Sustainability |

17Oct

Eco Lodge Owners Take Eco Vacation ;-)
The shoreline around Bocas del Toro is a display of colorful buildings on stilts.

It’s rainy season again and that means a break in tourism for us. We decided to take a break ourselves and journey on down to Panama and visit an island off of Bocas del Toro called Bastimentos Island. Bastimentos park is located here and is one of a few protected areas of Latin America that preserve, simultaneously, the wildlife and habitat of beaches, coral reef and mangroves. We rented a house on the southeast side of the island called Salt Creek where a small Indian community of some 300 inhabitants live in houses on stilts made of jira (a type of palm thatch for the roof) and wood.

This is also the beach where they filmed Survivor Panama (which we only found out about afterward, this was not a selling point for our vacation, lol).

We admit we are being “Total Tourists” taking this picture

We rented a house along the beach (one of five for rent in this little enclave) where beyond the beautiful homes life thrives as it always has here, native style. The Ngobe Indians still live in communities and small villages beyond the mysterious mangroves inland surrounded by rain forest. Their main occupation is fishing and lobster catching. You will see many boats paddling the shore in search of lobsters and fish along the coral reef that encircles the island in this area. Tours are also available for the community of Ngobe Indians at Salt Creek, 300 residents, as well as a guided hike into the rain forest. The hike does take several hours as a side note.

Michael our tour guide and host with Holly as we enter a Ngobe village by kayak through the mangroves.

Three typical structures: homes on stilts, metal, palm frond and plastic canvas roofs.

Ngobe children posing for a picture. They loved seeing their photos on the LCD screen of our camera.

The homes for rent although different in style all utilize similar sustainable practices to be as eco friendly as possible to this protected area. We were impressed with the various things they have implemented such as rain water catchment systems that supply them with all their household water needs. There is even an ultraviolet water purification system providing drinking water. Solar power, self composting toilets, low wattage refrigerators and DC ceiling fans round out many of the practices implemented in these eco friendly homes

A variety of tours that benefit the indigenous people, protected park and reef areas for snorkeling (Zapatilla Islands on Michael’s Hobie cat, two thumbs up!) or miles of shoreline to explore is all waiting for you at Salt Creek Bastimentos Island.

Michael and Christine are your hosts and they are both wonderful people and will help to make sure your stay is as comfortable as possible in this remote region off the grid.

Our beach home for 5 day.

You can find more photos of our vacation in the photo album section of the blog. We’ll end this article off with the picture below.

Artsy shot, dusk along the shoreline.

Thank you for reading our post,

Sincerely,
Dan & Holly Pesta
www.sabalolodge.com
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13Aug

I was a Migrant Rice Farmer
In an effort to see how sustainable we can be out here in the rainforest living off the grid I thought it might be useful to apply that age old saying “do what the locals do”. The families that live out here in our small community of Sabalo have a ritual they do every year around April: they all plant and grow rice, hopefully enough to last them a year. My employee at the time Isaac had a large area of land that we decided to work together planting a year’s supply for his family and ours (Holly and I). This was the biggest planting of rice he had undertaken and most certainly was mine as well.

Isaac cleared the field and burned the rest leaving the ground exposed for planting. The first thing you have to do is make a hole in the ground for the seeds. Here is a picture of Melvin, my employee, as he uses a pointed stick to make holes in the ground for the seeds.

We follow Melvin with a bowl of seeds like the one in the picture below, dropping a small handful of seeds in each hole. After a few hours your back is killing you! This is also one of the most humid places in the world so the amount of sweat that accompanies any type of physical labor here is mind boggling. I would be wet from head to toe, shirt and shorts soaked by the end of each three to four hour shift working the fields.

At this point in the planting all this work could be for naught if there is not enough rain to sustain growth. We were lucky that year and the rain supported a wonderful crop. The rice begins to sprout in only a few weeks.

Small handfuls of rice are dropped in each hole.

Rice begins to sprout in only a few weeks.

To the left of me in the picture below is our rice field coming in after two months. We grew two types of rice: yellow and red. The yellow rice is the typical rice grown here, the stalks can get over five feet high. The red rice is a smaller stalk and supposed to be better tasting as well as more expensive.

Below is a picture of rice seeds on the stalks. There are many different types of rice. These particular types of rice do not need to be submerged in water like the rice fields you may have seen in Asia. The Osa Peninsula gets up to 200 inches of rain a year so there is plenty of water for the rice to grow.

