Day 1
Left the hostel to meet Kevin at the park, where we then grabbed the bus to puriscal, (1.5hrs?) We were a bit nervous about putting the bags under the bus but as it was directo and K was sure to pick left side seats to keep an eye on them, we did not have any issues. We chilled in the town after some very poor food decisions including hamburgers (because they were literally out of everything else on the menu) and plastic/"candy" apples. As we were reading the directions from the farm and read the sentence 'find the bus station' I remarked how funny it is that one sentence translated to life could be so much longer...in our case we were lucky that those 4 words only = 15 min, but I thought far too long about how (too) simply said directions have cost me hours of travel time before.
Finally on the school bus to mastatal, the difference from the charter busses was made even more apparent by the sacks of rice lining the center walkway of the bus. We were the only gringos and definitely looked the part with our massive packs and yes...speaking English. Kevin has been pushing the Spanish and I keep telling myself I will too, but I am a but burnt out of not being able to fully express myself. We caught up, compared stories, goals, etc...on an already bumpy paved road but the real fun started 1-3 hours later (truly no recollection how long the ride was, just that it felt longgg) when we hit the "dirt" road that we would spend the next (eternity) on...massively bumpy and fun for the first hour we had awesome views of the mountains we were driving oh-so-close to the edge of. We hit a landslide, which based on the drivers quick scooping out and running through, was not out of the ordinary...the calle was more like a río soon, and the rain eventually led to our transmission overheating, the engine being opened and baking us for about 20 min., and eventually a sliding mud stop to the entrance of out first -very rural- farm, Villas Mastatal. Weighed down and getting damper by the second we walked up the mud-way to a little house, but not before an amazing view of the valley in the fog. We were met by a smiling tica who showed us to the bunk area were we immediately met 2 fellow volunteers -2 girls from ---. They camp is definitely rustic, to say the least but really home-y and everyone seems happy and settled in. The rest of the workers, a mash of Canadian, traveler, high school, gardener, & Texas came in time for the spaghetti dinner. Meal convos consisted of jungle book character names, near-death jungle stories ( I will be checking my boots daily for scorpion now and keep my eyes peeled for flash floods) and general introductions. I haven't used the composing toilet yet as I have not had to go #2 but is basically a tiny 3-walled outhouse that (like the rest of the living spaces) shoes don't enter, and that after wiping, there is the extra step of adding 3 cups of soil to the mix.
#1 is taken care of anywhere, tp thrown in the trash after. So far I have found a nice spot down the hill where while squatting with my headlight on, I have an up-close-and-personal view of the cows. Speaking of up-close-and-personal, although the bunkbeda have mosquito nets, an army of gnats have made themselves comfortable on my side of the net. I am typing this on my phone and as I am the only light left on at 930pm and have now mooshed about three of the lazier bugs swarming my phone (or dive bombing my face), I think I will go to sleep. Looking forward to the first day of work and reading the Michael pollan book one of the California girls lent me. Hasta mañana or as one of the guys at dinner said to our host "Hasta la noche" jajaja
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