A Final Sunset in Guanacaste, Costa Rica 12/30/06

Living in the Rainforest, Arrival 4/07/01

Audios everyone, (in CR adios means hello and good-bye)


4/15/01

I’m composing this letter while sitting outside of the Sarapiqui Learning Center where I will be teaching. The school is spacious with hardwood floors and large windows that open up to the lush fronds and violet flowers of the rainforest. The Sarapiqui River rushes through our backyard.

As I write, a metallic teal-colored hummingbird circles around violet, yellow, and pink flowers gathering nectar. They zip through here constantly. Red ants a quarter of an inch long march past carrying leaves 6x’s their size. I sit with my feet up off the ground because a bite from an ant will fester and puss up. There are so many species of trees, flowers, ferns, etc…. They form a thick multicolored wall of green.

The rainforest hums and even screams with activity. At night the insects get louder and louder; they form a sound similar to sitting under a high-voltage electricity wire.

Poisonous frogs of neon green and red hop past the doorway of the school. They are only poisonous to you if you touch them with an open wound.

Butterflies as big as a spread out hand land in the surrounding trees. My favorite creatures here so far are the little lizards. They’re everywhere you least expect them. I opened a door and one scurried away. I picked up a book and a little head peered up at me. When I go to wash my hands, a resident lizard always peeks its head out from behind the sink. Some lizards are as little as one inch long and as thin as a strand of spaghetti. So cute! However, I recently spotted its intimidating older brother, a three-foot snake with four legs and a Mohawk, the iguana. It had perfect camouflage and at first I didn’t see it. When I did spot it, my jaw dropped and a tingling sensation ran up my spine.

Last night two bats flew towards me and veered away from my head at the last minute. They were large enough for me to feel a breeze in the wind as they whizzed by.
Recently, a volunteer discovered a poisonous Coral Snake underneath a stack of books in the school. Screaming was heard from afar, and a Costa Rican man came and lassoed the snake and put it outside. One snake I don’t wan to run into is called the Jumping Pit-viper. How far does it jump is my question. There was a Boa around but I didn’t get a chance to see it.

What’s truly amazing is that I observed all of these things while sitting in front of the school. I haven’t even entered the reserve, which will require another 10 pages of description.

It’s cloudy most of the day and downpours come and last for twenty minutes, then recede. I can sit outside and the insects don’t bother me.

I’ve seen very few mosquitoes, thank God. Also, the humidity is tolerable. Snakes, and malaria don’t scare me here, but what does scare me is the road. I walk along the road to get to town or to go home to my host family and people drive fast and recklessly. Also, snakes gather on the road at night to suck the heat off the pavement.

My host family is wonderful. I live with a married couple in their late twenties, Xinia and Roberto. They have a seven-year-old son named Joseph who kisses me goodnight and gives me blessings. I tried to tell her that my mom was a fisher-woman, but it came out, as “my mom is a fish.” It’s an endless battle with the language and it keeps me laughing hysterically at times. Although I can barely communicate with them, they remain patient and kind. We watch American movies dubbed in Spanish and this is a big help in picking up Spanish.

Today I had the courage to use by baby Spanish to try to demand a fair price for a taxi ride. I’m always getting over-charged for being a Gringa. When the taxi driver dropped me off I did as another volunteer told me to do. Instead of discussing the price I simply handed him 100 colones. He looked at me and shook his head saying “ no, no, 800 colones. “ I replied by saying “no, un otro voluntario dijo 100 colones.” “No, 800 colones,” he insisted. I gave in and gave him the money feeling like I’d been had. Later when I told the other volunteer, she said that under special circumstances it can cost 800 colones and he was in the right. OOPs. It appears that the fastest way to make an ass of yourself is to travel to another country and not speak the language.

This week I may try traveling to Puerto Limon, which is on the Caribbean. It’s my last chance to travel before switching gears from tourist to teacher. Teaching is going to be a big challenge. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Take care everyone, and feel free to email me at: lrngcntr@sol.racso.co.cr
I’d love to hear how everyone is doing, and to keep in touch with what is going on in the states. There are no American papers and I’ll have no idea what’s happening there.
Love Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Mountain Pass Accident

4/21/01

Wow, where to begin? So much has happened in the week and a half since I last wrote. I’ve composed enough letters in my head to fill a small book. For those of you who are short on time, I’ll warn you now that I don’t think this is gonna be a short update.

Today I jumped on a bus to San Jose to find a cheap guitar. There was a two-hour direct route on a long winding bus route to get to San Jose. Since I had the whole day, I chose the long scenic route. So beautiful. A narrow road wound through lush green valleys and past tiny fincas. One beautiful site was that of a lone white cross atop a hill that was surrounded by a field of tiny yellow flowers. The narrow road wound around a steep hillside and climbed in elevation over the pass. The green labyrinth of the rainforest dropped into deep ravines below the road. Waterfalls spilled over rock tables and tumbled down hundreds of meters below. A cool impenetrable mist blew through the high elevations. As we wound around the tight corners of the road and sliced through the mist I wondered how the cars kept from crashing into each other on this thin mountainous road. I wondered, but I wasn’t scared. There’s no point in being scared. Here, I rely on faith. There’s no other way. Shortly after this contemplation, the bus rounded a corner and a truck slammed its breaks on and skidded straight ahead towards my section of the bus. The truck smashed into the side of the bus. Everything came to a halt except the mist that blew past us. All the passengers looked down at the truck diver and he wasn’t hurt. The front end of his truck was compacted but that was it. The bus and all the passengers went unscathed. What was strange was that I felt unaffected by the whole thing. It felt like I was just observing the accident but wasn’t actually involved.
Sometimes traveling gives you that feeling. I probably won’t be taking that route again soon, not because of the accident, but only because the windy road made me want to puke. I did manage to get to San Jose and ask a taxi driver to take me where I could find a cheap guitar. He dropped me off at the local market and I wandered around until I found what I was looking for. With guitar in hand I hopped another bus and headed home. I was proud of this trip, because it signified my ability to speak enough Spanish to travel solo.

