Luxury (奢华的) Costa Rica

This grand adventure through Costa Rica offers the perfect combination of luxury travel and thrilling encounters with the natural world. Travelers will visit the impressing Arenal Volcano, the magical Monteverde Cloud Forests, and the mysterious Manuel Antonio National Park.

★Accommodation in 4-star hotels with a Certification for Sustainable Tourism

★ Nature Guide

★Max. 14 participants

★Comfortable, private transportation

★Guaranteed departures

Look forward to seeing fascinating creatures in their natural habitats, relaxing on beautiful, unspoiled beaches, and spending your nights in high-quality accommodations. Whether you dream of whitewater rafting on rapid rivers, kayaking through forests, relaxing in natural hot springs, or hiking through lush (茂盛的) rain forests—this trip has something for you!

If you have ever considered visiting the picturesque country of Costa Rica then look no further than Sprachcaffe Travel and find out everything you need to know right here. If you have any further question, our friendly and informed staff are more than willing to help!

What’s Included

★Comfortable hotels with 4 stars

★8 breakfasts, 6 dinners

★Transfers in air-conditioned (mini) bus

★Entrance fees and guided tour of Manuel Antonio National Park

★Guided visit to Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve

★Hot springs, natural pools

★El Trapiche sugar cane and coffee

★English-speaking naturalist guide throughout, local guides

Jackhorn Kentucky, a small village in the Appalachian Mountains, is deep in coal country. But with coal jobs disappearing and unemployment at record highs, this community has found a reason to hope. A bakeshop with an unusual name, Black Sheep Brick Oven Bakery, is providing steady employment and job training skills to local residents.

The bakery is a community-owned social enterprise that is focused on providing jobs for workers displaced(免职)by the coal mining industry,people in recovery,and others who need a new start in life. It started as a volunteer driven initiative(倡议)as part of the successful “Back to Our Appalachian Roots” project. Through the project, workers can learn traditional mountain skills like blacksmithing, quilting, and mountain cooking.

“There is nothing like bread baked in the hearth,” Gwen Johnson, the co-founder and manager of the bakery said.“It feeds the body and seems familiar even if you have never before tasted it.” The name of the bakery and catering company was borrowed from a local shop according to Johnson. But the shop didn’t mind it.

The reasons why the community needs the social enterprise go back to the beginning of coal mining in America. Generations of Appalachian residents worked in the coal mines and it was a source of pride as well as the primary employer in the area. But coal mining is back-breaking work with a huge amount of injuries, accidents and diseases like black lung. Today, there are very few coal jobs left in the area due to automation and the reduction of power plants that are coal-fed. Poverty has become a major problem in the area.

The Black Sheep Brick Oven Bakery is working to turn this around. It is a model of giving people second chances and has become a successful business. Johnson said “We have created an inclusive place of love and belonging for whoever wants to come. I was always a black sheep in my family, which gave me a heart for others.”

Computer scientists at the University of Waterloo have created a device for wearable computer input suitable for many situations. You can control it easily just by touching your fingertips together in different ways. The device, called Tip-Tap, is inexpensive and battery-free through the use of radio frequency identification (RFID)tags to sense when fingertips touch.

The device could，therefore, be added to surgical（外科手术的）gloves, allowing surgeons to access the planning diagrams in an operating room. "One of the many possible applications of the device is in surgeries. What typically happens now with digital operation plans is that an assistant is responsible for navigating（导航）the computer and communicating with the surgeon, but this is slow and difficult," said Daniel Vogel, a professor in Computer Science. "If the surgeon tries to navigate it himself using a touchscreen or a mouse, it's difficult because it would require constant cleaning of the hands. The idea is if you wear Tip-Tap in surgical gloves, surgeons could navigate the computer themselves from where they are, and it won't affect their other actions."

In developing Tip-Tap, the researchers mapped the most comfortable areas on the index finger for people to touch with their thumb, and tested different designs. Following user tests, they solved the problem of making it "battery-free".

"We used this design in two prototype Tip-Tap devices, a glove with a range of four meters and an on-skin tattoo," said Vogel. Such devices are useful for issuing simple commands when a user cannot easily hold an input device, and the usage context is a defined（界定的）area—for example，factory workers，surgeons，or people exercising in a gym. "This is the only device of its kind that we're aware of that doesn't require a battery or wires to make it work."

If you’re not at least a bit terrified by the climate and ecological breakdown unfolding before our eyes, you haven’t grasped the scale of the crisis. Eco-anxiety, defined as “a chronic(长期的)fear of environmental doom”, is on the rise. But redirecting this anxiety into anger and collective action might just pull humanity back from the brink.

We don’t yet know how deeply eco-anxiety affects people, but we can learn not to repeat the mistakes of long-gone societies lost to environmental collapse. Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed uncovers the common driver that led to the fall of ancient civilizations such as the Central American Mayan, the remote Pacific Easter Island, and the Mycenae: People accidentally destroyed the environmental resources on which their societies depended.

Today, we are living in a new climate and ecological age. The new normal is one that humans have never before experienced on earth, and that has occurred within a single generation. We can’t claim ignorance. Numerous scientific reports show: unprecedented(空前的)wildfires in the Arctic, heatwaves annually breaking records, the Amazon shrinking and drying, and species extinction rates accelerating. Nature’s dangerous decline is unprecedented.

So, it’s not surprising that eco-anxiety is on the rise. Anxiety is often a private emotional state: We feel alone, stuck inside our own heads, and our emotions stop us from doing the things we want. But anger, directed appropriately, can fuel powerful collective action for change.

We are on a pathway to destroy the global conditions for human survival. Unlike previous civilizations, we have the science and technology to understand our danger and chart a new pathway. This is a moment for all of us to channel our eco-anxiety, fear and anger into energy for change.