CATIE Visit- Thursday

Once again this morning we got caught in the protester traffic.  We thought we left early enough since we left at 7 am but they beat us out there.  Notice all the large trucks that are stuck there as well as everyone who has given up on it and just talking on the side of the road. 

Since we were there for awhile Steve and I decided to have fun with it and take some pictures like we were actually participating.  The protesters actually thought it was funny and were laughing at us.  Good photo opportunity though.  I also have to mention that we saw on the news tonight about an hour after we left this site the police force brought in a huge team of people and broke up this dispute.  They have a lot of videos going around now of the police using the tear gas but otherwise very "good" means to get this group separated since they were interrupting so much commerce between the capital and the port.  So the bridge is back up in operation today!

Once we got through the road block we drove about an hour and a half over to CATIE which is a major research university for graduate and Ph. D level students. 

Here at CATIE they have a lot of research going on and one of the research project is cacao and trying to get a large genetic base of cacao.  This is cacao that was recently picked and this is what is used for making chocolate!

This is the entrance to the large collection of plants.

We also had the opportunity to visit the botanical garden and this is one of the orchids that we found. 

Can you see me?  This is a patch of some giant bamboo that was in the middle of the garden.

Here is another plant that we saw in the garden today which looks very familiar to me but I'm not sure where I have seen it before. 

Mom this one is for you since I know it is your favorite flower, sorry I couldn't get it rotated :-)

This is what they call the cannon ball tree which rightfully fits its name!

This is a huge grasshopper that I found on one of the coffee trees in their coffee plantation.  They are doing a lot more research on coffee as well trying to get more genetic base and variety. 

In order to fund 20% of the school and research they have commercial operations and dairy farming is one of these.  They sell the milk to Dos Pinos in Costa Rica. 

This is the first building that was build at this facility which is located in a beautiful part of the country in the mountains. 

This is a picture of just one of the many beautiful arrangements they had around campus using all natural plant material from all around their campus.

Today (Friday) we will be visiting a FUNDECOR site again as well as going back for a quick visit to La Selva before we end in San Jose where we will be stationed the next two days.