Living in the Rainforest, Painting a Local Picture

4/25/01

I suppose I should set the scene a little better. I live eight miles outside of a town called Puerto Viejo De Sarapiqui. The town has a few small markets, bars, and shops with cheaply made plastic objects. There is an Internet café, but it’s expensive and has a slow connection, so I try not to use it. The buildings are painted in various pastel colors. Most buildings and houses have rusted metal roofs.

The town is a bit run-down and molded over from all of the rain and humidity. Litter is tossed about. (Today as I rode the bus, the man in the seat in front of me finished his drink and threw it out the window. Such is the way in Latin America).

I don’t do much in town except for occasionally using the internet café and getting my favorite drink-an iced blend of milk and mango Also, I go to town when I need to catch a connecting bus to a distant place. The buses are cheap and reliable and I’d just as soon never drive in Costa Rica.

Most houses are single story with one to two bedrooms. They are modest and not overly poverty stricken. This is rural Costa Rica and families usually have chickens and scrawny mini-dogs running around. Some fields have horses or tan-colored cows with long sagging ears. I hate to look too closely at any of the animals because they aren’t kept in good health. Too often I see animals with infected open wounds or ribs that nearly pop out of their skin. It turns my stomach or makes me sad. I don’t fully understand why animals are treated this way. Yes, it’s because of poverty, but it’s more that that. There is a different mentality concerning animals. At this point it seems that people don’t empathize with animals, and definitely don’t attribute human-like emotions to animals as we American often do.

I came home a few days ago to find out my host family had acquired a Rottwhiler. This was not a pleasant discovery. Like most dogs here, it remains tied up on a six-foot leash and never gets taken on a walk. I hate guard dogs, but I feel for it. My host family would think I was strange if I asked to take the dog for a walk.

Sometimes Xinia makes me something for breakfast that I just can’t stomach. (Usually she’s a great cook, but Costa Ricans will eat the greasiest things for breakfast: rice, beans, fried yucca, and mayonnaise...) When I wake, coffee is made, and breakfast is sitting out, (fantastic dark Costa Rican coffee.) Xinia leaves for work in the morning. For a while I discovered that the dog savored that which I could not stomach. I’d stand at a distance and toss the tidbits his way. This routine didn’t last long, because one day as I tossed something his way, he didn’t eat it. This was a problem since I didn’t want Xinia to know that I had fed any of her cooking to the dog. This would be seen as an incredible insult. I decided to ask Xinia to only leave me bread and fruit for breakfast.

I know it sounds weird that I have someone cooking for me, but that’s the arrangement. The only money I make by teaching goes towards my room and board with my host family. It’s a decent amount of money to add to the family’s monthly income.
My house is quaint. There is slightly tattered but comfortable furniture. The kitchen and living room are and there are two small bedrooms. Xinia, Roberto, and Joseph sleep in one room and I sleep in the adjacent bedroom. There is a nice, tiled shower with no hot water. Most people don’t have hot water. It’s always hot and humid and I don’t mind taking cold showers here. At first my showers were @45 seconds, but now I wash my hair and everything.

There are 16 chickens and chicks that run around the yard and occasionally a neighbor’s horse is parked in the driveway. The front yard is thick with tropical flowers of all colors; tropical birds and butterflies come to feed on the flowers. There’s a palm tree outside of my window and soon Xinia is going to show me how to knock the coconuts down and machete a hole in the top of the coconut, so that I can drink the agua de pipa.

Xinia keeps the house spotless, as spotless as one can in the rainforest. Even though the house is spotless, I recently discovered an awful secret of the night. When the lights are turned off, they all come out. Late one night I had to pee, and when I walked into the living room and tuned the light on, big brown cockroaches scurried and skidded across the living room floor. They were on every counter top, running over the couch, across the floor, everywhere. Yuck. I love God’s creatures but these give me the willies.

Before I sign off, my latest language blooper: For the last week I have been thinking that I was saying to Xinia, “I have fear of snakes, I have fear of flying, I have fear of....” but I was mistaking “miedo” (fear) with “mierda” (shit) and saying to Xinia, “ I have shit of snakes, I have shit of flying...” and so on.

My friend Sarah recently told me a blooper of an English student in her class. He came up to her intending to say, “I can never put my floppy disk in the computer,” and he accidentally said, “ I can never put my floppy dick in the computer.” Oh, these are great.

I’m off to bed for the night, but I’ll write soon,
Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Carribean Angel

6/2/01

Hello again everyone,

It’s been a while since I last wrote. For any of you who wondered if I was the girl that was recently killed on the Costa Rican Caribbean Coast, the answer is no. That was an awful incident. I’m thinking of avoiding traveling to the Caribbean Coast unless I travel with a group of people.

I traveled to Puerto Limon by myself last month. Puerto Limon is the town where the first American girl was killed a few years ago. During the bus ride there, I met a beautiful boy. The bus stopped at Guapiles to pick up passengers and down the aisle came a tall black boy with corkscrew curls falling around his face and deep-set penetrating eyes. It was another dripping hot day, but he wore a black suite and held a bible. I scooted over so that he would sit with me. He started to speak to me in English. He told me that many black people along the Caribbean Coast still speak English because they came from Jamaica, a former British Colony. They were brought to Costa Rica to build a railroad through the country. He said they brought the Chinese to do the job first, but too many Chinese died of disease. The Jamaicans finished the job and stayed. Puerto Limon is how I would imagine Jamaica to be. It’s interesting that English is a dying second language in these Caribbean towns.

