The Poas Volcano

Having been befriended by Juan, a very friendly taxi-driver, yesterday, we used him again today for our trip up into the mountains and to the volcano - cheaper than a guided tour and far more pleasant than being herded around like a flock of sheep! An almost 100 km round trip, but starting around 900 m above sea-level and ending at the lookout point over the active crater at just over 2500 m. Quite a steep and winding road up to the volcano, with many spectacular views, enormous coffee plantations on the lower slopes, then strawberry fields (forever?), then pine and fern forest, some of it quite stunted because of acid rain caused by the steam and gas continuously flowing out of the active crater lake.... We accused Juan of taking us on the special tourist scenic route, so beautifully neat, tidy, unlittered and almost manicured the whole road was and not a slum or untended shack in sight. But no, he maintained that this is how it is in Costa Rica!

A pleasant km or so walk from the park camping ground to the lookout point, and there she blew in all her glory, the active Poas crater, filled with toxic hot water, supposedly one of the world's most acidic lakes, steaming away and giving off its toxic fumes, so that the area immediately around the crater is bare and the nearby forest extremely stunted. Impressive proportions, the main crater about 1.5 km wide and 300 m deep,,, The last major eruption, sending ash 8 km up, was in 1910, but there is constant activity - Poas was the epicentre of 6.1 magnitude earthquake in 2009, killing at least 40 people in nearby areas and there was also minor eruptive activity then, while the lake often erupts in a geyser-like fashion. All very impressive! (And smelly too, the sulphurous fumes catching the back of your throat... After suitableapprecative  grunts and oohs and ahs and picture taking, athletic Ros continued on a circuit to an even higher, but now inactive crater, which last erupted in 7500 Bc, while Juan & David ambled back to the visitor's centre for a well-earned coffee. Then down back the road, taking pics of rhubarb-like "sombrillo de pauvre" - "poor man's umbrella", before stopping for lunch at a big coffee plantation. All in all quite a day!

Museums of San Jose

Forgot to mention in our shock at arriving in CR with the President that the country's immigration procedure at San Jose Airport (About the size of Sola Stavanger) was the easiest, quickest and friendliest we have ever experienced.... And the friendly approach continued today, wherever we were, whatever we did during our visit to San Jose itself - described by Lonely Planet as "not a pretty city, what with the unremarkable concrete structures, clogged pedestrian arcades and fast-food monstrosities dominating its cityscape". A pretty jaundiced view in our opinion - we visited 2 world-class museums and ate a very good "menu del dia" lunch at what was a very Costa Rican and not fast food restaurant - the owner chatting afterwards to be sure we had enjoyed our meal.

The first museum, dedicated to "Pre-Colombian Gold" (www.museosdelbancocentral.org)
and a prize-winner on Tripadvisor, in fact gave an excellent overview of life in the region before the Spanish conquest - clearly showing a well-organised and not at all primitve society, in strong contrast to the European thugs who raped and pillaged the place! A view strengthened by the Jade Museum, (http://portal.ins-cr.com/portal.ins-cr.com/Social/MuseoJade/) which showed how this semiprecious stone had great religious and ceremonial use and significance in the pre-conquest societies.

Ah well, back to geology tomorrow and a visit to the active Poas volcano, less than 50 km from San Jose - after almost 45 years as a qualified geologist, this will be my first visit to an active volcano!!!!!! 

So here we are on a trip again, what a welcome!

Costa Rica: A Good Place to Be a Woman

10 SEPTEMBER 2012 NO COMMENT

Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla Miranda

Mary Liepold
Editor in Chief

Here’s the data. Costa Rica ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the international women’s bill of rights, in 1986, and its Optional Protocol in 2001. (The US has yet to ratify it.)

An Act Promoting the Social Equality of Women became law in 1990. The Beijing Declaration and World Platform for Action that followed the 4^th World Conference on Women in 1995 inspired a new series of laws and policies in Costa Rica. Its National Institute for Women (INAMU), established in 1998, oversees all policies that affect women. A cabinet-level Minister on the Status of Women serves as Executive Secretary of INAMU.

