Virtual Levin

It has rained to some extent everyday since we arrived. Today we woke up to rain and everything is wet and damp, and things just do not dry. Up until now we have had a lot of meetings to get oriented with our projects and yesterday afternoon we chose what projects we wanted to work on. The projects are: The Los Llanos-Santa Elena road side planting and trail improvements (this project involves designing and planning a trail that will be used as a walkway for elementary children on their way to school. Right now there are no trails and children are walking alongside the road where there is a lot of car traffic as well as large tourism bus traffic. This is my project and I will be working with a landscape architect student on this).

#2 is the Santa Elena High School master plan and interpretive trail. Three people were needed to work on this project. The high school is a technical school where they have a small farm, cows, chickens, and a lagoon. They want to design a trail that can be used so the students can work with eco-tourism and give tours on campus. Two landscape architects and one planner is working on this. This is the largest project, so if everyone finishes their little projects, we will all probably jump in on this. There is quite a bit of work to do there, they want to beautify the lagoon, improve the trail etc.

#3. The same school needs to have a library designed for public and student use. Two architects and one landscape architect are working on this project.

#4 the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve needs to make their trails handicapped accessible and there is some redesigning that will take place. There are 3 landscape architects working on this project.

Today has been a lot of wishing away the rain, especially by me and my partner Heather since we need to take an aerial photo into the field and walk the road and mark off where we have the most land (left or right side of the road) to start designing the trail. The span of road is approximately 4 kilometers long and curves and in some spots we don’t have much right of way to work with. Roads here are made of packed dirt mixed with gravel, or in some areas just packed dirt. There are a lot of Huecos (pot holes) that fill up with water, and walking to/from school you are lucky if a car doesn’t splash you. There is concern about fixing the road, should they or should they not? If they do people will drive faster, and can cause more accidents with pedestrians, but if they don’t fix the road what will it mean for tourism and tourism activities. We walk to and from school everyday. My walk is about 20 minutes each way and some of it is really uphill with blind corners, you have to carry a flashlight with you at night so you can see the road (and pot holes) and so people might be able to see you as they drive. I have learned what faith is. It is possessing a strong belief that the car behind you is not going to hit you as you walk in the road. But let me tell you—they come pretty damn close! Here we were told the cars have to move out of the way because there are no sidewalks, in San Jose pedestrians have no rights and you are expected to get out of the road, or get hit. It looks light the weather is thinking about breaking, so I am going to take advantage of the moment and gather my stuff so we can get our survey work done. I will try to post more in the next day or two.