buenavista

well just checking in since im at the internet, but nothing has changed really. i got sick the other night and threw up a couple times but appear to have made a strong comeback. for some reason most of the volunteers im with are german, though theres a couple italians, a couple dutch, an english guy, and one other american. and we all speak english which is kinda weird. they all had to learn it in school. they also told me over half the music they listen to is american which surprised me a lot. they always know what im talking about when i mention movies or songs. theres one german volunteer who reminds me exactly of my uncle gene which was really funny/weird. and i realized it before he told me he was studying to be a teacher which my uncle is which made it even weirder. theres also a crazy italian guy named simon who wears everyones shoes and tries to take peoples shirts and doesn´t speak great english, which has lead to various very funny misunderstandings. christmas was celebrated with alcohol and a bonfire and was entirely unchristmasy. im also carving a chess set now and am half way done. making level bases for the pieces was an unforseen difficulty, especially with only a swiss army knife. my friend anna from seattle came to samara with her family yesterday on vacation so ive gotten to spend all of today with her which has been wonderful. a big relief to see someone i really know after all this time. thats all for now i think, hope everyones well.

gus

Playa Buenavista

i feel like im staying at a resort except we get to play with turtles on top of it all. theres about 18 volunteers here most of whom are german for some reason, and we're all in on big open-air house thats approximately 3 steps from the sand of the beach. and on the beach which is a few km long we are basically the only sign of civilization. so we have this huge tropical beach all to ourselves. we work a few hours doing maitenance stuff during the morning before its too hot, then have the rest of the day off to relax, read, tan, swim, surf, etc. and then we do all of the turtle stuff at night. there are two patrols throughout the night that walk the beach to see if any mom turtles come to nest, and there are constant shifts of volunteers monitoring the hatchery in case any nests there hatch. the idea is that when a mom lays her eggs, we find the nest, collect all the eggs, redig a new nest the same size in the hatchery, and put the eggs in. this is so that animals and people can't get to them. then when they hatch we take them in a bucket to where their original nest was and release them to flap their way back in the great big ocean. and they are frickin cute. the only downside of it all is that it messes with your sleep big time, but so far its been a lot of fun. theres no electricity so after dark its all candles, and we have to carry in any drinking water and food, though luckily i haven't had to do that yet. Its nice though im getting nice and tan and all of you guys are freezing your butts of in the snow of seattle. go figure that i'd be here the one time it snows feet at a time though! getting to experience that is one of my dreams! i can't really complain at the moment though. i get to watch the tropical beach sunsets every night for over 2 weeks after all. alllllright i gotta go cuz we have to walk back before high tide or theres a river that gets too deep to cross. so enjoy the cold! talk in a week, gus.

san jose

well im sorry if you can´t bring yourselves to believe it but my plans changed again. i came (alone!) to the office for national park volunteering today having been told yesterday that there was room for me at arenal. when they checked today however there wasn´t. which is a bummer especially because it means i won´t get to see the relatives that are coming here and are planning on visiting the park. So now im going back to the nicoya peninsula to a turtle reserve at playa buenavista, which is the next beach over from samara. I´ll be there for a little over 2 weeks at which point i hope to be able to go to tortuguero for a while and then maybe arenal as well. while im at this place theres no internet unless i get into samara which i think i´ll be able to do about once a week. so yeah i suppose i´ll just write then. as for now voy a la playa otra vez!

mastatal

well here is a brief sampling from my vast picture collection thus far, and i hope it gives everyone a nice visual idea of how its been! update: i was planning on going to ecuador but that fell through and with nothing better to do in the immediate future i came back to mastatal for a big dance they were throwing which was great fun. but kind of reminded me of my middle school dances. anyhow tomorrow i leave to have an orientation meeting in san jose before i go to volunteer in arenal national park. it is known for its active volcano. i´ll be meeting new people! seeing new things! woo! i dunno what my internet access will be like while im there, so if its sparse i hope these pictures can tide you over. buena nota!