Once our bus neared Puerto Limon, I opened a map and asked my new friend where the American girl had been killed and why. He pointed to the waterfront and said that she was walking alone at night in this dangerous part of town. He pointed to the places that I shouldn’t go. When the bus let us out in Puerto Limon he walked with me through town to find the market and help me find my connecting bus. After I found my bus he walked away, shrouded in a soft light of kindness.

I live nearer to the center of Costa Rica in a rural area where nothing too dangerous happens. The only crime I’ve heard of here is robbery. However, they aren’t very sophisticated about it. One day, someone stole my next-door neighbor Rob’s bike. He has a shiny eight hundred dollar mountain bike that he uses to ride into town. He was bummed and we thought together about how to get it back. I told him that since this is such a small town, maybe we’d see someone riding it. After all, there is only one road to ride, drive, or bike on. Rob thought that they would have at least painted it if they stole it, but since we are in rural Costa Rica, maybe not. Low and behold, two days later, five-year ole little Christian, our other neighbor, spotted a kid riding Rob’s bike and yelled, “stop, that’s Roberto’s bike.” Christian’s father kicked the ked off of the bike, picked it up, and delivered it back to Rob. Funny. I definitely live in the country. Teaching has been keeping me very busy. The kids are so special. Little Flor, Lester, Raul, etc…I’ll write about them soon. Good night all. Thank you to those who wrote back and said that they liked hearing about life in Costa Rica. Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Hidden Howlers

5/15/01

Hello everybody,

I wanted to send a quick creature update from the rainforest front.

Yesterday I ventured into the forest for a short walk down a densely wooded trail. I don’t walk in the forest that often because the mosquitoes leave bites the size of quarters, and my fear of poisonous snakes keeps me tiptoeing down trails. The last time I walked down a trail by myself, I was nervously inching along, when a lizard bolted out of the brush, hopped over the trail in front of me, and scurried off into the woods. I screeched, jumped backwards, looked down at the trail and then saw a coiled up deadly Pit Viper at me feet. I quietly backed away from the Pit Viper with my heart racing in my chest and decided I wouldn’t walk in the forest for a while.

However, yesterday I gave it another shot. This time, as I tiptoed down the trail I saw a large branch around fifty feet from me dip down to the ground and bounce back up. It was a Howler monkey in the tree in front of me. Howler monkeys are only about a foot and a half long, but they make a sound like a Pit-bull being burned at the stake, and they can be heard from far away.

After seeing the Howler, I crept further up the trail to get closer to it. For fun I started trying to imitate the Howler call. All of a sudden I heard howls coming from all around me. I stopped, sat on the ground, and looked up above me into the trees. I was in the middle of a troupe of Howlers. I spotted one above me and then another jumping from a neighboring tree moving towards the tree above me. The big Howlers were growling and screeching as they gathered in the tree above me. Then, I heard a puppy-like whine and saw a baby Howler following its mom through the trees. The troupe became quiet and I looked up to see six Howler monkeys looking down at me. I stood looking up at them in silence as the forest grew dim. Glancing up at them I made the simple connection…no forest, no monkeys, and the forest continues to shrink around them.

This was the closest thing to a Jane Goodall, National Geographic moment that I may ever have. Take care all, Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Begging for Bus Fare in San Jose

7/10/01

My brother was flying into Costa Rica and I took the bus to San Jose to meet him. I arrived in San Jose mid-day, but he wasn’t flying-in until ten that night.

After wandering around downtown, I went to a touristy restaurant to get some dinner. The waiter was extra friendly to me as I sat and ate my dinner alone. When I went to pay, there was a problem with my credit card. It wasn’t being accepted. I asked him to try it again, but he said he had tried it several times and it hadn’t worked.

“What?” I wondered. “Why?” I didn’t know what to do. I was alone in the city and if the credit card didn’t work, that meant I was alone with no money, and no way to pay for a place to stay. I apologized to the waiter, “Discuple, no entiendo que paso.” I asked him if I could pay the next day. Luckily, this nice waiter had compassion and let me go on my, leaving the restaurant without paying. This type of good faith is a beautiful characteristic of many Ticos.

As I headed out onto the street at night a panic started welling up inside. “Oh God, that means that I can’t get cash to have bus fair to go to the airport to meet my brother. Worst of all, I can’t pay for a hotel and might have to spend the night on the street,” I thought to myself. My traveling experience and instinct kicked in, and kept me calm yet determined. I thought of options such as looking for an all night casino or hanging out on the street near the police if I had to stay on the street at night. The situation, I knew, was serious. San Jose is a dangerous city at night with rape or stabbing a real possibility, especially for someone who sticks out with blonde hair and green eyes.

I tried my credit card five times at the cajero and got the same message each time- denied. I decided that my main hope was to get someone to give me the 100 colones, fifty cents, that I needed to take the bus to meet my brother at the airport.
I had to do the unthinkable. Myself, a blonde, gringa from one of the wealthiest countries of the world was going to have to beg for money on the streets of a second world nation. “Do it! I told myself, Just f-ing do it! If you don’t beg now for fifty cents, you might be begging in the middle of the night for your life.”

I walked down the street and approached a few people.
“Por favor, necesito 100 colones por el bus.” I asked.

They ignored me and steered away from me. Some surreal survival persona kicked in as I became more and more determined to avoid spending the night on the street.
I heard a couple of guys in a parked car yelling at me, “Gringa, Rica.” I usually walked down the street ignoring these comments, but not on that night. I walked over to their car and leaned down to look them in the eye.

“Cree usted en Dios?” (Do you believe in God?) I asked, knowing that almost everyone in the country did.

“Si,” they both responded.

“Porque yo necesito un milagro,” (Because I need a miracle,) I told them matter-of-factly. I explained in my broken Spanish that I was stuck without money and needed one hundred colones for bus fair to meet my brother at the airport. They gave me the 100 colones.

