Water From Above, Water From Below

Last week, we took a day trip out to La Fortuna, Costa Rica. That is a town in the shadow of Arenal Volcano. But there were many stops on the way there, and fewer but some on the way home. Throughout the trip, we got to see fabulous flora, fascinating fauna, and wonders of water.

That's La Paz Waterfall in the background. (And Alrica and Erich in the foreground.)

We stopped at a coffee plantation. Coffee was introduced to Costa Rica in 1779. They grow Arabica coffee which was imported directly from Ethiopia. (That's where coffee plants are indigenous.) Over the 19th century, coffee farming grew and became a major industry of Costa Rica. Even though Costa Rica is small, it provides 1% of the world's coffee.

Did you know that's where your coffee comes from?

The thing about coffee is that you can't grow it just anywhere. You have to be high above sea level, but not too high above sea level. You have to have plenty of rain, but hopefully not too early or too late. You have to have various soil conditions. Parts of Costa Rica are ideal for this. So when you travel out of the valleys and up the mountains, you hit an elevation where the majority of the land is being used to grow coffee. And as you continue ascending, you hit an elevation where that stops.

This is not harvest time. The beans turn red when they are ready for harvest.

Apparently coffee plants can grow very tall but in Costa Rica, they keep them at about 2 meters or less. That's because the harvest is done by hand, so they don't want the plants so tall that no one can reach the beans.

Trunk of a Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree

Surrounding the plantation was a row of these gorgeous trees with multi-colored trunks called rainbow eucalyptus. But the coffee farmers don't plant them because of their colors. Instead, the trees provide nutrients to the soil, like nitrogen and phosphorus, that are beneficial for coffee growing. You also find the occasional banana palm in the middle of the coffee plants. These provide potassium to the soil. (And they provide bananas.)

The tall plant is a banana palm

In addition to the trees and coffee, there were many varieties of gorgeous flowers on the plantation grounds.

It's like a ladder for lizards

From the plantation we ascended out of the coffee growing region and into the cloud rain forest. Our first stop was at La Paz waterfall which is right along the side of the road. This gurgling fall runs all year round, but in the rainy season is even more vigorous than when we saw it. It's been a very rainy May, but apparently not compared to the midst of rainy season.

La Paz and it's pool (would that be La Pool de La Paz?)

Next we made a stop at the village of Cinchona. We had fresh juice. I had mora (which is blackberry) and Alrica had sandia (which is watermelon). There was a lovely balcony from which one could see the San Francisco waterfall. But the big thing to see was the birds. There were hummingbirds, song birds, and even the occasional bird of prey around.

Hummingbird

We had a lovely lunch in La Fortuna. We had casados. Casado is a very traditional meal which we had also tried in San Jose. It's great, you get white rice, black beans (though each place has its own way of seasoning the beans), fried plantains, salad, and then some choice of meat. I tried beef in that particular casado and Alrica had chicken. Both were great. Plus they served maracuya (passion fruit) juice which is so good.

I don't know what the yellow bird is called

After lunch was the main destination of our day trip: Paradise Hot Springs. I don't have any pictures, because I wasn't carrying my phone around to the pools. But this is a set of pools, all at different temperatures. Arenal Volcano is still active. While it isn't erupting lava, it does steam frequently. But the geological activity also heats the water. So the pools were using geothermally heated water mixed with cooler water to provide the various temperatures.

Not sure what this is called either, but he has a don't mess with me look.

Often, I am not a fan of such places. I get overly warm quickly when I am in hot water. I can do it for a few minutes, but then I am sweating and uncomfortable. Alrica, on the other hand, could probably bathe in molten lava and ask the volcano if it could turn up the heat. (Yes, I am exaggerating. She wouldn't really talk to a volcano.) But Paradise Hot Springs was great for me. Among its many pools, there were some cool pools. So when I got too warm, I could slip into a cool pool and chill out, literally. The recommendation was to spend 20 minutes or so in a hot pool and then five minutes of so in a cool pool. Repeat. I, more or less, reversed that, but it was nice to have the variety. There was one pool that was so hot I stepped in and got water up to my ankles and then said "Nope!" I saw no reason to become a major ingredient in soup. But aside from that one, I enjoyed the others for as long as I could take them and then cooled off nicely.

A two-toed sloth, though it's tough to know that's what it is

Coming back to San Jose, we stopped for dinner and had Chifrijo. That's a traditional bar food. Think of something vaguely like nachoes without the cheese. (Okay, I admit, the cheese is sort of the essence of nachos. But what if it wasn't?) It's a bowl with rice, beans, tortillas, avocado, and pico de gallo, served with pieces of pork. Traditionally it's with pork, but you had choices of other meats if you preferred.

Strict speed limits

So we were well fed, well washed, and for those foolish enough to go in the extremely hot pool, well cooked, when we got back to San Jose. It was great to get out of the city and see how much beauty there is in this country.

