back in Xela

I am back in Xela, with a stinking cold, but feeling happy.

In my absence, the number of people that I live with has now increased to 13! I love living with so many people. It's ace.

Costa Rica has been so different from Guatemala, and quite an eye opener. I am lead to believe that it is the only country in Central and South America that is so prosperous. Apparently it has enjoyed a 'close' relationship with the US, doing for a long time. It also seems to have been reasonably free from dictatorships and has enjoyed a democracy for quite a while. It's wealth was a real shock to the senses after Guatemala, but one thing I did notice was a complete lack of indigenous culture, as though this is the price that must be paid. In Guatemala, you see people wearing their traditional clothes, attending mayan ceremonies, hear them using their own languages all the time. But in Costa Rica, I only saw 2 people in indigenous dress, and they were women, begging on the street :o(.

I asked about the indigenous people, and was told that there is a village where tourists can go to look at them. The thought of this left a sour taste in my mouth.

Nevertheless, I was pleased that there is a country that has managed to make some money without having to slash every tree that stands, and force every animal, fish and bird to extinction. The national parks are magnificent, especially Monteverde, where you can look out over miles and miles of virgin cloudforest.

When I walked in the cloud forest, I was overcome with a sense that this is how things ought to be. That all is as it should be in these places. It was a very poignant sad-happy feeling. Happy that such places exist, but sad that more of them don't.

I love some of the symbiotic relationships that exist in the cloud forest too, and this one is my favourite:

The strangler fig is quite a common site in Costa Rica. It grows around the outside of an existing tree, literally strangling it until, many years later all that remains is a hollow fig tree that provides a home for mammals.

But the strangler fig starts its work at the top of the host tree, not the bottom, and send its roots gradually down the branches and trunk until they connect with the ground. So how can the fig tree ensure that its seeds get into the branches of other trees, rather than falling to the ground as is the fate of most?

In the strangler fig species, the seeds inside the fruit are surrounded by a sticky, latexy type of glue. The monkeys that feast on the fruit find that the seeds get stuck in their bottoms due to their gluey coating!! What can they do to relieve themselves? They find a branch at the top of a tree, and scratch their bottoms against it to remove the seeds. The fig seeds have now been deposited in the treetops of another tree, ready to take over it.

How cool is that!???