On Sunday, I went to a Christmas party called “Wassail” (rhymes with fossil, or if you’re in my choir, you call it “waffle”. Local community members call it “cookie day” – you will see why). It was run by the Monteverde Friends Meeting.
But before the wassail, there was a Christmas Program, which the Quakers have been holding for 71 years! During the program, community members performed different acts about Christmas. There were some songs like Silent Night, Angels We have Heard on High and readings and a little play.
Our family was the first act and we led a song: the 12 days of Christmas, Monteverde edition.
We got many friends young and old to participate. Each person was assigned an animal, each representing one of the 12 days. Some of them had masks that my dad made, some had stuffy animals, and some had other types of costumes.
When we got to their day, they came out onto the stage and performed an action like their animal. The sloth was very slow, the quetzal flapped her wings, and the hummingbird used a stick as their beak and fluttered around in a zig-zag way like hummingbirds fly.
Right after that, my choir was the next up. We sang a song called “Prince of Peace”. My solo was up first, even before the first chorus. I was shaking internally but everyone said afterword that I did great. I took a couple of deep breaths and I think that helped make it so my voice didn’t tremble.
The last act of the program was the kitchen sink orchestra. It had some string instruments, a keyboard, some woodwinds and a trumpet and a saxophone. There were also some unusual instruments like slid whistles, kazoos, maracas, a washboard, a triangle played with a metal spoon. The cymbals at the end were two pot lids! Everyone was wearing kitchen aprons too! They played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Wassail song.
Then, row-by-row, led by our friend Richard playing the saxophone, we all paraded to the kitchen where there were a ton of cookies waiting. Everyone who came to the wassail made 12 cookies to contribute and it was quite a spread! At the beginning, everyone took 5 cookies and a mug of wassail – a warm fruit juice punch. The cookies were yummy and the wassail was tasty.
Some of us went back for seconds: we brought ours home with us to eat on the airplane on our way to Chicago for Christmas.
Overall, wassail was fun. There were yummy treats and I got over singing my first solo ever!
If you know me personally, you also know that I have been working to support migrant families and communities for most of my adult life. This work springs from now over two decades of close relationships with Salvadoran families, whose lives have all been profoundly shaped by migration.
I am always inspired when I meet others who share this concern for migrant communities, and I have been fortunate to connect here in Monteverde with an amazing project called Proyecto Bienvenidos (Welcome Project). Since July of this year, this small group has been working to support several families from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus who ended up here in Costa Rica after trying to seek asylum in the United States.
To learn more about who these families are, how they ended up in Costa Rica, and what their experience here has been like, I invite you to read this articlethat I wrote for Friends’ Journal (a prominent Quaker magazine). In this post, I want to take the time to share a more personal reflection about this experience.
When we arrived here in early August, the migrant families had also only just come to Monteverde. The Quaker Meeting that we attend was holding fundraisers almost every week to gather the funds needed to continue to meet the basic needs of the families, whom they had agreed to help for up to a year. Most of the families were living in houses or apartments loaned to them by members of the community, but we still needed to raise funds for weekly food stipends, for transportation to and from schools for these families, as well as for medical needs and other expenses.
So on August 30, our third Saturday in the country, we opened our house to some of the families to help them prepare for a fundraiser lunch the following day. I spent the day cooking with two young mothers, one from Armenia and one from Russia, while Pat kept their children (and Sophie) entertained and occupied.
For me, it was quite an experience, working together intensely for 11 hours and getting to know each other while navigating some complicated language barriers. One of the women spoke Russian and pretty good English; the other spoke Armenian, some Russian, and limited English. So it was often like a game of telephone to communicate with each other! Still, they were really good at showing me what I could do to help them: I chopped a lot of vegetables and washed a lot of dishes!
We listened to Armenian music and there was a lot of laughter and singing and dancing in between the cooking. By the time the day was done, we were all exhausted, but I felt I had started to build two new friendships. The next day, we helped the families take the food up to the Meeting House and set up to sell lunches. We had spread the word in the community and a big crowd turned out to try the delicious dishes and help support the families.
