Indigenous eco-lodge welcomes first guests in Costa Rica

Richard Tinkler – Tico Times – Wednesday, 16 November 2011 (originally published 11 Nov)

Bribri woman teaches guess to weave palm leaves

A visitor learns how to weave palm leaves to bamboo branches to make thatch. Image: Richard Tinkler

Fifteen years ago, a group of 32 Bribrí women from Watsi, Talamanca, formed one of the first indigenous tourist and agriculture associations in Costa Rica. Since then, Amuprowa has been welcoming tourists, students and volunteer groups from all over the world to this rural corner of southeastern Costa Rica. On Oct. 26, the group opened Kabata U Indigenous Eco-lodge to enable tourists and small vocational or volunteer groups to share in the life of a typical indigenous community.

At 6 a.m. on inauguration day, men from the village were scurrying at an unusually fast pace from one corner of the new lodge to the other, putting the last pieces of tree-bark floor in place. Three Amuprowa women sat in the lodge’s jungle garden, weaving the last palm leaves to the bamboo branches they had harvested the day before. Marvin, a relentless carpenter from the Cabécar indigenous territory, mounted the roof of the newly built kitchen with a troop of young men carrying nothing more than crawler root and machetes. Chattering in Bribrí about la fuerza de la indígena (indigenous strength), they teased the Amuprowa women, whose job was to pass the 25-kilogram palm-leaf roofing elements through the roof structure 5 meters above the jungle floor. “Diego” and “Patri,” our German-speaking volunteers, bravely fought twinges of vertigo as they helped secure the last pieces of kitchen roof, while Marvin demonstrated his previously undiscovered mountain goat abilities

The first guests began to arrive at 10 a.m. Tourism agencies from the Caribbean coast negotiated prices with doña Felipa and doña Marina, the president and secretary of Amuprowa. Some had already visited the lodge with tourist groups wanting to experience different aspects of traditional Bribrí life. They enjoyed the sorbón (an ancient dance form still practiced by the community), traditional cooking classes, medicinal plant tours and visits to Amuprowa members’ organic farms. Hotel owners came to collect ideas and include Amuprowa activities in their daily tours . . .

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