Spring Break, pt. 3: Cahuita

The bus from Puerto Viejo brought us to Cahuita in just under 40 minutes. When we got there, we stopped in an internet cafe at the bus terminal to see if Chesca had emailed us to tell us where she was staying or where to meet her. She didn't so we were starting from square one. We used the internet anyway to look at a map of Cahuita, since we didn't really know anything about it before we got there. Luckily it's an extremely small town, so it's basically impossible to get lost, everything is within walking distance, and there are places to stay on every corner. We left the bus stations with our backpacks and decided to just walk around and try to find our friends. We walked towards the water, but quickly realized that our friend were not there because the area we were in had buildings built up to the water's edge with a few docks for boats but no beach whatsoever. However, we could see a long stretch of beach from there so we walked over and found ourselves at the entrance to Cahuita National Park. We stopped in the kiosk at the entrance, where there is a log book so the park guards can monitor who is going in and out. I realized that this would be a good way to tell if our friends were there already, and asked the guard if I was allowed to read older entries. I got a weird look from her, but she let me do it anyway, and we discovered that not only Tessa, Hilary, Chelsea, and Carolyn (who had left for Cahuita earlier that day) but also Chesca and Macho were signed in! We were very excited and started to walk down the beach with our boots and backpacks on, looking pretty ridiculous compared to everyone in their bathing suits. After about 30 minutes we found the first group, but not Chesca and Macho. Everyone was already on the beach and relaxing, so we just found out where they were staying so we could rent a room, leave our stuff there, and get some beach time ourselves before the park closed at 5. We found the place without any problems and were able to rent a cabina for all four of us for $10 per person per night, which was pleasantly cheap.

On the beach in Cahuita. Photo by Rukhshana.

Roommates in front of our cabina

Our room was not particularly nice, but for little money and only a little bit of time it was perfect for our needs. We hurried back to the beach and got to soak in the warm water, which was almost as calm as Punta Uva (...but not quite!). Right before the park closed at 5, we saw a couple walking along the beach far off in the distance. I jokingly said that it had to be Chesca and Macho, but as they got closer we realized that it actually was them! We ran out of the water and greeted them with salty wet hugs and the degree of enthusiasm that you have when it's only actually been a week since you last saw someone but it feels like a year because you are used to spending every waking moment with them. It turned out they were staying in another cabina only one block away from us, so we decided to go back and shower and reconvene at 7 to have dinner together.

This parrot sat at the exit to the park and said "adios" every time someone walked out. It was very entertaining.

We all met up and walked into town (approximately three blocks away) and looked around at the restaurants to choose from. We had heard that one was particularly good, but because Cahuita is so small Chesca and Macho had actually gone there the night before, so we chose a place nearby that had outdoor seating.

Showered and ready for dinner! Photo by Ellen

We all ordered Caribbean food, which was good but (again) not extraordinary. It was nice to have everyone in one place and see Chesca and Macho again. Unfortunately since we were a pretty large group Macho had trouble understanding a lot of what we were saying, and he didn't seem as at ease as he had the last time we spent time with him. Regardless, we all had a good time together on what was (for some of us at least) our last night of spring break.

An unfortunately dark group picture. Yes, Macho is the only male. Photo by Tessa.

After dinner Chesca and Macho went back to go to bed early, because they were taking the early bus back to San Jose the next morning. The rest of us went out to a bar down the street that was having some live band play that night. It ended up being a wide variety of Latin and Caribbean dance music, and one by one we all salsa danced with Carlo, a Tico we met who used to be a dance instructor on Disney cruises. Tessa and Rukhshana had taken basic salsa lessons at CRLA and Hilary has been dancing her whole life, but even me and my other friends who had no salsa experience ended up trying it out because he was (not surprisingly) a very good lead. We didn't stay out too late, because the next morning we had reservations to go snorkeling in the park with Carlo (that's actually how we had met him earlier that day).

In the morning we stopped at a grocery store to grab quick breakfast, which was a small loaf of bread and some pineapple jam (one of my favorite Costa Rican discoveries) for me. Then we met up with Carlo's brother Luis, who took us out on their boat to snorkel in the reef offshore in Cahuita National Park.