gus

Nicoya

While the title is Nicoya once again, I´m at a different internet cafe that is more air conditioned, and i haven´t actually been here for the week or whatever that has passed. Me and my traveling partner bodhi were on a hunt for her friend who has property in playa nosara. he inconveniently didn´t pick up his phone the entire day we were going there tho, so we had to spend a night in the town at a hotel that perfumed its rooms with urinal cakes. sweet. we got ahold of him the next day tho and what a place. hes owned the property for 20 years now but is just turning it into a bed a breakfast. he gave us a room and kitchen area for free, and we bought food to cook our meals with. i am now a master of tortillas and empanadas, a tico in the making! the best feature of the place, however, was the location, about a minute walk from a gorgeous stereotypically tropical white sand beach with rolling blue waves, palm trees, pelicans, and gulls. and sunsets, oh what sunsets. one of the best nights so far was watching the sunset on this gorgeous beach, groovin out to earth wind and fire, and drinking imperial beer. i honestly can´t think of anything that would have made it better. Playa Nosara actually consists of two beaches, and last time with the family, we stayed at the other one. so one of the days we walked to it to see what was there but also because i wanted to try to find the hotel and these super duper good sweet potato fries that i forget if i mentioned before or not. we batted .500, finding the hotel but not the fries. it was funny how much more i remembered about the place from before once i saw what the hotel was like again. I´d like to write more but we´re dying of hunger and have a bus to catch soon. im going to alajuela next though, so i should be back again soon. hope everyone is well!
gus

Nicoya!

How bout that! im not in mastatal any more! 5 of us-me, bodhi (the girl who was volunteering with me), aaron and greg (the two canadians volunteering at another place) and jorge (the 20 year old son of the tico family that runs the volunteering place where aaron and greg were at) - left from mastatal thursday morning for some fun in the sun at esterillos. we didn´t know where we were going to stay but at lunch ended up meeting a guy whose family rented out cabinas that we could get for 10 bucks a person. that sounded good so we followed his directions there except they were terrible and we ended up walking forever and asking like 3 more people where the houses were. but eventually we made it and when we got there they were like sike you don´t have to stay in the little cabinas you can stay in the big mansion next door for the same price. granted the front window had been broken the enormous jacuzzi wasn´t working, one of the showers didn´t work, one bathroom leaked, and there wasn´t a pot, but this place was honestly and truly amazing. oh and it was about 5 feet from the beach. so we ended up staying there for two nights and enjoyed the sun and sand and super warm ocean and life. then aaron greg and jorge, who had just come with us for a mini vacation, left back to mastatal, and me and bodhi were left alone to brave the unknown. our eventual destination is nosara where she has a family friend that she can stay with. we have yet to determine if theres room for me too haha. anyways so that first day we made it to puntarenas which was a very peaceful little port town on a mini peninsula. we stayed at a small hotel that had a guy at the front desk named fransisco who sung opera with the tv and who was supposed to wake us up in the morning but slept through his alarm. that brings us to this morning, when we caught the 6 am ferry out of puntarenas. the ride was gorgeous with lots of pelicans and sun and wind and super green islands. we then promptly missed the bus to nicoya because it for some reason left 2 minutes before we got off the ferry, so we had to taxi to jicaral and then bus from there to nicoya. and then we were super hungry but its sunday so not much was open and we ended up eating chinese food. it was good but just super weird to have it here. and now if everything goes to plan we´re going to bus from here to nosara at 3. its supposed to be a 4 hour ride which just kinda sucks. apparently on the bus ride here i fell asleep and my head was nodding off nearer and nearer to the girl next to me and she kept inching away haha. well i don´t really have any clue when ill have internet next, but ill write when i do. hasta luego.

mastatal

nothing much to report aside from the fact that i am still alive. signs are pointing to leaving at the end of the week, and i can´t wait. the water has been out here for 3 days, meaning 3 days of working and sweating and not showering. so we finally went swimming today and - i just knew something like this had to happen - one of the girls claimed to have seen a snake in the water. this sufficiently scared everyone out of any desire to swim any more, so after no more than 5 minutes we left again. a snake in the water is about ten times scarier of a thing than on land, though, and i think its unfair of nature to allow them the ability to swim. they´re on the ground, so you cant escape them there. they can climb trees so you can´t escape them there. and they can swim so you can´t escape them there. and tunneling wouldn´t work cuz they could just follow you into the hole. it appears the only escape is in the air, but then they made that movie snakes on a plane, so they even managed to get to us up there. there is truly no way to escape snakes. what a bummer. i also really need to do laundry.

gus