Back in the Land Of...

We have once again crossed the Atlantic and have arrived in Costa Rica. We've been here for a few days now. And while Costa Rica is very different than the United States in so many ways, in others, it is a reminder of home. And in others, it isn't so different from places we've been.

Look at me! I'm pink!

Much like Tunisia, the people here are very helpful and friendly. They speak fast though, which was not like Tunisia. And there are so many lovely flowers this time of year.

Morazan Park

Much like so many places, every great city needs at least one park with a gazebo in it. Additional, the parks can also have some very cool art in them.

See the shiny colors? Look at the close up view

The inside is made of old CDs

But let's talk about some silly little things that remind me of home and that I hadn't even realized I had been missing. The most obvious of these: I'm back in the land of electrical outlets I recognize.

I've missed you!

Yes, Costa Rica uses the same outlets we do in the States. No need for my converter, I can just plug my devices in directly.

Here's another: I'm back in the land of man chairs. If you don't know that term, I will explain. You know how when you go shopping, say with your wife and/or daughter, for clothing and then those you are with need to look at many things and go into the dressing room and wander all the racks in the store? Often, in the United States, there is a chair somewhere in the store for the companion of the shopper (me) to sit in while the shopping activity goes on. But we didn't see that so often in Europe or North Africa.

Here in Costa Rica, there are man chairs in many of the larger clothing stores. In fact, I even had saleswomen in two different stores tell me I was allowed to sit in them.

What do you do when your waist down mannequin is too skinny for the clothing?

I am back in the land of root beer. At some level, I had realized that other countries don't have the same varieties of pop that we do in the States. Sometimes, they have extras. There is a flavor of Fanta called "exotic" that is all over Eastern Europe. Here in Costa Rica, I tried "kolita" which has the same flavor as the green pop in South Africa that they call "cream soda". But what I hadn't realized while we were traveling was the lack of root beer. Not until the other day, here in Costa Rica, when I had root beer, did I think, wow, I've really gone a long time without having root beer as an option.

One more thing: I'm back in the land of American time zones, and it's killing me. Well, the jet lag is. Here we are in Central Standard Time. Costa Rica doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time. So my current time is the same as Mountain Daylight Time in America. Same time zone as my brother! But I am not making the adjustment well. I've been trying to stay up until about 10 PM and still I am waking early. Today, I did great. I didn't get up until 5:57 AM. But that's the latest I've managed since we arrived, with anywhere from 3:00 AM to 5:00 AM being my usual wakeup time. (And Alrica is waking up even earlier.)

I would assume that soon I will adjust. Though as Alrica explained to me, I will adjust right in time to have to get up at 4:00 AM anyway. Our daughter is currently with us for her break, but she must fly back to the states and has an early flight in a couple days. It's a pretty good reason though. She has to go to Washington, DC for an interview at the Embassy of Tajikistan to get a visa for her summer program there. Yes, getting up at 4 AM sucks. But that's a pretty cool reason.

Bonus: The other day, when the new pope had been chosen, but we didn't know who it was yet, a headline appeared on my computer. It was in Spanish and asked if I wanted to translate it. I clicked yes and here is what I got.

A smoked potato?

Choosing your potato can be newsworthy!

And Back Into Nature

In my last post, I talked about the Netherlands being the third country which we had visited but not slept in. In this post, I want to talk about Luxembourg being the fourth such country (and the 49th country we've ever been in.) This is very exciting to me, because both 4 and 49 are perfect squares. Not only that, they are each a perfect square of a prime number!

A welcoming bear

But before I math out on these number theoretic facts, there is a bit of a question hanging over the entire discussion. Alrica pointed out that my definition of "slept in" may be less than rigorous. (That's a huge problem for a mathematician.)

Weinfelder Maar

You see, one of the countries that we visited was The Bahamas. We arrived on a ship and went out into the island and explored. We slept that night back on the ship, but it was still docked in the Bahamas. So does this count as sleeping in Bahamas? If it does not, then Luxembourg is the fifth country of this non-sleep status. That certainly dulls the perfect square pattern.

Wooden Wizard with a Roof Hat

If I slept in a houseboat on Lake Erie north of the Canada-U.S. border, wouldn't that count as sleeping in Canada? Or maybe it is the salt in the water that matters. But if I slept in the same houseboat just off the coast of South Carolina, wouldn't you consider that sleeping in the United States?

We're painting the roses red.

I see the argument that if I fall asleep in an airplane flying over Uzbekistan, I cannot claim to have slept in Uzbekistan. But Alrica and I wouldn't count that as even having been in Uzbekistan. In fact, our rule is that if you are only transitioning from one flight to another and you never leave the airport, that doesn't count as a new country. (At one point, that was our experience in Qatar, where we spent a long time in the Doha Airport, but we did not consider ourselves having visited Qatar. Over a year after that, we did go to Qatar, and stayed in Qatar, and then we counted Qatar.