Chelsea on the boat on the way out to snorkel

The boat ride out was short and relatively calm. We shared the boat with another group of people who I think were from Germany or Belgium. We stopped at the first reef and hopped out of the boat and into the water, which was only about 8 feet deep. I tried out my waterproof camera underwater for the first time, since I had been afraid that it would leak and I would be camera-less for the rest of my time in Costa Rica. Regardless, I took it into the water with me and was pleasantly surprised at its ability to not break while completely submerged. So, needless to say, I took a lot of pictures underwater.

Thumbs up for technology! Photo by Ellen

These were my favorite fish... they were sparkly blue!

We went to two sites on the boat to snorkel, and then took the boat to a point in the park where they provided us with snacks of fruit, cookies, and juice. We had the option of taking a guided hike back through the park with Carlo for $5 extra per person, but decided not to because of how frequently we hike for school and also because we're cheap. So, we headed back to the dock on the boat while the rest of the people that had gone with us continued hiking. We stopped at a grocery store and bought some fruit for lunch on the beach and then spent the rest of our time in the water, since Tessa and I were leaving that day at 4 pm.

Fruit feast on the beach!

We literally didn't get out of the water until almost 3, and we had to leave to change and pack our stuff. While I was swimming, a monkey stole my mango(!) so Tessa and I stopped at the grocery store again on the way to the bus stop and got some snacks for the road.

Enjoying the last day of spring break

Hilary found a big sand dollar!

When the time came, we said adios to the rest of our friends, who were staying in Cahuita for one more night. Tessa and I had decided to go back one day early so that we would have all of Sunday to pack and run errands (like buying more shampoo, which I was running out of). We bussed back to San Jose, still sandy and a little sunburnt (you're not allowed to wear sunscreen while snorkeling because it's bad for the reef), and got back around 9 pm. We went to dinner at our favorite pizza place and then took a cab home, ready to meet up the next day to go to the mall and pack for the second half of the semester!

Spring Break, pt. 2: Global Creek

So, as I mentioned in the last post, the house we rented for spring break was, unbeknownst to us before arriving, located on a 13-hectare organic permaculture cacao farm called Global Creek. Throughout our five-day stay there, we learned more about exactly what was going on there, and even ended up doing some volunteer work at the end of the week.

So, Global Creek started out in a different location on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica with Ahki, the current manager of the property in Cocles. He graduated from college in Canada and, after working for a while helping businesses become more sustainable, came to Costa Rica to do volunteer work at some places that had reputations of being very ecologically-conscious and sustainable. When he arrived, however, he says he was disappointed in the discrepancies between how the places were marketed to people and how they actually operated. Thus, the idea for Global Creek, a sustainable business that integrates permaculture, sustainability, environmental education and "life learning," was born. He met someone with some extra land that Ahki began to watch and develop the business plan. Somewhere during that time the owner of the current Global Creek property found out about Ahki's business and mission and invited him to manage his piece of land. The owner built three houses on the property... one for Ahki to live in, one for a couple from the U.S. that processes the cacao and makes gourmet chocolate, and one for volunteers to live in while working on the farm. The last house is the one we stayed in, because they rent it to vacationers in between volunteer groups. 

The reason we couldn't rent the house for the rest of the week was because the property owner's daughter and sister-in-law were coming down to Costa Rica. They originally were supposed to be interviewed for a news documentary about sustainable business, but the filming got postponed until later this year and they decided to come down anyway since they had already booked their flights. The owner's family was only using the second-floor apartment, though, so the downstairs (where my bedroom was) was still available. There is also a "jungle hut," aka a screened-in platform with three beds on it, near Akhi's house. These were the two places we were allowed to stay for our extra time. The deal Ahki offered us was to continue staying on the property for free for as many more days as we wanted, as long as we helped him out 3-4 hours a day since they were in between volunteer groups. Normally even volunteers have to pay $5 a night to stay, so this was an extremely generous offer for him to make! 

The first day, we all stayed over together. Some people payed their way by working on the farm, but I helped thoroughly clean the upstairs apartment to prepare for the arrival of the next guests. I was planning on staying another night afterward and then going to Cahuita, a beach 30 minutes north of Puerto Viejo, for the last day. However, I checked my email after cleaning the house and saw that Chesca wanted to meet us in Cahuita and that she was already there with her boyfriend and was only staying until Saturday morning. I decided that I would take the bus to Cahuita at 2 pm on Friday to try and catch Chesca before she left, and volunteer in the morning even though I wouldn't be staying over another night. Because I had talked to Ahki about it already and because I was curious to learn more about the cacao farm, it felt like a reasonable way to do that without standing up Chesca. 

