Where can toucans wake you up to have breakfast with squirrels while big butterflies with their luminous blue wrings dance in front of you? Where do small monkeys with their big leaps play when they see you? Where does it rain all night long as if you were under a perpetual waterfall, then a spring sun rises if as it would never set? Where can you put one leg on a continent and the other on another? Where can you find volcanoes and paradise together? It is Costa Rica!

The huge Icelandic volcanic ash appeared on TY like a blind guard waving a stick in the air. It looked like a legendary King Kong emerging from under a snow blanket causing iron birds to stop flying. As I was following the news I felt that my crossing the Atlantic was impossible as the ash was expected to go through Europe. But the dark clouds began to clear, and with a glimmer of light the plane took off from Cairo airport to Madrid, and the journey to Central America had to pass by the land of people whose descendants now live in their former colonies.

The blue ocean stretching between the Old and New world looked like an endless carpet which was occasionally covered with white clouds like cotton flocks. Wasn t it only possible to keep looking at my watch measuring the duration of an eleven-hour journey?!

Compared with departure formalities at Cairo airport, arrival formalities at the Costa Rican capital s airport were very easy. There was no Cost Rican visa on my passport, as there is no Costa Rican embassy in any Arab country. All I had was a letter from the Cost Rican Foreign Ministry at the request of Costa Rica University which invited guests from 13 countries to the Costa Rican Poetry House. The letter sent by email carrying a post-stamp-size stamp allowed me to proceed to Costa Rica.

The moment I went out of the airport I saw my name in Arabic written in a hurry on a poster carried by the poet Norberto Salinas, president of the Poetry House and of the Costa Rica International Poetry Festival. To relieve my fatigue after a whole day s travel he carried the first copy of my anthology in Spanish published this year among 18 other anthologies of the Festival s poets from Costa Rica and other countries, including five Arab poets: Kholud Al-Mualla (UAE), Fakhri Ratroot (Palestinian living in Nicaragua),Taha Adnan (Morocco), Talaat Shahin (Egyptian translator specialized in literature in Spanish) and myself. The airport reflected the style of buildings in the capital San José: simplicity and cleanness. It s not a big building, and the number of planes there was similar to that found at any provincial airport. However, accuracy and calm meant simple formalities.

On the road to the centre of the capital which we reached in Norberto s car after half an hour, it was green as far as the eye could see the first feature of this country whose visitors needed extra lungs to breathe in fresh air. It s the greenest country on earth, and the happiest on the New Economies Organization index, based on the resources used by people and their age and degree of happiness.

In the land of Ticos

Though small in size (51,000 km2), the country is strategically situated in the middle of Central American countries, or more exactly between Nicaragua north and Panama south. The distance between the northernmost and southernmost parts of the country is only 484 km, but the distance between the eastern coast on the Caribbean and the western coast on the Pacific is only 119 km. Though situated only ten degrees north of the equator, temperature varies considerably due to rich geographic diversity mountains, heights and volcanoes, in addition to varying humidity and rainfall levels. There are only two seasons in most of Costa Rican parts : winter and summer, but this does not rule out rain and humidity in both seasons, and sunshine all year round!

Norberto and history books were my sources of information about Costa Rica: It is a country with a special flavour and a more special history. The people, called Ticos, boast of being the first country in the Americas without a regular army since 1949. Many pride themselves on the fact that even when they had an army the number of teachers was greater than that of soldiers, resulting in 93% literary rate. Successive governments made use of the budget surplus in providing clean drinking water, children injection and good health services, which makes the people among the longest living Latin Americans for over six decades. Costa Rican presidents encourage the values which ended their civil war: the promotion of peace, preservation of stability and spread of education.

The land of peace

On the eve of the 1948 presidential elections José Figueres led an armed uprising which turned into a 44-day civil war, the bloodiest incident in Costa Rica s history, in which hundreds were killed. As Figueres assumed power he abolished the army and in November 1949 he relinquished power to a civilian government and became a national hero. He was elected president in the 1953 first democratic elections held under the new constitution.

