The Villarreal Kindergarten is asking for support to build a play area for the children. If you would like to help with a donation, please contact teacher Johana at 2652-9228. Thank you; we are counting on your generosity.

Bistro Langosta has done it again! Now there is live music every Thursday – Slow Jo and the Mojo; Friday – Fabio Avellino; and Saturday – Beauty and the Beast; from 8 p.m. Tel: 2653-2025.

The ultra-glitzy Aqua Disco opened with a big party March 28. Featuring a two-storey waterfall down one wall and a balcony overlooking the main street, Aqua is available for parties as well as your local disco scene.

“Wild” Restaurant has opened in the old Stella location in Tamarindo, with chef Robert from Taboo. “Wild” will be serving “good, honest food” and home-brewed beers and, of course, great pizzas from the stone oven, with delivery up to midnight.

Also in Wild’s, Gil’s Place has reopened for breakfast with the old favorites and some new items.

Special promotion: Dulce is giving a 50% price reduction on all designer clothing. Situated right behind the French pastry café in downtown Tamarindo.

Security Company SIP is now in business in Tamarindo. SIP, with 15 years of experience in the surveillance field, offers alarm monitoring in the home or office with three minute response. If you have your own alarm system installed, SIP will connect it to their system; if not, they can install one. Call Alex Garcia at 2653-2564 or 8369-7912, or visit Office 20A in the Tamarindo Plaza.

Wayra Language School, of Tamarindo, has received accreditation from Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE), an international group well respected by businesses, universities, Chambers of Commerce and teaching facilities.

In preparation for low season the Surf Club Sports Bar Playa Langosta will be again offering a few activities in order to try to keep people entertained. Back by popular demand, Bingo Saturdays, 7:30pm; Wednesday Pool Tournaments, 7:30pm; Ping Pong Fridays.

Also, the Surf Club Sports Bar has the MLB package for the baseball aficionados. Go, Jays!

Coming up in late April, Bar 1 will be hosting the grand premier screening party for Quicksilver’s latest video release, “Out Of My Head” featuring Latin American surf star Gabriel Villaran. Gabriel will be attending the event in person, so come check him out in his new movie. Along with weekly parties and nightly specials, Bar 1 will also be working with local organizations to put together several fund raising events for the community, so look for those upcoming as well.

Monkey Jungle is now open in Santa Rosa, just a short drive from Tamarindo. Monkey Jungle has 450 meter ziplines, certified by ICT, with trampoline, Tarzan swings and nature trails, and they will pick you up in Tamarindo. Call Sharon at 653-1594 or 353-2324. Turn right at the Santa Rosa crossroad and follow the monkey.

The magic place, where the land meets the sea, gentle waves caress the sandy shore and wash the emerging rocks with foam and clear, salty water.  But when the sea is angry, waves crash into the shore lifting the sand and battering the rocks. It is there, where a wonderful world created by the forces of nature is inhabited by some of the wonders of the sea.  It is a place for young and old alike to explore and observe an amazing world of sea life without donning a wet suit.

The inter-tidal zone, where sea and land meet, is an ever-changing environment, and to live in this environment, organisms need to adapt to some of the harshest conditions to survive.  The crevasses and tide pools formed in the rock along the shore is a world of interesting life forms adapted to the mechanical forces of the waves and extreme variations of water, salinity and temperatures.  It is a world of “run and hide, or clam up”.

Plants and animals have evolved structural adaptations to survive in the various life zones from the highest zone of the rocks that are submerged during only the highest tides and have little life; the middle zone, the tide pool zone, has many depressions which are submerged during the high tides and exposed to the elements during the low tides.  The tide pool zone is one of the most diverse niches with plants and animals that exhibit an interesting array of adaptations to the ever-changing conditions.  The lowest inter-tidal zone is exposed only during the lowest tides and has a more stable environment and a greater variety of fishes, seaweed and other higher invertebrates.

If you explore the tide pools you will see species of algae, small fishes, sea anemones, sponges, barnacles, mussels, sea stars, sea urchins and other invertebrates. The tide pools are submerged during the high tides and remain filled with water during the low tides.  Some of the life forms are permanently attached, while others float in and out with the tides and may be trapped until the next inflow of water.  Temperature and salinity change dramatically create yet another challenge to adaptation.