So, Friday morning I got up early and met Ahki at the rancho to start working. A few other people were staying to volunteer, and the rest left for Cahuita early that morning. We split up the tasks, but in the first hour or so I got to hear a little about all the different projects from Ahki. Matt and Justin were working on building compost piles from yard debris and horse manure donated from a local animal rehabilitation center. The design of the piles allows the material to reach very high temperatures inside very quickly, so everything breaks down relatively fast. The piles are circular and large, but with space enough to walk in between, because when the composting is complete you have a raised bed in which to plant things. Ahki's goal is to make Global Creek more sustainable by growing all of the food for himelf and all volunteers that come to stay there. He currently doesn't buy food, but instead gets it by bartering with local farmers. While this is extremely cheap compared to normal food purchasing, Global Creek was founded with zero startup, so having gardens with rich soils to grow vegetables will make it both more ecologically and financially sustainable.

Three compost piles in various states of decomposition. When the mandala gardens are finished, Ahki expects them to be sufficiently productive to feed up to twelve people at all times.

After we learned about the compost piles and their sustainability goals, Ahki told us a bit about the beginning of the chocolate-making process. Cacao pods contain purple (yes, purple!) seeds encased in a sweet, tangy, white flesh. Both of these parts are edible raw, and I got to try them. The cacao seeds themselves are (expectedly) very bitter, but tasty. Compared to processed chocolate, they are much healthier because they have high concentrations of antioxidants, and three little seeds give about the same caffeine as an espresso shot. Snacking on them made me feel much more optimistic about working in the grove so early in the morning! Haha. The flesh is soft and juicy, and surprisingly good. If you eat the flesh and the seed together, the sweetness and the bitterness balance out a bit in an interesting taste combination. Apparently cacao seeds were a popular snack way back when, and travelers spitting out the seeds after eating the flesh may have played a role on how cacao arrived in Central America. 

A cacao pod cut open in a cross-section. The white part is the sweet flesh, and the bitter purple bean is inside.

Ahki also told us about the first steps that transform raw cacao into chocolate First, the fruit is fermented holes dug into the earth and lined with banana leaves. The fermentation gets rid of the flesh and begins changing the bean into its pre-chocolate form. Then the beans get dried in the sun, kind of like coffee. After that, the family living in the other house on the property makes them into high-quality chocolate and sells it in a small shop in town. 

Cacao beans drying in the sun

After the background information about the farm and the chocolate-making, we got down to business. Ahki explained to us how about 40 years ago, a fungus spread all throughout Central American cacao plants, killing the pods and driving many plantations out of business. The property that Global Creek is on now actually used to be an abandoned cacao plantation, which is why there are so many cacao trees there! No plants are naturally resistant to the fungus, so most commercial cacao is grown with lots of fungicide to stop infection. Because the cacao here is grown organically, anywhere from 0% to over 70% of the pods on each tree are infected and can't be used in chocolate-making.

Cacao pods with varying degrees of white pod rot

Because the fungal spores spread the infections, Ahki and volunteers periodically go through the cacao groves and pick the rotting pods to try to prevent the fungus from spreading. He is currently trying to figure out whether or not this significantly decreases the frequency of infection, so they are managing different plots on the farm to varying degrees. I helped out in one of the more managed sections, delicately removing pods with a fruit picker to minimize the number of spores knocked into the air. I thought that the work was actually pretty fun, although after a while it gets tiresome to crane your neck backwards and constantly look upwards, searching for white pods. I worked with Ellen, and after a few hours we had collected a good amount (maybe half of a potato sack) of rotten cacao.

The cacao grove I worked in

After we finished our morning of volunteering, we headed back to the rancho to make lunch. Since we had already cleaned out the downstairs apartment of the house, we didn't want to dirty the kitchen again and instead used the rancho's outdoor communal kitchen that Ahki and volunteers use. The rancho has an even better view of the sea than our deck at the house did, so it was lovely to sit around and enjoy it while eating my bean and cheese sandwich.

