The economies of the world’s countries are slow. Travel and tourism are down. Hotels have plenty of space. Crowds are down. Now is the perfect time to take that trip you have been dreaming about for so long. Travel now before the crowds come back and the prices go up. Join us on a trip to one of the exotic destinations around the globe that we specialize in. Whether it’s Mexico’s fabulous Copper Canyon, the magical Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan, or the rainforests of Costa Rica we are ready for your call.

Always wanted to come eyeball-to-eyeball with a flightless cormorant or a giant tortoise? Then the Galapagos is for you. How about enjoying a fantastic cruise through the Straits of Magellan, hiking on a glacier and sipping whiskey over-the-rocks of ancient glacial ice? Patagonia is the place, or travel back in time to visit the mighty empire of the Maya—the Yucatan is your destination. Perhaps you prefer to stroll or bicycle through the green hills and friendly villages of Ireland? These are just a few of the adventures that we have lined up for you.

Wherever your dream destination is, now is the best time to travel. When the times are slow it’s time to go.

Throughout Costa Rica’s plentiful rainforests, beaches and mountains, visitors are enchanted by the number and variety of butterflies. Costa Rica boasts over 1000 butterfly species, more than the entire continent of Africa.

Flitting from flower to flower the butterflies are enchanting to watch, the brilliant colors of their wings lending joy to the day. These delicate wings are covered with tiny scales which reflect light passing through them to form bright colors and patterns. They serve to identify the butterfly to members of its own species as it seeks to carry out its sole mission in life, mating. The colors of some species, such as the Monarch, which are toxic when eaten, warn predators that these butterflies are not dinner.

The male butterfly spends his short time on earth cruising around looking for a female. With his antennae he can smell her perfume (pheromones) from over a mile away. At the back of his abdomen—remember, butterflies are insects so their bodies have three sections, a head, a thorax, and an abdomen—is a set of “claspers” to grab on to his lady love. When couples mate they face in opposite directions with their abdomens locked together. The female, if startled during the conjugal act, will fly up into the air carrying aloft her attached Don Juan. During her short lifetime she will lay about 100 eggs. Some species lay their eggs in clusters while others lay each egg on a different plant.

Upon hatching, the tiny caterpillars go into the world to eat. As adult butterflies are primarily sex machines, caterpillars are primarily eating machines, munching the night away, and remaining motionless during daylight hours to camouflage themselves from predators. The growing caterpillar sheds its skin four times, then searches for the perfect spot on the underside of a leaf to attach itself and prepare for the miraculous change from a crawling eating machine to a glorious flying butterfly.

The butterfly’s life is short, varying from species to species, but averaging about three months—two weeks as an adult butterfly.

Join us on a California Native tour to beautiful Costa Rica and witness this bounty of butterflies for yourself.

According to Greek mythology, coffee originated when Zeus’ daughter, Helena, prepared a drink that “had the power of robbing grief and anger of their sting and banishing all painful memories.”

Throughout history, religious leaders preached that the drinking of coffee was dangerous and the “drink of the devil,” but in the 17th Century, the Pope gave his blessing on the consumption of coffee, and in Turkey, as part of the marriage vow, the husband had to provide (till death do they part) his wife with coffee—failure to do so was grounds for divorce.

Coffee arrived in Costa Rica in the 1790’s, and one could describe the relationship between Costa Rica and coffee as a love story—they were made for each other—the rich soil, ideal climate and altitudes were perfect for growing the red berries. Costa Rica exported its first coffee to Columbia in 1820, and twenty-three years later, London became a profitable market for the rich beans, converted in the mills to “grains of gold.”

After a brief civil war in 1823, free land grants, coffee plants and small parcels of land were given to families that wanted to grow coffee. Thus, Costa Rica is said to be based on a “Coffee Democracy.”

Coffee was originally hauled from the Central Valley to the coast on the backs of mules, but by the mid-1800’s, roads were developed and oxcarts replaced the mules. Even today some farmers rely on this traditional method of transporting their goods.