Thirty years ago (in December 1980), the UN established the Peace University in Costa Rica as a prestigious higher education institution to promote the spirit of tolerance and peaceful coexistence among all peoples of the world. One hundred and seventy male and female students from fifty countries are enrolled in the university to obtain a master s degree in the area of peace. The campus is located in the middle of a green nature reserve for monkeys, gazelles, reptiles, over 300 species of birds and about 100 species of plants. The university programmes are funded by contributions and financial support from governments and institutions which encourage the university s mission.

In 1987 the Costa Rican president Oscar Arias S?nchez was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in recognition of his effort in the making of a treaty which was signed by five Central American presidents ending civil wars there. During our stay in San José we saw many new presidential election posters which helped Mrs Laura Shinshila, the conservative socialist and former vice-president under S?nchez, win a landslide victory and become the first woman president in the country, and join other Latin American women presidents, including Michele Bashilit of Chile and Christina Fern?ndez of Argentina.

This peaceful atmosphere contrasts sharply with the country s tragic history. In 1719, over two centuries after Columbus set foot on the Atlantic Cariari coast in 1502, a Spanish governor described the colony of Costa Rica as the poorest and most miserable in the Americas! Unlike the bloody battles in Peru and Mexico, Costa Rica s resistance to the occupation armies coming from the north was less fierce.

Nevertheless, Costa Rica s remoteness nd absence of trade routes caused its relative isolation, in addition to ineffective Spanish control. The dream of finding gold was shattered; that was perhaps why that rule was commercial as Costa Rica was unable to contribute to the welfare of the colonies, though its name, in English means Rich Coast !

Costa Ricans

The population of Costa Rica is a little less than four and a half million, 94% of whom are whites and mixed races. Blacks from the Caribbean region make up 3%, and Native Americans 1%, living mainly in Cordillera de Talamanco or Juanacasti, and 1% of Chinese origin. The rest (about 3%) are blacks of African origin, descendants of Jamaican immigrant workers in the 19th century and slaves carried across the Atlantic.

White Costa Ricans are descendants of early Spanish settlers during the last five centuries, in addition to a propulation of a variety of origins: Itlian, German, English, Dutch, French, Irish, Portuguase, Lebanese and Polish, as well as American, Canadian, European and Jewish communities. The black spot in Costa Rica s contemporary history in my view is its voting in favour of the foundation of the Israeli state of occupation in 1948, which many Costa Rican poets apologized for at the Festival, saying it is historical shackles they wished they could free themselves from and establish good relations with the Arabs, but this is rather difficult as Costa Rica still has its embassy to the Zionists in Jerusalem, the capital of usurped Palestine.

Gardens or Prisons?

The sense of peace and security which Costa Ricans today have attracts many refugees, mostly from Colombia and Nicaragua (1% of the population), in addition to those who fled from civil wars and neighbouring dictatorial regimes, especially in Chile, Argentina and El Salvador, in the 1970s and 1980s. According to World Bank statistics, there are about 441,000 illegal immigrants, and 127,000 Costa Rican legal immigrants abroad.

When I read those rosy figures I felt as if I were in a forgotten utopia between the Americas: a country without an army, almost 100% literacy, favourable weather, nature that can cover the entire Arabian desert; however, I began to feel worried, and there were warnings and recommendations: Don t walk carrying a camera. Put your bag on your chest and hold it with both hands! Leave your valuables in the hotel! Don t walk alone after sunset! Don t stretch your hand out of the car window! Beware .! What s the matter, Costa Rican friends?

A close look at the style of Costa Rican houses reflects this hidden concern: Most houses are single-storey huts or villas built from wood, stone or metal like remote islands. Homes are filled with wonderful decorated curtains, folkloric paintings, colour photos and symbols of the country, such as the wooden carts pulled by villagers or their oxen, the two chairs put in the balcony or at house entrance to sit in for drinking and talking, as well as massive trees in, around and in front of the house and in its balcony and on its windows. Surprisingly, many houses have iron doors and fences and sometimes even barbed wire! This is common in towns and cities, but less common on external roads and rare in vast green spaces which are protected by slopes.

