a large block of rainforest in Costa Rica. Through bake sales, recycling collections, and private donations, the original purchase was for just over 10 acres of land in 1988. In the nearly 20 years that has passed since the original purchase, the organization has grown to include schools all over Europe, and the reserve has grown to over 54,000 acres.

So, back to Rancho Margot: The vision of Rancho Margot is to be a fully self sufficient and organic ranch, with an emphasis on protection of the rainforest around it and education of the tourists who visit it.

Amongst its projects:

RM has an up and running dairy operation. Its small herd of dairy cows is milked daily to provide milk for the restaurant. Extra milk is used in a cheese production facility that they have built. This cheese is both used in the restaurant and sold on site. They also have a large number of free range chickens that produce eggs for the restaurant. In the works is a hog facility for pork for their restaurant.

With the large number of cattle and hogs that they will have on the ranch, they decided to make use of some of the “natural byproduct.” They are building a processing plant to convert manure into a natural gas that will be used to heat their hot tubs and in the kitchen for the stoves and ovens.

Speaking of power, the ranch has a small hydroelectric plant. A small portion of a stream that runs through the ranch is diverted through a hydroelectric turbine and then back out into the stream. The result is completely clean, byproduct free electricity. Enough electricity is produced to power the entire ranch: guest rooms and restaurant included.

There are huge organic gardens that grow just about everything you can imagine: lettuce, carrots, cilantro, cashews, coconuts, beets, radishes, just to name a few! The food is used in the restaurant to make some of the freshest salads and side dishes you can imagine. Even though large quantities of each food are grown in the gardens, only small batches of each are found in one spot. Growing small patches dispersed throughout the gardens is a way of deterring bugs and diseases. Large patches draw in more bugs and allow disease to spread more easily. Because most diseases are distinct to each plant, by dividing up the crop, even if one plant gets sick, the disease doesn’t spread to the entire crop.

Beyond the farming aspect of the ranch, Rancho Margot has a lot of other projects going. They have an animal rescue center for animals that are injured in the wild or that are kept in captivity. The goal is to rehabilitate these animals for return to the jungles. Most of the animals in the rescue center now have been rescued from hotels that kept the monkeys in small cages without much room to move or kept the toucans in the lobbies with wings clipped.

A ranch the size of Rancho Margot, with as many projects as it has in the works, needs a lot of help. RM relies heavily on volunteers. It has a large program in place of language school. Volunteers come in to work in the gardens, help with the animals, or build new accommodations, and in exchange they receive two to three hours per day of language training, and reduced rates on the room and board.

Even those only interested in being on vacation will find a great home for a few days at Rancho Margot. RM offers horseback rides, hikes, bike tours, waterfall climbing and rappelling, kayak tours and so much more. With three levels of accommodations – high level private bungalows, mid level field house and budget backpackers’ dorms – there is a place for anyone on any budget.

We discovered Rancho Margot by accident. We finished up a day of work early during our Final Trip Prep and decided to go for a quick ride. We knew there was a road that went out past Volcan Arenal and alongside Lago Arenal. We didn’t think we could use it on trip because, as far as we knew it didn’t go anywhere, but we thought we would ride it anyway. We had some extra time, and from time to time it’s nice to do a ride that we don’t do on trip. We got out to the end of the road and there was Rancho Margot. After a quick tour of the ranch we decided it was something that had to be included in our trip. It’s great when you kind of accidentally stumble upon something that becomes a really awesome feature of the trip.

For more info, visit: www.ranchomargot.org

And to prove things don't always go as planned...

Wow, was that a week...

Overall, it was a good trip, but we had some rather "unique" experiences along the way.

Things got off to a rather interesting start. The first night, our trip stays at Turrialtico, just outside Turrialba, near where we start our day two rafting trip. It's a very unique place, sitting at the base of two volcanoes. Needless to say, it is a bit of a volatile are, geologically speaking. We were all shaken awake at 4:30am by a pretty intense earthquake. It wasn't enough to do any damage, but we all got a good start and woke to the ceiling fans above us doing quite an interesting dance.