The coffee industry plays such a prominent role in the existence of this nation, that there is a special branch of the government that deals solely with coffee—The Costa Rican Coffee Institute or Instituto del Café. León Cortés Castro was the institute’s first president, and in 1936, went on to become president of the country.

Today, there are approximately 50,000 coffee producers in Costa Rica and together they produce more than 170 million tons of coffee. Costa Rica’s fine, high quality coffee is known throughout the world, and is frequently used to upgrade lesser quality coffees, like those of Brazil.

Modern medicine is still undecided on the health effects of this caffeine beverage but one thing is for sure, Costa Rica has found it quite stimulating.

So join us for a cup—in Costa Rica!

Costa Rica is just the paradise to make the winter blues go away. It has rainforests and jungles loaded with exotic animals and birds—monkeys playing in the tree tops, sloths hanging from tree limbs, basilisks (Jesus Christ lizards) walking on water, macaws flying above, and butterflies dancing everywhere.

The scenery is unbelievable. From the Caribbean to the Pacific the country has so much to offer—fiery volcanoes, lush rainforests, mysterious cloud forests, and beautiful beaches.

Looking for a little action? Costa Rica boasts some of the best whitewater rafting around, canopy tours where you can fly above the tree-tops on a zip-line, hiking, horseback riding, swimming and kayaking. Whew! Need relaxing time? Nothing like a soak in hot-springs heated by the Arenal Volcano.

Costa Rica is the perfect place to thaw out. Located in the exact center of the Americas, right next to the equator, the temperatures are warm year round. (It is tropical, so it usually rains in the late afternoon but the rain is warm and not uncomfortable.)

Hungry? On your Costa Rica vacation you will savor fantastic seafood, tropical fruit and delicious coffee—all very fresh and oh so delicious. And the people who call it home, the Ticos, are warm-hearted and friendly which really puts the icing on the cake of a perfect vacation.

Join us on one of our Costa Rica Nature Explorer Tours by September 30, 2011 and receive our “Jump start to Spring” discount. All you have to do is mention this offer when you reserve your trip to paradise and you will receive a $400 per couple discount.

Phone or email us today and start packing for a wonderful adventure.

Last year was quite an eventful year for The California Native. We made another exploration trip to Patagonia, sailing around Cape Horn on a wonderful expedition cruise, hiking on glaciers with crampons, and whitewater rafting through Argentina’s beautiful countryside. We also made several trips to Mexico, one at the invitation of President Calderon to attend a luncheon with him and celebrate the initialization of a campaign to promote the wonders of Mexico’s colonial cities.

For the upcoming year we will be offering new trips in Patagonia and China, as well as additional departure dates for our Copper Canyon trips. And of course we’ll continue to offer our exciting tours of Costa Rica, Peru, Galapagos, Bhutan, Myanmar and Ireland, and our other off-the-beaten-track destinations.

But why “Tico“? In the Spanish world, the diminutive, formed by dropping the final “o” or “a” and adding an “ito” or “ita” depending on the gender, is commonly used out of friendliness and familiarity. It’s much more cariñoso (affectionate) to call your amigo (friend) an amigito (little friend).

About a century ago many Costa Ricans made the mistake of forming the diminutive by adding an “ico” to the end of words. So poquito (the Spanish diminutive of the word poco, little, few) would be poquiTICO when spoken by a Costa Rican. Because of their friendly and warm-hearted manner, the people of Costa Rica commonly used the diminutive in their everyday speech patterns and thus earned the nickname “Ticos” from outsiders.

Although the Costa Rican educational system has now taught most of the Ticos the correct grammatical usage of the diminutive forms in Spanish, the term “Tico” remains to commemorate this charming affection of the past.

The banana plant is not a tree but a member of the lily family.

Remember Woody Allen’s movie Bananas? Well, take away the inept Guerrilla fighters and political assassinations and you have Costa Rica, the nicest and most peace-loving republic in Central America.

