Almost Done in Costa Rica

At the end of June I started noticing that I was writing email after email to various friends and family telling them more or less the same thing of my adventures/experiences in Costa Rica. The idea of a blog occurred to me but I really haven't gotten a chance to sit down and create once until now. So even though I'm down to my last couple of weeks in Costa Rica, I figured I could start this now and continue it throughout my trip through Central America.

To give you all an update, I'm currently working for a company called Rustic Pathways as a guide. Rustic offers 1-2 week language, travel/adventure, and community service-based programsin various countries to high school kids. I'm like their counselor, and have worked on the language program, in which kids live with local families, take Spanish classes for half the day, and then do activities the other half, and the volcanoes and rainforest program where kids stay at this amazing base house and do community service and adventure activities.

Right now, I am on a program called Heart of the Jungle that travels with kids for 2 weeks throughout the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica doing community service and experiencing the jungle! We have 16 girls this session and there are 3 of us guides total. It can be stressful and some patience is definitely necessary, but I've really enjoyed myself. We taught English a couple of days at a local elementary school, painted schools, and cleaned up a beach. As for adventure activities, we rappeled down a 150 ft waterfall, (which really wasn't that terrifying, though one girl did stop in the middle crying and refusing to continue and had to be coerced down) and climbed a 60 ft tree with roots and trunks everywhere (it reminded me of those wacky walking and talking trees from Lord of the Rings). We've gotten to see so much cool wildlife, like a ton of monkeys (white-faced, howler, squirrel, spider monkeys), toucans, iguanas, poison dart frogs, coatis (mix between an anteater and a raccoon), butterflies, and lots and lots of snakes and bugs.

At one place that we stayed at on the beach we encountered a Terciopelo or fer-de-lance snake, one of the most poisonous snakes in Costa Rica. It was devouring a huge toad whole and was probably 10 feet away from where we were eating. It was insane! The chef came out and killed it by stabbing it with 2 long sticks and then smashing it repeatedly. We then saw the same type of snake while playing in a waterfall after a 7 hour hike (yes 7 hrs! it was totally worth it, we saw a ton of animals, but I was grateful to finally come to this cool waterfall, sans the sleeping, ready to pounce snake) . This one was even closer and one of the girls pointed it out. When they all asked if it was poisonous I was just like "nahhh, don't worry, it's just sleeping" while in my head I was freaking out just a little, as we were in the middle of NOWHERE and I was definitely not prepared to helicopter out one of 15 year old, naive as hell girls.

Yesterday we visited a sustainable hotel that makes its own gas by way of the following process: the composted garbage gets fed to a pig and the poop from said pig is transfered to this HORRIFIC SMELLING area where it is covered by a tarp and the solids sink to the bottom while the gas fumes from the poop get filtered out through a tube and voila, there you have methane gas that the employees use for cooking their meals (they do not use this gas for cooking guests' meals and I can't help but be suspicious as to why not...). But the hotel also uses solar power, salt water pools, bungalows made from local trees and leaves, and properly labeled fridges with 4 doors instead of 2 so less energy is wasted when you have to reach in to grab one little thing. They give guests reusable water bottles so they don't have to buy 10,000 plastic water bottles during their stay just to have water. The rates for the hotel are through the roof, but it was cool to see that those places exist to not only make guests feel good about themselves, but to educate them about the environment and community too, so it's a bit of a learning experience too.

Tomorrow we leave for a 3 day sea kayaking trip that'll wrap up our 2 week journey! I'm super excited, and hope that it doesn't get ruined by foul weather and even fouler moods. No, but really, the girls have been good for the most part. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into when they signed up because this is a brand new program this year, so I have to give them a little credit. When I'm done with them on Tuesday, my mom is coming into Costa Rica for 10 days so I'm pumped for that too. We're going to spend some time in San Jose, though CR'S capital is a bit of a dump, so we won't be spending too long there. Then we're heading to the beach-Manuel Antonio- because contrary to popular belief, spending a whole summer in Costa Rica does not guarantee beaches and bronzed bods; just in this past week I've gotten more sun that I had all summer working on language or volcanoes!

After my mom leaves, I'm leaving for Guatemala (I think) with Cait, a friend from AU, and 2 other friends that we met while working here. We're working our way down Central America in a month, but I'm sureeee our plans will change and we'll have to push our flights back. Seeing as we don't even have flights for Guatemala yet, which I think we're planning on leaving for at the end of August, we're kind of in the traveler's mindset and will just play it be ear...