“Muchas Gracias,” I said, saved. I was very thankful to God, and the ability to speak a little Spanish.

I’d been lucky. I got on the bus, met my brother at the airport and told him the story of our near miss.

My brother wasn’t that surprised by the story. He is an adventurer himself and had had many close calls while attempting to ride his bike across India years before.

Belize, Swimming with Sharks

6/20/01

Hello everyone,

I’m writing to you from Caye Caulker, an island off the barrier reef in Belize: baby blue waters, palm trees, rastas, and international hangout galore. Today I snorkeled off the reef with neon-pokadotted puffer fish, plankton eating sharks, and schools of stingrays floating two feet beneath me. It was great!

We had planned to go to a language school in Guatemala after this trip to Belize, but now I’m not sure. When we stepped off the plane in Guatemala, it seemed like there was something screwed up about Guatemala. The customs area had a combination of traditional Guatemalan folk music and policeman carrying machine guns with one hand, and holding the leash of a drug-sniffing dog in the other.

We took a taxi to get to a bus that would take us on an all night ride to Belize. There were men outside the bus station with machine guns. We needed to exchange money and asked the bus station attendant if it was safe to walk down the street one block to get money, and he said, “maybe.” Hmm. We had no choice. We walked to a total of eleven banks to find someone who would exchange money. Each bank came with its machine-gun-toting guard.

I had no idea Guatemala was this bad. We got some money, got on the bus, and headed towards Belize. The bus stopped four times in the middle of the night, and each time, a guard got on and looked at our passports.

We arrived here in the safe haven of Belize only to find out that Guatemala was far more dangerous than we knew. There was a high security prison-break two weeks ago in Guatemala. Thirty of the prisoners were captured, five were shot, and fifty remain at large. The police are out in full force trying to find the prisoners. To make matters worse, there was recently a tourist rape/robbery that happened in the ruins of Tikal in the last month.

Sarah, Michelle, and I had to agree what to do for the rest of our vacation with this newfound info. My friend Sarah is one of the few people I know that is more stubborn than a Dulin. She insists on going to Tikal even though it’s so sketchy that some tours to the area have been cancelled. I, like Sarah, am as stubborn as they make 'em and am thinking of changing my plans and traveling to Honduras to see a friend in Peace Corps. I want to play it as safe as possible.

Agreeing on travel plans can be a pain, and at this moment I’d rather be home. That’s traveling for you.

I’ll write soon, Laura

Guatemala, Chased by Monkeys but not Guerillas

6/25/01

Sorry for the scare everyone,

I’m in Flores, Guatemala, and it feels pretty safe. Looking back on my last email I think that I experienced some type of culture shock. It was a bad combination of having money troubles, seeing too many men with machine guns, and hearing too many horror stories from travelers: the story of the fifty prisoners on the loose, the tourists that were raped and tortured in Tikal, the robberies at gunpoint, and then the final topper, the two cars full of Mennonites that were gunned down.

I asked a travel agent about safety in Guatemala and he responded by saying that sometimes things happen in Latin America, but usually you are safe. I had become accustomed to Costa Rica where the crime rate is low, and there’s no military. I was shocked to see the other side of Latin America.

After enduring a meeting as painful and difficult as a Middle Eastern peace talk, Sarah and I agreed on a compromise that would allow us to remain traveling together. I am now traveling with Sarah and Michelle along La Ruta Maya, which should be remained La Ruta Gringo. La Ruta Maya stretches from the Northern Guatemalan Region of Pitan, down to the ruins of Copan in Honduras. The towns near the Mayan ruins have lots of gringos and gringo luxuries such as email, nice restaurants, and travel connections. These towns are fairly safe.

The Tikal ruins have the worst reputation for guerilla attacks on tourists, specifically Americans. Tikal is in a remote jungle setting with only one road leading in and out, and usually only tourists visit Tikal. The guerillas that are hiding out in this region stop tourist buses as they pass through, lecture, and rob “American Imperialists,” and sometimes rape women. Visiting Tikal is a gamble. Sarah and Michelle took a tour to Tikal today, and I decided to stay in the cozy gringo town of Flores to wait for them.

Flores is a tiny pueblo located on an island in the middle of Lake Pitan Itza. There are quaint cobblestone streets that meander through brightly painted blue, yellow, and red buildings. All streets come together on a hill in the center of the town where a white peeling Catholic Church and a town square rise above town. From the square you can see people paddling around Lake Pitan Itza in dugout canoes that look like they were hand carved from the rainforest around them. The calm water of the lake pushes open the dense tropical forest.

Today, instead of visiting Tikal, I decided to take a boat across the lake to a biological reserve. We skimmed over a lake lit by the soft morning sun and made our way to the adjacent shore. The guide edged the boat ashore and then told me in Spanish that we were at the reserve, and that he would wait in the boat as I went alone into the forest to see Jaguars, monkeys, Peccaries, parrots, and crocodiles. After seeing my look of confusion he explained that the animals were all in cages. I asked him once more, “usted espera aqui, claro? “ (You wait here, right?) and he nodded yes.

I ducked into the jungle and followed the depressing path of caged animals. Guatemala doesn’t quite understand the concept of eco-tourism yet. The last thing that you want to do is travel thousands of miles to see the last of the worlds most exotic wild animals trapped in a cage in the jungle swimming in their own urine and feces. I passed by the caged wild pigs, the caged and cramped crocodile, the exuberant irritated monkeys, and turned around before visiting the Jaguar. I came back to the shore and found my guide sleeping in the boat. He was sleeping in a weird position, lying on his belly with his leg lying over the side. To my dramatic imagination, it kind of looked like he’d been shot, and fell halfway out of the boat. However, he woke up and prepared to take me to the last bio-reserve site.
He cruised the boat over to a tiny island, edged it ashore, and once again told me that I could get out and see the animals on the island. “Oh God, I thought, not this again.”

