Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Profile

I am an architect and urban planner from Costa Rica. I currently work for the national chapter of the Green Building Council, promoting sustainable construction and design in the country. I have also an interest in urban design, therefore I am developing a social project for a poor community in Alajuelita, Costa Rica. I also have an experience on urban planning, and a strong interest in cultural and architectural heritage, since my childhood, when I visited several national parks and insisted to visit churches and picturesque towns with my family.

In this interest for heritage concurred many other of my passions: my love for nature (I'm an avid hiker, having visited the most amazing and unknown locations of my country), my interest in architecture and town planning, especially the Modern Movement, my interest in cultures, heritage, history and geography.

As a matter of fact, I was part of the Costa Rican team that in the 1999 International Geography Olympiad, in Toronto, reached an unexpected 4th place, after a 3rd-spot tie with the Canadian team.

Specifically about the World Heritage List, I knew about it in my teens,through an almanac, that listed the sites from every country to that point (mid 90s). This created a profound impact on me, since I was both interested in the geographical aspect of this matter and the existence of a far more diverse heritage in the world, than I thought. It fueled my knowledge about the world, more than memorazing maps could.

Since I found the Unesco WH website, sometime around 2003, the search has been unstoppable, and I have managed to document it in pictures and pictures of every site on the world heritage and the tentative list. Every time when the WH session happens and the documents from each new site and their evaluations filter, I enrich my bank of data and pictures. Of course, it is an intellectual task, but one that I find highly rewarding.

I am proficient in four languages: Spanish, English, German and French. And I am currently learning Italian. I intend to apply for a master degree on Sustainable Urban Design in Germany or the Netherlands in some point in the future. And I also expect to begin to visit other WHS in the near future.

Costa Rica Last Update 31.12.69 5 WHS Visited 13 Reviews 5 WHS Rated 4 TWHS Visited

Visited Sites Esteban Cervantes Jimenez

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Recent Reviews Esteban Cervantes Jimenez

Corcovado National Park and Isla del Cano Biological Reserve (T)

Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Costa Rica - 15-Nov-17

Site visited on my December-January vacations, for a whole week, a trip that I had been wishing to do since my childhood’s readings about the Costa Rican National Park System, that helped me highlight the importance of the Osa peninsula conservation complex.

The Nature:

After visiting both protected areas, I think they fully live up to Corcovado’s name as “the most biologically diverse point on Earth”. During my visits to 2 different ranger stations (closer San Pedrillo and farther away and more pristine Sirena), I saw many more different species than I had ever seen in any national park in my country, and in different life stages, daytimes, and habitats than I had seen them before.

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Stone Spheres of the Diquís

Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Costa Rica - 22-Mar-15

I visited this site back on February 1st, 2015, on a two-day-trip. This was my first new site in 14 years and I am glad that I have managed to make the first review of it. I visited it as a part of an organized tour through cultural sites and traditions of the south east of Costa Rica, that was organized by Culturacr.com.

As part of the tour, me, my partner and a group of other 20 Costa Ricans and some resident Argentineans, traveled some 300 km to the cultural festival known as La Fiesta de los Diablitos (or the Party of the Little Devils), a tradition from the Boruca indian community which exists since colonial times, and takes place on the first weekend of January in Boruca Territory, and the first weekend of February in Rey Curré Territory, where we went. I thought it was the most interesting part of our journey, and is totally deserving of being in the Intangible Heritage List, in case it is ever nominated. I bought a mask, there is plenty of handicrafts at reasonable prices, made by the borucas themselves, who, after losing most of their own culture, are in the process of recovering it

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National archeological park of Guayabo de Turrialba (T)

Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Costa Rica - 24-Oct-14

I would like to add a less general information to my initial account, made years ago. By that time, I hadn't visited the site in some 10 years.

I'm back on visiting different sites of Costa Rica and I made an almost incidental visit on Guayabo on October 12th (an unplanned homage to the initial contact between the native american and indigenous worlds). I did also a lot of photographing, which I hadn't done on my 2 or 3 previous visits. I think I got some really good shots. The area, not just the archaeological area, but the rural environment, the natural heritage, and the landscapes are worth photographing.

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Panamá

Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Costa Rica - 21-May-14

I visited both Panama Viejo and Casco Viejo in january 1999, as part of a prize for winning the 3rd spot in Costa Rica's National Scientific Fair, together with 3 members of our group. We visited also sites outside the WH site, as Cerro Ancón, the Esclusas Miraflores, the aquarium, the canopy observatory "National Park" (from where one can see the best views of the city) and the Smithsonian's Barro Colorado island. And although my peers were most interested in the shopping malls (many Costa ricans go to Panama just to shop, as it is duty free area), I managed to make them come along with me on a taxi ride to the ruins of Panama Viejo.