Things went pretty smoothly again until the third day, when on the ride one of the guests and I crashed into each other while riding across a little stream. Neither of us were hurt but for some scrapes and bruises, but it's not ideal when guides crash into guests. It definitely provided a good story for the day though.

The final bummer of the trip came on the last full day of the trip. We were out kayaking and hanging out on the beach, and at some point someone got into our bus and stole three people's backpacks. Our driver was with the bus the entire time, so the best we can figure is that there was about a 45 second window when we unloaded that everyone was looking at the river, and the person must have gotten into the bus then. It was a huge downer at that point in the trip. The guests had trip insurance to cover the lost goods, but you still hate to see that happen. We thought we were being careful before, now we're going to be extra vigilant for the last trip.

As I'm writing this, I realize I haven't really written a post about everything we do on the trip, so here's a quick rundown.

Day 1: We pick up the guests in San Jose, the capitol of Costa Rica, and shuttle to the top of Volcan Irazu (which I talked about in last week's post). We have a picnic lunch on top of the volcano and descend about 8,000 feet to La Pastora before shuttling the last 20 minutes into the hotel (our hotel is on top of a big hill, and no one feels like riding it).

Day 2: Rafting on the Rio Pacuare! The Pacuare River was named by National Geographic as one of the top ten best day trip rafting trips in the world. Filled with class 3 and 4 rapids, the guests rarely get a chance to be bored on this rafting trip, but there are a couple places where it chills out enough to get out and swim. It's an awesome day, and everyone is worn out enough to sleep through the transfer at the end of the day to our hotel near Volcan Arenal, in La Fortuna.

Day 3: We ride out, around Volcan Arenal and along the shore of Lago Arenal (Lake Arenal) to Rancho Margot. Rancho Margot is a really cool organic ranch where we do a tour and have a fantastic lunch (next week I'm doing a full feature on Rancho Margot). That evening we go to a local woman's house, where she prepares a truly Tico meal for us. It's all typical Costa Rican food, rice and beans, barbecued chicken and pork, tortillas, and more! It's an amazing cultural experience.

Day 4: Today we walk through the rainforest! With two local naturalists as guides, we take a 2.5 hour hike through La Reserva de los Dendrobates. This is a reserve that surrounds not only the local water supply, but is also an area filled with little poison dart frogs (dendrobates). The most common here are the blue jeans frogs, named for their blue legs on red bodies (see photo album). From there we go up to Cataratas La Fortuna (La Fortuna waterfall), where we have a picnic lunch, hike down and do some swimming near the base of the waterfall (but not too near!). Finishing out our busy day is the canopy tour, where we go through a series of 13 ziplines through the tops of the trees of the rainforest. Everyone loves it (unless they're afraid of heights that is, as we are as much as 250 feet off the ground). The final zipline is over 1000 feet long and swings down over a river.

Day 5: We start out this morning with a boat ride across Lake Arenal, followed by a bus transfer to Hojancha. In Hojancha, we visit Cafe Diria, a coffee co-op that does a lot with organic and fair trade coffee. (More on Cafe Diria to come) We ride from Diria to our hotel on the Pacific Ocean, El Sueno Tropical.

Day 6: Time for vacation! We give the guests the morning to hang around town and shop, or sleep in, or lay by the pool, or whatever they want. In the afternoon we kayak down Rio Oro (Gold River) to the ocean where we hang out, boogie board, and just enjoy the beach! After kayaking we head into town for our final night dinner together at El Lagarto (The Alligator) which is a great barbeque place on the beach that serves the most amazing grilled steak and fish and veggies!

Day 7: Sorry kids, time to go home. We board a plane at 11:00am for a 40 minute flight into San Jose and send everyone home to recover from their vacation. Despite the dirt runway, no actual airport, and little twin prop plane, most of the guests prefer this to the five hour bus ride.

Ciao for now!

PS. 07 web album is up at http://picasaweb.google.com/jonvickphotography/CostaRica07