Inspired by...Costa Rica

I am not the only one that is experiencing a milestone birthday these days. My mom is turning 70 in October, and to celebrate our milestones we decided to go somewhere together. Since I’m really just a chip off the old block, my mom and I like similar types of adventures. She’s climbed Machu Picchu, rowed down rivers in Alaska, and she hikes and showshoes weekly in her hometown in Eastern Oregon. She’s my ultimate inspiration. I hit the gym for a month before the trip, just so I could be sure to keep up with her! I wrote the following while I was there, and now that I’m back “on the grid” as of yesterday, I’m sharing it with all of you…

We chose Lapa Rios on the Osa Peninsula as our destination. It’s won all sorts of sustainability awards, and is known as one of the top eco-lodges in the world.  It is completely off the grid just south of Corcovado National Park, high on a ridge in the rainforest. It’s a strange sensation, to have no television, no phone, no Internet, no walls. I am perched at the edge of a mountain in a bungalow, and can hear the ocean breaking a few hundred feet below me. The howler monkeys signal their bedtime with prehistoric-sounding wails, and, as the sun sets, I hear the rainforest come even more alive as the nocturnal population awakens. When I got here, I found an ant in the shower and killed it. Now, I think ants are spectacular. Have you ever watched an army of leaf-cutter ants at work? Incredible. We went on a night walk on our first night here…we saw snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions. In fact, I should probably put on some shoes, for there is a very real possibility that a tarantula or scorpion will crawl on my feet as I sit on my deck and write this. But this is the adventure I always desire…one that challenges me, encourages me to face my fears, and teaches me something that I don’t know. And they are doing amazing things here…composting, solar energy, biodiesel, hydro, everything is measured and accounted for, and everyone pitches in to make it happen. Their values are all about making this place sustainable. Right on, Lapa Rios, right on.

It seems strange, since it’s hot and humid, but I am reminded of Antarctica almost daily here.  For one, I am surrounded by people who chose this as a destination because of their love of nature and desire to preserve it. On a boat trip along a tropical fjord we passed untouched rainforest reaching all the way to the sky…it was just like the Lemaire Channel, but green, not covered with white ice.  When I jumped off the boat into the warm Gulf, it reminded me of my Polar Plunge (until I hit the water of course). And, the humpbacks I love to watch in Antarctica are expected here soon for their breeding season. It occurs to me that this is a perfect example of a world connected. Of balance. Of similarities and differences. It is a demonstration of how precarious the world is. Signs of climate change are all around here, even in what is known to be one of the most diverse and healthy ecosystems in the world. The rainforest, like Antarctica and the Arctic, is another canary in the coal mine.

So, as I reflect on what I’ve learned here, and what I learned in Morocco, I can’t help but wonder…perhaps there will be a day when more people look beyond only themselves, their house, their job, their town, their state, and their country….to find that there is actually a whole world out there. What stopped us from thinking of ourselves as global citizens?  Just because something is different, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. After all, sleeping with ants and spiders certainly felt different a few days ago, and while I won’t be turning my apartment into a jungle anytime soon, I may think twice before killing the next critter I see.

This photo was taken by one of the Lapa Rios guides looking through a telescope with my camera..a howler monkey eating lunch in a huge tree behind the entrance to the lodge.

Inspired by...Morocco

Well, hello again. It’s been awhile. It’s not that I haven’t been “inspired”, it’s just that I haven’t written about it. So without further ado, I’ll pick up where I left off six months ago...

After my first expedition to Antarctica, I realized that a goal of setting foot on all seven continents was suddenly attainable, and, since I already had six under my belt, it was attainable before the end of my (insert an unmentionable milestone birthday here) year. Last fall, when a girlfriend of mine sent out an e-mail asking if anyone was interested in joining her on a camping trip in the Sahara the following month, I jumped on it. Africa? Check. Seven continents? Check. My favorite? Still Antarctica. BUT…Africa was amazing. Now, it wasn’t sub-Saharan Africa…I still need to do that…but riding on a camel at sunset, into the darkness of the Sahara, and camping out on the top of a sand dune under magnificent stars wrapped in wool blanket? Brilliant. Waking up at sunrise and watching the sand turn to movie-set red in front of my eyes? Magic. I wanted to stay in the desert for a week. I was sucked back into the Antarctica-like feeling of isolation that I love…the feeling that no one else existed in the world except for the few of us on that dune. Here we were, three American girls, with three Berber Moroccan guides, singing, drumming, laughing, and drinking tea. They tried to help us understand jokes in Arabic, we tried to teach them American campfire songs. We were all the same…people living life and enjoying it, learning about differences and respecting them. Learning about similarities and feeling dismayed that such judgment exists in the world between our two cultures. Not there. Not on that dune.

I’ll summarize my Moroccan inspiration with a story. Khalid, our new friend and talented guide, had patiently taught me to speak some of his language, answered my questions about his culture and religion, showed me how to eat traditional Moroccan food, and made sure I didn’t freeze on that dune. On the way back to Marrakesh, we stopped in the mountains to shop and I asked Khalid where I could get a tajine dish to take home. He told me that the best place would be coming up in a little while. I forgot all about it. We arrived to our riad in the old city and began to say an emotional goodbye to our new friend. Khalid reached into a bag and presented me with a tajine…a gift. A gift?? From my tour guide? That demonstration of heartfelt generosity will never be forgotten. You see, in Morocco I learned about true generosity, but also about family values, about the beauty and origin of the word “inshallah”, about discipline, and that most people who seem very different from me are, in fact, not at all.