I stepped off the boat and wandered onto the tiny island. I jumped up into the air when a Scarlet Macaw squawked from a branch behind my head. As I looked around, I noticed things were a bit different on the island. The wild pigs were loose and roaming the island. Hmm…I thought…these things have some nasty teeth, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’m sure they must be fine. Then I swiveled around to see a monkey that was screaming as it looked up at me. The monkey started coming at me, and I was shooing it away with my hat. While shooing the monkey away, I could see lots of monkeys all around the island. I freaked out and started running for the boat. There were five monkeys running after me. I hurled myself from the shore to the boat where the guide was chuckling. The monkeys jumped up onto the boat in pursuit as I hid behind the guide saying, “no me gusto loss moons.” (I don’t like the monkeys.) Laughing, he told me that the monkeys are just friendly. He shooed the monkeys off the boat and we headed back to the little island of Flores.

Truly, everyday is an adventure here.
Next stop Copan, Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Trip to Guatemala

6/20/01

Hello from a lost lamb in a foreign land.

Time to tell the last part of my Guatemalan trip before it’s washed away like the amoebas that I carried home in my stomach. After being chased by monkeys I went back to the island town of Flores and met up with Sarah and Michelle. Their trip to the Mayan ruins of Tikal only became frightening when a Mayan man read their palms and declared that they had a short life ahead of them. The man invited them into the secret society of the Maya only to find out that Sarah and Michelle already know many things about the religion. He didn’t understand how they could already know insider information about the religion, and he had no idea that some people in the US have been practicing the Mayan religion-oddities of the information age.

Michelle and I decided to head for Honduras to find my friend Laura who is working for Peace Corps, and fearless Sarah chose to strike out on her own. Michelle and I took a miserable all night bus trip back to Guatemala City and then failed to find a bus to Honduras. Wanting to get out of Guatemala City as fast as possible, we caught a bus towards Lake Atitlan, a lake in the Guatemala Highlands. I planned to spend a week at a Spanish school located along the lake.

While climbing towards Lake Atitlan a new world emerged. We wound around steep hillsides where every bit of land was cultivated, forming a hand-sewn quilt of crops: patches of corn, stitches of onion, beans, and tomato. The indigenous people could be seen farming in their traditional clothes of reds, yellows, green, and blues. The men with their white cowboy hats and the women dressed in their long skirts. The indigenous Guatemalans appear to be a very hardworking people with a pattern of their own that they fight to preserve…resisting assimilation…resisting becoming one fallow field, one color, one language. I saw an old man who smiled with wrinkles under his eyes. He wore red and green striped pants, a bright multi-colored shirt, and a white cowboy hat. He walked past me along a cobblestone street with a thick bound bundle of long white lilies and orange gladiolas draped over his shoulder. I also saw and eighty-year-old man stooped over and walking forward with three twenty pound rocks on his back. With his ant-like strength and endurance, he didn’t seem to notice the weight.

I stayed in San Pedro, a little village next to Lake Atitlan, for a week and attended language school. The lake fills an enormous caldera and is surrounded by three volcanic peaks. It is life for the people. Early in the morning and in the afternoons, the villagers can be seen bathing and washing their clothes along the lakeshore. Water is pumped form the lake to irrigate the terraced lakeside gardens of chive, corn, beans, and Santo lilies. Come mid-afternoon, Michelle and I would take a footpath through the towering corn and onto the lake where we would bathe aside the locals.

We stayed with a Guatemalan family of eighteen while attending language school. The abuela of the house had the energy of a young filly and ran around taking care of four grandchildren during the day, cooking for us, and running a small restaurant. The unfortunate part of our home stay was the toilet, which was something you’d expect to find in a third world prison. This might have been tolerable had Montezuma not taken serious revenge. While suffering from Montezuma, I also came down with a fever. When I went to the pharmacy to get medicine for my fever, I could see a mix of indigenous and western culture. The pharmacy contained aspirins and western medicines on one wall as well as jars of herbs lining another wall. I asked the attendant if she had any herbal remedy for a fever. She disappeared from the store and came back with a bowel of freshly cut assorted herbs. She offered to boil them down to make a tea that would heal me. I accepted, she left again, and then came back 10 minutes later with a hot tea made from the herbs.

My other favorite cultural interest came when I was at a restaurant and asked for a doggy bag. The woman wrapped my leftovers in a palm leaf.

At my language school my private teacher, Tosho, set me straight on the main points of Guatemalan history. This was very important because I had previously been getting my information from a ten-year old guidebook and the guidebook was written while Guatemala was still having a civil war. No wonder I was so scared. He explained that during the civil war the guerrillas fought for the rights of the indigenous people who make up seventy percent of the countries population. They were fighting for equal rights to health care, education, and the right to speak their language, and preserve their culture. According to Tosho it was a dark time with no future, but now, he says, “ A future is possible.” The indigenous are now allowed to preserve their culture and have better access to education and health care. However, there is terrible corruption in the government and he believes that it’s getting worse. He explained how the people work so very hard for so little money and this leads to banditos and corruption. He doesn’t excuse it, but explained part of the reason why it exists.

I met a Swiss man who had a great bandito story. He and his friend had decided to hike up a volcano without a guide. They tell tourists not to hike in Guatemala without a guide, because the chances are high that you’ll be robbed. He said that at the top of the mountain two men jumped out of the bushes with masks on. One had a machete and the other had a gun. The banditos robbed them of everything except for bus fair back to town.

A real danger is riding the funky chicken buses. Guatemalans sometimes cross themselves before entering the buses. The macho driver barrels down the road trying to pass as often as possible. The man in the cockpit assists the driver by leaning out of the open door of the bus and trying to peer around the upcoming corner to see if the bus will hit oncoming traffic. Sometimes the assistant miscalculates and while rounding a corner on two wheels, the bus suddenly swerves back to its side of the road, barely missing oncoming traffic.