While the rice is growing we have the task of keeping the weeds cut back until the rice comes in full enough to choke out the weeds. This is the ugly side of growing rice. Everyday for months we are bent over with a machete, cutting weeds that have thorns, stickers and sharp leaves, leaving our forearms cut and scratched, itchy and uncomfortable at the end of each work day. Then there are the biting ants. If you are not watching and get too close to a nest they will climb up your boots and up your legs biting and stinging while leaving little white bumps from each bite as a reminder of their reign of terror.

If that wasn’t bad enough you always had to be on guard for the black snake. He was in the fields eating rats that were eating our rice. He was not venomous but when he sensed us cutting weeds he would come over to see if it was a rat. Man, that thing could stop your heart when he got close and you didn’t notice him until the last second. I did many sprints across the field when he did sneak up on me until I got better at recognizing his approach.

The growing season was fast with the rice and we were already harvesting it in mid to late July. Below is a picture of Tom, one of our guests from Arizona who wanted to help out showing how to cut the rice stalks in the field. A few days after Tom left I was harvesting rice as in the picture below and accidentally split open one of my fingers with a my machete, ouch! No doctors out here so I pulled the wound tight with a band-aid and it healed fine. That and a whack to my shin leaving another nice wound were my only rice injuries thank goodness. After that I decided maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have our guests cutting rice.

Once the rice is cut we stack the stalks up in a pile and the thrashing of the rice begins. The thrasher picks up a bunch of stalks and slams them into the grated box in the picture. The rice falls between the grates and the stalks, empty of rice are discarded.

Later the rice is dried in the sun and then bagged. The rice still has to be processed for eating. The outside kernel needs to be removed exposing the actual rice kernel underneath for eating. This can be done by machine in the local town or by hand the old fashioned way as pictured above.

This was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. The climate definitely contributed to the grueling work. It was an educational experience to see the amount of work necessary to bring rice to my table. Most families here eat beans and rice three times a day so they have to grow a large amount of rice. Our one year supply of rice will last of several years at this point. Every time I eat it however I appreciate it more than any bowl of rice I’ve had and believe it or not you can taste the difference in quality.

Thank you for reading our post,

Dan & Holly Pesta
Owners Sabalo Eco Lodge – Costa Rica
www.sabalolodge.com
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06Aug

The Best $100.00 They Spent in a Long Time
As the age of consumerism finds itself in the final death throws of a time when over consumption was en vogue, people may find it hard to remember any satisfaction that spending $100.00 might have brought.

Pay it forward, service to others, sharing with the less fortunate and many other phrases describe how these three families transcended the “Need for Me” and found “Gratification in Giving”… Amen!

Sabalo Eco Lodge is proud to acknowledge three very special families that have gone the extra mile. Each family made a $100.00 donation to a cause very near and dear to our hearts.

Located is a remote part of the Osa Peninsula the community of Sabalo lives off the grid without public electricity or water. This is one of the poorer parts of the country and as such the local school is lacking the required basic teaching materials and books.

An eco lodge by definition should have some reach into their local community, integrating and helping to bring improvements where possible. We decided early on, the definition of eco lodge or not, that we wanted to help the school in any way that we can.

That makes the introduction of these three families so special to us; previous guests of Sabalo Eco Lodge helping children in a remote part of the world.

Please allow us to introduce you to these special families;

The Bouc Family

Wisconsin/US

The Bouc family has four children: two boys Evan and Peter and two girls Lauren and Lydia. Geoff, Cindy, Evan, Lauren, Peter and Lydia first visited Sabalo Eco Lodge back in March of 2008 and were the first guests to donate $100.00 to the school of Sabalo at the end of their trip.

A month later Geoff and Loren came back to the Osa Peninsula and stopped by the lodge for a night. They were gracious enough to pack a bunch of items and clothing for the school and community, pictured above, no easy task hauling all this stuff around to the middle of the jungle – thanks Geoff and Loren! There were some baby and children clothing in the box; interestingly, Sabalo just happened to have two newborns in need of clothes. It was great timing and all the clothes and items for the school were greatly appreciated by the whole community. Thank you Bouc Family for your $100.00 donation to the school and children of Sabalo, as well as, your generosity the second time around.

The Button Family

California/US

The Button Family visited us in the Osa Peninsula during December of 2008. Pictured above from left to right: Sneha, Yuko, Gary and Brian in the back. I remember the Button family being fascinated with this area and asking a lot of questions about how people live and get along out here. They realized how difficult it is for these families living remotely especially for the children. One of the questions Brian asked out of the blue was if his family could make a donation for the local school. Thank you Button family for your $100.00 contribution for the school and children of Sabalo.

