this past weekend ride

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:35 am

about an hour away from san jose, on the way to the pacific coast, you can see the pacific ocean and the nicoya gulf, with some islands there,

but an hour later we left the panamerican highway, and make a right turn to small village named Miramar, something like look out to the sea,
passing that we found this river, crystal clear water

we saw these creatures from the bridge, they are basiliscus,
this particular ones are JesusChrist basyliscus, because they walk on water,
they look like small dinosaurus, the males have 3 crest along their bodies.

now where are way up in the mountains,

the hamburger factor destroyed a lot of these forest starting in the late 50's. the grass is called kikuyo, an it was brought from Africa

we get to the end of the asphalt, so time to turn around, we are way up at this point, need that altimeter that somebody is selling in the for sale forum

some places offer some amazing vistas, you can see the pacific coast, the gulf, the islands, this is the rainy season here, but i guess during the dry season, the sunsets may be awsome from here, i guess i need to be back, or buy some land around, which i think it may be not that expensive

i think my wife already picked the piece of land that she wants,

this the view to the other side

this is a closer look of what you see from up there

the day ended with a delicious lunch, with sea bass in hearts of palm sauce

hope you enjoy the pics, it-s great to ride our f's

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:07 am

Wow that is some beautiful countryside you have down there your a lucky man.

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:17 pm

what is the hamburger factor?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 4:57 pm

Beautiful pictures and nice to see the f used like this!

I think the grass is "Kikuyu" [like the tribe my sister-in-law is from] - is this deforestation for cattle farming?

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 4:01 am

bmcdonau wrote:

what is the hamburger factor?

,

in the late 50's, 60's and on, the different kinds of forest were destroy to enlarge the cattle fields to supply the Us. demand for burgers, back in the early '80, the rate consider was that 8 sq.ft. of rainforest had been destroyed for ever burger that had been produced.

most of the costarican cattle is fed on grass, and for that reason is kind of skinny, and its consider a low class beef. the final result is that the cattle is consider the final destruction of the costarican forest.
the beef turns out to be consider a second quality to be good for second quality ground beef, good for burger and cats and dogs food,
higher up in the mountains, we also have the dairy cattle, with other kinds of grass, like jaragua and para, grasses that can survive the fire and the overgrazing,
the acres up in these mountains support the highest number of head in the world,

also, if you see in the far out part of the second picture, there are some area cover with some black stuff, that area were some type of plant is growing, and no it's not what you are thinking,
these are leather leaf ferns, that is export it our for your flowers arragements,
and talking about ferns, here an example of something called tree fern, prehistoric plant, from dinosaurs time, it doesn-t produces flowers or any ffruit, and it gets dispered by spores

these grasses are so thick, that very few trees can grow thru them, there are seeds under that grass cover that can be on stand by for up to 50 years waiiting for a change to start growing,

you can see some cows and the electric fences, the lifespan of these kind of cattle is very short, because their legs cannot support that much weight

when you cut a tree in the temperate area, usually it's only just a tree, but you cut a tree in a rainforest, the tree is like an skyrise apartment building, with all kinds of stuff growing in them, plants, insects and many more tthings

these are bromeliads, also part of group known as air plants or epyphites, meaning that they get their nutiients from the air, most of the orchids are also air plants

even if you could replace the trees that takes hundreds of years to grow, you can never replaces all the differents kinds living at different levels of the rainforest,

sorry if this got kind of long

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 4:24 am

OMG!

WOW those pictures are fantastic. Thank you for sharing them with us. Very Happy

Dave

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 5:17 am

Awesome pics.

Don't apoligize for giving us some history....we need to hear the truth more often.

Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 2:51 pm

That was a great ride you had. Informative too, makes you want to ride more and tinker less. Still a lovely part of the world despite everything you told us. Have all the lessons been learned yet? What else is the country doing to redress the balance? Foxyj.

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 9:20 am

i see by the paper plates and other garbage that you get the same slobs we get here. hard to find a place that people go that there isnt someone dropping their trash on the ground we all walk on. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:41 pm

Those Cows look bloated, not meaty....

Still VERY COOL pics Tony...I think anyone of us would pick the same spot your Wife did...Awesome, Just Awesome. I thought Montana was Gods Country.

Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 7:02 pm

AWESOME Pics, Tony, enjoyed every minute! Like I'm sure you enjoyed the ride... No apology necessary, for sure (my wife will tell you that I get long winded, too!). We sometimes go to Mexico for vacation, but that's just a tourist trap (Puerto Vallarta), looks like you're "living the life", man. Ride safely.