The last thing that I can say about Guatemala is that it will make a shop-aholic out of any tight-pursed penny pincher. On Sundays the artisans come down out of the hills carrying their goods and sell them in street markets. Incense wafts through the air of the market. Fresh vegetables, herbs, and flowers are interlaced between indigenous clothing and crafts. Most things are handmade and have the bright colors and intricate designs of the indigenous people. For better or worse, everything is astoundingly cheap. Sarah, Michelle, and I spent every last penny we had. I even missed my bus to the airport because I had to run back and get one more thing from the market. Guatemala was not the most comfortable country to travel in, but I’ve been left with rich memories and some great handmade blankets. Hope all is well in the US of A,
Laura

Living in the Rainforest, Looking Down Upon the Rainforest on a Full Moon

5/05/08

Sarah, a fellow volunteer teacher, and I loved to head out from the school and take long walks in the rainforest.

One evening, during a full moon, Sarah and I put on our headlamps and set off on a night journey. We met on the road and walked down the road with the moon casting a grey-blueish shadow and dimly lighting our way. The full moon cast a silver-blue hue over the tall rainforest trees. You could hear, and almost feel the restlessness that the moon was creating amongst the colonies of insects, animals, and plants of the rainforest. You felt yourself tucked inside its world amongst butterflies curled under leaves, Toucans perched on branches, snakes keeping warm under fallen foliage, alligators lying still in a pond with only their nostrils and eyes peering up at the moon. You weren’t alone in the rainforest-especially on a moonlit night.

As Sarah and I walked down the road in the quiet of the night, few cars passed. We didn’t make our usual stop at the local karaoke tavern, but dept on down the paved small road. This road was deceptive. One minute you felt comfortable walking down it and waving to the country folk in their simple homes, and the next, a Dole Banana truck would pass by you at 80 miles and hour coming so close to you that you felt the breeze it left in its wake. In the eight months that I lived in Sarapiqui, one drunk and two children were hit and killed.

After walking about twenty minutes in the dark, we spotted a dirt road off to the left that led past a hovel of tin roof shacks where illegal Nicaraguan immigrants lived. One time I visited an 8th grade student of mine who lived in one of the shacks. I was taken aback. It’s one thing to see poverty from afar, and have no real connection to it, but another thing to see a child that you know living with so little. When I stepped inside her house to meet her parents, they were sitting on chairs atop a dirt floor. In a separate section of the house were two beds atop the packed dirt floor, one for four children, and another for the parents. They also had a TV blaring in the shack. I watched them watching the TV, and tried to imagine what it must be like to do back-straining work all day, carrying and harvesting one hundred pound bags of bananas and then coming home at night and watching the TV- peering into a world of fancy cars, and big, comfortable houses.

We kept following the dirt road that wound around a hill. We turned off our headlamps because the dim light of the moon was enough to light our path. We reached the top of the hill, which was flat and littered with an old car, a fridge lying on its back with the door flung open, and the foundation of an old house that used to have a phenomenal view. From the top of the hill we could see the rainforest canopy below, the Rio Sarapiqui that snaked through it, the vast, open expanses of cut forest turned into cattle pasture, the points of light from the distant houses in remote regions, the rain forested mountain ridge to the south, and the full moon lighting it all in a phosphorescent glow.

Sarah and I didn’t speak for a time as we stood in awe of the beauty below and above us. The silence was finally broken by the sound of a few local kids coming up the road. They were kids that we knew from our after school program. One boy jumped in the old fridge and pretended that it was a boat that he was rowing out to sea in. Seeing that made me smile, and gave me hope that as long as a child had imagination, was surrounded by the purity of nature, had some rice and beans to eat, and a rusted tin roof overhead, life could be good, and magic could be made by a child playing in a pile of junk on a moonlit hill.

Living in the Rainforest, Trying to Teach English

3/01-8/01

Hello friends and family,

Ever since I arrived here, I’ve wanted to talk about what it is that I do for work here in Costa Rica. However, it has taken me a long time to write about this, because I’m never quite sure what we four gringa volunteers are doing here in rural Costa Rica. I think we’re here to help the impoverished people of this rural Costa Rican community in whatever way we can. My main job here is to teach English as a Second Language. I teach first through six grade in the public schools, private lessons in our school, and one adult ESL class. I also teach music and environmental education. I probably put in seventy-hour weeks, but a fair amount of those seventy hours are spent lying in a hammock looking at the Iguanas in a nearby tree and talking to Sarah, the other volunteer from England.

Sarah and I are the new English teachers. We walk to the public school after regular school hours and teach the kids English.

Our first day teaching Sarah and I walked to the school and admitted to one another that we had no idea how to teach children, and furthermore weren’t too sure that we even liked them. We entered the classrooms, which are open-air rooms with bars on the windows. The rooms have cement floors, and well-used wooden desks, but lack posters, computers, or anything beyond the essentials. As Sarah and I entered the classroom, most of the students left. The students aren’t required to go to the English classes that we offer. I didn’t take this personally because how many children would choose learning English over playing with their buddies after school? I wouldn’t have either if I were them.

Later…….

Over the course of about 8 months there were many frustrations and a few rewarding moments teaching the kids.

Third grade has been my greatest triumph and greatest defeat. For the first three weeks they came to my class, but they didn’t learn a thing, and I couldn’t control them. On the third or fourth week I nearly gave up on trying to teach them. However, right before one of my classes, I came up with a system for controlling the class. The system was that if they behaved and worked they would receive a point, and after they received four points, we would spend the class going for a walk in the rainforest. I went to class, told them the new system, and a miracle occurred. Suddenly the classroom was quiet, the desks were lined up in a straight line, notebooks and pens appeared before me, and glory be- I had the power.