The Pesta Family

California/US

Pictured above are my parents John and Emily Pesta. My Father, John, visited Sabalo Eco Lodge back during the construction phase to see what his crazy son and daughter in-law where up to, bless his heart. On a recent trip back to the states in October of 2008 we were having lunch with my folks telling them how some of our guests were contributing to the local school. In the middle of my story my Dad interrupts me and said enthusiastically, “I want to make a donation!” He pulled out $100.00 dollars right there at the table. Thank you John and Emily Pesta for your $100.00 donation to the school and children of Sabalo.

If you would like to make a donation for the school of Sabalo we have a PayPal account where you can make a donation on-line. Please feel free to email us directly for details at info@sabalolodge.com

Thanks for reading our post,

Dan & Holly Pesta
Owners Sabalo Eco Lodge – Costa Rica
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04Aug

Plastics that convert light to energy could have big impact
© Mary Levin/University of Washington
David Ginger, a University of Washington associate professor of chemistry, displays the tiny probe for a conductive atomic force microscope, used to record photocurrents on scales of millionths of an inch in carbon-based solar cells.

Researchers the world over are striving to develop organic solar cells that can be produced easily and inexpensively as thin films that could be widely used to generate electricity.

But a major obstacle is coaxing these carbon-based materials to reliably form the proper structure at the nanoscale (tinier than 2-millionths of an inch) to be highly efficient in converting light to electricity. The goal is to develop cells made from low-cost plastics that will transform at least 10 percent of the sunlight that they absorb into usable electricity and can be easily manufactured.

A research team headed by David Ginger, a University of Washington associate professor of chemistry, has found a way to make images of tiny bubbles and channels, roughly 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, inside plastic solar cells. These bubbles and channels form within the polymers as they are being created in a baking process, called annealing, that is used to improve the materials’ performance.

The researchers are able to measure directly how much current each tiny bubble and channel carries, thus developing an understanding of exactly how a solar cell converts light into electricity. Ginger believes that will lead to a better understanding of which materials created under which conditions are most likely to meet the 10 percent efficiency goal.

As researchers approach that threshold, nanostructured plastic solar cells could be put into use on a broad scale, he said. As a start, they could be incorporated into purses or backpacks to charge cellular phones or mp3 players, but eventually they could make in important contribution to the electrical power supply.

Most researchers make plastic solar cells by blending two materials together in a thin film, then baking them to improve their performance. In the process, bubbles and channels form much as they would in a cake batter. The bubbles and channels affect how well the cell converts light into electricity and how much of the electric current actually gets to the wires leading out of the cell. The number of bubbles and channels and their configuration can be altered by how much heat is applied and for how long.

The exact structure of the bubbles and channels is critical to the solar cell’s performance, but the relationship between baking time, bubble size, channel connectivity and efficiency has been difficult to understand. Some models used to guide development of plastic solar cells even ignore the structure issues and assume that blending the two materials into a film for solar cells will produce a smooth and uniform substance. That assumption can make it difficult to understand just how much efficiency can be engineered into a polymer, Ginger said.

For the current research, the scientists worked with a blend of polythiophene and fullerene, model materials considered basic to organic solar cell research because their response to forces such as heating can be readily extrapolated to other materials. The materials were baked together at different temperatures and for different lengths of time.

Ginger is the lead author of a paper documenting the work, published online last month by the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters and scheduled for a future print edition. Coauthors are Liam Pingree and Obadiah Reid of the UW. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Ginger noted that the polymer tested is not likely to reach the 10 percent efficiency threshold. But the results, he said, will be a useful guide to show which new combinations of materials and at what baking time and temperature could form bubbles and channels in a way that the resulting polymer might meet the standard.

Such testing can be accomplished using a very small tool called an atomic force microscope, which uses a needle similar to the one that plays records on an old-style phonograph to make a nanoscale image of the solar cell. The microscope, developed in Ginger’s lab to record photocurrent, comes to a point just 10 to 20 nanometers across (a human hair is about 60,000 nanometers wide). The tip is coated with platinum or gold to conduct electrical current, and it traces back and forth across the solar cell to record the properties.

As the microscope traces back and forth over a solar cell, it records the channels and bubbles that were created as the material was formed. Using the microscope in conjunction with the knowledge gained from the current research, Ginger said, can help scientists determine quickly whether polymers they are working with are ever likely to reach the 10 percent efficiency threshold.

Making solar cells more efficient is crucial to making them cost effective, he said. And if costs can be brought low enough, solar cells could offset the need for more coal-generated electricity in years to come.

“The solution to the energy problem is going to be a mix, but in the long term solar power is going to be the biggest part of that mix,” he said.
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