In the months since then, we have celebrated children’s birthdays with the families, held a fun Coffee House (talent show) fundraiser with tons of amazing acts and delicious food, and written thank you letters to donors. But for me the most powerful experiences have been ones like that day of cooking when we are able to spend time together. We’ve invited families over to our house regularly for dinner and games, always an interesting time as we learn how to communicate despite the language barriers.
Now several months into their stay in Monteverde, the situation has evolved. Some of the families have decided to stay in the area, at least for a while, and have begun to find work and improve their Spanish skills—none of them spoke Spanish at all when they arrived, since they had never planned to move to Costa Rica. Patrick worked with one family to make a bilingual (English/Spanish) flier advertising their hair cutting services to try to help them find more clients.
Some families, however, made the painful decision to leave Costa Rica and try again to enter the United States. All of them had loved ones there—often their spouses and other children—who they longed to be reunited with. The pull to be together as a family ultimately outweighed the risks of the journey, which they knew all too well.
As I write, three of the families that we met are being held in an immigrant detention center (a jail) in the United States. One of them is one of the women I got to know during the day we spent cooking together. My heart breaks every time I think of her, her children, the other families we met, and all the many immigrants we don’t know who like her are being held indefinitely in these prisons, most of which are run by big corporations (GEO group and Core Civic) who are making money off of locking up parents and children.
This feeling of heartbreak resonates deeply for me. In 2014-2015, a close friend of mine from El Salvador was sent to a detention center with her three small children by the Obama administration. Like the families I met here in Monteverde, she was fleeing an unsafe living situation in El Salvador and trying to reunite with her husband—the father of her children—in the United States.
I will never forget what it was like to visit her at the detention center in Texas where she was being held. I had to empty my pockets and walk through a metal detector and multiple locked doors. On the other side of the locks there were young children and traumatized mothers. I didn’t have a child myself at that time, but now as a mother, I cannot imagine what it is like to see your children locked up and deprived of the freedom they need to thrive.
Many of the detained immigrant mothers were desperate to call attention to their situation and they decided to organize a hunger strike. Allies and community members outside of the detention centers organized alongside them, and I participated in a major protest they organized in May 2015 outside of a new family detention center that was being built in Dilley, TX.
As a result of this pressure and ongoing legal campaigns, court rulings were handed down in 2015 and 2016 that reinforced earlier decisions that had made the long-term detention of children illegal. My friend was finally released after 9 months in detention. Her youngest son, who had just turned 3 when she was released, had spent a third of his life in jail.
Sadly, the Karnes and Dilley detention centers never shut down entirely. After holding only adult immigrants from 2021-2024, the Trump administration re-opened them as family detention centers. The families that we met in Monteverde are most likely being held at one of these two centers, which together can hold 3,500 people. The funding bill passed in July of this year contains $45 billion to build more immigrant detention centers, including new prisons for families. This recent news stories contains accounts from families about the horrific conditions they face at these detention centers.
At this time of year when many of us are fortunate to travel to be with our loved ones, please remember these families who have been locked up simply because they wanted to be together, in safety, with their loved ones.
If you feel called to take action, here are some things you can do:
Everyone knows that there are lots of amazing birds in Costa Rica. But despite taking many of hikes with our binoculars, we have seen the most spectacular birds at our house! Let me introduce you to some of them here!
Wilson’s Warbler
Female/JuvenileAdult Male
This bird migrates and has a huge range! They spend the summers as far north as Alaska and the Northeastern U.S. and spend the winter in Mexico and Central America, as far south as Panama. I’ve seen both male and female warblers in the hedge outside our kitchen window, often while I am washing dishes!
Montezuma Oropendola
This bird has a really unique call that makes it stand out from the other birds. You always know when one is nearby. For several days this month we had one visiting the woods behind our house. One morning, I saw him in the nispero tree in our front yard. There are epiphytes (air plants) growing on the branches of the tree and he was either eating bugs or drinking water that was caught in the leaves of the plants. We wish he would come to visit again!
Summer Tanager
I happened to look up from my computer and glanced out the window when my eye was caught by this beautiful flash of red. At first I thought I was looking at a cardinal, but the little pointy hat that cardinals have was missing. It turns out this is another migratory bird that spends summers in the southern U.S. and winters in Central and South America, as far south as Brazil.