Lack of a sense of security is mainly attributed to the presence of wretched and homeless people at the fringes of cities. As their features show, these are mostly immigrants who carry their countries of origin s problems. Under circumstances where there is shortage of jobs and a high cost of living, there is a high rate of crime. On the edge of San José, in an area popularly called the Homeless District , there are people who look for something in garbage bins, and in the city centre there are many hawkers who sell Chinese dumped goods for a few dollars. (Costa Rica s currency is the col?n, and a US$ is equivalent to 500 colones. Most shops accept payment in euros or colones). When the police come near them, hawkers collect their goods in cloth bags to return to the same place when it is clear.

Inside a real prison

In the above lines a comparison is made between the beauty of nature and its inhabitants prisons, but the journey included a visit to a real prison in the town of San Carlos, north of San José. There was an agreement between the Poetry House and Costa Rica University on the one hand, and Justice Ministry, on the other for a visitor to read Arabic poetry on the prison stage with simultaneous interpretation into Spanish, an Ecuadorian singer to play on the grutar and a charity worker to distribute stickers and publications about environmental protection to the prisoners. At the prison gate I spread my palm, as did the interpreter Agosto Caesar and the artist Elbato Torres, for the guard to stamp them so that we would not be replaced with those behind bars!

We were told not to use videos or photograph prisoners faces as they were awaiting sentencing. As we went through the prison gate I saw a number of wooden products. As the interpreter explained, These wooden carts and birds are made by the prisoners as part of their rehabilitation process, and the proceeds of their sale are given to them. On the way to the theatre a prisoner sculptor s skill astonished me as he was carving a lion on wood, venting his lost freedom on the lion s body. He allowed me to photograph him. After the poetry reading and singing finished and on our way out of the prison, prisoners who didn t attend that activity asked Elbato Torres to play the guitar in the prison garden. The Ecuadorian singer song as Caesar translated my poem: The dreamer prisoner/said to the cruel warder/ how could you know you re not my prisoner?!/ aren t we only separated/by the same bars?

Poets rounds

Poets rounds in San Carlos were not limited to visiting the prison. In three days we organized three or four activities daily at schools, institutes, universities and parks. Following the opening ceremony which took place in the capital s theatre, the Festival s guests went to the various provinces. Dr Talaat Shahin read at Peres Zilidon with Juan Pernal (Costa Rica) and Fakhri Ratroot (Nicargua based), Kholud Almuala and Marta Lenor (Nicaragua) at Alajuela, and Taha Adnan read from his anthology I Hate Love in Jaco.

As for the other towns the Korean An D. Hun and the Costa Rican Diana Aviela read at Monte Verde, the Spanish Atiana Alberti, daughter of the great poet Refael Alberti at Lim?n and her husband the Cuban poet Alex Pausides at Herdien, the Mexcican Bianca Boldido at Pelen, the Spanish Beatrice Rosso at Santa Ana, the Italian Claudio Pozani at Torialba, the Panamanian Hector Colado at Hatilio, the American Jean Oterstorm at San Ram?n, the Venezuelan Riviero at Juanacasti and the Costa Rican Alfredo Trejos at San José.

Norberto Salinas, the Festival s founder and president, wanted to give 50,000 Costa Ricans the chance to attend the Festival s poetry reading sessions in various parts of the country. Poets read in their mother tongues, while efficient interpreters and Arabists made the interpretation. (My anthology has been translated by Dr Nadia Gamaleddin, Head of the Department of Spanish, Faculty of Languages, Ain Shams University). Poets signed their anthologies later and posed for group photos with the public who bought the anthologies for 2000 colones (approx. $ 4) each.

The anthologies were published in Spanish, the country s only official language spoken by about 97% of the population; the rest speak Native American languages and English. There are two main indigenous dialects: Costa Rican and Nicoionian which is similar to the common dialect in Nicaragua. Spanish-speaking Costa Ricans use the vocative plural pronoun instead of the pronoun tu which they consider colloquial. Interestingly, women exchange greetings in Spanish with two kisses, but Costa Ricans with a single kiss!

