It´s almost time for us to come back home, and there´s barely two weeks left, before we fly from San Jose back to Portland Oregon. It´s our sixth week in the Carpe Diem Program, and we just finished our last volunteering at CIRENAS. We had to travel by a ferry to reach Nicoya Peninsula, where CIRENAS was based at, and it is one of the most beautiful places I have seen while staying in Costa Rica. CIRENAS is a permaculture community, and it´s beautiful because it´s barely been touched by humans, and CIRENAS plans to keep it like that. While staying at CIRENAS, we did a few activities.
The chicas drinking pipa (cold coconuts) waiting for the ferry
Our first activity that the whole group really enjoyed was horse back riding; I rode my horse real good. I also got in trouble because me, and Trey started racing on the horses, and apparently I´m the only one who took the fall for that. After the horse back riding, Nana who was a coordinator, and our guide showed us around the wildlife refuge. After that, we were done with the games; the coordinator´s put us to work. The next day, we built staircases on a hillside with the help of Sam (supervisor) and two of the workers on CIRENAS. After the stairs we ate some lunch, and then Sam gaved us a brief tour of CIRENAS, and what Permaculture is. I actually learned a few new things which will be usefull in my near future. Then we went to the beach to swim, again. In the next morning, we all made Empanadas, except me. I panic looking for my journal all over the place, and I found it, stuck in between the beds. Then we left for our homestays.
Riding horses through the nature preserve
Fording the river
The whole group split into three groups, the six girls split three each, but me and Trey were stuck with our OE´s Topher and Rachel. We stayed on a ranch with Ricardo, and Nelly; they had these two dogs and I swear to my pinky toes, the dogs wanted to fight us. The animals on the ranch really loved Topher though. The animals stoled his phone, layed eggs in his stuff, and there was this goat who loved him so much, he peed on him to mark him as his territory. Despite the animals going wild, the home stay was really great, and their kindness is more then we could ask for.
Eating our delicious homemade empanadas
It was our last night of homestays, and we went the the beach to clean it up, and swim. I swear to god, I have never seen Topher smile so big, and filled with so much anger. Before we went swimming, we spent an hour cleaning up the beach, picking up giant pieces of plastic and broken sandals. Then right after the clean up, Topher picks up my sandal that were flaoting in the ocean, right after the giant clean up we did. He started yelling at me.
After we were done swimming, we all sat down and panic, because we did not have any clues on how we were going to get to our next destination, but in the end we figured it out, and we left the Nicoya at nine in the morning to last few weeks.
We´ll see you guys waiting back at home soon!
Much love!
Michael Vang
Stay hungry, Stay Foolish!
Mikey V aka "Papas"