Great Kiskadee
These birds are everywhere, and often perch on the power lines. With their bright yellow bellies they are easy to spot, except when they sit on the nispero tree when it has ripe fruit on it – because they are exactly the same shade of yellow!
Blue-Capped Motmot
This handsome fellow is harder to spot because he likes to hang out in shady trees. We have often seen one on our walk to Sophie’s school, and in the trees at the bottom of our driveway.
Interestingly, I had become very familiar with it’s cousin, the Turquoise Browed Motmot when I lived in El Salvador. This is the national bird of both El Salvador and Nicaragua, though it is known by different names: torogoz (in El Salvador) and guardabarranco (in Nicaragua).
White-Fronted Parrots
Despite their name, these birds are mostly bright emerald green. When they fly, you can see beautiful red patches on their wings. But they are mostly noticeable for the noise they make when the get together in flocks of up to 30 birds. One day at Meeting for Worship at Sophie’s school, a flock of them held their own meeting in a tree behind the school – let’s just say it wasn’t very quiet!
Keel-Billed Toucan
You may know these from the front of a cereal box, but they are actually a real bird that is quite common here in Monteverde! We have seen several of these from a distance but Pat saw one up close in the nispero tree in our front yard and managed to make this video!
Sun Bittern
In October as we were leaving for an early morning trip we spotted a Sun Bittern out in our driveway displaying its beautiful wing pattern. It was facing off with an agouti who had all its rump hair standing on end, a trick they use to try to look bigger and more threatening. I think the Sun Bittern won this battle though!
And more!
There are other more common birds like sparrows, grackles (zanates), brown jays, chachalacas, and guan that we see all the time.
But by far the most frequent birds we see are hummingbirds. They love the Porterweed hedge around our house and we see them zipping around the flowers there every time we look outside! We have seen several different species, but because they are so small and move so fast, I am not confident in any of our identifications.
Each Monday, Sophie’s teacher has them complete a page of writing and drawing about what they did that weekend. At the end of the year, she will compile this all into a little memory book that will help her remember all her adventures this year.
In the meantime, here is a sneak preview into some of the Weekend News items we got to see at our parent-teacher conference last month.
My hike at Bajo del Tigre
August 18, 2025
I went to the Bajo del Tigre reserve and I did a long hike. I started on the Conservatory Trail and then I switched to the Bellbird Trail. At the end of the Bellbird Trail we split up. My mom and I went on the Monkey Trail and my dad went on the Miradora Trail which had very cool views. Meanwhile me and my mom walked the entire Monkey Trail! Then we got onto the Kids Trail and headed back home, all in one morning! It was fun but I felt more tired once I was at home.
Icing cookies
August 25, 2025
I went to the institute and I iced cookies. I made a mushroom cookie into a fish cookie. I made an apple tree, and I made a leaf. There were four colors of icing: red, brown, green, and green again. There was also a hike and a potluck. On the hike we learned about types of trees. And at the potluck there were refried beans and yummy guacamole.
I had a sleepover!
September 8, 2025
On Saturday, I had a sleepover with Daleyn. First we went to Daleyn’s house to eat dinner. It was pizza and salad. It was the best pizza ever! Then we went to my house to watch the movie K-Pop Demon Hunters. It was my third time watching the movie and my third sleepover. I was very excited and happy. And then we went to bed.
Pancakes
August 18, 2025
On Sunday I ate pancakes with my family at Stella’s. After I ate breakfast me and my parents walked to the bus stop and waited FOREVER! When the bus finally arrived we got on it and were finally on our way. When we got there I had already convinced my parents to go to the gelato shop. I got birthday cake, my dad got strawberry and salted caramel, and my mom got chocolate coconut.
Ice Cream
September 9, 2025
I went to “El Camino Gelato” with Daleyn and my dad. I got birthday cake and Daleyn got two flavors in one scoop: mango maracuyá citrus and strawberry mint. My dad got mango maracuyá citrus. Daleyn was at my house for the weekend with Scout, Daleyn’s dog. Scout broke their back leg and I felt so sad! Anyway, back to ice cream! I loved the ice cream I got. I felt really happy!
