Green Challenge #11 and a little fun!

Green Challenge #11:  Buy my downloadable music from:  http://www.tunesfortrees.com/

So I feel like a lot of my eco-friendly changes include a lot of giving up and less of doing something.  Here's an easy eco-friendly change.  Follow the link above, bookmark it, and the next time you go to download a new CD or song try to do it through this website.  For every 10 songs a tree is planted!  With a very small change you are giving back to mother earth!  Not all CDs or songs are there, but quite a few are- give it a shot!

------------------------------

Now for some fun!

Join me on a Costa Rican Coffee Tour!

We start at what is the both the beginning and the end....the coffee bean!

 

Here you can see coffee beans sprinkled on the ground out of which leaves will sprout.  I think it's funny to have a coffee bean atop a green sprout!

 

The little sprouts are grown in a nusery and after a year look like the small trees at the top of the picture.  Those trees are then planted.

They grow up to look like this and can produce coffee for up to 100 years, but the yield decreases after 20-25 years or so, which means coffee plantations replace them at that point.

Above is the "coffee cherry."  These red little fruits are picked by hand and then processed to make coffee.

The coffee cherry has many layers, which are depicted here.  It may be a little hard to see.  On the right, is the red coffee cherry.  If you pop that cherry out comes 2 half beans as seen in the right hand above.  Those 2 beans have another parchment paper type of layer, at the base of the fingers on the left.  The small single bean on the left nearest the thumb ring is what will actually go on to be roasted.

A machine is used to pull off that outer red layer.

Those beans are put into troughs filled with water.  The beans that sink are first class.  The beans that float are second class beans.  Second class beans float because they either have worms/larvae in them or have been infected with fungus.  They still use these beans to make coffee, but all bacteria, fungus, etc are killed during the roasting process.  According to our tour guide, starbucks buys about 50% first class and 50% second class beans.  Second class beans are often ground up, because they don't look as nice.

After the beans are separted, they are laid out in the sun or in greenhouses to dry.  This is our tour guide turning the beans, to make sure that they dry on all sides.  Bet you didn't know your coffee beans were walked on before they made it into your cup!

Close up of drying beans.

Here is a pic to show you the parchment outer shell layer.  The gray bean in the middle is what is roasted.  Another maching pulls off this parchment layer, which can be used to make paper.

The gray bean goes on to be separated by size.

The big pretty beans are used to make whole bean coffee.  The smaller beans are used to make ground coffee.

This is the roasting machine.  The lighter the roast, the more caffiene content.

Coffee beans from start to finish with different roasts - light, medium, and dark.

What would a coffee tour be without tasting?

Come joinus, pull up a chair!

Green Challenge #7 and Monteverde Part 1

Green Challenge #7:  No more gum in those plastic packages! 
Ok, so this is sort of a wussy challenge, but I've been busy and some changes I plan to make can't happen while in Costa Rica.  So.....for now here's a relatively easy one.  You know those packages like Eclipse that have the flat cardboard with plastic inside, I'm giving up that kind of gum.  It's just more plastic and ends up in the landfills and eventually scattered all over the world!  I'll explain more on that later once I'm back in the states!

Now on to the fun stuff:
------------------------------------------------------
Monteverde

This past weekend, we made a trip to the rainforest and had one of the BEST weekends of my entire life.  Please, come take the trip with me.
We started the trip with a walk and tour at the floor of the rainforest.  We went on a hunt for animals and just to take in the beauty of the trees and vegetation!  It was absolutely amazing!  The clean air and the wind would make all of the leaves dance in unison.  The sounds were so calming.
We saw an agouti which is in the rat family, a few squirrels, a salamander, and a couple of birds on our walk through the rainforest.

The trees were almost always covered in vines and the branches were like window sill pots lined with plants.  The plants that grow on the branches of the trees are called epiphytes.  Epiphytes are a type of plant that grown on another plan non-parasitcially.  These plants derive their nutrients from the air, rain, and sometimes from debris that accumulate around or in them.

Nature's swing set!

 Much of the tour was spent on hanging bridges, high above the ground.  This offered us a view from above to better see birds and look down at some of the animals below.

One of my favorite views of the day!

