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MISSION STATEMENT
for
RainForest World
I am writing this sitting at a table in our "rancho" at camp. It is 5:45 AM, I have a cup of coffee, the sun rising downstream in the notch of the canyon, and the guests are still sound asleep in their tents. This is my time. My favorite time in my favorite place. The howler monkeys are sounding off across the river way up in the rainforest somewhere. A hundred yards downstream, a bare throated tiger heron stands on a midstream rock in a Class 2 rapid. He is staring intently down into the Pacuare river, waiting for his breakfast to swim into the eddy behind the rock. I have seen him many times. I am pretty sure it is the same heron.
I think back on my seventeen years here in Costa Rica. It is like it has been a second lifetime for me. My "first life" was spent on the rivers of West Virginia, learning to kayak, first with my father, then with friends, then with those same friends taking the sport of kayaking to a whole new level in the seventies and eighties. It was also spent building a rafting business with my partner, Roger Zbel. Precision Rafting is still there and so is Roger. So are most of my friends. I'm the one that left. I'm the one that came to Costa Rica.
I didn't just come to Costa Rica, I was drawn in. There was no escape. The rivers, the endless summers, the life-style, the magic of the forests and jungles. The place just exudes life. However, as I came to learn, sometimes life is not easy here.
The Costa Rican people constantly strive and struggle to make a living (a lot like the tiger heron). Watching it all happen all around me, it made me want to be a part of it and give something back. Years ago I adopted a couple of the kids from the "precario" the squatters' neighborhood at the Pacuare takeout. I raised Angel and Poca on the rivers and taught them how to guide and kayak. They are grown now and work for RainForest World. Back in 1990, a couple of Cabecar Indian boys stepped out of the jungle and onto the river bank. Urbano still lives in the canyon but Octavio has been with me since the first week this company opened. Close to a dozen young Costa Rican men and women got their start here at RainForest World and have gone on to do things they probably never imagined they would do. Take "Semilla" for example. When Semi was 12 he picked fruit in the RainForest World organic farm in his home village of Peralta. This past year found him guiding on the American River in California and then living and working for 2 months in Manhattan.
In West Virginia, rafting takes place in gorgeous river canyons, but the rivers are crowded and rafting trips are at best an "adventure sport". Here it is different. While I'm not going to tell you that our trips are "educational," or even necessarily "eco-tourism", I do know that it is hard to go down the Pacuare, or canoe the Sierpe, or watch a sea turtle lay her eggs on a beach at night in Parismina without the experience enriching us as human beings.
My time in Costa Rica has truly given me a whole new perspective of our role on this planet. We must leave a mark, a positive mark, in our lifetimes. I have been immersing myself in the never ending battle to save the Pacuare from proposed dam projects. I'm a Costa Rican citizen now and have a voice. I am going to make sure that it doesn't happen in my lifetime. People ask me why. Well, I guess it's for the future of the company, and the future of our guides and drivers and the Cabecars. But I'm also doing it for the Tiger Heron. It is all part of giving something back.
Phil Coleman
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