I went to Curi Cancha
The other day I went to Curí Cancha for the first time. It was for forest school. It was really fun! It was a scavenger hunt that took a while. But when we got to the maze it was kid mayhem!
If you want to see the amazing sights you should totally go! If you want to see what it’s like I suggest you look at a map. (See picture)
So yeah, I had fun at Curí Cancha. But then I got hungry so I…
With winter approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, I thought now would be a good time to share a gallery of photos of flowers from Monteverde.
Generally the flowers here are small and often easy to miss among all the lush greenery. But they are so colorful and take so many different shapes that I am endlessly fascinated.
(And before you ask, I don’t know the names of most of these other than the obvious hibiscus and bougainvillea! All the field guides in our house are for animals, birds, and insects. Nothing for us poor plant-lovers!)
The major local story in Monteverde this month has been the replacement of the bridge over the Quebrada Cuecha. This bridge is the only way to get from Monteverde Center (and CASEM) up to the Friends School and the Cloud Forest Reserve.
The old bridge, built in 1983, was in danger of collapse after 42 years: check out this local news article about the history of the bridge, complete with historical photos!
Our house is just up the road from the bridge, so we got a close look at all the goings on! Check out these photos to see more about the construction process.
Here is what the bridge looked like before construction began.
The first step was to relocate the pedestrian bridge. They used a crane to lift it up and move it over to make space for the new vehicular bridge.
This new positioning required that they add an extension to the pedestrian bridge, which they just welded on! Here is Sophie with a before and after comparison.
Once the pedestrian bridge was installed, they closed the bridge to vehicle traffic. That caused a challenge for the Friends School, as most families live on the other side of the bridge. The staff worked hard to arrange a safe drop-off procedure, and the older students helped to walk the younger students up the hill. Sophie was excited because for the week that the bridge was closed, she was able to walk to school by herself, since there was no vehicle traffic!
The first step was to install the new bailey bridge. This is a prefabricated bridge and they put it together almost like a lego set, right on top of the old bridge!
It didn’t take long and within a few days, the new bridge was assembled!
The new bridge was about a meter higher than the original bridge, so the next step was to build ramps out of gravel. They used a backhoe to put the gravel in place and then packed it all down with a roller.
To keep the gravel ramps from immediately washing away in the rain, they filled sacks by hand with gravel and lined them up as temporary walls along the ramps.
They called for volunteers to help with this labor-intensive step, and Pat went down to help and made some new friends! He also earned a true tico apodo (nickname): Guayaba! The person who gave him the name said he was rosadito (pink) like the fruit!
Guayaba fruit
Several weeks later, another team of workers came to replace the bags of gravel with more permanent cement walls. First, they built a structure out of rebar to fit the size of the wall they are going to make.
Then they poured some concrete down and used it to set the rebar into place.
The next step is to pour the concrete. To get it to hold the shape they want, they built a mold out of wood, using a bunch of bamboo rods and 2x4s to hold it in place.
Once the cement is poured and hardened, they remove the molds, leaving concrete retaining walls that are much more permanent than the sacks of gravel. They are also building some more massive walls like this under the bridge to help protect the banks of the creek from erosion.
Despite the challenges of working during the rainy month of October and having to transport all the materials up the mountain, the new bridge is now almost finished!
During my school break in October our family traveled to La Fortuna, a town near the Arenal Volcano.
To get there, we took a bus from Monteverde down to the edge of Lake Arenal, and then took a boat across the lake. From there we got our first views of the Arenal Volcano! How impressive!
The Arenal Volcano is a young volcano, meaning it is less than 7,500 years old. It was most recently active from 1968 to 2010.
We went for a hike at the National Park at the foot of the volcano. It is illegal to hike to the top of the volcano because of dangerous gases and venemous snakes!
We hiked out to the viewing point where you can see magma (an old lava flow from an eruption in 1992). From here you can also look down and see Lake Arenal.
On our hike up to the lava flow, we saw a lot of cool animals and plants, including these bugs that my dad took pictures of.
We heard a really strange sounding bird call, and it turned out to be a Montezuma Oropendola which we sadly didn’t get a photo of. But then, we spotted a couple toucans in the trees! Another hiker (a retired nature guide) told us they were yellow-breasted toucans, the largest species in Costa Rica.