In the tropical tide pools along the north Pacific coast of Costa Rica, there is a complex interaction of plants and animals struggling for survival. There is competition for sunlight and space, pressure from grazing species, and of course the more recent impact of man’s activities along the shore.  Along a complex food chain there are predators, prey and even scavengers.  For example: Filter feeders such as muscles, clams, tunicates and barnacles feed on aquatic plankton.   Limpets, chitins, sea urchins and snails graze on algae.  Carnivorous sea stars feed on limpets and snails, while the always-hungry sea anemones, even though stationary, are predators for shrimp and small fish.  Crabs and isopods are scavengers. External predators such as shore birds also impact the pool balance.  Because there is a delicate balance between the many life forms in the tide pool ecosystem, the loss of one species can create an imbalance in the whole system.

Pollution from natural and human sources also impacts the health of the tide pools. Removal of one species such as limpets that graze on and control algae can create an algae bloom and change the composition of the tide pool life. Runoff from construction and chemicals from agriculture and even human waste may suffocate the delicate filter feeders and poison keystone species such as coral.  Costa Rica’s once famous black coral reefs on the Caribbean side were all but wiped out from runoff of pesticides and herbicides. Poisons and other toxins can travel up the food chain, right back to man.

Exploring a tide pools is easy.  The best time is low tide when the water-filled pool life is exposed.  Don your water sandals (not flip flops) or old tennis shoes, because the rocks are often old coral or sharp rocks.  Polarizing sunglasses help cut the glare and a pair of binoculars can act as a microscope to investigate smaller attached critters.  Just turn your binoculars around and look through the larger end and move in until the subject is in focus.  Many of the invertebrates will be tightly attached to the exposed rocks above the water line, but those submerged will be more active.  Small fish trapped in the pools often seek the shade and sea urchins or sea stars can be seen feeding on the attached life. And if you are interested in geology, look closely at the rocks and they can tell you a lot about the history of the area.   But watch your back, often tide pool observers suffer sunburned backs, so a wet T-shirt can help cool and protect.  Remember to bring your “sense of wonder”.

If putting names to the life forms is important, there are field guides to aquatic life or check out the internet for additional information on the biology and ecology of tide pool life. And, one of the real advantages of tide pool exploring, it is free.

Where are the best Tide pools?
John Lyman
 
The stretch of coastline just south of Tamarindo, between Playa Langosta and Playa Negra have some of the best tide pools you’ll ever find. There are some nice tide pools starting just south of Tamarindo, around the big point at the south end of Tamarindo Bay. This is the start of Playa Langosta. From the point to the estuary at Hotel Barcelo are some amazing tide pools. Some are big enough to swim around in with a mask and snorkel. This stretch of coastline has always been a favorite with the long time locals and despite the recent heavy development, it’s still a great place to explore.

Playa Avellanas, a few kilometers south of Playa Langosta is another great place to go tide pooling. Check out the reefs a short walk south of famous Lola’s Bar & Grill. This section of coastline is a little further away from big development and seems to have more things to see. There aren’t any huge pools here but you are sure to see cool things like stranded fish, bright blue starfish, whole herds of hermit crabs, octopus and a lot more. Be careful where you step. You don’t want to squish a poor octopus.

The beaches between Playa Avellanas and Playa Negra have miles and miles of exposed reefs at low tide. Check out Playa Lagartillo. Park at Bar Mapache and hike to 1 kilometer to the beach. This place is completely unspoiled for now. Chance are you’ll be exploring tide pools nobody else has. The reefs here are very alive with all kinds of little critters to check out.

From beautiful Playa Negra to Playa Junquillal are a series of little tropical bays. There are lots of tide pools at the north and south ends of all these little bays. Here too is a great place to find tide pools big enough to swim around in. This is a great family place. Stop off and have lunch after your exploring at one of the cute little boutique hotels that dot this stretch of the Gold Coast.

So get out there and explore. Do your exploring in the morning hours when it’s still cool. Most of the exposed reefs are black volcanic rock and it gets really hot after about 11:00. Don’t forget water and sunscreen.
 

