{"id":520,"date":"2010-04-24T01:24:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T08:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=520"},"modified":"2010-04-24T01:24:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T08:24:09","slug":"eco-scenes-the-good-and-the-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=520","title":{"rendered":"Eco Scenes, The Good and The Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

ON BOARD THE CELEBRITY<\/a> MILLENNIUM, sailing from Puntarenas, Costa Rica \u2014 In these days of political correctness, especially of the eco kind, sometimes the skeptics among us wonder if people professing to being good custodians of the planet are just saying that because it’s the thing to say. Are they practising what they preach? Do the plastic containers in that blue box really wind up being recycled, or are they taken to some landfill?
\n\"\"<\/a>This country is known for its environmental good citizenship. Lately. The forests of Costa Rica were ravaged over the decades, and preservation has become a priority in recent years. Good and bad.
\nOn our stop here, we saw both.
\nThe Tarcoles River, and the two hours we spent floating on it looking at crocodiles and birds co-habitating, is the bad. It empties into the Pacific, and carries a generous amount of debris that tour guides dismiss as the fault of Costa Rica’s Central Valley residents, who care more about money than trees.
\nThe Rain Forest Aerial Tram<\/a>, about an hour north of the ocean, is the good. Now we\u2019ve all seen trams carved out of a mountainside \u2014 you can spot the clear-cut a mile away. This tram is not visible. When it was built, every post, cable and car was flown in by helicopter, obviously at great expense because the nearest \u2018copter capable was in Colombia.
\n\"\"<\/a>This is a commercial operation, so it is here to make money, but clearly not at environmental expense. It is part of the 6% of Costa Rica that is protected by professionals, as opposed to the government\u2019s 25%, and the guides are passionate \u2014 \u201cI want to show you so much about the forest but they only gave me 40 minutes.\u201d
\nThe only blatant moneymakers are the zip-line cables that cater to the thrill seekers (the answer is NO). The more genteel thrill seekers are obsessed with seeing the elusive scarlet toucan, a magnificent and famous colorful bird known to zip by.
\nWe saw at least five of them, perched high and deep in rain-forest trees. At least we were told that\u2019s what we saw. They could have been old cans of paint hanging among the branches, but while that might have mollified the genteel thrill seekers, it would disgust keepers of the planet, and not just in Costa Rica.
\nThat\u2019s it\u2026we\u2019re done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ON BOARD THE CELEBRITY MILLENNIUM, sailing from Puntarenas, Costa Rica \u2014 In these days of political correctness, especially of the eco kind, sometimes the skeptics among us wonder if people professing to being good custodians of the planet are just saying that because it’s the thing to say. Are they practising what they preach? Do… Continue reading Eco Scenes, The Good and The Bad<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,36,15],"tags":[89,95,96,91,97],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ports","category-reviews","category-stories","tag-costa-rica","tag-eco","tag-environment","tag-puntarenas","tag-rain-forest","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}