Tessa in the kitchen, making pasta

The view from the rancho

About half of the remaining group had left on the early bus to Cahuita, so Rukhshana, Tessa, Ellen and I were hanging around the rancho by ourselves. We thought that Ahki had left to take the guests to an indigenous market in a nearby national park, but to our surprise the landowner's daughter and sister-in-law showed up at the rancho while we were eating lunch. We got to meet them and talk for a little bit. Eventually Ahki came up, too, and we realized that they had called off their trip because they missed the bus while waiting for a delivery, and the only taxi driver that could take them there never showed up at the house. So, we all ended up hanging out for a little bit, and they got to learn about OTS and our program. Ahki knew we were all students, but was intrigued to learn that in our courses we'd spent a good deal of time visiting farmers. The landowner's relatives were also very intrigued, and ended up having us pose for some publicity photos to put on their website. It was a little weird having to pretend to pick cacao and shovel out trails, especially since we had been doing it for real justtwo hours earlier, but they were very excited to make a connection with a student group that could potentially send volunteers back in the future, so we obliged them.

After our busy morning and unexpected lunchtime activities, we finally headed out to catch the 2 pm bus to Cahuita. Tessa, Ellen, Rukhshana and I left together to try to meet up with the rest of our friends although we had no idea where they were staying and had no phones or anything to contact them. Two of our friends had already left for San Jose to spend time with siblings visiting from the U.S. The remaining two of the group, Matt and Justin, decided to spend the rest of spring break in Puerto Viejo for free and keep volunteering at Global Creek.

The "jungle hut" where Justin and Matt stayed

We said our goodbyes to Ahki, who wished us well and invited us to return in the future, and got in a taxi (4 x 4 this time!) that drove us from our house to the bus station in Puerto Viejo, where we began the final leg of our spring break adventures.

Tessa and I waiting (sweatily) at the bus stop in Puerto Viejo

Spring Break, pt. 1: Puerto Viejo

For spring break, twelve of us rented a house in Puerto Viejo on the southern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica. Because Ethan's birthday was on Friday, we decided not to leave San Jose until Saturday morning, and to go out Friday night to celebrate since he and most of the other OTS students were going to Bocas del Toro, Panama for the break. Almost everyone in our house was taking the 10 am bus out of San Jose, I took the early bus to get out to Puerto Viejo with a reasonable amount of time on the beach. It was Mary's last weekend in Costa Rica, and we invited her to stay in our house since it had already been paid for, but since she had class on Monday she was only going to get one full day on the beach... hence our decision to leave at 6 am instead of 10. Tessa also decided to head out early with us, and we made it on time (barely! Mary forgot her passport and we had to take a taxi all the way back to our house and then to the bus station again!) for the bus even though we had been out late the night before. We arrived in Puerto Viejo around 10:30 am and called Ahki, the manager of the property we were renting, to ask him how to get to the house from the bus terminal (one of the many downsides of places in Costa Rica not having addresses). We had been in touch with Sylvia, a real estate agent, when renting the house, and she had told us that we could show up whenever we wanted on Saturday, but when we talked to Ahki he said that check-in wasn't until after 12:30 pm. We were disappointed because we had our big backpacks and didn't want to bring them to the beach or wander around the town much trying to find the house (which was supposed to be a few km away), so we decided to go to a restaurant with wifi to kill time until we could leave our things at the house. We bought plates of fruit since we had gotten up too early for breakfast at our homestays and checked email for the first time in a while since internet at CRLA wasn't working well at the end of our time there. 

Eventually we called a cab which we quickly discovered was a little sketchy for two reasons. First, it was an unregistered taxi. We got the number from Ahki, but apparently there is only one real taxi in the entire Puerto Viejo region, and the rest of them are just people who drive people around in their cars regularly. There are no meters and you agree on a price when you get in and tell them where you're going. In San Jose, unregistered taxis are really dangerous, but apparently in Puerto Viejo they're pretty normal. So, we got in and headed to our house. Second, our taxi was a regular sedan, and the house we were renting was at the top of a steep hill with a gravel driveway. Our car couldn't make it even 1/4 of the way up, and we started to slide backward down the hill! Our driver was trying really hard to make it, but eventually we just told him we would walk the rest of the way up, which took about 15 minutes with our heavy backpacks. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica is hotter than the Pacific side, and we were already quite sweaty and a little disgruntled by the time we got up to our house, given the morning's mishaps.

However, when we got to the house we quickly realized that our wait was well worth it. The house was beautiful! It is two stories with a large open living room and kitchen upstairs, and decks on both floors with views of the Caribbean just across the street below. 