• At least in the formal sector, Costa Rican women earn 90% of what their male counterparts earn.
• Women hold 39% of the seats in the national legislature.
• The 2012 Social Institutions and Gender Index ranks Costa Rica #2 overall among 86 non-OECD countries, up from 5^th place in 2009.

“Non-OECD” means that Costa Rica, like first-place Argentina, is classified as a developing country. What’s more, it’s a Latin country, one of those whose language and culture gave us the word machismo, and its complement, marianismo.

So, yes, there’s a gap between law and practice. Those of us who live in one of the 34 OECD member, or most-developed countries, know we have gaps here too―some big enough to swallow lives.

Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla Miranda is committed to closing the gaps. “Women continue receiving less salary for the same kind of job,” she said in a 2011 Forbes interview. “Women have a higher unemployment rate in our country. When you analyze the composition of poverty, you will find that most of the families in poverty are being run by a woman. Also, a big issue is violence against women.”

Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve learned about policy and practice, from both research and conversations with those who know the country best.

Family Status

In 1973 Costa Rica became one of the first countries in the world to pass legislation granting parental authority to both spouses. This law also provides for equality in the case of divorce. A 1995 law on common-law marriages took it a step further, providing for equality between cohabiting partners. The 2001 Responsible Paternity Act outlaws discrimination against women with children born out of wedlock or not recognized by the father.

The government of this predominantly Catholic country considers sexual and reproductive health a fundamental right. Women’s access to contraception is guaranteed by the General Health Act, and the Ministry of Health runs outreach programs to increase the use of reproductive health services, including access to contraception. According to the CIA’s 2012 World Factbook, Costa Rica’s birthrate is 1.92, below ZPG and slightly below the US rate of 2.06.

The legal marriage age is 18, but 15-year-olds can wed if both parents give permission. In 1986, 20% of marriages involved teens. By 2010 that number had been almost halved, to 10.5%.

And who does the dishes? As in the US and other “developed” countries, the domestic power balance is tilting toward equality, and it’s still far from ideal.

Education, Employment, and Economic Status

According to UNICEF, enrollment and attendance rates at primary and secondary schools are higher for Costa Rican girls than for their brothers. The high school enrollment rate is 92% for girls and 87% for boys. High school attendance rates, at 65% and 59% respectively, are lower for both genders but follow the same proportion.

The rate of women’s employment grew 26% between 2000 and 2012, according to an August 2012 World Bank report. The law requires that Costa Rican women and men receive equal pay for equal work. Women are entitled to four months paid maternity leave at 100% of wages, plus three months more in case of medical necessity. Half the payment comes from the national social security system and half from the woman’s employer, as long as she was contributing to Social Security for six months in the year preceding pregnancy. When that’s not the case, the employer pays two-thirds of her salary. Pregnant or nursing mothers cannot be fired except for cause, like any other employee. These rules apply only to women in the formal economy, and not to the many in domestic service or the informal economy.

Even domestic workers have some security, though. Along with Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Panama, Costa Rica has instated means-tested national pension programs for both women and men that do not depend on money paid in. This is especially important for women because we live longer than men. The nation’s poverty rate is just 2%, according to the PensionWatch Country Fact File.

Political Power

Central America

Observers note that quotas have been more effective in Costa Rica than in any democratic country anywhere. President Chinchilla Miranda, who took office in 2010, is the nation’s first woman president, one of three currently serving in Latin America and twenty worldwide. The deputy chief justice of the Supreme Court is a woman and so are the presidents of the High Court of Civil Appeals and the Constitutional Chamber and the ambassador to the US.

