. . .

Today I ve got back to San Jose from my bicycle trip. The route was way longer then I expected. According to my road-signs calculation I ve cycled around 950 km in the last 16 days. Since I had two days where I did not cycled 67 km on average. I m estimating my longest day on 110 km. So it s less then I ve did on my trip in France where Chris and I made 125 km on average.

Anyway one point about traveling by bicycle is to decelerate the speed of our life and move with muscle power. After New Years in Bocas del Toro I made my way to various Farms in the southern Caribbean I ve met up with a friend I know from the Critical Mass in San José. We ve chated briefly on a concert of Sonambulo and I invited her to join me on my trip. Since she already had plans for New Year we agreed that she would join me in Puerto Viejo for the last part of the journey.

I did not expected her to join since in general a lot of ideas and compromises are made here in Costa Rica but they do not really get realised very often. Not so this time. I called her on the first of January and after smooth some doubts she joined me from the 4th on. The first day we made it to Puerto Limon and had dinner in the Restaurant based in the Black-Star-Line, an old building named after the organisation founded by Marcus Garvey.

The day after we passed through the American Zone of Puerto Limon, which describes the area of the former United Fruit Company infrastructure,  and made our way to Siquirres. From there we climbed up to San José passing Turrialba and Cartago and the highest point of the trip (~1500 m).

Between Turrialba & Cartago

On Sunday I m going to the Finca Sonador for around 5 weeks. I m not gonna have any Internet Connection there so don t expect fast answers to any kind of requests.

I ve crossed the mountains and my ass hurts!

Thats why I m gonna take a day off and take the boat to Bocas de Torro today.

On the first of january I m probably crossing back into Costa Rica again and visit the people of the Finca Tocori Verde but maybe step by Finca Punta Mona before.

If anybody is around Bocas right now search me I m gonna be in one of the cheap hostels

Approximtelly 450 km passed and I ve hit Panama today.

No intention to spend a lot of time in this Internet Cafe just thought it might be nice to leave a note.

Tomorow it s time for climbing mountains -> Changuinola!

Take care - it could be your son!

PS: For the techies I ve changed my rolling-element bearing between the pedals becuase they ve been totally broken. And yes  – thanks Dad now I m wearing a long Shirt which covers my arms. Sometimes the easiest solutions just don t come to my mind

The Plan:

The Tool:

Start: 23.12.09

End: <09.01.10 …

Like most of the reasonable people predicted the COP15 did not reach a progressive and legal binding agreement in Copenhagen. The promised “Hopenhagen” was not participative and not inclusive. It was not about finding solutions for a global crisis. It was a struggle between the rich and the poorer countries about economic development.

It is important to note, that the developing countries do no beg for help but demanded for reparations or like they put it “pay our climate debt“. In the end it s about the same thing – who is getting more money out of the summit. Compared to the vast amounts spend on bailing out banks to “solve” the financial crisis and the thousands of billion dollars spend every year especially by NATO countries on military expenses the offer to save the climate was a bad, a very bad joke.

The official summit kept on debating the “false solutions” like carbon trade or bio fuels instead of listening to the hundreds of thousands voices on the streets of Copenhagen and at the Klimaforum09. Voices which traveled often hundreds or thousands of kilometers, not rarely on their own expenses because they had something to say and live already the consequences of climate change.

These voices addressed the real concerns of worlds citizens and proposed solutions based on their local experiences. There have been a Cuban delegation talking about their experiences with oil scarcity after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Grass roots organisations planting their own food in urban gardens in London. Agriculture has to be in the hands of small farmers in order to empower people and combat climate change – as well in Europe!
They demanded to decentralise the energy system and bring the power back into the hands of communities. There are already initiatives to bring the power back into peoples hands. For example the German cooperative “Energie in Bürgerhand” (Energy in hands of citizens) tries to create a huge fund to buy shares of the Thüga in order to have a say in the boards of the company. The cooperative will invest in renewable energy and tries to influence the policy of the Thüga away from nuclear power and fossil energy.
Already on their way to Copenhagen the caravan coming from Geneva was able to see the infrastructure in Freiburg where a syndicate buys houses to withdraw them from the market and have people living in their own houses.
There are countless examples of alternatives but the politicians did not want to listen to the voices on the streets.

The Voices of this massive amount of people from every corner of the world were not just ignored by the elite gathering at the Bella Center. They first tried to keep critical voices out of the country by interrupting the Schengen Agreement and closing all borders. Then they excluded in the second week various critical NGO’s and hindered others to hand out information material inside the Bella Center. Demonstrations have been violently repressed on almost every single day of the summit. People have been pre-emptively arrested for no obvious reasons. Accommodation of activists has been raided on several occasions by the police [1,2].

“This is what Earth democracy looks like.”
Vandana Shiva in front of 100 000 people outside the Danish parliament, 12.12.09

One of the most important conferences in the last decades.

Independent News:

• iCOP15 [mostly en]
• Democracy Now! [en] | [es]
• indymedia linksunten [de, en]
• Freie Radios [de]
• KanalB [de]

Most of the people living or traveling in Latin American countries know them:

Electroduchas

It s tricky for foreigners to figure out how to take a hot shower (less water -> higher temperature).
In Europe we are used to hot water in abundance in our homes at every hour of the day. In colder areas of Latin America one of the first question of travellers searching for a hostel is: “Do you have gas heated water?” because the Electroduchas don t have enough power to heat the cold water up.

I ve wondered about that a lot. Some houses have water heaters that consistently heat more water so you can have a convenient shower but they still do it with electricity. Which is pretty bad because most of the electricity (coal, gas, oil, nuclear) is made by heating water up and accelerating a turbine which generates electricity. This electricity is then transported to the household and used for heating water again. Very very ineffective. Our house does not have these consistent water heaters and our automatic cutout flipped twice already because showers used at the same time need more then 10 000 W of electric power which is dangerous in these kind of electric systems.