This tree is hundreds of years in the making!  Can you see the weird lattice type work that appears in the trunk above?  This tree is actually hollow in the middle!  Wait? What?  How does that happen?  Well many many years ago a monkey was sitting on a tree eating or something when it pooped or a bird.  This poop fell down and landed on a branch.  Within the monkey's feces was a seed of a plant called a strangling fig.  This strangling fig germinated and started growing.  The fig sent down roots from the branch.  Those roots eventually hit the ground and took hold.  Over hundreds of years those roots solidifed and grew together and formed the tree you see above.  The strangling fig eventually cuts off nutrients to the tree upon which it started it's life and the original tree eventually decomposes and leaves a hollow tree!

                                               

And what better thing to do with a hollow tree than to climb it!  It's helps when guides before us have placed nice rope steps within the tree.

Peek-a-Boo!

Coming up next on our Monteverde adventure is a Canopy Tour!!!!!!!!

Green Challenge #6 and Puerto Viejo

Green Challenge #6:  Eating only local fruits and vegetables!

I think this is going to be one of the hardest changes I am going to make.  While in Costa Rica this change will be easy, because I am surrounded by wonderfully delicious fruit and fresh fruit juice.  Pinapples, watermeleon, cantelope, pineapples, bananas, plantains, mangos, etc.  I am going to have to learn to hit up the local farmer's market weekly and can or freeze fruits when they are in season, so I can have them all year long. 

I have not had time to do the appropriate research to tell you exactly how this is eco-friendly, but...I do know that rainforests have been cut down to make way for banana plantations.  Where do you think those bananas go?  Some to the USA I'm sure, and they end up in my cereal bowl.  So no more banana's when I get back to the states.  Also, local fruits and veggies means less trucking/shipping, packaging, etc which all equals more green house gases.  Buying locally ensures that the food is fresh, not shipped across the country or flown over continents to reach me.  Right now my definition of local will be within the same state, yes I know some states are huge - I may narrow my range once I get better at buying locally and figuring out this next challenge. 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This weekend we traveled to Puerto Viejo- a Caribbean beach in Costa Rica.  It was not nearly as beautiful as we expected it to be.  The town was run down, dirty, and rampant with stray dogs.  We unfortunately were unable to snorkel because the rain that came when we got there caused rivers flowing into the ocean to bring sediment and the water was turbid and too hard to see.  Instead we hung out on the beach - which was a black sand beach, they say it's from the lava from nearby volcanos.  We swam in the ocean and enjoyed the warm water.  Sief managed to get his first really bad sunburn - shoulders and back.  I have a mini sunburn on my left shoulder and at my hairline.  The sun is so much stronger here and really takes a hit to our winter skin.

Below are some pictures from the trip!  Enjoy!

Black sand beach! 

Relaxing in hammocks at our hotel!

The HIGHLIGHT of the entire weekend - a wild sloth in a bar at night!  Doesn't it look like a small hairy child.  It was soooooo awesome and moved slowly.  I did some sloth research, but it's late and I have to get to bed, so I will have to fill you in on my sloth knowledge in another post!

We Made It!

     Sief & I made it safely to Costa Rica.  We are staying with a local family in a neighborhood or suburb of the capital San Jose in Curribadat.  We do not have an address, but a description of where we live in reference to landmarks and that we are the house with red wine colored bars in the front.  I recognize our house too, because there is construction being done to the house next to ours.  All the houses here have gates and bars covering all of the windows.
     We are lucky because our house has warm water.  It comes out of a shower head that is somehow electrically hooked up and the water gets heated as it goes through the shower head.  No water pressure, but at least it is warm.  We're also lucky because we have wireless internet at our place.  I was completely not expecting that!
     What I've learned so far is that Costa Ricans like their rice & beans. It's a staple here and I've only had one meal thus far without them.  Breakfast has consisted of eggs and rice and beans.  They also love their juice and I'm not a juice person.  The restaurant juice is pretty good, but the juice my "tica mama" makes is from powder and super sweet and concentrated.  I've only been here 2 days, so there will be many more culinary adventures yet to come!
     Today was our first day of class, mainly just them talking to us and explaining things about the city and how to get around.  We rode the  bus to school, which we will probably do on most days.  We live about a 40 minute walk from school, which wouldn't be bad except for all of the exhaust we would have to breathe in during the walk and the fact that we risk our lives everytime we cross the street!  Tomorrow we start class for real and Sief and I are both in the beginner beginner class!

I'll post pictures soon!  Just wanted to check in quickly and let you know we are here & enjoying the beautiful 80 degree weather!  It's oh so nice :)