A knight in lacquered armor

I'm still going with Luxembourg being the fourth country we visited but didn't sleep in. But if you disagree, feel free to give me grief in the comments.

Setting all of this aside, let me tell you about the second half of our road trip. We headed from Belgium to visit the Vulkaneifel region of Western Germany. The Eifel mountains are geologically active. Much of the region sits on top of a huge caldera. Much like Yellowstone National Park, some places seem calm and other seem more volcanic.

The village across the maar

We stayed in a very cute village called Schalkenmehren which is situated on Schalkenmehren Maar. A maar is a lake formed in a volcanic crater. This was a chance for us to get into nature, to hike, to breathe fresh air, and to hear lots of birds. (We saw some too, but only a small fraction of those we heard.)

The maar from the village

We have been very city bound for quite a lot of this trip. I miss hiking sometimes, so we used the second half of our road trip to get some good hikes in. Not only did hike around Schalkenmehren Maar, we also hiked around the neighboring Weinfelder Maar. Plus the village is filled with all these amazing wooden sculptures. (I think the sculptor lives there.)

Think it is a woodcarver's self-portrait?

We had some lovely hikes, but we still weren't satisfied. So the next day we did a very fascinating hike in Echternach, Luxembourg. This hike involved a lot more elevation change. We hiked up to Wollefsschlucht, which translates as Wolf's Gorge. The gorge was formed by an enormous landslide (tens of thousands of years ago.) There are many caves in the gorge and we invested one of them. Though we didn't go too far, as our light (and our legs) were inadequate for real spelunking.

The cave as far as we got

There is a legend about Wolf's Gorge that tells of an avaricious Count who sold his soul to the devil to obtain more riches. But he was so greedy, even the devil said "To heck with him!" (I think the devil would use heck, because he isn't going to say "To my own kingdom with him.") The devil cursed the Count and turned him into a black wolf. Now the wolf roams the gorge, protecting the many small caves where the Count hid his wealth. But don't despair for the cursed Count, my readers. Legend also says that if an innocent child places a rosary into just the right crevice in one of the many folds and creases of Wollefsschulucht, it will release the Count from his curse. In reward, he will reveal to the child where his treasures are. So if there are any innocent children out there reading this, grab a rosary and start placing it in crevice after crevice of Wolf's Gorge. (Okay, you have to get to Luxembourg first.) But note: if it does work and the Count grants you all his treasures, I would like a 1 percent finders fee for putting you on this path in the first place.

If only Alrica had brought along a rosary

Now we are back in France. Soon we leave this part of the world, an end to the first era of our international sojourn, around and about the Mediterranean (and a bit further north.) Tomorrow we fly across the Atlantic Ocean to San Jose, Costa Rica. And we will sleep there too.

No Tiptoeing Involved

Hallo from Belgium! You might think I should say Bonjour from Belgium. But Alrica and I are staying in the Flemish part of Belgium where the language spoken is Dutch.

My beauty in the midst of tulip beauty

We are doing something with which we are very familiar, and also something with which we are out of practice in doing: taking a road trip. On Thursday, we flew from Tunis into Paris. We rented a car at the airport and we are driving around the Benelux area of Europe. (Benelux is a mashup of three words, or to speak non-technically, a threewordsmash.) It is the region of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

The yellow is so bright you almost don't notice the red

At present, we are in Belgium. We are staying in a very adorable town called Mortsel, just outside of Antwerp. It has castles, lots of old-world architecture, and some tasty Belgian fries.

Pink and white, like Neapolitan ice cream after you've eaten all the chocolate

Yesterday, we took a day trip into the Netherlands to fulfill a lifelong (in truth, monthlong) dream (which is probably a stronger word than is called for here, “fancy” might be a more accurate description) to see the tulips. The Netherlands is famous for its tulip season where you can drive around and find fields of tulips in so many colors. We were worried that we might be too late. It generally runs from Mid-April to early May. It turns out, this year we were, if anything, too early. But really, we were in plenty of time.

Check this out: Orange on the outside, yellow on the inside

While some of the tulip fields we saw were entirely green, no blossoms yet, we still saw plenty of tulips in a variety of colors: The yellows were super bright, hard to miss. The reds came in varieties with white tops or yellow tops. There were orange tulips which were orange through and through, and others which were red-orange on the outside and yellow inside. We also saw purples and pinks.

You so want to tiptoe through them. Admit it.

We went up to Noordoostpolder, which is a region northeast of Amsterdam. We had read it can be very crowded with people in tulip season, but for us it wasn’t. We did see other people, but usually just a handful at some of the fields where we stopped.

Free sporks! Is this heaven? No, it's the Netherlands.