For over a month I was able to teach them ESL through nature. They were learning things like, “the fish swims in the river.” I would take them on walks in the rainforest with a Costa Rican guide, and the guide would teach them about conservation. Many of the children had never been on walks in the forest. The parents consider it a dangerous, forebidden place. During one walk a spirited nine year old, Alba, looked up and said in Spanish that she never wanted to cut a tree down again. She had learned some conservation fundamentals.

Unfortunately, the students’ motivation eventually dwindled. One day I came to class and they looked up at me and said, “No Vamos a Ingles,” (We’re not going to English.) At this moment I lost all motivation for being here and asked myself, “why bother?” Why were we here trying to teach these kids something they didn’t want to learn and with no support from the school or parents. However, I think teaching must be what it’s like to be a parent; no matter how bad it gets, you’re still morally obligated to continue.

The next day I went back to teach my third graders, and their attitudes were awful again. I told one of them that if he didn’t stop the horseplay, he’d have to leave immediately. The boy looked at me and yelled, “Nunca, Nunca voy a recibir Ingles,” (I’m never, never going to receive English.) When he left I tried to resume with class. Then, I noticed that rocks were being thrown through the window into my class. I looked out the window and saw the student crouched in the forest. I was so pissed off. I told my good students to stay put and I ran to the director of the school ranting in broken Spanish about what the kid was doing. He looked at me and said that he didn’t understand what I was saying. I made an exasperated noise and he followed me as I pointed to where the boy was hiding in the forest. I tried to continue teaching as I saw out of the corner of my eye that the director was chasing the boy through the forest.

After this incident we decided to have a meeting with the director to figure out a way of getting better support from the community and the school, or to consider the option of not teaching the kids after school. After the meeting, we decided to send a note home to the parents asking them if they want their child to receive English and telling them that if they do, they will need to reinforce attendance. This caused a breakthrough. Many of the troublemaking kids never came back, and a new batch of well-behaved, motivated kids started coming. They were really sweet. One little girl told me that she hadn’t been coming before because all the bad kids were in the class. Evidently my prior batch of boys consisted mainly of the kids that liked to get into trouble after school. They used the English class as an excuse not to come right home after school and have more time to play around before going home.

All in all, this job is rewarding but tough. It’s been hard to stick to it lately. Often times I’ll be having a hard day and just want to pack up my bags and leave, then one sweet kid will look up at me with big brown eyes and hand me a Guava or a flower that he or she picked for me. Then I think that maybe I can stay for just a little longer.

Hope everyone is having a great summer.
Laura

Trip photos of Granada, Nicaragua with Leah

10/01/05

Salchi's Story, Adopting a Costa Rican Dog

12/20/04

On a beautiful morning in Costa Rica, seventy degrees and the sun shining, I went for my walk. Lost in thought I walked through the Central Plaza where mothers’ with their babies and older people like to sit and just ‘be’ in the park.

Along with people hanging about, the usual pack of nomadic mutts (the name for mutt in Costa Rica is “Zaguate”) were hanging about the park. They roam freely in the streets and eat street garbage and occasional scraps put out by store owners. They aren’t threatening to people but can be a little territorial with other dogs.
After passing through the plaza I walked down a busy street towards a nearby town. Glancing down I saw a dead puppy in the gutter. “How sad, why did I have to see that?” I wondered.

As I walked down a side street I saw the butt of a little black pup with its head inside of a bag of trash. I looked at it and thought of the dead homeless puppy that I had just passed by. I wondered if this pup would be met with the same fate; uncared for, hungry, and eventually dead.

The pup noticed me standing close as I thought and it looked up at me from the trash. She had innocent eyes, trusting eyes that seemed to look at me with hope. She put her head down in submission, but slowly walked towards me with her tail wagging. My heart came pouring out to this little pup. She seemed to trust and have faith in me even though I could only imagine that others had shooed her away.

I sat on the sidewalk and pondered the situation.
“Should I adopt her?” I asked myself.
It seemed a little complicated because I was living in Costa Rica temporarily and wasn’t sure how I would bring her back to the United States. She sat near me and looked up at me almost pleading. I couldn’t walk away and leave her there. Her faith was contagious. I decided to adopt her.

I found an empty box down the street, put her in, and carried her home. The vet gave her medicine to get rid of the worms and a special shampoo to cure her skin problems. In a few weeks her belly went from being bloated to the size of a normal puppy belly. Much of her hair fell out due to the toxicity of the shampoo that we used to kill all of the things that were growing on her skin, but a clean, healthy pelt grew in its place. She got well and turned out to be the most loyal and loving pet imaginable. When I walked her down the street in Costa Rica, and now in the USA, everyone says how cute she is and wants to know what breed she is. No one would suspect that she was originally a homeless “Zaguate” that ate trash in the street to stay alive.

PS
It was pretty easy to bring her back to the US. All I had to do was make sure she had all her proper vaccinations. There was no quarantine. Adopting Salchi was the best decision I ever made, and I highly recommend adopting a street pup.

Traveling Sola to Bocas Del Toro Island, Panama

7/15/05



I traveled to the Islands of Bocas Del Toro, single and solo for three days. Boca’s Del Toro, which means ‘Mouth of the Bull’ in Spanish, is a group of small islands off the northernmost tip of the East side of Panama. The islands are in some ways similar to the Carribean islands off of Belize, but are still rustic and lightly populated.

To get to Bocas Del Toro I took a bus from San Jose, Costa Rica to the border of Panama. From the border I took a local taxi that brought me to a boat launch where boats leave hourly to take tourists and locals out to Bocas Del Toro.