Schools: theatre, garden and library

According to January 2009 statistics, literacy rate is 97%, one of the highest in Latin America and the world Primary and secondary schools are everywhere. The right to have university education is enshrived in the constitution. Primary education is compulsory, and pre-school education is free. Few schools have classes after grade 12, as when students finish grade 11 they are awarded a bachelor s diploma which is recognized by the Education Ministry. There are government and private universities, and Costa Rica University is considered one of the best educational institutions in Central America.

One of the activities we attended was the opening of a school library in San Carlos on the occasion of the World Book Day. Guests were first greeted, then students performed a multi-scene play from Spanish literature about reward and punishment in this world and in the hereafter amid a big round of applause by schoolfellows and teachers. After our poetry reading and singing, a priest opened the library and sprayed the holy water amid prayers for the library to be a new forum for literature, art and life. Every school we visited had a theatre, library and garden, indicating that education is not based on curricula alone, but should be supported by art and the love of nature, and this attitude should start at school and spread to all parts of the country.

A small country, a large park

Public parks are seen everywhere in Costa Rica. Alvaro Ogaldi, a Costa Rican, spent forty years developing national parks. According to him, the country s history is divided into two periods: one before and after the people s commitment to sustainable preservation of unique biodiversity.

With Mario Boza, and other colleagues, Ogaldi developed the system of parks, and he himself was appointed national director of the system twice and was a leading figure in other environmental organizations. In 1999, Time magazine called him leader is the area of the environment in the 20th century . Alvaro and Mario, both biologists, are aware of the fact that biodiversity should be the target of a small country less then 1% of the world s size, but the habitat of 5% of all living creatures. The term biodiversity was unknown then, but the shape of equatorial life in the country has for decades been the centre of the interest of Costa Rica University s professors who advocate the ecological system and the theory of evolution. That inspired the two young scientists to convince Costa Ricans of the need to create parks and protect unique species.

The creation of parks and nature reserves was the task that concerns the future, and tourism was of secondary importance then. The country changed completely within a few years of the creation of parks. All Costa Ricans are quite familiar with the matters concerning the country s natural resources and nature conservation regulations. Before 1970, there were no nature reserves, and most of the environment, particularly Osa peninsula, with its biodiversity, suffered from the mining industry, game hunting and logging, but the area is now a nature reserve with relevant economy.

However, Costa Rica is still suffering from man-related environmental problems in parks, such as bird hunting, in addition to forest fires. Unplanned urban development results in water pollution, and lack of wastewater treatment has a negative effect on neighbouring parks. But the real danger facing Costa Rica and the world is still at a stone s throw: the negative effect of global warming, ozone hole, biosphere deterioration, and endangered species, the melting of the North and South Poles and of the many mountain tops which have increasingly been causing floods in recent years.

A visit to an old volcano

In her four-wheel drive, the social activist Vaniah Vogelsong took us from San Carlos to one of five active volcanoes on a mountain top where about 160 volcanoes used to exist. It was just past sunset, with the rainbow appearing in the sky and light rain falling on the closed windows. Every 15 minutes or so the car stopped and we got off. With Vaniah, the Costa Rican poets Vivien and Caesar and artist Elbato, I looked at the cloudy, dark sky. They looked like pagan worshippers in supplication to their gods on a museum mural.

Each time we stopped Vaniah translated the same sentence to me, The scene will be better after 500 metres. As we approached the volcano s crater, the place was full of hotels and restaurants, but the open areas and gardens were empty because guests and customers took shelter from the heavy rain inside the buildings. As the place was near the volcano, shops sold cold drinks in front of the scene of molten lava.

We did not wait long, as, like lightning, a spark ushered the rise of a cloud from the volcano which coughed before fires burst and lit the night, with camera flashes clicking and trying to take pictures of the dormant volcanoes. I was amazed. Just one week before the journey I wished Iceland s volcano died away, and now I wished Arina volcano in northern Costa Rica would erupt. How far apart man goes from one extreme to another!

The land of the saints

Strangely enough, there are many cities and towns in Costa Rica which begin with the word San , meaning saint: San Carlos, San Ram?n, San Giraldu da Rivas, Santa Cruz, San Isidro, San Vito, and of course San José!. In every local market there is at least one shop for religious icons of Christ, Virgin Mary and crosses. Big churches are built in front of houses. Despite the scenes of outward permissiveness, religion is an essential ingredient of social mobility. I remembered the priest opening the school library.