The living room. All of the glass sections are sliding windows that open completely, making the upstairs totally open-air if when we wanted it to be.

Downstairs there was a large master bedroom with a closet and a separate bathroom, which Tessa and I claimed for ourselves since we were the first ones to arrive in the house. There were two more bedrooms upstairs, each of which slept 3-4 people, and the rest slept on beds in the extra room downstairs. 

Our lovely bedroom! Sleeping on a REAL mattress for the first time this semester was an unbelievable treat... not to mention the view of the sunrise every morning!

One of the real highlights of the house was the kitchen. There was tons of counter space with bar stools and a speakers, making plenty of room for people to cook and eat food together or just hang out in the kitchen area. The windows on the deck also opened up completely, making another bar area with stools out on the deck facing in. Outside we had a beautiful view, and comfortable rocking chairs and a hammock to observe it from.

Tessa in the kitchen. Although it's backlit and impossible to see, there's a view of the sea out the window!

Our upstairs deck! Again, the sea is off in the distance although the lighting is bad here.

This hammock was a hot commodity in a house of twelve!

This sloth lived in a tree right outside of our balcony! We saw him almost every day.

Since it had taken us so much longer to get to the house than we expected, we decided to just wait the extra hour until the next group of people arrived at 2 pm. While we were waiting, Ahki came down, introduced himself to us, and told us a little bit about the property. It turns out that the house is usually used to hold volunteers, because the rest of the property is an organic permaculture cacao farm! The whole property, known as Global Creek, is owned by someone else who lives in the U.S., but Ahki has lived there for the past four years in a different building a two-minute walk up the hill, taking care of guests and volunteers and running the farm. I was very interested to learn more about the property, but he said he would come back later after everyone else arrived to give us more of an orientation. 

As soon as our other ten housemates got in at 2 and we all changed into our bathing suits and applied sunscreen, we headed out to the beach. Our house was actually in Cocles, which is one beach farther south of Puerto Viejo. This turned out to be a good thing, since Puerto Viejo is a little dirtier and more crowded since it draws more tourists and has more restaurants and hotels. The entrance to the beach was just across the street from our house, which was lovely. 

The entrance to the beach near our house

Cocles is (according to my guide book) one of the only beaches in the Puerto Viejo area that has an organized lifeguard system, which turned out to be a good thing because it's a popular surfing beach with strong rip currents. The swimming zone was another couple of minutes down the beach, and we all got in the water within a few minutes of arriving since the early-afternoon sun was really hot.

On the way to swim!

The current was even stronger than we thought, and after a few minutes in the water most of us were too tired to swim anymore so we came out and dried off. For the rest of the week we realized that the best way to cool off is lying down in the shallow water where there's no rip tide. The beach was beautiful and not crowded at all, and we enjoyed it safely every day for the extent of our stay in Cocles.

Manny found a crab in the road on the first night!

The second day of break, the rest of our amigos on the way to Bocas del Toro were staying in a hostel in Puerto Viejo to break up their travel time into more manageable increments. They came over to see our house during the day (it was a big hit, not surprisingly) and we all went to the beach together. That night, a few of us went out for "girly cocktails" happy hour in town, which was a nice break from being in a very large group all day.

Lee, Liz, Rukhshna, Tessa, and I at happy hour

We all tried guaro sours, which are made with Costa Rican liquor made from sugarcane. They were a big hit, and Liz, who has a bar tending license, made them for us again later in the week. Our waitress also brought us free bruschetta to snack on since we stayed there for a long time!

The "sunset" view during happy hour, which isn't much of a sunset because we were facing east.

Monday we had a lazy day around the house and met with the real estate agent to make the second half of our payment for the house. After that we bummed around on the beach all afternoon, which was nice because it wasn't as hot as it had been the past two days.  At night we had a friendship bracelet-making frenzy with a bunch of string that Carolyn had bought in San Jose. We all taught each other how to do different stitches, and made bracelets for everyone in the house. It was a relaxing way to spend a night since we had gone out four nights in a row before that. We also all cooked in the house, which was really nice since we haven't been able to make our own food all semester. I made pasta with spinach, onions, tomatoes, parmesan cheese, garlic, and olive oil. It was amazing! Costa Rican food is delicious, but it was nice to switch it up.

