Donna Wootton: What is it about travel that inspires the muse?
Port Hope Author Donna Wootton reflects on her experience travelling with Horizons to Panama and Costa Rica in 2019.
All the travelers on the 2019 Panama & Costa Rica Educational Tour.
Goethe said that the highest goal humans can achieve is amazement. Can travel achieve this? Why limit oneself to a singular experience or repeat the familiar without cultivating others? Why settle with simply being a tourist?
Nowadays, travelers often go on adventures that pit them against the elements or that otherwise test their own limitations. Last February I chose to experience the foreignness of an unfamiliar country by signing on to travel with a local NGO that organizes exposure trips to Central America to educate participants in the work it does.
On the outskirts of Panama City I found Flor Eugenia, a slight woman with white hair who took the time to welcome me and my fellow travelers to the community she had founded in 1971. It is called Madras Maestras/Teachers Mothers. The women who are part of this community care for the children whose families have moved into the city from rural areas. We met the children and their mothers. We did not meet their fathers although there was some discussion about what these strong women are doing to get the men involved. Their culture still lacks liberal practices that attempt to equalize the domestic roles of child rearing. As a mother of two sons who can fix things around the house, garden, do the laundry, cook well, and care for children, I was struck by the imbalance and would encounter it in other indigenous cultures we visited.
It took years of dedication to keep this program going and make it work. In fact, it works so well the community school idea has spread across the country. Two visitors from the Philippines arrived while we were there. They were planning to open a Mothers Teachers school in their country. Weeks later, after I arrived home to Canada, I heard on the CBC radio that local neighbourhoods here want to create spaces where parents and children learn together. Touted as a progressive educational model it will succeed if we can support and sustain it like the community I had visited in Panama.
Madres Maestras staff Maria Villalobos and Flor Eugenia.
After Panama, our group continued to Costa Rica. We had the unique experience of crossing the border on foot. With our luggage in tow, we left behind one bus to board another. Awareness dawned. Millions cross borders on foot every day. They do not choose where to land. Unlike us, they are not tourists. Such privilege to be one or the other belongs to the likes of me and those of my fellow travelers who paid our way. Now on the bus, I was full of memories of a Panama outside the familiar. Yes, I had visited the Panama Canal, Casio Viejo (Old Panama), and seen the new Panama of international riches including modern high rises and new bridges. Yet what I remembered most was warm ocean waves rolling into shore along a shallow stretch of a sandy beach in the province of Chiriqui and the brilliant expanse of stars positioned in a sky close to the equator. Companionship brought warmth, sparks, laughter.
My reward for venturing off the beaten path was the amazing beauty of the south Pacific coast of Costa Rica. The OSA Peninsula, where mostly locals visit, is home to the Bahia Ballena National Park, a vast protected marine and biological reserve. Now I have travelled to the east coast of Canada and seen puffins and porpoises, to the west coast and seen eagles and whales, to the Galapagos and seen boobies and dolphins, but here, in Costa Rica, one boat excursion brought sights to equal those and more. Breaching humpbacks so close we could reach out and almost touch them, colonies of birds across the water from howling monkeys, and a tidal formation in the shape of a whale’s fin, a fluke. Total amazement!
Travelers on the Whale Watching tour in Osa Peninsula, Puntarenas, Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is known for its waterfalls. Our group visited them in both Costa Rica and Panama. Despite being told the trail was challenging, I was determined to get to Ngobe-Bugle, our very first visit to a waterfall. I joined the young students and seasoned hikers. To top off the challenge it was a windy day. At one turn a fierce gust slammed me against a rock and pulled my sunglasses off my head. When I reached for them, an indigenous guide raised his palm indicating for me to stop. He nimbly retrieved them. That’s when I realized I had a following. A long line of locals wearing only flip flops giggled. I was grateful, if a little embarrassed. They were looking out for me, an old lady in hiking shoes unused to the steep terrain, rocky ground and narrow path. The joy of the plunge was worth the effort.
The ancient waterfall on Ngöbe-Buglé territory.
No surprise to learn that fish farms are catching on in Central America. The main fish cultivated are tilapia and fresh- water shrimp. Where I live there is a local trout farm that is sustainable. The dish is popular in restaurants that advertise environmentally friendly produce and local products. In Costa Rica we visited a fish farm in Boruca which is an indigenous reserve. The family working this farm were basically squatters on their own land that was once occupied by non- indigenous cattle farmers. The set up reminded me of many farm-to-table initiatives. Here, water comes from a spring in the hills where there’s a waterfall. This irrigation system also allows for the building of greenhouses and the establishment of vegetable patches in the future. So, goodbye cattle farmers. Hello sustainable production for local consumption.
The sustainable fish farm project led and executed by Horizons’ local partner Mano de Tigre.
On our first day in the capital city of San Jose, I woke up early. Outside our hotel the street was busy with people heading off to work. I felt safe joining the throngs who were walking in sunshine. Only one block away I came across a plaza with art installations that resembled the works of Henry Moore. Heidi, a mature student who was also with the tour, saw me and waved. We were both full of delight to find ourselves in this magical place with an extensive sculpture exhibit of Jiminez Deridia. All the bronze sculptures that lined the plaza had figures with spheres. Earlier on our trip we had been introduced to the phenomenon of stone spheres that litter the countryside in Costa Rica. There is much speculation about how they came to be. Were they carved by ancient people? Did they drop from the cosmos? Were they formed naturally? Later that day we visited the national museum and saw an exhibit in their central garden of varying sizes of stone spheres and an exhibit indoors on their origins. We also witnessed more gigantic sculptures being erected outside the museum in Democracy Park. Before leaving the national site, we took a group photo in front of one of the impressive sculptures.
Early the next morning, our last before departing for the airport, I again left the hotel to take a walk. Outside I came across a work crew with men unloading more sculptures from a flatbed truck. They were busy installing another large piece. Here was the evidence of a country that values the art of its citizens. Such effort, such cost, such attention, by both the creator and the citizens. I wished I could have stayed longer to delve deeper into the phenomenal work by this celebrated sculptor. Yet I was content. I took away the warmth of the people of Central America. I experienced rural and urban lifestyles. I left having achieved my goal to experience the unfamiliar and to be amazed.
One of the Jiménez Deredia’s sculptures on display in San Jose, Costa Rica.