According to a national survey on religion carried out by Costa Rica University in 2007, 70.5% of Costa Ricans are Roman Catholics (44.9% perform Catholic rituals); 13.8% Evangelical Protestants, 4.3% followers of other religions such as Buddhism (mainly 40,000 Chinese), Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, with 11.3% atheists.

Good morning with rice and beans!

In the main market in every city and town there is a cluster of restaurants and shops to which people go every morning for shopping, breakfast or buying their national rose-violet. Everybody reads newspapers, especially sports papers and tabloids. According to a Correspondents Without Borders survey, Costa Rica is no. 1 in terms of freedom of the press in Latin American; 21 at world level.

As we entered the market we saw a large mural painting. There are many colour murals in streets and homes as decoration, publicity or expression of anger. We entered a restaurant and noticed that Galo Pento is the most popular dish in Costa Rican cuisine. It is a mixture of rice and beans. When they knew in one restaurant that I don t eat pork mixed with rice, they mixed the latter with tuna! Beans are ground and become like butter, then used to coat bread, which can be made from dried mangoes, Fruit is mixed with oil to make a popular food. Tanks to the abundance of dairy cattle seen in pastures everywhere, cheese is excellent and sold fresh and is hung like fruit on shop doors in the country.

Tortuguero is a must!

He who visits Costa Rica without visiting the Caribbean is deemed not to have visited it. That s a proverb I coined like the many clichés about Latin American countries. Our final destination was Tortuguero (or the reptile house ). As we were crossing Cartago valley, our always smiling guide Carlos said, In 1559, Spain decided to take full control of Costa Rica and so sent Juan Vascez da Coronado to found a capital for the colony in Cartago valley. The capital remained here until it was destroyed by the eruption of Erazo volcano in 1723.

Carlos talked like a simultaneous interpretation machine: a Spanish sentence followed immediately by an English one! Asking the tour conductor to slow down, he said, You are lucky as we are following this unofficial road as the official one is made impassable by the flood. Through this longer and more difficult road you ll be able to get the country s local flavour and see towns unseen by tourists. More surprisingly, we ll soon reach the point which separates North America from South America.

Everybody got their cameras ready. Few are the towns that separate or join two continents. Other examples are Sinai in Egypt and Istanbul in Turkey. I took a picture of an old bridge over a small, half-full stream.

On an over 126,000-hectare area, 1,500 creature and plant species live, making Tortuguero a unique nature reserve. Rudolfo Dada received us in his resort. He boasts of being a descendant of a Palestinian family who immigrated to Costa Rica about a century ago. The family lost their home in Palestine and made Costa Rica their new home. What remains of the home country are words counted on the fingers of one hand and pictures of an Arab family hung on the wall. At the end of the night I was asked to light a candle in memory of the Iraqi poet Anwar Alghassani who taught at Costa Rica Unviersity and died this year after he helped expand the horizons of the Festival by inviting Arab poets, the first being Ahmad Alshahawi, then the Moroccan Aisha Albasri, and now five Arabs, as if the Festival were ours.

Alghassani was a member of Kirkuk Literary Society, formed in the 1960s, with Fadel Alazzawi, Jean Dumo and father Yusuf Said. In 1962 he moved to Baghdad, then in 1968 to Leipzig, Germany, where he obtained a PhD in Journalism in 1979. He taught in Germany and Algeria before he settled in San José to teach journalism and media studies at Costa Rica University.

With two candles lit in memory of the late Alghassani, the Costa Rican poet Norberto Salinas recited words of love, recognition and farewell, and the Ecuadorian singer Elbato Torres played a piece he called Arabian Nights :

This is Scheherazade opening all doors,

She wants someone to call her from Alhambra palaces,

She wants him to save her as high tide does low tide,

The story will not end by dawn,

There will be no end,

The story will be like tattoo,

That remains amid dance fires,

To the tunes of rumba,

Awaiting sunrise.

Until a late hour of the night we went on reading poetry in various languages in the land of paradise and volcanoes looking forward to the rise of a new lyric.

(Translated by Dr. Shaaban Afifi)