The country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) now requires that a minimum of 50% of candidates for elective office be women and, significantly, that women’s names be placed alternately with men’s on the ballot for each party slate. In August the TSE reported that 49% of the candidates running for office in the December local government elections are women. Women are almost 39% of the legislature, holding 22 of 57 seats and including the vice president of the assembly, the government party leader, and nine legislative committee chairwomen. (The percentage is 17% in the US.) There were 7 women in the 21-member cabinet as of May 7, 2012.

Violence against Women and Children

The National Institute for Women is particularly active on issues relating to violence against women, providing services to victims as well as advocating for better legal and practical protection. Sex work is legal, but pimping is against the law. Sexual violence remains a problem, with some evidence that rates have increased in recent years. Trafficking in women and even children is a growing concern.

The burgeoning eco-tourism, which has been a boon to the economy, brings sex tourism as well. Prisons, including the women’s prison, are overcrowded, mostly because of drug-related offenses. In the Forbes interview, President Chinchilla described her country as “caught between the producers in the South and the consumers in the North.” She was talking about drug traffic, but it’s also true of traffic in persons.

These are serious, serious problems. “It’s easy to come and do bad stuff because there aren’t a lot of police outside the capital,” says Sharon Ann Wildey, an American resident of Costa Rica who loves the country and its people and generously shared her impressions. Even one incident of sexual violence or child abuse is one too many. Yet there is no widespread impunity, according to the US Department of State’s 2010 Human Rights Report.

Ticos support their government because it provides them with education and what Wildey calls “heroic” medical care. They don’t want government involved in their everyday lives, and outside the capitol and the coastal regions, where crime and police power are both concentrated, they have a rough, macho way of taking matters into their own hands. Overall, perhaps it’s still a good thing to have more teachers than police, as my previous article suggested.

Or maybe not. Is Costa Rica one of the best places in the world to be a woman? Newsweek’s 2011 list of the 20 best places had no winners in Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America. Can a country that loves peace be a bad place to be a woman? What do YOU think? We’d love to hear your opinions.

Home to early signs of spring...

We finally arrived home 39 hours after leaving Lane Cove, feeling pretty shattered! Most of the trip went well, the drive through Sydney a fine Sunday morning's cruise down the Tollway, noticing our last wonderful aboriginal placename on the way - Woolloomooloo! (look it up - there are lots of different explanations for that name!). A last look at Sydney centre in the haze, then flying very comfortably on the the top floors of 747s on the two long flights, with spectacular views of the Ozz interior and the Timor Sea on the first flight before the sun went down.

Delicious Thai noodle soup for breakfast on the second flight and then everything went haywire when we arrived in Frankfurt - our and many other Lufthansa flights cancelled because of a strike by handlers (wot, a strike in Germany?!!!). We finally got a flight 4 hours later, so that we were waiting in an overfilled lounge for several hours, along with many stressed-up and impatient passengers, like us on diverse stand-by lists, but glad our airmiles at least gave us the luxury of the lounge in our jet-lagged state.....

And home to small piles of melting snow, temperatures above zero and of course thick fog in the fjord just below home, boats hooting and tooting along the narrow channel in and out of Oslo. Ground outside still frozen solid of course, no question of work in the garden yet, and forecast of more cold weather to come. At least I can start sorting my seeds, sowing tomatos, leeks, celery, tagetes and all the other plants that make up a Norwegian gardening summer, dreaming of sunny days along the Great Ocean Road, our breakfasts with roos, the raucous kookaburra dusk chorus...

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And the next trip? Perth to Adelaide and return via Uluru, the Flinders and the Nullarbor? Or Cairns to Cape York and return? Or more of the Kimberley? We'll see, but there'll definitely be another trip and it definitely will be out in wilder areas than this one - watch this spot!

Back in Sydney...

It's now Saturday, we're in Sydney, our last full day here, leaving on the Bangkok flight tomorrow afternoon after dropping off the camper van and having driven almost 6,000 km...... On Thursday we reluctantly decided to leave the grazing roos and the paradise that Bendalong was and head for Sydney on the last 260 km of this coastal tour. Dropped in at Kiama - my first stop long ago - now in lovely weather and the blowhole blowing magnificently!

