January 3, 2015 | Posted in: Events and News

We wasted no time delving into the many academic opportunities Costa Rica has to offer. Our first stop was the Tico Plant in San Jose. Tico Plant is a greenhouse operation owned by greeenhouses in the United States. The  operation grows cuttings for ornamental plants that are eventually shipped to the greenhouses in the states. About 3.5 million cuttings per week are transported to the United States during the high season, which begins in December and declines in March. After that we traveled to the center of San Jose and had a typical Costa Rican lunch at La Casona. Feeling refueled from the beans and rice, we ventured to Mercado Central to check out what the market had to offer. Being a big group in a busy place, we hit the road pretty quickly to find a less crowded market, Mercado Borbon. There, we were able to try all sorts of new fruits like maracuya (sour passionfruit), tree tomato, cape gooseberry, carambola (starfruit), and little bananas. We were all amazed by the flavors of the fruit- most of the fruits we had never tried before. After seeing some more of the city we went back to Alajuela to have dinner and discuss Costa Rica’s economy.