We also saw many different flowers and berries, often quite small and hidden pops of color along the trail!
If you ever come to Costa Rica, don’t miss seeing Lake Arenal and the Volcano! We highly recommend a trip to the National Park, and maybe you’ll have better luck than we did seeing the peak of the volcano emerge from the clouds!
Check out this short video of a capuchin monkey jumping through the trees with a baby riding on her back! This was recorded in Bajo del Tigre reserve on September 11, 2025.
It is impossible to understand Central American history without paying attention to coffee. I learned this when I lived in El Salvador, where the ruling class (known as the “fourteen families”) consolidated economic and political power through the coffee economy. Shortly after independence, the legislature abolished communally held lands, stripping Indigenous communities of their ability to sustain themselves through farming and making vast plots of land available for purchase by the oligarchs. This process produced a gulf between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, a foundational inequality in Salvadoran society. In the decades since then, this inequitable distribution of land has fueled civil war, organized crime, and rampant violence. It is also a primary factor that has pushed over 1 million Salvadorans to migrate to the United States in search of better opportunities for their families. I have often wondered how different El Salvador’s history would have been if land had been distributed more equally.
On our recent visit to Finca Life in Cañitas (a nearby town), I felt like I got to see some glimpses into such an alternate history. Finca Life is part of a local coffee-growing collective called Café Monteverde. When it was founded in 1989, several participating families pooled their small land holdings to work collectively. At first they produced both dairy products and coffee, but later they consolidated to focus on coffee production and have demonstrated a great deal of savvy to grow their business. They have opened coffee shops in high-traffic spots in local towns where they sell coffee exclusively made from their product. My husband, a serious coffee fan, says the coffee they sell there ranks among the best he has ever had. During the pandemic, they set up an online store to sell their coffee and other merchandise, and today they still send out coffee shipments internationally each week. They now also offer coffee tours for coffee aficionados.
For over 25 years, Café Monteverde has been a model that has allowed the member families to sustain themselves. Today, the business continues to grow. They have purchased other local coffee farms when they went up for sale, incorporating new families into the co-operative. This keeps land ownership in the community rather than having it be bought up by investors from outside of the zone. Today, 21 families are members of the collective.
{{IMG_5176 – bins of coffee beans}}
This is a very different story of coffee production from what I saw in El Salvador. I am not a scholar of Costa Rica, so I still have much to learn about Costa Rican history. But from the little I have learned so far, it is clear that the Costa Rican government over the years made important decisions that have made it possible for small-scale farmers like Finca Life to flourish. After a brief but bloody civil war, the country abolished the military in 1948. With the funds freed up by this decision, the government invested in health and education, creating a universal health care system and funding free public education through university. This use of government funds has provided a stable and peaceful society where projects like collective coffee production can thrive.
The government also enacted specific policies related to coffee production and land ownership. A government agency was established in 1933 to regulate coffee production and help small-scale farmers compete with large-scale producers and millers who were fixing the price to try to drive out competition. Today, this agency ensures that producers receive 80% of the FOB price (the market value of goods at the point where they are exported from an economy). A land-reform law passed in 1961 worked to curb large-scale land ownership and to integrate farmers into national development; for coffee producers, this led to the creation of farm cooperatives like Finca Life. This is not to say that the coffee industry in Costa Rica is without problems. Across the country, coffee pickers – often migrant workers from Nicaragua and Panama – still work long days for relatively little pay. And land ownership in Costa Rica is by no means egalitarian; indigenous communities especially face many challenges in recovering ownership and access to land that is legally theirs.
But the model of Café Monteverde is still one to follow. It has had many benefits for the wider community beyond the member families. The collective regularly hosts free community activities like a film screening and Children’s Day celebration that we attended. They provide free educational programming to local and national schools, as well as internship opportunities for students. Along with other providers of coffee tours in the region, they donate $1 per tour participant to a local community development fund. Over the last 4 years, they collectively donated $250,000!
