Well it's been a long time I know, but the Costa Rica school system has finally decided to throw some work at me and since I´ve also been travelling like mad the past few weekends I've just not had the time to write.
Went to the Nicoya Penisula for the first time two weeks ago and it was absolutely beautiful, stayed in a hostel by the ocean, near the town of Nosara. The beach was lovely, hardly anyone there so lots of space for all six of us to spread out, take in the sun, read and of course surf, which is what the beach is known for. Met a lot of surfer types at our hostel. I took my first surf lesson and had pretty low expectations, but was wonderfully surprised when I stood up three times throughout my lesson and if perhaps not gracefully somewhat rode the waves into shore. It was an amazing experience and I can somewhat appreciate the superlatives of surfer talk, because the feeling of riding the energy of the wave was quite simply cool. I am definitely hoping to rent a surfboard the next trip I make to the beach. Also had was able to check off the "de pie" experience in my list of Costa Rican things to do. We weren't able to buy return tickets before we left for Nosara, so on our return trip Sunday, riding the only bus back to San Jose from Nosara I got to stand for 5 hours. More exhausting than I would have imagined, enough said.
This past weekend was a trip of a different sort. The university here has a volunteer group called UNAventura, which makes regular weekend-long trips each semester with large groups of students to work in national parks, with poor communities and other sorts of volunteer projects. My trip was to Talamanca, an indigenous community right next to the Panamanian border. There were about forty students, only four gringos including me. I had a lot of fun getting to talk to Ticos outside of class. Got to help build a building for the local indigenous community, the Bribris and maybe make some tico friends. The only downside of the trip was Saturday night, three members of my particular work group had already gotten sick earlier in the day, probably from the water we'd drunken in the community, which had very poor resources. Long story short I threw up, and got about three hours worth of sleep before heading back to Heredia at 5am in the morning. Good trip though over all :)
