Costa Rica: Summer Volunteering Diaries
Stef White-Moncrieff
Hi Guy!!!
I am emailing on behalf of the three of us as we are just off to bed and might not have time to mail you tomorrow morning as we are getting up early to go to El Silencio.
So far it has been amazing, so many new experiences in just a day and a half!! We travelled around San Jose with Oliver today and had a typical Costa Rican lunch which consisted of rice...beans...deep fried plantain, chicken in salsa and mash potato and i think we were all suprised at how nice (and filling!) it was!
The people here are very friendly and we seem to be picking up the lingo a bit. It’s fun learning and we have all been having little learning sessions in our room with our phrasebooks.
Thank you for all the organising and everything, going very smoothly so far! I think we have all emailed our families and today we all bought a phonecard to use in the payphone in the coming days.
Speak to you soon!
Buenos Noches!
Stefie, Charlotte & Ruth
Stefanie White-Moncrieff
Hellllllllllllllllo!!
I absoloutely love it here!! I love the locals and the beaches and the forests and the waterfalls and the animals. Being in a HUUUUUGGGEEE family is doing me the world of good, as my family is quite small and i find it difficult to interact with children but i am having so much fun with my family going to the 'salon' and watching the awful karaoke, haha! I help My mum Ariana in the kitchen too but i'm not very good at peeling potatoes.
We've just been to Manuel Antonio, saw 2 sloths, 5 capuchin monkeys and 5 squirrel monkeys. It's amazing to always be surrounded by this type of wildlife and see them so close up in the wild.
The work is so much fun too, and the two guys we work with, Johan and Pinocho are hilarious. Yesterday (friday) after work we went down to the river savegre with the other volunteers from Quebec and rode the river current up and down! So fun and relaxing.
The beach at Manuel Antonio is so so so so so breathtaking. I thought it wouldn't look as good in real life but if possible i think it's better. We have our next weekends planned out too, we're going to visit Matapalo, Dominical and Jaco and probably stay overnight in hostels to make the most of the time in the weekends.
Love Stefi
Stefanie White-Moncrieff
I am very very happy and the living conditions are exactly what I expected. I love my room, it feels like home now, I never have to worry about privacy or anything like that as the family is very respectful and they leave you to do your own thing, however I am usually in the living room or kitchen interacting with the family anyways because they're so funny, they have a great sense of humour out here!! Ruth, Charlie and I sit on the porch in the hammocks and in the rocking chairs after work and chill out - doing as the Costa Ricans do!
The food is rice and beans for every meal pretty much, accompanied with some kind of meat which is often hard to make out!! But very tasty and filling nonetheless!
My expectations have definitely been matched so far! Work has been enjoyable and I definitely didn't expect to be working so closely with the animals. That pleasantly surprised me. The people are funny, friendly and helpful and the country is beautiful and very charismatic. What more can I say!!
We often get asked by the lodge staff and the co-ordinators if we're having a good time and if we'd like to try anything new, which is great. This week we got asked if we wanted to go horse riding and we got to ride horses up a mountain and through the river all for free! It was great fun, we were really grateful for that; it was very nice of the locals to think of it. We also got asked if our families were looking after us ok and stuff like that, but we had no complaints there. They are very thoughtful.
Today we left early to go to Dominical and the mum of my house asked the night before if she could make me some breakky to take for the bus journey!!
The work is good fun. Most mornings we do our usual routines at the animal centre cleaning the cages and preparing the food (I’m going to be so good at chopping fruit and veg when I get home!), then during the day our work changes weekly. The first 2 weeks we worked on the rainforest trails which was very physically demanding but therefore very rewarding also. We built benches and dug out steps, painted signs and raked the trails.
This week we have been organising English Lessons for anyone who wanted to come along. We made posters advertising it and by the end of the week we had at least 15 regular children coming who surprised us with their enthusiasm!! They love learning so much! They came religiously, sometimes twice a day and by the end of the week they could confidently ask and answer questions such as, how are you? When is your birthday? And, what is the time? As well as knowing the names of a variety of foods, animals, months, days and family members. They were so keen that we are going to organise some more lessons another week.
Next week I think we are going to be helping in the organic garden, yet another change of scene. There is definitely no lack of variety.
That pretty much sums up what we've been up to. Today we visited the national park in Dominical - Hacienda Baru.
We had two great guides called Danny and Pedro who made us eat termites!! Sounds disgusting but they were really yummy, tasted like peanut butter! haha. We did a canopy tour consisting of a series of zip lines and a hoist which took you 120m above the ground so we could see the rainforest from a sloth's perspective! We see new wildlife up close and in the wild every week. We've seen sloths, poison dart frogs, loads of different monkeys, scarlet macaws, toucans, iguanas, wild pigs, weird black squirrel things, and lots of other birds like hummingbirds.
We have made really great friends in the village who take us waterfalls and play cards with us at the lodge in the evenings. There is such a strong sense of community, and I think England could learn quite a lot from it! Everything is very cheap, at the weekends we can have a big lunch for about $3...about 1 pound 50. Hostels are about a fiver max per night to stay in, and the bus is no more than $2 for a 2-hour journey. Not bad at all!
Right, well, we're off to the beach now!!! Talk later! Thanks for the help with the San Jose hostel.
Stefie
Matt Nokes
Hey leap.I
am just emailing to say thank you for making this trip possible. I have had an amazing time whilst doing the volunteer work and the best bit was living with my family who I became so close to that I am going back to see them in three weeks time after my travels alone around Costa-Rica.Thank you again. mat x