The trip was typical and non-eventful, dodging maniacal tractor trailers with tires the size of our Daihatsu while stopping every few kilometers to make donations to the Transit Police Benevolent Society we made the 150 mile journey in just under seven hours, our fastest time yet!

Finally we’re in downtown San José just in time for the beginning of the 3pm to 8pm gridlock. We’re moving in the basic direction of San Pedro at about two miles an hour, sharing the city streets with buses that apparently are lifetime-exempt from exhaust emissions testing, hundreds of agitated red taxis and almost as many cars that look exactly like ours.

We have the “To do” list from hell. We stop at the fancy light store; it’d take seven weeks to order the part I need. We hit the fancy mega gigantic hardware emporium who apologize for no longer carrying the essentials that were there the month before. The only art store that stocks the needed tubes filled with paint is still waiting for the next bi-annual art container and I have to visit my accountant and pay my US Taxes.

What???? Yeah, that’s right...Pay my taxes!
The only reason I mention this tidbit is that it seems whenever the subject comes up the ex-patriate I’m sitting with claims to have not filed income tax for twenty-five years, implying I’m a sap to do so. It usually turns out that he hasn’t lived in the United States for about twenty-five years and is also wondering if he should get a new passport to replace the one that expired in 1997. Welcome to my peer group.

Of course my accountant’s office is on the opposite side of San José and the traffic continues to flow at the same speed as liquid mercury flowing uphill.

In a blinding moment of genius my wife suggests we park the car and flag down a taxi driver. These guys know all the shortcuts and have all the angles figured out. Within seconds we’re in a non-air-conditioned fifteen-year-old Korean-built taxi speeding down a by-way that seems promising until it runs into a demonstration moving down a main avenue at about the same velocity as the previously mentioned heavy liquid, featuring thousands upon thousands of Costa Ricans protesting for better treatment of poultry.

It is seldom that we have a taxista who is actually older than his current customers; ours assures us he can still get us to our appointment with the taxman, makes a hard left in the totally opposite direction and then proceeds to talk our ears off on the economic inequities due to the immoral shortcomings of the Great Satan. Surprisingly he was referring to Canada as he had actually lived in New Jersey and had only fond memories. At least that’s what we think he said. We were starting to wish we had picked one of those drivers that only talk on their cell phones and not to you. We pretended to have forgotten how to speak Spanish and were only fifty-seven minutes late to our appointment. Our accountant pointed out that since we did everything over the internet this year there was no real reason to meet with him and hoped we had some other things to do. We did.

After checking into our hotel we headed out La Vascona, a restaurant/futbol museum that features the best Sopa Negra in Costa Rica, bar none. After a couple of bowls accompanied by national beverages we were reinvigorated and set out to spend and buy a lot of stuff. It was just barely daylight by then and it was still pretty safe to walk around. Most of the city folk were lining up for the buses for their trip home to other exotic locales, and by eight o’clock the downtown areas are re-inhabited by people who had only got up a couple of hours earlier.

As we haven’t invested in any large caliber semi-automatic weapons and/or handguns, and we can’t seem to find any place that will re-fill tear gas containers, we have a tendency to steer clear of the downtown area after dark. The trick is to grab a taxi from point A to point B with the idea of being outside less than ten seconds. We do so and end up in one of the least scary downtown blocks known for its profusion of high-quality restaurants. We have a fabulous meal at the Esquina de Buenas Aires, an Argentinean affair that bases its menu prices on that day’s inflation rate in the old county. Our bill came to 7,349,000 Pesos, or about $48.

We made it back to our hotel in time for a good night’s rest, somewhat disturbed by the early morning rush hour starting at five a.m. that featured a lot of groggy rich Costa Ricans in their BMWs and Prados hoping that by leaning on their horns the dead homeless person in the road will miraculously spring back to life and maybe even wash their windshield.

We still had a few things to pick up, most of which we either couldn’t find or didn’t work after we got back home.

Leaving San José always seems easier than getting there. There’s an envelope of good driving time that lasts from about 10:30 to 11:45 in the morning, and lets face it most of the ride back to Guanacaste is downhill. Another trick is to keep driving during lunch hour to avoid the Transitos, whose trucks and motorcycles can be seen parked at the posh restaurants that dot the highway, spending that morning’s take on expensive fare.