Then along yet more spectacular coast, in some places on viaducts as the cliffs are so steep. Stopped at Bulli Lookout (last time I was here it was in the clouds), looking down at a light plane flying along the cliffs below us, counting all the 15-16 cargo ships lined up to collect their cargos of coal and grain from Wollongong, the 9th largest city in Ozz. Then on through the Royal National Forest, our last rollercoaster ride before hitting the traffic nightmare that is Sydney, miles of so-called "Freeway" with traffic lights every 100 metres or so. We'd decided to stay at a site in another National Forest Reserve - Lane Cove, an ecosite recommended by many, but on the north side of Sydney, while the airport is to the south...... Deeply regretted now, as is the move from Bendalong! Ah well, next time we'll just keep out of big ciites as much as possible!

We took the metro into central Sydney yesterday, visited the Botanical Gardens (highly recommended!) and the iconic Opera House built out over the harbour, with the equally iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background. Then hightailed it out of town, feeling very much out of place and country peasantish among smart-suited business yaps and elegant totties dressed to the nines flitting between the Prada and Gucci outlets..... Enjoyed much more the kookaburra raucous evening chorus and Ros's night walk through the park with a ranger pointing out all the nested birds and the possums and bandicoots going about their nocturnal business (though not caring much for the snake and spider stories!)

Today packed and got ready for prompt departure tomorrow, bought access to the Tollways to avoid the worst tr affic back through Sydney to the airportand then took what we hoped would be a relaxing ride to a beach, but which developed into yet another traffic-jammed point-to point between traffic lights....... Back to the haven of Lane Cove and then a delicious farewell meal at a local Japanese Restaurant!

Across the Dividing Range

From Corryong on Monday, we carried on up the upper reaches of the Murray River, finally crossing it and over the state line from Victoria into New South Wales, all in gorgeous rolling pastoral country, climbing slowly into the northernmost extent of the Snowy Mountains. These reach up to over 2200 metres, with the tree line at 185o. We didn't get so high, but after a serious stoop down a winding road cut into the the sides of the gorge down to a hydroelectric dammed reservoir and then back up again along an equally hair-raising route up the other side, we finally reached the highest point on our journey at 1500 metres in relatively open heathland. There's snow and skiing conditions up here in winter, so that there are turnouts along the road for motorists to fit their snowchains, all quite strange after our travels through summer Ozz!

Then down again and along rolling valleylands to Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory, ceded to the Commonwealth by New South Wales as a compromise after deadlock between Sydney and Melbourne as to choice of capital city in an agreement of 1908. Work began on building Canberra (named after the Ngambari, a local indigenous tribe) using a masterplan for a garden city radiating out from a hub along a series of grand avenues in 1913. Work went slowly, hindered by the 1930s depression and the 2cnd World War and it reportedly still had the air of a small country town in the late 1940s, but now it and suburbs have reached almost 400,000 population, spread out between the gardens, memorials and hills, nestled betwen the eastern and western parts of the Dividing Range at 600 m over the sea. A very pleasant and impressive place indeed, and not at all like the image I mistakenly had of a boring ostentatious necropolis! (Too much attention paid to Bill Bryson, who was clearly very bored by the place!) - the picture below taken along Anzac Avenue towards the Parliament Building.

We had a lovely evening with Becky and Phil, friends from Timor-Leste, newly moved to Canberra - Becky now working on the Solomon Islands bench of AusAid and Phil combining his IT expertise with his biking passion, now up and down the hills in and around Canberra. A very pleasant reunion after almost 5 years, a great barbie courtesy of Phil and a lovely bed and shower after weeks of campervan life! Then yesterday Tuesday another reunion, this time after 46 years! But first we skimmed through the National Gallery's Aboriginal Art exhibit, highly impressive, some works with highly critical themes - see below, with the gallery's and the artist's commentary!

