Well so much has happened over the last three days, I thought I`d steal a chance here in San José to update before I forget details. I`m sitting in Paula´s house, in the same seat as I was the first time I wrote from San José. Time takes on liquid properties here, it seems like it`s been forever, but hardly any time at all too. I guess in a way, it has been both. I`m very happy listening to 97.5 from Lansing streaming live on the internet as I write this. I`m enjoying the English radio advertisements just as much as the new Beyoncé hit.
So I woke up at 4 on Wednesday morning and called a tab to take me to the central park to wait for the staff bus to collect me. Anyway, the cab shockingly came for me about 5 minutes early and ridiculously honked, waking up my mom hours before he had to go to work. I didn`t have time to put in my contacts so I jumped into the red taxi nearly blind and was dropped off at the park five minutes later. The central park of Neily is possibly the ugliest block of land I have ever seen. The trees look like a combination of ghosts and knotty hair, the benches are primary colored and unsitably filthy, and that early in the morning, at least three poor homeless people people are always sprawled out asleep amongst the rubbish. It`s so ugly that it`s almost Dr. Sussianly whimsical which somehow lends it a bit of quirky charm. Waiting without contacts in the dark morning was a surreal surrounded by the haunted atmosphere. After putting my contacts back in, my co-worker Joanna showed up to wait with me, and before long, the rented bus (the same kind used for the serenatas) screeched around the corner, jam packed with the happiest staff of any school I know. We reached a tourist hub on the Sierripe called Las Vegas where a awkwardly large pontoon floated waiting for us. We snarfed a quick breakfast of Pinto in banana leaves, snapped a group photo (mine turned out to be one of those funny five second videos where everyone is holding still, waiting for the flash that never comes), and boarded on the boat.
The mangrove forest we cruised through exposed bleached gray roots about one meter above river level. This indicated low tide, and on the sunny shores to either side, we immediately saw two American Alligators with gaping mouths, cooling off like statues. As we made our way to la boca with the Pacific Ocean, the staff went out of their way to make sure I was included and having a good time. As if a free vacation surrounded by crazy animals wouldn´t be enough! The scenery was stupendous with jutting green hills dotted occasionally by pagoda style cabins or flat reliefs of riverside cow pastures. The weather out of the San Vito valley was clear and refreshing as the tiny flecks of white caps barely came into view. I felt peaceful and lucky. Of course, as a 6 season rower, I shouldn´t have been naive enough to believe whitecaps could ever be associated with a peaceful moment on the water, and as we approached the looming ocean, the size of our boat suddenly seemed way too small for its required task. Isla de Caño is about 3 miles offshore mainland Costa Rica, and it´s all smooth sailing once you pass the delta, but where the river and ocean meet, the waves that once seemed simply there to add some white highlights to the view now towered over our dinky water toy. The only way through them was with them, so for an incredibly frightening 15 minutes, we surfed in spirals over and over again at the mercy of the crashing olas. Just when I was sure I was going to have to wash nun chunks off my life vest, we made it out into the flat, peaceful ocean.
On the island, we spent a lazy day snorkeling, eating, joking around and just enjoying each others company away from those pesky students so that, of course, we could behave like pesky students. Three Humpback Whale, four White Faced Monkeys, dozens of Dolphins, a sandwich bar, several bad sunburns and two sloth sightings later, we returned to Las Vegas just as it began to rain. Although I had had a terrific day, the bus ride home to Neily was the best part. Rafa, the secundaria English teacher whipped out a gory rubber, full headed halloween mask (let´s not explore the fact that he actually thought to bring it along). During the three hour ride home, he proceeded to act out the funniest scenes with the Hermanas (my favorite included the satanic zombie praying and pleading with the nun to gain access into heaven) until we all had laughed ourselves into cramped delirium.
I returned home around 9 that night with barely enough time to pack for my next two week trip and sneak in 4 hours of sleep with my AFS friend Lily,with whom I would be traveling to Ostional. Another bleary morning found me waiting at the makeshift Neily bus station to catch what now felt like a routine 8 hour Tracopa to San José. Lily and I loaded on and promptly crashed, hoping to wake up in San Jose and skip over all the turbulent travel along the coast. I was pretty miserable with a bad sunburn from the day before all across my shoulders, and this combined with the 100 degree heat of the unairconditioned bus, made for an unpleasant ordeal. You can imagine my confused disappointment when I finally did awake to find myself 6 hours later on a bumpy dirt road, sweat plastering me to my seat. Now, the ride to San José isn´t a treat on the bus, but there wasn´t ever dirt road either. I immediately assumed we were somewhere in Panama and had somehow confused buses or tickets and would miss the trip I was looking so forward to. I didn´t have my passport and was preparing for days of abuse from the boarder police, surely sitting alone in a urine reeking pit of a jail cell. The reality was worse. We had to make a 9 hour detour away from the scheduled course due to road work and the bus ride would last 12 hours. Pura torture.