Everyone intently working on their bracelets in the living room

Tuesday we got up early because we wanted to rent bikes to go to another beach 10 km away. Unfortunately, as soon as we got ready to leave the house it started pouring! It was still warm out so we could have biked anyway, but we decided that since the point was to go to the beach we would rather wait for a sunnier day. Thus my morning became dedicated to reading and taking a nap in our hammock, overlooking the sea (I can't complain!). In the afternoon it stopped raining so Tessa and I walked into Puerto Viejo to look for souvenirs for our friends and family, since our next couple of sites were going to be pretty isolated and we weren't sure when we'd be able to shop again. I did really well and got things for my friends from high school and Erin. Tessa also got herself a ring and something for her mom. We even squeezed in a little time at the beach when we got back, and started teaching Rukhshana to float in a shallow pool of water that had no rip current. She is an amazingly quick learner!

Tessa on the way back to our house after Rukhshana's swimming lessons

Walking back to our house at dusk, we saw that even though all of our other friends had already gone back to make dinner, Justin was still out in the water. He rented a surf board from some guy on the beach and was teaching himself how to surf! Surprisingly he made a lot of progress in just a few hours, and was able to get up onto his knees consistently and ride into shore. We stopped and Tessa gave him a few pointers, because she's taken surf lessons before, and then went home because it was getting dark and we didn't have a light.

Justin surfing at sunset

Wednesday we made good on our plans of the day before and got up early to rent bikes and go to Manzanillo. Nine out of twelve of us decided to go, and by 10:00 we were on the road. We started out going slowly because a bunch of the group hadn't ridden bikes in years, and because we were enjoying touring the neighborhood south of our house. Even at our slow pace, it only took us ten minutes to get to a grocery store that it took us almost 40 minutes to get to on foot the day before. It became really clear why so many people rode bikes there, since it's so much faster than walking and the low coastal roads are almost completely flat.

Biking! Photo by Ellen

About half way to Manzanillo we had a little detour and ended up going to Punta Uva first. We locked up our bikes on palm trees and set up on the beach, which we shared with approximately four other people. The whole area is much nicer on weekdays, because there are less tourists around and the beaches are practically private. The beach we were at in Punta Uva was a beautiful cove protected by a coral reef offshore, which we happily discovered as soon as we went into the water and felt how calm it was in comparison to Cocles. Floating on my back for 20 minutes, I barely moved an inch... there was absolutely no rip tide! We were overjoyed.

The cove... so calm and peaceful!

Amigas in Punta Uva

We spent several hours enjoying the tranquil water and napping and reading on the beach. We took an ice cream break around lunch time at a store across the street from the beach, and then decided to continue on the last 5 km to Manzanillo since it had been our original destination, and was the beach that Ahki had recommended that we visit. He also told us that it was the best Caribbean food in the region, so we stopped at a small restaurant and some people got early dinners. I wasn't hungry because I had packed lunch, but I got to try a little bit of the rice and beans, which they make with coconut milk on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was a subtle difference in taste, but it was good! Manzanillo was an even quieter town than Punta Uva; in the words of Ahki, it exemplifies "pure Costa Rican tranquilidad." I can see why he thinks so, but overall I thought that Punta Uva was the most beautiful beach we had seen yet, and I was really glad that we had unexpectedly decided to stop there on the way.


Thursday was Ellen's birthday and our last day in the house we rented, so of course we went out Wednesday night to celebrate. Apparently since the most tourists are around on the weekends, businesses in Puerto Viejo takes Wednesdays off instead. We didn't know this in advance, but it became increasingly apparent as we walked into town and saw every restaurant and bar closed. As we got closer, though, we started to hear dance music in the distance, and followed our ears to the one bar that was open. It was practically empty (I think there were actually a total of six people there besides us), but, as usual, we filled the place up with just our group. One of the lessons that I've learned this semester is that traveling with eleven to 27 friends at all times makes it easy to have a party whenever and wherever you want. Haha. Because the bar was so empty, the DJ took every song request that we made, and Ellen got lots of free things for her birthday. We had a really fun night and Ellen definitely started off her 21st year well, surrounded by friends in a bar on the beach in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

