Tuesday, March 31

Tuesday March 31, 2009

Well, I made it back from my first sight visit with no problems and had a great experience! Saturday morning I took a 4-hour bus from San Jose to Liberia the Capital of the Guanacaste region, which here in Costa Rica is there Cowboy country. The bus ride was nice, a 27 year old Tica named Marybeth sat next to me, who was on her way to Coco beach where she lives and goes to college. She was very nice like many Costa Ricans I have met and while I wasn’t able to sleep the conversation in Spanish was pleasant. At the end of the bus ride she gave me her email address and phone number and preceded to tell me to call her if I’m ever near Coco Beach, which I thought was very nice of her. From there I switched busses and made my way to Cuajiniquil a rural fishing village in the northwest part of the country only about a half hour from the boarder of Nicaragua. This is where a current volunteer was waiting for me. His name is Rob and he has been in Costa Rica for about a year in the same program as myself. So it was nice to get an idea of some of the things I could be doing in my future site.

Upon arriving at the fishing village Rob asked if I would be interested in watching the Mexico vs Costa Rica soccer game, which I gladly obliged. We ended up getting invited to the local bar to watch the game with a local fisherman named Cola who is also part of the development committee and has befriended Rob. Unlike most Ticos Cola is a big man; well over 6 ft tall and broad shouldered. During and after the game we chatted over some beers with Cola and some other locals. Trying to understand slang fishermen bar talk was somewhat challenging but a good experience. Throughout the night I was taught to pretty funny Costa Rican sayings that I will not soon forget. Although it was a fun night, Costa Rica lost. Towards the end of the night we were invited to a development meeting in the morning so we elected to call it a night so that we could wake up without a hangover for the meeting. We tried to split the tab, but Cola would not have it and payed for all of our beers, unnecessary but a nice gesture.

Sunday morning we went to the 9am meeting at another fisherman’s house at 9:30 to be on Tico time(Ticos are notorious for being late); where there were 8 people discussing different upcoming projects. The most interesting was a project that will help the community with tourism. They are receiving 4 boats that have been donated to put into use as scuba diving and snorkeling tour boats. I had heard about these Costa Rican meetings where people just sit around and talk for a few hours over coffee and snacks but don’t get a lot accomplished except for planning another meeting. So it was a good experience to see first hand.

Afterwards we made it back to Rob’s house where we where trying to cool off in the shade of his front porch (Guanacaste is also one of the hottest regions in Costa Rica) when a truck pulled up looking for us. It was a man named Alvero (but he said I could just call him Al, lol) He has to be the funniest Tico I have met. He reminded me of Ed Brower for those of you that know Ed; you probably get the idea. Al and his wife own the one hotel in town that is a nice little bungalow kind of thing that specializes in snorkeling, kyaking, and other tours. He had a busy night the night before at his hotel but all his clients had left that morning so he was looking at it like a day off. His wife had left to go hike the tallest pike in Costa Rica Mt. Chirripò where on a clear day you can see both the Pacific and Caribbean seas (A goal of mine). We didn’t have much planned for the afternoon so it wasn’t to hard to convince us to come back to his hotel and sit outside in the shade to watch the Brazil vs Ecuador soccer on his flat screen tv game and drink Casique with him. It turned into a very enjoyable and needed afternoon with some delicious shrimp pasta, sediche (a lime cured fish platter), and guaro. Al even tried to get us to stay in one of the air-conditioned rooms, although tempting in the 90-degree weather, we elected not to. He also wanted to take us out snorkeling the next day but we had work to do. So we said our goodbyes and walked back to the house I was staying at to take a cold shower before trying to sleep in the blistering heat.

Monday Morning we had to take some blue prints for the community center into Liberia to the DINADECO office. DINADECO is the national development association that gives money to a lot of development projects in Costa Rica. They will be my counter-part and a very good resource to get to know for my own experience. So needless to say I was happy to go to the office and get some sort of an idea of how things work. We brought the plans that Rob has be working on and just got the money approved to start the construction. I enjoyed learning about this sort of infrastructure project, and could see myself helping on a similar project if necessary in my future community.

Around the heat of the day we arrived back in Cuajiniquil and took the employee at the DINADECO office’s advice and made our way to the beach! It’s about a half hour walk so we were very ready to jump in the ocean once I saw it! The beach we went swimming at was another beautiful Costa Rican view of a national park and an island that would have made a great picture. I even brought my camera this time but realized when I went to take a picture that although I had brought the camera I left my memory card in my lap top back at my host family’s house so that was a disappointment. After swimming a baking in the sun for a couple hours we decided to make our way back to town to prepare for and English class we were supposed to teach. The walk back made us pretty thirsty and we were looking forward to chugging some water when we got back to the house, unfortunately this rural town has some problems and one of them is that sometimes you cant count on having running water. And that was the case when we got back. Luckily there was a bottle in the fridge, but we would have had a couple more glasses if there was more. Hydration is a concern for me, it seems like the locals in Costa Rica don’t drink any water only coffee and refresco, or agua dulce (a sugary water drink that I’m not a fan of). And personally I drink a ton of water and I think my host family thinks this is weird that I would rather have water than a sugared down refresco, lol. Anyway the point being, I’m trying to stay as hydrated as possible.

So Monday evening as we were preparing English class with no running water, when power went out. So some of the problems that plague the poorer parts of Costa Rica are unstable power and water systems. I have seen power surges at my host family’s home and at the retreat center but this time it was more like a long nap than a surge. The lights went off around 5pm and didn’t come back on till after 9pm. Needless to say we weren’t able to teach an English class, when the lights go out people don’t really do much of anything, so we sat around Monday night talking to some locals in the dark.

Tuesday morning I woke up and made my way back to San Jose by about 2:00pm. I stepped out of the bus terminal and thought to myself, “wow, it looks like it might rain”. And sure shit, it did, hard! Luckily for some reason I packed a light rain jacket that was easily accessible and that came in handy. It didn’t help that I was wearing shorts and Chaco’s. I had about 15 blocks to walk from the bus terminal to a different bus stop that would get me back to my community of San Juan Sur. It rained the entire walk and my shorts were soaked, but my jacket did its job and my backpack got its first passing test in a tropical rainstorm. I did learn that standing in soaking wet shorts for an hour and half packed bus ride is not fun. But there happened to be about 10 other trainees who had made it back from their trips to different parts of Costa Rica who were just as uncomfortable as me. It was interesting to hear how they liked their visits to other volunteers as well and I think the consensus was that the majority had positive trips, so that was reassuring.

All in all, I had a great weekend! I traveled by myself to a rural community to see some positive things that the PeaceCorps does. Not to mention I saw a community who had completely accepted a gringo, which is comforting and a future concern of mine. As well as got a chance to relax and have a little fun, which was really necessary since they have been keeping us real busy in training. I just hope that when I get my assignment I will be accepted and help make a difference with my community. Ok, I have rambled on enough…
-Hope you enjoyed it!