Amazingly, I made it to the capitol city, and thank goodness there was a kindly old taxi driver, waiting to escort Lily and I to wherever our tired hearts desired. Like the heat exhausted idiot I was, I gladly let him grab my bags and lead me around back to our unlicensed, awaiting chariot. Lily and I were to meet Paula at the shoe store of my papá´s sister, and I had the address, but not the faintest idea of where it actually was. Costa Rica, as a country, has elected to do away with those tedious little address numbers, as all they seem to cause is trouble anyway, so my directions looked something like, 100m South, 200m East of the big yellow pizza place in Barrio so and so. Our driver must have seen us coming a mile away. He feigned being lost (while covering as much ground as possible) and lent me use of his cell phone to call the aunt. The whole time we were really close to the store, but by the time we reached it, we owed the pirata about ten times what we should have had to pay. Before he sped off, he winked at me, ensuring that my use of his phone was free. What a guy.
After a speedy reunion with Papá´s side of the family and a night crashed at Paula´s place, Lily and I caught yet another 6am bus out of Los Yoses to take us to Playa Ostional. Small blessings like air conditioning and breathing room improved my nihilist mood as I chatted up Julian, a fellow AFSer from Austria. Around 4pm, we reached the National Park´s bridge protected boarder. I was the only one who was staying away from home for more than simply the duration of the Ostional trip, so when we all loaded off the bus into the blistering heat to walk our luggage to an undisclosed location, I looked like a complete bimbo diva with my two week´s worth of crap in a wheeled duffle and brimming backpack for a two night trip in a national park. The walk proved more exciting than just a walk, of course, because the bridge preventing overtourism was right out of Indiana Jones. When I look back at the photos now, it´s hard to believe I don´t remember teetering across the thin, tipsy, and tall wire bridge, but I was so travel weary, I must have just lumbered across with without noticing. Maybe that´s how Indy managed his feats.
If it sounds like I was por el piso at that point, everything about my mood was completely improved as soon as I saw Playa Ostional for the first time. Right away, we started our first work shift because the sun was setting. This meant turtle time! My speculations about actually seeing anything after all the travel were immediately dissolved when I spotted my first hatched nest of Ping-Pong ball sized baby turtles doing their best to scamper down the beach and into the ocean. At that point, we didn´t really know what we were doing, but it seemed a like a good idea to stand around the babies exclaiming endlessly in every language we knew about how fabulously adorable they were. Later that night, we were properly educated with a poorly translated English video about what our job for the nest two days would entail. We learned that turtles had slim odds of surviving hatching, much less the trek to the ocean, surrounded by head chomping dogs, fin tearing crabs, and gut piercing vultures. Yes, survival chances appeared grave for the defenseless Lora turtles of Ostional. After our job was detailed, a voice imposed over a sunset sweetly informed us that after the valiant little guy made it to the Pacific, "Each and every ones will surely face the more of dangers awaiting for those in the danger violent ocean". Lily and I were the only fluent English speakers, and when this dire conclusion was played, our burst of laughter was not appreciated by the dreadlocked crowd who found nothing comical about the turtle bloodbath. Ostional, strike two.
The following day was peaceful and enjoyable, rising at 4 to beat the sunrise and catch the majority of the hatching turtles. The beach was gorgeous and almost completely white with hatched turtle eggshells. Hundreds to Loritas painstakingly made their way into the crashing waves one by one. Our job as volunteers was to slowly walk behind them, shielding them from the glaring sun and protecting them from their lurking predators until they met their natural element in the sea. I wouldn´t consider myself an especially patient person, but I could walk those crawling turtles to safety all day for the rest of my life and feel content. We weren´t allowed to simply lift them into the ocean because their half hour army crawl was necessary for developing their muscles and lungs in order to be successful swimmers for their year long migration to Japan. It was such a peaceful, meaningful act. And every time you knew you saved one, you´d just backtrack to the nest and start protecting another.
In our off time, the 20-odd international group of students (only Silvia and Eva were there from the volunteer group) crammed into a semi-truck bed that off-roaded us to a secret beach, San Juanillo. We were dumped out of the truck into heaven. There is a law in Ostional that you can`t swim during the arribada, or tutle migration, because not only is it dangerous for the tortugitos, but it`s also prime shark season. Thus, we were hauled to San Juanillo, the white sandy beach littered with pink shells and palm trees. While most of the kids enjoyed the crystal turquoise water, I resolved to make use of my keens (the ugliest, and possibly heaviest shoes known to man) that I`d lugged along to do some exploration on the jagged rocky shore further down the beach. I invited a nice Japanese girl to come along who wasn`t in a swimming mood either, and we cautiously explored some caves while I learned about Buddhism in Spanish.
The two days we had left at Ostional passed pleasantly. The rhythm of life was simple. Our moods were light. Our cabins had a common space filled with hammocks and just outside the property was a nice island bar and the Ostional Project headquarters where we were served cafeteria style meals together on a long wooden deck. Lights are illegal at night all year in the beach town because sometimes the turtles confuse street lights for a sunrise, and their signal to start crawling towards the light source. For this reason, I was scared one night as I started my trek to the cabins in the pitch black night with only a rib-popping, flea ridden dog for company. Then I looked up. It turns out, stars can be seen in Costa Rica too. I hadn`t seen them since that cab ride from Cartago to La Finca three months ago because of the ceaseless rain in Neily. They were absolutely stunning. The difference between the milky way and the rest of the black canvas contrasted with razor clarity and the constellations (though I didn`t know who they were or what they meant) took form and pierced the void. The next morning, we made our next early morning march back across the bridge and to the waiting bus.
No comments:
Post a Comment