May 16th, 2009 fmorgan
You mean I gotta take another bath!?
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When I lived in the USA, I was always conscious of what month it was because each month in the northeast is for me strongly associated with a certain weather pattern.
In Costa Rica, although I am rarely sure what month it is, I do know which season it is. It’s so obvious. Costa Rica only has two seasons: mud and dust.
The mud season. For eight months of the year, I walk out the door and put on my rubber boots (after shaking them in case something crawled in there during the night). Unlike when we lived in the USA, I don’t check outside to see how many layers to wear. Temperature really doesn’t change that much year round, so what you wear is pretty much the same everyday, except for what you put on your feet.
When the rainy season starts, we generally have two weeks of sogginess. There is daily rain, sometimes very heavy and at times with lightening. We get the same thing when the rainy season ends. During the rest of the seven months, at the Monte Cristo plantation where we live, generally there is a big rain twice a day, at about 4:00 in the morning and again in the afternoon. Inside the La Garita plantation, the rain comes every other day. This would seem to make for better living conditions at La Garita, but it really doesn’t, because the sunny day heats the soil, and the previous day’s rain creates a sauna. For living, I prefer a daily rain, but the trees don’t care.
The dust season. Activities change drastically during the dry season. We have more visitors and it is easier to do changes to infrastructure, like road and bridge building, etc. Construction is much, much easier when you aren’t ankle deep, or more, in mud. You can nearly double your time in construction if you do it during the wet season compared to the dry.
One very nice thing about the dry season is it coincides with the coolest time of the year. So the increased sun is offset by the cool winds that come from the North.
When the temperature may vary no more than 10 degrees Farenheit for the entire year, even a change of 5 degrees seems like a lot. So we all act like we’re freezing any time we have to put on socks.
The dry season is great for swimming in our river, as the water is low and crystal clear. Not so good for fishing though. A rain makes the water a little more murky and so helps hide me from the fish. Most of the Ticos go fishing during the dry season because there are places that are accessible no other time of the year except by horse.
We do the heavy pruning of the trees in the dry season. Mainly because bark is slippery and when we are pruning large trees, it is important that nothing is moving around. We can prune for form all year round.
This is good because the grass isn’t growing as much, so workers who would have been working at keeping the grass cleared around the trees can switch to pruning.
For tree owners, the best time to visit is during the dry season, which is also peak tourist time. This is because getting into the plantations is much easier. During the dry season, we can almost drive up to the individual trees. Otherwise, it can require quite a walk to get to the trees.
For riding a mountain bike, I prefer the rainy season, but after things have dried just a little. Just enough to keep the dust down, but not so much that all the rock is loose. One really nice thing about the dry season is you can ride on the pure dirt roads, which are nearly impassible even with a bike for much of the year. They come through with a grader and clean them up during the beginning of the dry season, giving a great opportunity to ride on hard-packed dry clay.
The truth is, I like both seasons. And the end of each, I am eager for the next. When the dust is everywhere, a nice rain is very welcome, and when you can’t seem to find a dry place anywhere, three months of no rain cures that feeling very well indeed.
Posted in clothes, cycling, finca, forestry, mud, nursery, roads, tree owners, trees | No Comments »
January 17th, 2008 fmorgan
I have always enjoyed dressing casual, and I am sure some would say too casual. Here in Costa Rica on the farms, I can go about as ragged as I dare without notice or comment. Inside my closet, there are two sections, clothes for the fincas and clothes fit to be seen in town. The ones for the fincas show how often I traverse barbed wire fences. Since the average Costa Rican is much smaller than I am, the spacing between the fence wires usually manages to snag the back of my T-shirt me as I try to pass through.
But I have nothing on the average campesino (country dweller). If you meet him inside his own farm, it will often appear that he has a few shirt fragments strategically placed around his upper body. Highly likely, many buttons are missing if the shirt ever had any, and the shirt tails are sort of tied around his waist to keep from flapping around and catching on things as he works (must be an OSHA standard). Many times, the pants are not jeans, but dress pants that have seen MUCH better days. Because campesinos work hard, the majority of them don’t have an ounce of extra weight on them. These means that they don’t expand out of their clothes. Once they achieve full growth, there is nothing to stop them from wearing a particular outfit until it falls off or rots from the climate.
If a belt exists, it is rope or something similar. Usually this isn’t used so much to hold up the pants as to attach the machete. When wearing a machete, you should attach it to the side opposite your dominate hand so you can quick draw it like a person would a sword (you never know when a fer-de-lance will need to be dealt with). To do otherwise marks you as a newbie. Yes, I wore one wrong for a couple of years — probably explains why they kept hiding it on me…a newbie with a machete is a thing to be feared.
Shorts are not uncommon, especially for construction people. Those who work in the field tend to go with long pants for protection, but not all the time. I have seen more owners wear shorts. Maybe it’s a status symbol to show that they aren’t hacking down brush alongside their workers. This is nice, because if I show up to the fincas on my mountain bike, I don’t look so out of place.
The favorite Costa Rican hat is the type worn by Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island. Usually the hats are in terrible condition, all frayed around the edges and pretty much as holey as the shirts.
The one item usually in good condition is the footwear, a pair of tall rubber boots. They are cheap and your feet are important. For 8 months of the year in our zone, you can expect to be in mud, so keeping your feet dry is critical. I would wear them too, but they don’t stock them in size 12 (46) — the largest size they sell is about a 10 1/2. To walk around in these boots all day, you have to have feet of steel or thick socks. I get blisters just looking at them.
New clothes are expensive here, but there are plenty of cheap used ones in the “American clothing” stores. These stores buy by the bale clothes from places like Goodwill in the USA. They sort out the clothes and sell them for about what you’d pay at Goodwill. It seems that a lot of shirts with sayings on them end up among these US castoffs, perhaps because they are too rude. Almost no one in the campo speaks or reads English — think of some of the things you have seen printed on T-shirts and imagine a person walking around in one of them without a clue what message he’s sending out to any unsuspecting English speaker he passes. My wife likes to offer to translate people’s shirts for them if they say something amusing, but she won’t say a word about some of them. Like when we went into a store where everyone is friendly and helpful all time, especially the owner, and were greeted with a T-shirt worn by the owner saying, “Ask someone who cares.” Or this one: One of our workers came up to greet us very respectfully in a T-shirt that says, “Your parents must have been siblings.” Sometimes it’s so hard to keep a straight face.
When I come off the farms caked with mud, immediately my jeans, shirt, and boots are grabbed and sent over to be cleaned. When they reappear, you wouldn’t know what they have been through except for a few new holes from the fences and some wear from the scrub brush and harsh bluing soap. Although to be filthy at the end of the day is considered normal, if I were to start the day that way it would shame the person who does the laundry.
Posted in campo, clothes, finca, style | No Comments »