Check out this picture: Apparently the Dutch word for a spork is “spork”. Except that really isn’t a spork, it isn’t a mix of spoon and fork. It’s really a wooden fork with a knife edge on one of the tines. I like the name “knork” for this one. I suppose “forfe” is another choice though, but I like the beginning with a non-sounding k—sometimes called silent— and ending with a k-sounding k—sometimes called nonsilent or insilent or insolent. (Yes, I made that last part up.)

From the tulips we headed south and visited a geographic oddity: We visited the interwoven towns of Baarle-Nassau and Baarle-Hertog. But first a few terms.

An enclave is a country or a piece of a country that is entirely surrounded by another country. For example, Lesotho is an enclave, a country entirely surrounded by South Africa. Both Vatican City and San Marino are enclaves entirely inside Italy. But an enclave doesn’t have to be an independent country. It could be a territory of another country. Think of West Berlin in the days of the Cold War, which was entirely inside East Germany, even though it was a piece of West Germany.

An exclave is a territory belonging to one country but separated from that country, surrounded by other countries. (Generally surrounded by land, not by water. So Alaska isn’t an exclave because while it is disconnected from the United States, it isn’t entirely surrounded by other countries. It has a lot of coast.)

Many exclaves are also enclaves. They are surrounded entirely by land belonging to one other country. Not all of them are. For example, there is a piece of territory owned by Azerbaijan called Nakhchivan which is separated from the main part of the country. It is surrounded by land belonging to three different nations: Armenia, Iran, and Turkey. So it is an exclave which is not an enclave.

But it is easier to find examples of exclaves which are also enclaves. That’s where I’m going with this. But one more term: A counter-exclave is a piece of territory belonging to country X which is entirely surrounded by a piece of territory belonging to country Y which is in turn surrounded entirely by country X again. This is also called a second-order exclave.

You could also go into counter-counter-exclaves (or third-order exclaves) and on and on. But for this discussion, we only need a single “counter” (or a second-order exclave.)

You see, Baarle-Hertog is Belgium. But it is entirely inside the Netherlands (in the city of Baarle-Nassau.) So, Baarle-Hertog is an exclave. Or in truth, it is 22 separate exclaves. There are 22 disconnected pieces of land in southern Netherlands which are part of Belgium.

What’s more, there are holes inside those exclaves that are pieces of the Netherlands inside pieces of Belgium inside pieces of the Netherlands. These are counter-exclaves. There are 10 of these. Twenty-two pieces with ten pieces inside. A border mess!

And yet, the people there don’t seem to worry much about it. It is a lovely town, or two towns, to visit. This whole complication dates back to the Middle Ages when one nobleman gave up some land to another nobleman in exchange for protection. Every source I’ve found just describes it as protection. I’m guessing this is more military alliance than racketeering, but I can’t say that for sure.

It wasn’t a big deal for a long time. Even in the modern era, it was all the Netherlands, because Belgium wasn’t a thing. Okay, it was a thing, but not its own country. Belgium was part of the Netherlands and only became independent in 1831. It left behind such a mess in the region, that they didn’t get around to figuring out exactly what pieces of land were which. For a while. A long while. I wonder what they did before they all used the same currency.

Today, the borders are marked with plus signs along the sidewalks, though this was not all laid out and done until 1995. So they had a good 164 years of not really know which piece of land belonged to which country. Now the borders often run through buildings, so they have a front door rule. If your front door is in Belgium, you are Belgian. (You vote in Belgian elections and pay taxes to Belgium.) If your front door is in the Netherlands, you are Dutch. (Elections, taxes, blah, blah, blah.) If the border runs through your front door (which is rare, but it happens), you get to choose. (Luckily, you don’t have to pay taxes to both, but unluckily, you don’t get two votes.)

You need to know which jurisdiction you are breaking the law in!

When we visited, it was clear the locals just don’t care very much. They are out eating in cafes, not worrying about which country is which. Though, the number plates for the addresses either have the Belgian colors on them or the Dutch colors. They do want you to know which country each building is in.

I labeled the essential details

It did cause some stress during COVID-19. The Netherlands and Belgium had very different mask mandates. There were situations in which you entered a shop required to be masked, but then walking to the merchandise in the back of the shop you could take your mask off. You had crossed an international border.

For us it was a beautiful walk on a clement day in a charming medieval town with some very pretty towers. One of them had bells which played songs. The first we heard was Down by the Riverside. I didn’t recognize the second.

Beautiful music and a pretty tower? Too much.

This day trip makes the Netherlands the third country we have visited but not slept in. (The first was Vatican City, and I think you would need a special invitation to sleep there. The second was Slovakia when we visited its capitol, Bratislava, in a day trip from Vienna.) But maybe I should have set up a tent on the plus signs and managed to sleep in two countries at the same time. I’ve never done that before! A new lifelong dream! (Or seconds-long passing thought.)