In addition to being good neighbors, Café Monteverde also takes seriously their responsibility for the land. At Finca Life, 50% of the land remains under forest. The rest is used for coffee production, vegetable gardens, and raising animals like goats and chickens who produce milk, cheese, and eggs. These food ingredients are used to prepare delicious meals that they serve to visitors in their educational programs and on the coffee tours. They have also moved away from using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and are instead relying on natural products that they produce themselves. They work with the ingredients at their disposal: leaf mulch from the forests, animal droppings, and the husks produced in coffee production, composting these ingredients down into a concentrated and nitrogen-rich fertilizer which they then “steep” in large vats of water to create natural fertilizer. They even have a small lab where they collaborate with researchers to study the micro-organisms in the soil so that they can learn which ones are most beneficial and how to use them to control pests.
Visiting Finca Life and learning about Café Monteverde has allowed me to imagine another possible world in much more concrete and detailed ways. I hope that sharing this story inspires you too!
It was pouring rain and blowing wind when we woke up, but by the time breakfast was over, it had cleared up, so I went for a walk. A 15-minute walk from our house is the Bajo del Tigre Reserve, which is part of the Children’s Eternal Rainforest. This is a 57,000-acre preserve that is run by the non-profit Monteverde Conservation League that was established in the 1980’s.
A map of the reserves around MonteverdeA very tall tree in Bajo Tigre reserve
I took a 2 km loop on well-marked trails, mostly downhill on the way out and then uphill on the way back. I didn’t see anyone else on the trails, just the trees, which were alive in the wind, each whispering or speaking or shouting in their own particular rustle. I took lots of pictures of the trees, many with ficus (strangler vines) growing around them that will eventually kill the tree, leaving a hollow structure.
A view across the valleyAn enormous ficus tree
Inspired by this connection of life and death, I began to look at trees that had fallen and to stumps – each nurturing so much other life, even in their decay. This one stump was even still working with roots deep in the soil to hold back a hillside.
A decaying tree trunkA stumpMoss on a tree
I only caught glimpses of the fauna of the forest. The only animal I saw fully was a brown squirrel who wasn’t at all shy, sitting on the trunk of a tree and scolding me as I approached. His scolding startled another creature in the underbrush, which I think was a Highland Tinamou (after I spotted one on another hike). They are hard to see unless you catch one in motion, as they blend in with the colors of the forest floor.
On a side note, we have spotted capuchin monkeys, although just in our everyday life out-and-about in the community, rather than in the forest. Pat saw this one doing a high-wire balancing act! I saw another pair right behind the coffee shop in the community center, jumping from branch to branch.
This cappuchin monkey was walking across a powerline over the main road downtown.Monkeys come pretty close to people, to the point that they are sometimes problematic!
On my hike, I also spotted lots of butterflies, moths, and other winged insects. The only one I knew the name for was the blue morpho. We see these beautiful big butterflies every time we take a walk, and their flight is a captivating fluttering from the brilliant blue of their top wings to the camouflage dark brown and grey of the wings’ undersides.
A blue morphoThese guys are everywhere in Monteverde.
But the most riveting part of the walk were the bird songs – I didn’t see a single one, but I heard many! The Pajaro Campana (three-wattled bell-bird) in particular followed my steps for a long stretch. Their call begins with a low croak, then steps up, almost like an arpeggio. The third note is a high-pitched and piercing whistle that can be heard for miles. Although I searched the trees, I never spotted one. Later the next week when I went back with Patrick and Sophie, he went off on a slightly longer trail by himself and made this amazing video of a bell-bird where you can see and hear it vocalizing.
The three-wattled bellbird is one of the loudest birds in the world!
I look forward to returning often to this beautiful place and hope I can spot the Pajaro Campana myself before the year is out!
🚨 Update! On Monday, August 25, I returned for another walk in Bajo del Tigre, and following advice to look for the Pajaro Campana on dead branches, I managed to spot the bird twice! The second time he wasn’t very high up and I had to walk – very quietly – almost underneath where he was perched, so I got a really good look. When I described these locations to the staff, they said these were two of the three preferred spots of one particular bird, who has a triangle of terrain he covers. So if you come to visit, we can take a walk in Bajo del Tigre together and maybe, if we are lucky, we will spot the Pajaro Campana again!