All of us on the beach outside the bar on Ellen's birthday

Thursday we woke up early and cleaned the house, since we had to check out by 10:00. We had tried to rent the house the whole week, but someone had reserved it before us and were arriving on Thursday so we couldn't. However, after befriending Ahki and learning about the cacao farm on the property (more on that later), he offered us extra nights of free lodging if we volunteered 3-4 hours each day that we stayed. We thought that the offer was too good to pass up, and paid our way for another night in Puerto Viejo... some people helped pick cacao, some people helped make compost piles, and a few other people and I cleaned up the house thoroughly so that they could save money and not call in a cleaning service before the next guests arrived. After we finished working, I interviewed Ahki for a homework assignment we had about getting local perspectives on conservation issues in Costa Rica (more on that later, too), and then we went out to dinner to celebrate Ellen's birthday again. We had a much more low-key night and went to a restaurant instead of a bar, and we all got delicious food. The waitress even brought Ellen free cake! Manny's sister also arrived in Costa Rica that day with her boyfriend, and somehow she found us in the restaurant we were in without knowing we'd be there. Puerto Viejo is a small town in a small country! Haha. Still tired from the fiesta the night before and our volunteering earlier that day, we went to sleep relatively early to get ready for the next leg of our spring break trip.

Ellen's birthday cake!

San Jose, pt. 4: Last days at CRLA

I returned to my homestay from Dota around 5 pm, and Maria was already cooking dinner. I was looking forward to spending our last week in the city, but little did I know that there was a little bit of 

the outdoors waiting for me at home! After putting down my backpack I sat down on my bed to see if the internet would work, and noticed that there was a little worm on my comforter. I picked it up and threw it in the garbage, thinking nothing of it, and went about my business. About fifteen minutes later, I noticed that there was another one up near my pillow. Curious, I moved my pillow and turned down my blanket, only to find dozens more of the little bugs! I didn't know what they were or why they were in my bed, but I knew that I needed to change my bedding, since they had been crawling around and leaving little trails of poop all over my sheets. Because my host mom is so generous and takes such good care of me all the time, I always feel like a burden asking her for anything. Hesitant to inform her that her house, which she takes great care to keep spotlessly clean (she even hires a cleaning lady to visit at least twice a week!), was infested with little grubs, I knocked on Mary's door instead. When she saw my room, she decided that we needed to tell Maria immediately, even though we both knew she would feel badly about it. So we told her in the best Spanish that we could muster what was going on, and she stopped cooking dinner to come investigate. Of course, she was mortified and confused about having bugs in the house at all, let alone in her guest's bed. We collected all of the bugs we could find, threw them out, swept the floor, and changed all of the bedding. I felt bad about making her do extra work (especially since she had just changed and washed my bedding three days before), but it was a relief to be able to go to bed that night in a clean and insect-free bed. The next day when I had internet access at school, I looked up some different pictures online and figured out that the mystery bugs had been housefly larvae. Luckily this made sense, because we had seen a single fly in my room about a week before the infestation, and although we killed it, it may have laid eggs somewhere in the house before it died. My best guess is that the eggs had hatched sometime around Thursday, and that while I was away for the weekend they were crawling up into my cool, dry covers to pupate. Of course the situation ended up being a hands-on biology lesson for everyone, which seemed fitting for my semester in Costa Rica. Bugs don't really bother me, so instead of being grossed out by the whole incident I found it kind of amusing, especially since it was so easily taken care of. Plus it made a great story to tell my biology professors when we returned from spring break!

Luckily, the rest of my time in San Jose was entirely bug-free. Our last week at CRLA was really packed with work, since we had an essay, a 20-minute presentation, and our three-hour final exam all in the course of four days. We essentially finished all of the grammar that we were learning by Tuesday, and spent the rest of our week doing less "academic" work and more casual conversation. Rebeca even took us out to get ice cream one afternoon! The same day I also went to a cooking class and learned how to make empenadas, which was lots of fun. 

Francesca cooking spicy ground beef to put in the empenadas. Can you tell that she is her happiest around food? Haha.

Empenadas frying... they were delicious! I definitely hope to make these back in the U.S.

I saved my empenada for later, since Wednesday is half-price movie day at the theater in San Pedro and Mary and I told Maria that we wouldn't be home for dinner. This week we saw Hall Pass (aka Pase Libre), which was awful! Thank goodness the movies are so cheap in Costa Rica, otherwise I would have been annoyed about spending so much money to see such a terrible film. A bunch of other OTS students saw it, too, and we at least all commiserated at the end about what a waste of time it was.

