By Jack Ewing

The season is here for bird watching fever.

The patter of raindrops lightly pelting the leaves far above our heads was the first warning of a change in weather. It would take a minute or two for the rain to filter down 50 meters, through the layers of canopy to the jungle floor. We covered our binoculars with plastic bags.

“Maybe it’ll pass,” I offered weakly.

“You think so?” queried John, hopefully.

“No, not really, but let’s wait and see. When the rain comes this early in the day, it’s not usually a passing shower. If we go back, we’ll be soaked by the time we get to the house anyway, so we might just as well wait a while and see.”

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Filed under: Jack Ewing, Nature and Local History Stories on January 26th, 2011
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By Mark Goldstein

Why practice yoga? Because you will feel better.

Practicing the type of yoga that is right for you will improve your life. Some enter a yoga practice in search of physical improvement, and some are searching for a deeper spiritual involvement. Many find their way into some of both. It is truly unimportant what physical shape that you are in, or whether or not you believe or disbelieve in any type of higher power. All that is important to practice yoga is showing up on your mat and letting your practice unfold.

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Filed under: Costa Rica Yoga Journal, Mark Goldstein on January 26th, 2011
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In my practice as Holistic practitioner and Body Worker I see many people with lower back pain. There can be many causes of back pain and finding what triggers it is crucial for long lasting relieve. I believe that a real solution for any health issue needs to be found by addressing our being as whole. Body mechanics unbalance, unhealthy inner chemical balance and emotional discomfort can all participate to create diseases and pains. While long lasting results can require a professional assessment there are few simple tricks that can help you managing lower back pain.

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Filed under: Holis Wellness Center on January 24th, 2011
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By Volunteer Trevor Tierney

Kids Saving the Rainforest recently partnered with Blue Banyan Inn, an environmentally friendly bed and breakfast located right outside of Manuel Antonio.

The Blue Banyan is part of a 75-acre ecologically sustainable community, encompassing KSTR’s new Wildlife Sanctuary and International Volunteer Center, tilapia farms, nurseries, and botanical gardens. As a KSTR volunteer, I spent part of my time volunteering at the Blue Banyan Inn, helping them move towards their goal of becoming fully self-sustainable. My primary job, along with Rodrigo and Tio, two of the workers on staff, was to harvest a food source for the animals housed at the sanctuary.

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Filed under: Kids Saving the Rainforest on January 24th, 2011
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Merle & Alexander today

by Steve Huffstutlar

In 1984, I was assigned to work in the dusty, smelly, broken down Pacific banana port of Quepos, which seemed to me then to be the veritable armpit of Costa Rica — it was far from being the shiny tourist paradise it is today. That year, it was my good fortune to be recruited to organize the first oil palm production cooperative in Costa Rica, thus ending the United Fruit Company/Chiquita Banana monopoly and making plantation workers into land owners.

Quepos had been in a gentle downward transition since the 1940′s, when the United Fruit Company had given up farming bananas after the Panama banana disease had somehow followed them from Limon. Oil palm took the place of the bananas, but was much less profitable and employed many fewer people. The company railroad tracks were torn out in 1970 and the first vehicle road to the outside world was built in its place.

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Filed under: Guest Writer on January 20th, 2011
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By Jim Parisi

Musicians throughout the world have a good reputation for giving back to the community, especially to the next generation, the children, and Central America is no exception. Costa Rica’s three-time Grammy Award winners Editus are a good example. They have recorded twelve albums in their seventeen years together as a group and in an effort to give back to the community, they founded their Acadamie de las Artes in San Jose, Costa Rica in November 2004. It is a modern conservatory that integrates diverse elements of artistic development, not only for music but for dance, literature, theater, painting and photography as well. The music classes they offer are incredibly staffed and diverse, with three drum and percussion instructors, six teachers specializing in voice, lyrics and songwriting, four electric guitarists, six acoustic guitar instructors, two violinists, a cellist, five pianists, one saxophone teacher and a bass guitar instructor. Not surprisingly, some of the current teachers are former students, a sure sign of the Acadamie’s success. The academy also offers a sound lab to teach engineering, mixing, mastering, even DJ sampling. And there is a chorale group who performs a minimum of twice a year with selections as varied as Gospel and spiritual, Rock and Pop, Costa Rican and Latin American songs, in an effort to create a completely diverse chorus.

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Filed under: Jim Parisi, Music Review on January 20th, 2011
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By Juliet Davey

Costa Rica changed everything for me.  I was a suburban London girl whose closest experience to wilderness had been the placid, ambling hills of the English countryside.  They are quite charming but at 23 I wasn’t looking for charming, I was looking for great adventures in far-flung lands, challenges and discoveries.

So I came to Costa Rica and here was a land that appeared untameable.   All those fierce rivers with their fierce will to flow, flanked by luxuriant rainforest, all the heavy mango-scented air.  I swear I could even feel the earth’s pulse beneath the clay-rich soil.  I ate rice and beans, my feet got dirty, my hair wild.  I had found my place.

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Filed under: Holis Wellness Center on January 19th, 2011
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