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My Arenal , My Road To Monteverde , My Montezuma and Poas
Costa Rica itself is an interesting country. The people there especially in the rural areas have an examplary conscience in protecting peace and nature.
When you look at the centuries, costa ricans did not have strong ancient civilizations on their soil, they were mainly small tribes that did not have much power, and there is only very few to see about their cultures really from that time. Yet with the spanish conquest many things changed.
Although it was a poor country, the introduction of the coffee bean changed the economical structure of the country. Once it was understood that coffee bean could be easily grown in the climate, and the demand was real high, costa rican economy started to depend on coffee exports heavily. While the coffee production increased in other countries too and reduced the profit margin, costa ricans tried to build railroads for reaching the inner jungle for coffee bean production. However this project which was under an american contractor, failed miserably mainly because the railroad workers got diminished with diseases they were not used to... Yet after this failur, the desperate try of the american to sell some of the bananas he produced for feeding the workers along the railroad was thdefinitely the gold strike. People loved it, and soon most of the coffee bean exports have been switched to banana exports, they earneed even more than their coffee hit this time.
Obviously banana production also increased in other countries too, so costa rica had to find another way to earn money, and they were the firsrt to invent and implement the concept of eco tourism.... With this invention, the jungle finally started to bring some real money, most of the economy in costa rica currently purely depends on the eco tourism. The prices are really absurdly high for some of the activities in costa rica, and as soon as you enter thre touristy zone, expect to pay 4 times you would pay normally. The interesting thing is the locals pay 1/4th of the price the tourists pay, even less some times. 20 years ago, land in Costa Rica was way tooo cheap. Currently it is the exact other way around, with the entry of Americans to the house market, now it is nearly impossible for costa ricans to happily buy a land .
Another interesting note about costa rica is its peace keeping and armiless resolution mechanism. Ticos are totally proud with this and they simply have right to. It started with their charismatic leader Figuerres Ferre and the army was disbanded and costa rica was declared to be a neutral peace keeping country. Later American influence on Nicaragua Border forced the country to fight with Nicaraguans, but this time another follower of Ferre, Oscar Arias entered the scene. His first action was to kick the united states embassador out of the country, after that he diplomatically resolved the problem in the Nicaraguan border. Unlike other central americaa countries, costa rica never had suffered from internal wars or other serious political fights since then.
Pure costa Rican Stories:
High chess player
I had met the worst smelling best chess player in this trip in costa Rica. The guy was american, he was playing with another german who was smelling at least as bad as him. And the american guy took the two matches while be was constantly drinking at the same time. After their game, I joined a match with the american.... I made some risky moves you wouldnt make to a player of his level. The result was obviously I was losing. Yet he didn]t think that seriously about one of my attacks and I captured his queen... He was real trapped and he was trying to find a way out, and then our game was divided by some guy with some marijuana.... I guess the main reeason that guy was living in Costar Rica was the cheap grass ... Anyways he was really willing to go ahead with his toy, so he offered a draw... I wasnt in the mood for playing much more either, so I just accepted the draw although I was in sort of a better position. The moral of the story, buy drugs, or play chess. Dont do both at the same time =)
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