But it’s the thrill of pulling back into Tamarindo with its quaint roadways and bustling police forces and colorful non-tourists that makes you happy to be home and out of the way of large trucks, with the possibility of having to return to San José in the distant future of next month.

Jesse Bishop hails from Texas, and lives in Langosta, Costa Rica with his lovely wife Susan and ugly Shar Pei dog Sun Tzu. In addition to writing for the Howler, Jesse is a guitarist who plays several gigs along the Gold Coast. Contact Jesse at owlhumm@hotmail.com

“I feel more at home in the water than on land,” says Renata Herberger, self-styled mermaid.  In 2005, a massive blood clot in her leg led to a thrombosis operation, with less-than-satisfactory results, leaving her with severe leg pains for which there is no cure.  A long-time swimmer, Renata again took to the water and found that the discomfort disappeared – as long as she kept swimming.  At that point, she decided on a marine life.  She now swims, on average, two hours a day.

Now Renata, born in Germany but living in British Columbia, Canada, is on a mission: to raise awareness of the ocean upon which we so much depend – its life, its problems and solutions.  “We came from the ocean,” says Renata, “It is our principal home but, through our lifestyle, we have lost much of our contact with it, with animals and nature.  This immersion puts me into total contact with it and I would like to make others aware of the sea, its importance to us, its fragility, our uses and abuses of it, and how we can all help with positive action.  After all, we humans are composed of over 70% water.”

At this time, Renata is part-way through an awareness-raising project – to swim the entire Pacific coast of Costa Rica from the Panama border to Nicaragua.  When she reached Tamarindo she took time off from her task for an interview.  “On this trip,” she says, “I am swimming about eight hours a day, usually with just one support person in a boat donated by its owner, a fisherman or sailor.  Unfortunately, I have lost many days because I had to reorganize my swim when some of my “helpers” let me down. 

On a typical day, Renata is on the support boat at 5:30. Wearing layers of protection against jellyfish, she swims in bouts of about half-an-hour, interspersed with short breaks to drink yoghurt.  A half-hour break to eat a hearty lunch, and she is back in the water until her eight hours are completed.

Along the way, many of Renata’s expenses have been defrayed by hotel owners.  “Most of my accommodation and food has been supplied by the kindness of hotel owners,” she continues, “but I still have many other expenses.  The whole cost of the project will be about $15,000.  I hope that others will help me as I go along with the swim.”

To this end, Renata took a day off to demonstrate the swim at Lola’s Restaurant at Playa Avellanas where the owners, Don and Kristi Van Akkeren, kindly donated their entire takings from this busy Saturday to the cause.  Sadly, not all those involved in her swim have been so generous.  “I have been the victim of opportunists on a few occasions and this distresses me.  I have learned never to trust a verbal agreement.  Everything has to be in writing.”

“I am easily exhausted when I’m out of the water,” says Renata who, at 52, looks years younger. “but totally at home in it. I believe I move into a different brainwave pattern when swimming.  It’s a very contemplative swim.  My mood matches that of the ocean; when it’s calm, I go slowly.  When rough, I plough along.  On this swim I have been accompanied by dolphins, manta rays and even big humpback whales.  So far, no sharks.”

Further details of Renata Herberger and her swim may be found at www.costaricamermaid.net.

If you only caught the headline, you might be thinking that I’m going to exhort all the expat gringos to head home and do their best to prop up what’s left of US omnipotence—both economic and military. It seems like the New American Century project is hobbling badly with decades to go. Or maybe, I’d issue a presidential endorsement from a jungle cabin in a third world country. Sorry, but the concerns here are closer to hand. Right in my front yard so to speak.

My dry season garden, pumping out tomatoes, cucumbers and string beans from January through June, is part of the floodplain of the Rio Nandamojo River. Our river valley starts near 27 de Abril and ends in the estuary—and soon to be Wildlife Refuge—south of Junquillal. The watershed for the river extends way up into the hills above the town of Florida and even behind the ridge inland from Avellanes. The alluvial deposits in the lowlands are brimful with Guanacaste Gold---potable water.

Equally important, there’s a growing group of people, organizations and social networks which share a common goal. We hope to manage the damage and do our best to shape the wave of the future. We’re working to ‘capture the flag.’