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National Monument at San Jose (T)

Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Costa Rica - 18-Jun-11

Equally to the National Theater, the National Monuement, located in the National Park in San Jose, represents the ideals of the liberal era, in this case nationalism. The monument was built to conmemorate the 1856-1857 National Campaign against the filibusters that invaded Nicaragua at that time and were planning to establish a puppet slave republic in Central America according to ideas prevailing at the time.

It was also built to ornate the park in front of the railway station that connected the city and the Central Valley to the Caribbean coast and thus allowed trade with the world at the time. It was the point of entrance to San Jose and was located in the area of San Jose where also the finest buildings and where the rich mainly settled, all in the northeastern side of the city.

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Profile Data

Name: Esteban Cervantes Jimenez
Country: Costa Rica
Most Impressive: To this moment, I have been more related to WH through my "virtual" visits, researching about more than half of the WH sites to this point, creating a picture and document database for each. But if I had to pick one WH on site experience, it would be two. The first one, when I was 12 and visited the ChirripÃ³ national park (part of the Talamanca mountain range-La Amistad site) and knowing a kind of high mountain landscape which is unusual in Costa Rica. The simple fact of leaving the oak trees forest into the moorlands, was amazing. But walking in the night to reach the peak of ChirripÃ³ mountain proper, and seeing the sunset from there, with the different shades and colors in the barren mountains, was a supremely spiritual experience. The other experience would be in RincÃ³n de la Vieja national park, part of the AC Guanacaste WHS. Here it was also about transitions: from the dry forest to the volcanic features, from the savanna descending into a lush green river valley with a waterfall, or ascending to the volcano, leaving the forest behind into a sandy wasteland.
Proposal: I think that the WH list should become more representative of the diversity of the world with the years, still think that Europe (specially Eastern Europe) still has lots to give in terms of inscribed sites. I am, however a fan of east asian sites and think that this is the area of the world that will grow the most in the next years, in terms of its representation in the list. Since I have researched a lot -for years- about cultural and architectural heritage, I can think of sites like the cemeteries and cenotaphs of the First World War in Belgium and France, Glasgow's School of Art, John Soane's house in London, the cultural heritage of Kamakura, the ruins of M'banza Kongo in Angola, and Kumbi Saleh in Mauritania, the historic center of Yazd in Iran, the archaeological sites of Aspendos and Afrodisias in Turkey, the temples of Palitana, Varanasi or Bhubenaswar in India, Alvar Aalto's architectural work, FLW main works in the USA, the Klondike in Canada, Famagusta in Cyprus, the palace of marquÃ©s de Dos Aguas in Spain, Dura Europos or Ebla in Syria, Jerash in Jordan, well...and many others.

Recently Visited WHS

Update 31.12.69: Statue of Liberty

Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves

Guanacaste

Panamá

Stone Spheres of the Diquís

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Rating Stats

Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves 4

Guanacaste 3.5

Statue of Liberty 3.5

Panamá 3

Stone Spheres of the Diquís 1.5

Reviewed WHS

Visited TWHS

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Top 50 Missing Sites

Amritsar
Bagan
Benin Iya / Sungbo' s Eredo
Cenotes of the Yucatan
Chicago School of Architecture
City of Herat
Dzongs of Bhutan
Kaieteur National Park, Iwokrama Forest and the Kanuku Mountains
Middle and Upper Sepik
Minoan palaces of Crete
Mt Kailash
Okavango Delta
Palitana
Pharaonic Temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu
Tana Toraja Cultural Landscape
Taq-i-Kisra (Arch of Ctesiphon)
The Archaeological Site of Göbeklitepe
Torres del Paine National Park
Vatnajökull National Park
Vers une architecture: Major Buildings of Le Corbusier

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Esteban Cervantes Jimenez Profile

Visited Sites Esteban Cervantes Jimenez

Legend

Recent Reviews Esteban Cervantes Jimenez

Corcovado National Park and Isla del Cano Biological Reserve (T)

Stone Spheres of the Diquís

National archeological park of Guayabo de Turrialba (T)

Panamá

National Monument at San Jose (T)

Profile Data

Recently Visited WHS

Visited WHS

Reviewed WHS

Visited TWHS

Reviewed TWHS

Top 50 Missing Sites

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