Another week has passed incredibly quickly, it seems as if I write one blog to then have to immediately write another! Last weekend we went to a waterfall which had a huge, deep plunge pool at the bottom. It started as such a calm day, just swimming in the plunge pool and jumping in on a rope swing until Kat dropped her GoPro.
The GoPro is unfortunately still sitting at the bottom of the pool but not due to lack of effort to try and retrieve it. Kat must have dived down (about 10 metres deep) fifty or so times but all she surfaced with was bloodshot eyes and earache. Despite Kat’s disaster, it was a really lovely day.
On Monday our volunteering was preparing the turtle garden at the beach in Santa Teresa. We prepared the nests for the eggs to go into which we were meant to collect on early morning patrols. However, over Monday night it started raining torrentially and it didn’t stop until Thursday! Therefore the patrols were cancelled, so we start them this week instead. The rain was on such a large scale that we didn’t leave Jakera for 3 days. The bridge connecting us to the rest of the town was completely flooded and so we were cut off. We watched a fair amount of movies together and played Pictionary to pass the time we had to spend inside. After a day or two we were definitely ready to get outside again and were getting frustrated at the rain, however it was still incredible to see how much water was falling.
It was unlike anything I’ve seen before. On Thursday afternoon it had dried up enough so we could sort out the recycling and take it over the bridge to be collected (as the bridge was too damaged for the truck to cross). On Friday our volunteering was planting trees throughout the neighbourhood before having Spanish - which we couldn’t have during the week as our teachers couldn’t get to Jakera! On Saturday some of us decided to go to the local town of Montezuma and others rented ATVs and explored the area further. I went to Montezuma and it was such a lovely day out. We had lunch overlooking the sea which was incredible and then had a look around the shops there. Lots of us picked up souvenirs to take home as well as getting some beautiful jewellery which was made from shells and stones that had been found on the beaches of Costa Rica.
Sunday was spent on the beach, chatting and eating nachos. The weather picked up and it was really hot and sunny again which we were all very happy about after the rain earlier on in the week! For the upcoming week we are still at Jakera and at the end of the week, 5 of The Leap team are going home. None of us are looking forward to it at all as we’ve become so close over the past month and a bit!