Fortunately, we’ve got a head start. Several years back, a group of students and professors from the US were presented with a simple challenge. The owner of Las Tucas, Doña Abigail Pizarro, put it straight to the assembled experts: Can’t you do something make the river run year ‘round like it used to??? As a matter of fact, all the older residents can regale visitors about the sky dark with water fowl, fish running upriver capable of feeding dozens at a meal, swimming holes of crystalline water throughout the valley all summer long.

A great line from Ghostbusters: We got the tools and we got the talent. In our valley, we’ve got the talent AND we’ve got the data.

Let’s start at the beach. Junquillal, 8-years-running Blue Flag beach, hats off to Silvia Hector and the motivated Comité de Bandera Azul who have worked to keep up the spotless record.
Also in Junquillal, the turtle project, headed by Gabriel Francia, the biologist whose tireless work over 5 years has received tremendous community support and is one of the reasons why MINAE has decided to establish a Wildlife Preserve which includes both the mangrove and the beach. (Of Turtles, Angels and Men, the “Howler”, March 2005.)

Throughout our valley, for the past 2 years, slogging through mangroves or hacking into forest, Paola Brenes and Lorna Marchena have documented the diversity of birdlife under a grant from the US Fish and Wildlife Service. 150 species and counting, reports Paola, the manager of Proyecto Nandavi. With this kind of baseline data, and given people’s natural affinity for our feathered friends, Paola is moving into the communities with an expanded focus: the health of the rivers, the feeder streams and the watershed.

Here again we’ve got the data. Doña Abigail prodded us to put our money where our environmental mutterings were. With help from Applied Ecological Services in the US, we started gathering data on rainfall, stream and river flows and documenting the effects downstream, of land use changes upstream. This study was pushed further by the Paraiso community water board which contracted a hydrologist to do a yearlong study of the entire watershed, with an eye to planning for sustainable use of the aquifer well into the future.

Also deserving credit is the small group of developers who have taken the long view and invested substantially in erosion control, sediment capture and forest restoration on their projects. Thanks to their commitment parts of the valley are better off and there are dozens of workers who have the training to implement control techniques elsewhere.

It is easy to imagine that “living in a greener valley” could become a great tag line for developments. But, there’s a catch. The community-based environmental education campaign not only explains how a watershed works. Not only do people learn the importance of forests on the ridges, the problem of sediment in the estuaries, the causes of flooding and river bank collapse which threaten their homes. Workshop participants are informed on the statutes in environmental law pertinent to watershed issues and trained in the step-by-step process of filing complaints with the appropriate agencies.

This is called “empowerment”. People in Guanacaste have long felt abandoned and ignored by government agencies. Those who act alone risk reprisals or just being labeled a “sapo”, or fink, by their neighbors. But there’s strength in numbers and you can see the developing awareness in the training sessions.

In a recent session, folks from Junquillal got together and agreed to denounce a rather reptilian hotel with an open garbage dump replete with flies, nasty odors and burned plastic residue seeping into the underground waters. Others from Rio Seco chimed in with their own worries. A developer there had bulldozed right into the river and is planning a commercial center in area that was underwater in last year’s floods. Not to be outdone, community leaders from farther up the valley clamored for the hows and whys of documenting the damage to river systems caused by massive earthmoving in the hills above their towns. (See The Views above the Mud Below, the “Howler”, December 2006)

The efforts in our valley—Proyecto Nandamojo—will have a new website where we recognize those businesses who share our vision. Guanacaste has recently appeared on the radar of some international environmental organizations with both money and clout. Proyecto Nandamojo will be presenting its credentials as a broad-based effort with a track record worthy of future support.

Forgive me for ending on a rather personal note. I owe a debt of gratitude not only to Doña Abigail who urged us to get off our butts in the first place. I also want to thank the scores of Howler readers who have written me with comments, criticism, praise and above all the encouragement to fight like hell to keep this valley from going the way of the once quiet seaside village that they call home.

Tom Peifer is an ecological land use consultant with 12 years experience in Guanacaste. Phone: 658-8018, email: peifer@racsa.co.cr. Web site: www.elcentroverde.org