My Dad has put a solar heating system on our roof and since then we ve got water thats even more hot then it used to be with our oil-fired system. In Morocco I ve seen a lot of compact Solar Heating Systems on the roofs. Costa Rica, and especially San Jose, is not the same climate as Marrakech but still it should work.

So I tried to figure out how to get a solar system installed in Costa Rica. The patron of the house I m living right now wants to make a renovation of the entire house in January so I thought it might be worth investigating a little bit. Google didn t helped me a lot in the search – or say not at all. Commercials on roads were kind of misleading and most of the solar panels installed have been imported by the owner from the U.S. or Europe. I ve as well checked the D.I.Y. options but since I m moving out here soon and the renovation will happen a few months later i droped that option.

Finally I ve found a house in Moravia which had a system installed which looks quite similar to the ones I ve known from Morocco. I ve went there three times over the last two months and finally someone was there who gave me the information I was looking for.

They ve got there system installed 5 months ago by a company called E.C.G. which does offer the service of installation of solar systems. They ve visited houses in the mountains where the systems of E.C.G. are installed and talked to the owners. The awesome feedback from them convinced the family in Moravia to install one on their own. Now they ve got hot water for 6 persons in their house without any problems.

Because of Visa regulations I had to leave Costa Rica for 72 hours in order to get a new tourist visa.

I choose to visit the Solentiname Islands in Nicaragua. I ve left Thursday afternoon by bus to Los Chiles in order to catch the boat to Solentiname on Friday. Unfortunately I could not get across the border before 1 pm when the only boat to San Carlos leaves.

Cueing in front of Nicaraguan migration I ve listened to a conversation by two Americans. They were going to the Islands I wanted to go and had a boat. After a short introduction they gave me a ride. In exchange I helped them to unload the boat when we got to the Island. They are both working for an NGO on the Islands working in education.

I ve spent some very very calm days on these Islands with a little excursion to Papaturro on the southern shore of the Lake of Nicaragua. I ve went there in order to see a soccer game between two teams from the islands and two teams of the Costa Rican Side north of Upala.

The teams already played a couple of times against each other. Normally when the teams from Nicaragua want to get to the match they have to walk 2 hours through knee-deep mud in mangrove jungle in order to get to the soccer field. Clandestine obviously. This time they tried to do it officially and rented a boat and a truck to cross by a small migration post.
They ve rejected the first soccer team so the second one did not even tried to enter.

Conclusion: Next time they have to walk through dangerous swamps and get exhausted to the matches. Not talking about returning without daylight and the snakes in these jungles.

Well the player took it without big discussion (I was quite upset) and they got drunk on the way back. One even fell out of the boat while playing around with his mates.

On Tuesday morning I went back to Costa Rica and found out that the Costa Rican authorities get more and more paranoid.
After they introduced a Police Checkpoint north on Cahuita on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and the long ago established checkpoint between Peñas Blancas and Liberia they now have one between Los Chiles and Ciudad Quesada.

The president of Costa Rica, Peace Nobel prize winner Oscar Arias, describes his country as the “most pacific country in the world”. In 1949 Costa Rica abolished the army under José Figueres Ferrer. Even though this so called “most pacific country in the world” manages somehow to be the biggest importer of arms per capita in Central America according to a report of the UNDP.

In every damn village the bus stoped I ve seen at least one police officer and cycling through San Jose, especially around the “Coca Cola” area on almost every corner you can see a police unit. Often searching suspicious persons, mostly people with Nicaraguan appearance.

The actual government of Oscar Arias tries furthermore to pass the budget for the Dirección de Inteligencia y Seguridad (DIS), something like the Costa Rica CIA. This agency has no obligation to report there activities to anyone in the country and the institution, secondary to the ministry of the presidency, is headed by president Osacar Arias brother, Rodrigo Arias. Nobody knows what they are doing with the money – there is no control of this agency at all. Thats why several parties from the opposition demand the abolishment of this agency.

No Border! No Nation! Fight Repression! Fight Racism!

I ve been on a concert of Ska-P and Die Toten Hosen today. Actually I ve not seen quite a lot from Die Toten Hosen. Theybasicly stoped playing when I arrived (30 min too late). So they ve played maximum half an hour or lets say 5 songs. Pretty low for a Band coming from Germany all the way to Costa Rica. Anyway I was not there to see them but Ska-P.

Even though I ve been kind of sick (stomach) I ve went. When can you see two good bands for ~25 €?! Besides that I was curious about the Costa Rica concert experience. The visitors of the concert were pretty young – probably around 20 on average.

Ska-P tried quite a lot to politicise the audience with messages and videos about Palestine, against Bullfights, against death-penalty, for antifascism, against the Vatican and abuse of minors, against imperialism, against police repression and in favour of the Bolivarian Revolution.

In the end I doubt that it really politicised lots of the young audience. Most of them come to the concert to consume the band they like. The political message is secondary. I don t think that this is the fault of Ska-P. They did what they could do. I think it s rather a general question … can cultural events (here concerts) really politicise the masses? Just one concert probably not … maybe Ska-P comes back soon …

Tonight I ve been at one of my new favourites here in San Jose. The Parque Morazan!

On Thursday night a bunch of jugglers gathers there and plays with their pois, juggling balls, slackline, Unicycles, Pins etc. There are fireshows and the ambience is really great. Tonight we had some percussion guys coming over adding acoustical vibes to the audience.

It s a great group of young people which gathers in the center of San José once a week and celebrates a non-comercial public event where lots of people just walk by – have a look and keep on their way.

I knew it – San José does has very nice parts!