Travel, Nature & Us

As anyone who has been to Costa Rica will tell you (and a few people in Switzerland did before we left), you will eat a lot of rice and beans. Gallo Pinto is the name, and it is basically white rice with kidney beans (with seasoning) and is a staple dish for breakfast and possibly at any time throughout the day. When made well it can be very tasty, or, it’s just cold bland rice and beans…. and therein lies the rub…

Conversely to our previous posts of our positive experiences, this one is more to reflect on the ‘rice and the beans’ of our time in Costa Rica. As those of us on social media are mostly familiar with, the reality does not always match the image portrayed – this was also the case from our experience in Costa Rica, and we came up with a phrase that we found ourselves using often; “not as advertised”.

At our local level around The Rescue Center, it started when we first arrived. The private room that we booked was not entirely private, with partially open netted walls to the adjacent rooms and everyone’s bathrooms. But we were at least dry, unlike some other volunteers who had to move around looking for a dry bed. Then there was the food… Unfortunately the (reportedly, very good) chef left a couple of weeks before we arrived. The new “chef” was, we suspect, having a go at being a chef. The Gallo Pinto was served every day for breakfast, and it was generally bland and cold…..like the coffee, on the lucky days coffee was available. Drinks were available throughout the day – tap water. We don’t need to labour at this point but the food really was “not as advertised”.

The management invited anonymous feedback every day, and when they had a few the same, they would explain to the group (at the daily team meeting) what they would do about it, or, why it was like that. Often, and entirely understandably, as they were a charity and not a 5* hotel, the limited budget was prioritised for the animals that we were all there to care for. That’s fine, to a point. We started to struggle with this when we had paid a very reasonable sum of money only to get questionable accommodation (numerous days we were without running water) and bad food. After being promised fresh fruit for breakfast we didn’t actually see a piece of fruit until we walked to the supermarket on the 3rd day…. however there were numerous mango trees on site with rope fruit that were not being utilised?!

There were other issues too, such as the inconsistent or volatile temperament of some of the supervisors, far too many “volunteers” who had no interest in animals and just there for a “cheap” holiday, and the over privileged kids whining about many things we thought were perfectly reasonable. We came up with a list of issues including limited recycling (on and off site), one of the gardener /maintenance staff smoking marijuana outside the animal hospital, lack of on-site laundry (as advertised), and so on…. And then there was the general poor hygiene across the site that led to a lot of people becoming sick….in some cases very sick.

After about a week, we both came down with a “stomach bug”, along the same symptoms as a lot of people there. We don’t know exactly what it was but it persisted so long that (after the paramedics came out to treat Elizabeth) we left The Rescue Center after 3 weeks, with 10 days to go before our flight back to the UK. We suspect we had E.coli, and decided to check into a nice hotel near the airport for a relaxing recovery; a 4* Barcelo hotel with various restaurants – perfect.

The hotel had much better conditions than The Rescue Center and it was definitely the right decision, but…even there things were “not as advertised”. The food was limited in choice and poor in quality. When we were feeling better we ventured into the bar, and asked for a wine list. We were told “no wine list – we have white wine, or red wine”. One of the restaurants closed over an hour earlier than stated, etc, etc. And this seemed to be consistent with Costa Rica. It has a huge tourist industry under an image of environmental responsibility but scratch the surface, and things were “not as advertised”. The farm next to the rescue centre was illegally pumping water out of the river to grow marijuana. Sloths were brought into The Rescue Center because of poisoning from the chemicals used in pineapple fruit plantations – and this we learnt was why fruit was not available for breakfast, as the centre management did not want to support that industry. We were also shocked how little recycling was available everywhere we went, even in the hotel.

But… Even with all the rice and the beans, the experiences that we had caring for the sloths made it well worth it. We also got to meet some great people along the way, volunteers who were there like us to help care for animals who desperately needed it. Also if we hadn’t got sick, and hadn’t gone to “that” hotel at “that” time, we wouldn’t have met two new friends from British Columbia, Canada… that would make the next travel plans change from ideas to entirely possible…

I don’t think we’ll look at rice and beans the same way, again.