I took a couple of shots of rum out of a bottle like this the night I stayed in Los Planes. When the bottle was passed the following morning before breakfast I gave it a precautionary glance and wisely decided against it. Orange juice filled the bill just fine, straight out of the Dos Pinos [...]

There’s a family at Campanario that takes care of all matters related to the field station, including cooking, cleaning, maintenance and construction. The women who work at Campanario have a brother who is a really good guy with a hard work ethic and good sense of humor. His name is Chango, and I see him [...]

 Arnulfo, in the purple socks, is the guide and naturalist at Campanario. He also lives at the biological field station. Arnulfo has a sixth sense and sees eyes watching us as we hike and smells the scent of nearby animals before the rest of us spot anything.  Jorge is our nearest neighbor heading south. He [...]

 Among the contemporary voices for the Earth, none resonates like that of Thomas Berry. His teachings and writings have inspired a generation’s thinking about humandkind’s place in the Earth community and the universe, engendering critical acclaim and a documentary of his life and work. Berry opens our eyes to the full dimensions of the ecological [...]

  Maria invited me to her home in Heredia over the weekend, which is about half an hour bus ride from San Jose, and oh my did we ever have a good time singing up a storm at karaoke and me learning how to dance the Salsa and Merengue.  The dances here are beautiful and [...]

 Idalieth, Olgalidia and Stephanie (l-r) are the queens of Campanario. They reign! These women are incredible. They build cabins, construct furniture, crack open coconuts with machetes, sew curtains, make jewelry from sea shells and beads, cook, clean, help bring in boats, well you get the idea. They run the place. Idalieth lives at Campanario in [...]

  After I bought some hand-crafted macrame ankle bracelets woven with beads and sea shells from the Kuna woman you see here, she allowed me to take her photograph. The Kuna Indians are a strongly-knit tribal society living on a chain of islands called San Blas in Panama. They still live much the same way as [...]

 While in Panama City I went to see Dr. Juan Byrne, an iridologist. He examined my eyes to see where there might be problems lurking in my body. Being without holistic nutrition for three months, and eating almost exclusively beans and white rice, I had become slightly concerned about my health. I knew an iridologist [...]

I struck up conversation with a vivacious woman named Kathleen at an art gallery in the Monteverde Cloud Forest yesterday afternoon, and a short time later, while hiking the dirt road back to our respective lodgings, she invited me to eat dinner with her and the 12 women she is traveling with from California and [...]

Just a short walk down the dirt path and gravel road from where I’m staying in Monteverde is a non-profit cooperative of artists. Originally, when eight women formed the coop in 1982 it was for women artists only. But since then the coop has grown to include 89 women and three men. It’s quite a [...]