Thursday 3/24 was our last real day of class, and we spent all morning taking our final exam, which consisted of grammar, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It was a very thorough but fair test, and it was nice to feel like I could take a test like that after only two weeks of Spanish classes. The amount which everyone learned in such a short amount of time was astounding. We had a short "graduation" ceremony before lunch, and all received diplomas to prove that we had successfully completed our studies at CRLA.

Getting my diploma from Rebeca, my Spanish professor. Photo by Lee.

To celebrate our graduation, we went back to Mantra, our favorite restaurant in San Pedro, for lunch. It's a vegetarian cafe (very uncommon in Costa Rica!) that has a variety of delicious dishes like rice bowls, falafel, lasagna, and soups, and fresh-made juices. Rukhshana and I had both gotten the Florentine sandwich the last time we were there, and were mildly obsessed with it since then. It's nearly impossible to find sandwiches in Costa Rica at all, let alone AMAZING sandwiches, like this one from Mantra. It was soft, crispy, garlicky bread with sauteed spinach, tomatoes, mozarella cheese, and pesto. It might not sound special, but it was actually incredible (clearly, since I am taking the time to blog about it a full month later, haha). We both got the sandwiches again, and were very happy with our decision. It was especially good since a group of us had gone out for sushi the day before, which we were all really disappointed by because it was not so cheap and probably the most mediocre sushi I have ever eaten. We probably shouldn't have gotten our hopes up about Japanese food in Central America, but regardless, Mantra the next day was a huge upgrade.

Rukhshana and the infamous Mantra sandwich.

"Class" Thursday afternoon consisted of watching a Mexican movie called El Estudiante, which was good but a little bit sad. That night I had dinner at Ivania, Maria's daughter's, house with her daughters and the students she was hosting. Afterward I met up with Tessa and we went rollerskating! There's a roller rink (or salon de patines) a few blocks away from CRLA, and we passed it every day on the bus to and from school. We had all been talking casually of going there before we left San Jose, but Tessa and I decided to get serious and make it happen since we only had two days left in the city.

The inside of "Salon de Patines Music," complete with neon decorations, a disco ball, and ridiculous music.

Rollerskating was just as much fun as we thought it would be, and even more entertaining. Apparently rollerskating is still really popular here, so the rink was full of people ranging from age 12-25, and people take it really seriously. Many of the skaters were really talented, and groups of friends had little choreographed dances and steps that they would do in unison when they went around the rink. It was actually really impressive, and just as much fun to watch as to skate.

Tessa and I flaunting our four-wheelers

We skated for about an hour and a half, and then left to meet up with the rest of our friends at a bar. We all wanted to go to a reggae bar with Miguel, so we also squeezed that in before leaving San Jose. The bar was really different than we expected because there wasn't really any dancing, but it ended up being really fun anyway. We stayed out until past midnight, and Ethan's birthday was Friday so the bartenders gave him a free drink at midnight. 

Ethan receiving his birthday drink. You can't tell because of the blurry picture, but it was on fire!

Friday was our last day at CRLA, and since we had finished our exams and all of our curriculum, we had a free day to do whatever we wanted with our classes. My class and another class went to the National Museum in the morning, which was really cool to see. The building that the museum is in used to be a barracks, and you can still see bullet marks in the outer walls from the extremely brief Costa Rican civil war. Plus there is an enclosed part before the entrance to the museum that is a butterfly garden, which was awesome. We walked through some of the parks on the way to the museum, too, which was lovely.

Rebeca and Carlos's Spanish classes, as viewed through a tube made of bottle caps. Photo by Maggie.

Patrick and I in front of a sculpture made of recycled plastic crates

Butterflies in the butterfly garden eating fermented bananas

Ancient indigenous sculptures in the National Museum

Maggie on the balcony of the museum, overlooking San Jose

We went out for lunch together at a delicious restaurant that had a lunch special that included bread, soup, an entree, juice, dessert, and coffee for about $8. My Spanish professor really loves food, and always has great recommendations for restaurants, so I was not surprised that we got an excellent lunch for an excellent price while out with her. In the afternoon we went to an exposition at the University of Costa Rica and saw a lot of cool booths about student research from all of the different departments. We also got to learn how to play the xylophone at a music booth, which was really fun! We returned to CRLA for the last time, and the staff had a cake there for Ethan's birthday. After we sang happy birthday, we said goodbye to our wonderful Spanish teachers and headed home.

Ethan's birthday cake on our last day at CRLA