"Daniel Boyd’s gloriously tongue-in-cheek appropriation of the Aboriginal languages map in Treasure Island 2005 seems particularly relevant with the recent reprobation of Indigenous land in the Northern Territory by the Federal Government, and with the minerals boom that Australia is experiencing, making only a very few people wealthy – and Indigenous people are rarely part of the newly rich. "With the European nations vying for ‘unoccupied lands’ (‘terra nullius’) the race was on to find the fabled ‘Great Southern Land’ and nothing was to stand in the way of obtaining it, not even a complex culture tens of thousands of years old. Intentions to me seemed dishonest and dishonourable, traits I found too similar to modes of operation related to piracy. Being so closely intertwined in the fabric of the British nation, the process of the colonisation of terra nullius allowed me to experiment and explore different subject matter under the blanket of piracy and construct an alternate version of our history. Introducing elements of piracy such as the parrots and [eye-]patches allowed me to deconstruct the romantic notions that surround the act of our colonisation and reconstruct them from an Aboriginal perspective".Daniel Boyd, 2006...."

Anyway, after this cultural interlude, we met up with Russ Temple, classmate of David in the Manchester Geology Honours bachelors programme from 1961 to 1964 and we haven't met again since graduation in 1964, although Russ did work in Stavanger for a while. He moved to Australia in 1969 and worked at the Bureau of Mineral Resources, now part of Geoscience Australia, before partial retirement some years ago (like David, we old geologists don't just retire, we keep plugging on....). Russ kindly drove us around the main sights of Canberra, then guided us out to and around the Geoscience Australia offices - impressive modern buildings, of course set in parkland - a beautiful setting for a great workplace (Ros had a lot of contact with them during the Timor stay and was most impressed by their efficient and friendly service...). A pleasant lunch reminiscing and catching up and then sadly it was onwards yet again, all too quickly....

Again over rolling tablelands over the eastern hills of the Dividing Range and then down yet another rollercoaster, back to the east coast which David drove down 4 weeks ago.... Past Bateman's Bay, where he stayed on Australia Day, past Ulladulla ("safe harbour"), Yatte Yattah ("2 waterfalls"), all in lovely fresh green countrysde, all the greener for all the rain they've had this summer, with wild lilies in bloom all along the road. A big contrast to the countryside between Melbourne and Adelaide! Finally out to Bendalong Tourist Park, one of the most beautiful sites yet (recommended by Becky & Phil - thank you!), surrounded by grazing roos and chattering multicoloured parrots.... All with an "ensuite " powered site - our private loo just by the van, more luxury.... Staying here for a final relax before the last leg into Sydney after another 630 km driving the last couple of days......

Up into the hills!

Covered 617 km today, first along the eastern end of the Great Ocean Road, cut into even more spectacular cliffs than we'd seen to the west, then past the famous surfing beaches south of Melbourne, then a long boring slog up the freeway past Melbourne itself to Wodonga (aboriginal for "bullrushes"), where we took the last 120 km along the Murray Valley Highway, another rollercoaster through the uppermost reaches of the Murray River system, almost 2500 km upstream from where we took the ferry across its outlet just over a week ago... Ending in the small town of Corryong (aboriginal for "bandicoot"), ready to drive over parts of the Great Dividing Range to Canberra, the federal capital, tomorrow.

Couldn't help thinking on the way how ironic it is that the towns we passed by alternate betwen copying their British namesakes, from Torquay to Glenrowan (where the Ned Kelly gang was finally mowed down) or are based on aboriginal names - from Geelong ("land, cliffs") to Wangaratta ("place where cormorants nest") to name just a couple. The aboriginal names are especially ironic as there are scarcely any aborigines left in this part of Ozz - largely wiped out by European diseases or massacres by the mid-1800s..... No wonder the bitterness of an art installation we photographed in Victor Harbor entitled "On occupied territory".....