Costa Rica has rainforests, beaches, rivers, mountains, volcanoes, birds, animals, butterflies, and flowers. It also has bananas, bananas, and more bananas—in fact, Costa Rica produces about two million tons of premium bananas a year, 20% of the world’s total. For the Costa Rican economy, bananas rank second only to tourism.

Bananas are money to Costa Rica. They say “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”—neither do bananas. The banana plant is not a tree but a giant herb and a member of the lily family. It is the largest plant on earth without a woody stem, and grows as high as 25 feet in one year.

Did you ever wonder where bananas came from? Probably not, but I’ll tell you anyway. Bananas originated in Malaysia and the East Indies. Today primitive wild bananas still grow in these areas. Men have farmed bananas since pre-historic times. If you are a student of ancient Hindu, Chinese, Greek, or Roman literature, you can find references to the banana in old dusty manuscripts and scrolls. Aaachoo! Excuse Me!

In 327 B.C., for example, Alexander the Great found people eating bananas in India. An ancient Burmese legend tells us that wise men first realized that bananas could be eaten by observing the birds eating them. It makes one thankful that these same wise men failed to notice that the birds also ate worms.

When Spanish explorers came to the New World, they brought the banana with them. Friar Tomas de Berlanga planted the first banana root stocks in the Caribbean in 1516.

Three hundred years later, American sailors returning from the Caribbean brought bananas to the United States. They were officially introduced to the American public at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Each banana was wrapped in foil and sold for 10 cents. Today the average American eats 29 pounds of bananas a year.

So join us on a trip to beautiful Costa Rica and while you’re there, have a banana on us!

In the mid-nineteenth century, adventurers known as filibusters participated in military actions aimed at obtaining control of Latin American nations with the intent of annexing them to the United States—an expression of Manifest Destiny, the idea that the United States was destined to control the continent. Only 5’2″ and weighing 120 pounds, Walker was a forceful and convincing speaker and a fearless fighter who commanded the respect of his men in battle.

Born in 1824 in Tennessee, Walker graduated from the University of Nashville at the age of 14 and by 19 had earned a medical degree. He practiced medicine in Philadelphia, studied law in New Orleans, and then became co-owner of a newspaper, the Crescent, where the young poet Walt Whitman worked. When the paper was sold, Walker moved on to California, where he worked as a reporter in San Francisco before setting up a law office in Marysville.

When he was 29, his freebooting nature led him to become the leader of a group plotting to detach parts of northern Mexico. Recruiting a small army, he sailed to Baja California and conquered La Paz, declaring himself president of Lower California. He then decided to extend his little empire to include Sonora, and renamed it “The Republic of Sonora.”

Marching on to the Colorado River, Walker found himself faced with harsh conditions and a high desertion rate, forcing him to retreat to California, where he surrendered to U.S. authorities on charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws.

One result of this incursion was that Mexico sold a part of Sonora to the United States—the transaction we call the Gadsden Purchase. Acquitted of criminal charges, Walker next turned his attention to Central America. Throughout this region, chaos reigned, as forces known as Democrats and Legitimists fought each other. The leader of the Democratic faction in Nicaragua invited Walker to bring an army and join the struggle against the Legitimists. In 1855, with his army of 58 Americans, later called by stateside romantics, “The Immortals,” he landed in Nicaragua.

Within a year, leading “The Immortals” and a native rebel force, he routed the Legitimists and captured Granada, their capital. His success roused concern in the other Central American countries, especially Costa Rica, which sent in a well-armed force to invade Nicaragua. Walker’s army repelled the invasion, but a poorly executed counter attack into Costa Rica failed, and a war of attrition continued, in which disease killed more soldiers on both sides than enemy bullets.

Other enemies plagued Walker. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the shipping magnate, seeking control of the San Juan River-Lake Nicaragua route from the Caribbean to the Pacific, armed Walker’s enemies, while the British navy, attempting to thwart American influences in the region, regularly harassed efforts to supply him. In spite of these factors, Walker had himself elected president of Nicaragua. The United States briefly recognized his government but never sent him aid. Soon the other countries of Central America formed an alliance against him, and in mid 1857 he surrendered once again to a U.S. naval officer and returned to the U.S.

