Hasta Luego Monteverde

Sunday – June 17, 2007

Hello all- As this is probably my last journal entry from Monteverde, I should begin by apologizing for the poor correspondence rate of the past several months. Life has gotten much more hectic as I have tried to wrap up various projects, prepared for teaching my summer sustainable design course at the Monteverde Institute, and at the same time prepared to leave our home of the last year to return to the US. Norma also spent significant energy securing her new job with Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, where she will be the new alumni programs coordinator (beginning in August). Norma and Niall departed for California last weekend, and I have now moved from our little casita in Santa Elena into a big house in Monteverde where all of our course faculty are staying this summer. The house belongs to one of the Institute board members who is traveling with his family in the US for the next month & a half, and as it sleeps at least 4 comfortably, it is great for our teachers.

I’ve been very busy the past 3 weeks with my students, and we have all of our projects well under way, including most of the heavy construction of a pretty neat little bamboo structure in San Luis (see pics). We’ve also been out doing traffic counts and measuring roadways to facilitate designing sidewalks along the main road through town; in short, it’s been a very hectic time!

We’ve managed to take care of all our final logistics, including selling our car here, and then buying a new one over the internet in California. Norma is already driving around happily in our “new” used Toyota. The car sale here went fairly easily and we were very happy with our car experience as a whole, even though we were always grousing about the roads. Twice within the last month both Norma and I managed to nearly end up off the road, and both times we were lucky to be safely pulled back onto solid ground when one wheel slid into the ditch along the side of the typical muddy track that passes for a road here. Unfortunately for the car, the day after I sold it, the new owner was not so lucky. He managed to back it too close to the edge of a ravine, and when the rain softened banks gave way, the car slid down more than 10’ and rolled onto its roof! (see pics!!). At least no one was hurt—the driver and passenger (one of my faculty colleagues) both walked away with little more than a few scratches. Good thing it wasn’t raining—this creek looks like a raging torrent of whitewater in a thunderstorm. We’re all hoping the insurance coverage we had on the car (it was supposed to be in effect until August) will cover the damage, which looks to be extensive.

I now have just 10 days left here in Costa Rica, then it's on to southern California, and our big trip home across country. We’ve all enjoyed our time in Costa Rica immensely, and come to appreciate much about the place and the people. We will sadly leave many new friends and we’ll certainly miss our little house high on the hill at the edge of the cloud forest, where we spent many an evening with a glass of wine gazing out over the Gulf of Nicoya, watching the sun set spectacularly out over the Pacific. Life is much simpler here in Costa Rica, and if we’ve learned anything from this year, it is to take things a little less seriously and with a little more emphasis on the simple things we hold dear.

Looking forward to seeing all those we’ve let behind this year soon-

Hasta luego desde Monteverde, Costa Rica

Scott Shannon