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:56 am

Nice ride Tony.
I should really take some pictures of my countryside so you will really see how it should look Confused

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:53 am

that will be great, i love pictures, probably have like 15000,

and good to hear from you,

Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:22 am

Squatch71 wrote:

Those Cows look bloated, not meaty....

Still VERY COOL pics Tony...I think anyone of us would pick the same spot your Wife did...Awesome, Just Awesome. I thought Montana was Gods Country.

the cattle in the pictures are jerseys and holsteins, and we have them on the highlands, dairy cattle,

the first pictures are taken at much lower altitude where basically brahmas are fed on grass

here's one brahman with the national tree in the back, Guanacaste tree

many Latin American nations
including Costa Rica began or expanded cattle ranching as an
economic method for the obtaining of crucially needed foreign
exchange. The demand for beef in the United States was
extraordinarily high and these dollar strapped nations chose
clear-cutting and deforestation as the central formula to earn
dollars. In particular, Costa Rica deforested much of its
tropical rain forests and Latin America in general lost 11
percent of its rain forests to cattle ranching alone. The
Costa Rican government established specialized exchange rates
and credit instruments in order to help cattle ranchers expand
beef exports or attract new investors.

In sum, beef exports from our nation increased nearly 500
percent from the 1960's to the late early 1980's. Additionally,
cattle pasture land increased from 27 percent of land mass to
54 percent of total land mass. Deforestation and
pasturization of land in Costa Rica marks one the most
expansive and damaging environmental disasters recorded in
modern history, in terms of percentages.

The destructive process of deforestation due to cattle
ranching also has created another repercussion -- soil erosion.
Tropical rain forests have delicate ecosystems that also serve
to protect soils from substantial amounts of erosion. However
with the lost of forests, Costa Rica has reported considerable
amounts of top soil erosion consequently depleting the land of
its nutrients. The long-term effects of this depletion have
been the overall reduction of the land's productive life.

Approximately 2.2 billion metric tons of top soil have in
the aggregate been eroded in the countgry due
in so small part to the role of beef exports to the United
States. Ironically, Costa Rica today receives greater
earnings from the preservation of its rain forests than it did
from its exploitation and destruction.

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America, barely
seventy-five miles wide at its narrowest point. Yet, within
its narrow confines, Costa Rica possesses a remarkable
diversity of physical features and biological habitats. It has
sea coasts on both the Atlantic and the Pacific; four mountain
ranges; volcanoes, swamps, marshes. It
possesses three times as many species of birds as all of North
America.

Costa Rica denudes nearly 57,000 hectares of rain forest
each year. This is the highest total in the Western
Hemisphere. The Costa Ricans' rain forests are among the
worldþs richest ecosystems. In 1969, the government
established thirty-two national parks and reserves. This
amounts to approximately 10% of Costa Rica's national
territory. One of these parks, Corcovado, contains 161 square
miles of rain forest. Within this small area, about the size
of Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, there are 285 species of
birds, 139 species of mammals, 116 species of amphibians and
5,000-10,000 species of insects.

1 acre of forest = 800,000 lbs. of plants and animals
1 acre = 43,560 square feet
1 bovine = 200 lbs. of actual beef
200 lbs. beef = 800 4 oz. hamburgers
1 hamburger = 1/2 ton of forest products or 1000 lbs.
1 hamburger = 55 feet of forest

This shows the damage one hamburger wreaks on the rain
forest.

there are many factors that contributes, like the cultural factor

The beef industry and demand in the United States
represents a culture identification with institutions such as
the McDonald's hamburger. This has become an American symbol
of idealism -- the Earth simply is unable to sustain the meat
eating habits of billions and billions served

I can say that 25 years ago we were very concernd about the rainforest, and we thought that they were not going to be any left by the end of the century,
but a lot of progress has been made, a lot of new national parks, and wildlife reserves and refugiees has been created,
you can still see a lot of lumber trucks on the road, a lot of wood is being cut illegaly, a lot of hunters enters the protected areas to kill animals,
sometimes the provoke fires in some areas so the rangers get busy, and go and hunt in others,
some animals are probably gone forever, because they need huge territores for hunting, like the harpy eagle

the eagle could pick a monkey or a sloth from a tree, and lift it in the air,
the jaguars are endagered also, for the same reason,
but overall, i think the areas that are protected are in better shape than before