Landing first in New Orleans, he was greeted as a hero. He visited President Buchanan, then went on to New York, all the time seeking support for a return to Nicaragua. But support waned as returning soldiers reported military blunders and poor management.

Nevertheless he succeeded in raising another army, and returned to Nicaragua in late 1857. Again thwarted by the British navy, he abandoned his third Latin American invasion.

Still undaunted and seeking support for yet another venture, Walker wrote a book, The War in Nicaragua. Knowing that his best prospects lay in the South, he assumed a strong pro-slavery stance. This strategy proved successful, and in 1860 he once again sailed south. Unable to land in Nicaragua due to the ever-present British, he landed in Honduras, planning to march overland, but the British soon captured him and turned him over to the Hondurans. Six days later, at the age of 36, he was executed by a firing squad. The Walker saga had ended. This enigmatic man had come close to altering the history of the continent. Had he been successful, he might have brought several Central American countries into the United States as pro-southern states, altering the balance in Congress and postponing The Civil War.

Today Walker is far better known in Central America than in the United States. Costa Ricans honor Juan Santamaria, a young drummer boy who became a national hero by torching a fort in which Walker’s army was encamped, and a national park, Santa Rosa, commemorates the battle where Walker’s soldiers were expelled from Costa Rica.

According to legend, orchids were given their name by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus, who was a student of Aristotle. The rounded paired bulbs of one common Mediterranean orchid looked like male organs to him so he named the plant orchis, the Greek word for testicle. In medieval Europe, aphrodisiacal powers were attributed to the plants and their dried pulverized tubers were used in love potions. Potions made from younger, firmer tubers were believed to result in the conception of sons, while potions made from older, softer tubers resulted in daughters.

Orchids cover a full spectrum of colors and patterns, from delicate pastels to vibrant full-bodied hues, and range in size from tiny plants an inch high with flowers so small that we can barely see them, to 50 foot long vines with blossoms spanning more than a foot—some bloom only for a day while the blossoms of others last for weeks.

But what actually is an orchid and why do people find them so fascinating? We looked into the nature and history of these exotic plants and came up with some fascinating facts.

Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants (almost 30,000 wild species have been classified) and also the most diverse. Although they can be found in a wide range of habitats—one is semiaquatic and only its blossoms poke above the water surface, while another grows and blooms entirely below the ground—the greatest diversity of orchids can be found in tropical cloud forests. Most of these tropical orchids are epiphytes—air plants, which grow on the trunks and limbs of trees. Although they grow on the trees, they are not parasites and only use the tree as a place to anchor where they can receive light high above the forest floor—biologists have recorded almost fifty different orchid species growing on a single tree.

An orchid seed has no food source of its own, but each species has a symbiotic relationship with one particular fungus—without that fungus the seed cannot grow.

Just as the colors and sizes of orchids have so much variety, their scents also cover a wide range—some have no scent at all, others give off musky decaying smells, and one has the delightful scent of vanilla—in fact, it is vanilla. The vanilla plant is the only fruit produced by the orchid family that humans can eat. Centuries ago, the ancient Aztecs used vanilla to flavor their chocolate drinks. When the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez was offered the drink by the Emperor Montezuma, he was so impressed that he brought it back to the King of Spain and it soon became a favorite with the royalty of Europe.

In addition to being designated as the national flower of Costa Rica, the orchid is also the national flower of Thailand, Singapore, Columbia, Panama, Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and the Cayman Islands—a very popular flower indeed.

In Mexico’s Copper Canyon

a young Tarahumara lady weaves a basket from leaves of the agave.

Everybody loves a bargain! So, if you book your trip to Mexico’s Copper Canyon, Yucatan or Costa Rica within the next 30 days, you can lock in our 2010 prices for your 2011 trip.

To quote some famous thinkers on the subject of saving money:

“Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.” – Groucho Marx

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” – Woody Allen

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” – Yogi Berra