On the boat ride to the islands, we first followed a narrow canal with tropical trees that hung overhead. We passed by the wooden shacks of “campesinos” (country folk). After a half-hour of winding through canals, we left the canal and glided for another half hour over the open ocean to reach Bocas Island, one of many tiny islands in the chain.
When the skiff pulled up to the dock at Bocas Island I noticed a small group of tan-skinned local islanders looking my way. Once I got off the boat and walked passed them I could hear a little hiss, whistling, and “hola macha” (hi, blondie.) As a North American woman this type of thing brings up some conflicting feelings. The feminist in me says, “Shut up you chauvinist pigs,” but the woman in me says, “I’m sexy and someone finally sees it.”

The island life also attracts retired men from North America who build their dream get-aways in the tropics, buy fishing boats, and drink beer from sunrise to sunset. The only problem they seem to encounter in their new dream-life is that on the island their dating pool shrinks to the size of the tiny islands they stand on. If they haven’t found a young, tropical girl to take care of them, they become as pesky as sand fleas to any new woman that comes to the island.

Walking past the island storefronts painted in sunshine yellow, mango orange, lime green, and sea blue, my traveler’s reserve started to melt. I looked around to see which hotels were charming, but affordable. I came across Las Olas, (The Waves) a three story building which was built over the ocean. On the second floor there was a balcony filled with wicker chairs to sit in while you look out at the sailboats anchored out at sea.

It was a very romantic place, which is perfect if you are traveling with a companion, but saddening if you’re traveling alone.

When I went to turn in the key to reception, I noticed that the staff were a group of dark haired, dark eyed, broad shouldered masculine creatures speaking in an unidentifiable foreign tongue. I handed the key to a young man that looked like a Trojan warrior with his broad shoulders, olive-toned skin, and thick brown curls. He winked at me as I turned and walked away. I perked-up in an instant. Romance at least seemed possible, if only in flirtation.

That night I barely slept and thought obsessively about women with families and how I didn’t have one. I even wished for a second that I were sitting in my room watching cable TV with a husband. I imagined that he would turn over in bed, initiate sex, and I would politely say “sorry not tonight hon” as I turned away from him and fantasized about the Trojans running the hotel. However, the thought of passionless companionship still seemed better than the single life where passion is still possible, but companionship often unavailable.

The next day I woke and drank dark, rich coffee as I sat on the balcony and took in the sun sparkling on the ocean. I self-consciously turned my key into yet another handsome man. I asked him where he was from, and he said Israel. He told me in English that he spoke Hebrew and that the group of men and women running the hotel were all from Israel. I found it odd but interesting that I had stumbled across my first community of Israelites on a tiny Panamanian island. They were all so handsome. “Perhaps they really are God’s chosen people,” I pondered.

I set out down the one street of Bocas wearing a long purple, turquoise, and yellow skirt, and a halter top, with my long blonde hair flowing loosely down my back. “Que Linda” (how pretty) some men said softly as I passed by. I was surprised that they noticed me, because in Latin America far sexier women than I display their cleavage as if they were serving the men a full coarse meal on a platter. Latino men are constantly complimenting the eye-catching bright red bloom of tropical women, but to my surprise they equally complimented the far subtler wildflower blossom of the North American woman.

As I walked down the street I heard locals from black Caribbean decent and Latino descent speaking Spanish, English, and Gauri Gauri (the local Creole language of Bocas Del Toro).
To get to the public beach I walked past the main drag, past the grass field that is used for small incoming planes and for local boys as a football field, past the worn-down pastel colored wooden shacks, and past a cemetery with a white washed archway and cross. I reached the white sand beaches where only one other North American couple, and a few local kids were playing in the waves. I jumped into the waves and swam around a bit. After splashing around in the waves a bit, I got out, laid back on a log, and relaxed. A young Caribbean man with black skin, defined muscles, and dread locks was staring out at the ocean just down the beach from me, lingering about. I must have looked like a cliché to him; young single woman traveling alone, and lonely for some young dark surfer. I ignored his attention, and he finally gave up and walked away.

Living here in the tropics, I’ve seen a constant influx of North American women that come here and fulfill their fleeting beach fantasies with young local surfers. It becomes a routine for the local boys. I imagine them showering on a Saturday afternoon, splashing some cologne on, and readying themselves for a night of dancing and sex with yet another starry-eyed tourist. Seeing the routine of it all makes me avoid contact with the tropical beach boys.

I walked back to Las Olas to wash off the sand and salt water. That night I asked the tan-skinned Israeli at reception for an early morning wake up call. “Sure” he said glancing into my eyes. We looked at each other in silence for a moment, a nice moment of casual intimacy. He said goodnight in a soft voice, and I went back to my room alone, thinkng that maybe I wasn’t the only one sleeping in this hotel wishing for the comfort of having someone beside me.
Early the next morning I boarded a skiff with a full load of tourists from North American, Panama, England and Australia. We skipped over the smooth morning ocean toward the mainland, and in silence we said our good-byes to the islands of Bocas Del Toro as they faded behind us.

The only romance that had transpired on Bocas Del Toro was a love affair with the shining turquoise water, the sun warming and caressing my skin as I lie on the beach, and the passion of fantasy with the olive-skinned men in Las Olas, (The Waves).


Transportation, Resorts, Retirement, and links to other information for Bocas Del Toro:

· For information on how to travel to Bocas Del Toro from San Jose, Costa Rica or from Panama City, go to http://www.bocas.com/.

· For information about traveling to Bocas Del Toro and living in Panama I recommend, http://www.escapeartist.com/Isla_Solarte

· For information about Bocas Del Toro on everything from resorts, to real estate to local flights I recommend looking at http://www.panamainfo.com/en/article/destinations/69/

· The Lonely Planet guide to Costa Rica or Panama has detailed information on different forms of transportation to Bocas Del Toro and low budget to mid budget options for hotels.