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Published: December 14th 2008
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Safety on the roads!
This is not a dual lane! This is cars overtaking on a corner with no idea at all whether there is oncoming traffic around the bend on a single laned 'highway'! So I have now been at the San Luis Eco Lodge for about 5 days! I'm living in a bunk-cabin, with vibrant Costa Rican coffee farmers as my avid neighbours and rain forest mountains as my back yard... It's somewhat rustic, mildly luxurious, & feels overwhelmingly like home ;-)
So my daily schedule is all work:
5:30 = wake up (all on my own, and I don't even hit the snooze button!), jump into my multi-directional spitting shower and dress in my bush gear - I even wear gaters over my gumboots!
6:00 = delicious breakfast: fresh fruit such as watermelon, pineapple, melon, pawpaw, bananas; scrambled eggs; Monteverde cheese, and the ever faithful pinto (beans and rice which is served at EVERY meal!)
6:30 = walk up to the various local shade tree coffee farms along a highly muddy, slippery forest path
7:00 - 11:30 = track bird species (the proper feathered kind like summer tanagers, emerald toucanets, dusky capped flycathchers), counts ripe fruit & blooming flowers, catch bees
11:30 = packed lunch and freshly brewed coffee with one of the local families
12:30 - 14h30 = misnetting (catching toucanets in nets) or diameter breast height measures - no that's
Sideroad lunch
Fernando, Valerie and our drivers Alex and Andreas on route from Alajuela to the EcoLodge not measuring the local breast diameters! It's the tree trunks...
14h30 - 16h30 = pollen counting or data entry
18:00 = dinner - which is divine! Fresh veggies, banana platano (a larger less sweet banana), fish/chicken(pollo)/meat - all which is slaughtered around the area in a local farm and of course - pinto rice and beans ;-)
And in between loads of chatting and cafe rico...
So my days are full and abundant. My photos do no justice to the brilliant vibrant array of birds, flowers, butterflies and general natural environment... But Don - who is on his ELEVENTH Earthwatch with his wife Sandi, is stocking up for all of us ;-)
So who's all in the group?
Valerie is the principal researcher who is completing her disotation on sustainable coffee, and is quite honestly a slave driver! But the nicest kind of slave driver there is ;-)
Don and Sandi are American ex-biology teachers who get more excited every time they spot a bird than I do when I spot a random dog needing a pet...
Brian is an ex-Navy submariner from America who has a hilariously dry sense of humour and rates all of our activities
Rural roads emerge
This is apparently a new and improved road... at a 2 out of 10 (in an incredibly good-humoured non-plussed fashion!)
Phillip is from Australia and talks non-stop with stories from who knows where about absolutely everything!
Fernando is a fellow lung-cancer driver from BAT Peru who has become our Spanish translator and teacher (and boy oh boy do we abuse him!)
And there are other volunteers who are either teaching English, serving as baturalist guides to groups that come through, researchers (some who spend all there time just studying butterflies! I mean have you ever...???) Mostly American, some who have met a Costa Rican and fallen in love. Others who have fallen in love with the spectacular natural arena of Costa Rica. And then a few who are born volunteers who need little more than the bare minimal survival means, a roof over their head and an abundance of culture of nature...
So how am I? Brilliant! I really feel so at home here and within me... Learning how to use binoculours, spot and identify birds, count the number of flowers on every bush in a plantation (trust me it's a tediously boring job!) and counting pollen grains in a microscope have all been incredible lessons in
Bedtime...
My room and bed - luxutious I promise! patience, concentration and focus - which you know I'm not a keen supporter of generally...
The Costa Rican are so friendly and it amazes me how simple their homes and lives are yet how open their hearts are... I haven't gotten to spend as much time with them as I would like but I'm getting to know a few slowly but surely. My spanish is improving a little and I'm stringing the basic sentences together...
The weather is all rain, tons of wind (I really thought a hurricane was blasting through us one night - which is impossible in the middle of a valley of mountains!), mud to make a pig in shit reconsider it's desired state of happiness, and an occassioanl glimpse of sun! It is rather unusual as dry summer is normally apon the Finca la Bella community - but it's what's been served to us so we accept is gracefully! (Ok we bitch and moan regularly but we're still smiling...)
I'm still slightly tentative as to what my plans and resources will be like for the last three weeks but I have pushed that aside and am truly embracing the incredibly delicious food, the
La vista
The view from my room on a very rainy day... amazing people - volunteers and locals (with so much to teach me beyond my usual conversations), the abundant natural wonder constantly around me, and the simple yet so incredibly full and meaningful moments that fill my days here...
I have to be honest and say: No I'm not missing anyone, and no I don't wish I was in sunny Cape Town, and yes I'd rather be watching birds like a nerdy ecologist than lying on the beach, BUT - I truly wish you were all here to share these experiences and moments becuase my words just don't do any of it justice!
Yo deseo ellos estan muy felize y yo temando muchos amor y besos!
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