Ding Dong Ditched in Costa Rica

Written Feb 10 

Today we crossed the Panama - Costa Rica border!! It was a 3+ hour ordeal to get all 27 of us through immigration and everyone in a huge group each holding 2+ backpacks drew many looks. I’m not sure if it’s the same in other places, but we had to walk across the border between Panama and Costa Rica. Aly made it sound like it was going to be a 7 mile hike uphill both ways, but in reality it was a walk on bridge over a pretty river that lasted less than 10 minutes. We stopped at a national park with a beach on the way to our homestays! 

While in Costa Rica, I’m staying at a beautiful farm with four other girls. We have our own mini house on their property with five beds and a bathroom (complete with lizards hanging out in the shower). The power has gone out twice tonight and we keep getting ding dong (or I guess knock knock) ditched by a kid from another family that’s staying at the farm. 

Elias and Anna run La Chiquita farm and have pigs, a cow, dogs, cats, ducks, tons of chickens, fish, and a magical mariposa farm. They also grow lots of fruits and vegetables and run a dessert shop in their kitchen and teach cooking classes (tomorrow Anna is going to make pizza with us - the first pizza I’ll have this trip). Tomorrow is a free day at our homestay so our hostdad Elias said we have to help out on the farm. We’re going to feed the animals, harvest some of the butterfly pupas, and move some fish from one pond to another. When we asked him how we were going to move the fish, he just said we’ll have to wait for tomorrow… 

The past few days we spent in Changuinola at a hotel in the clouds. Literally. Almost the entire time we were there the entirety of the hotel was in a cloud. But, in the early morning we could see the view of Bocas del Toro and the banana farms (90% of the Bocas economy is made up of banana exportation). The restaurant at the hotel was called Toucan Cafe, and for good reason. We all saw toucans for the first time!!!! I didn’t realize that they were so chatty. They also make a really odd croaking sound. 

an amazing picture someone got!

We stayed at the hotel except for a day excursion to a nearby cocoa farm run by a fourth generation farmer. We were able to taste raw cocoa fruit which was NOTHING like I had pictured it. You can’t eat the raw seeds, but you can suck on the fleshy part around the seeds. It tasted almost exactly like mango! The farmer Orlando talked slowly and deliberately about his motivations for farming. He firmly believes that he has to take extra care of his land (even if this means extra costs) so that he can reap the benefits of the land for many years. He owns one of the only organic banana farms in the the area. We were able to try some of his cocoa and it was incredible. 

Also, during the tour of his forest he motioned for some of us to walk with him through the forest away from the group. When we asked him what he was showing us, he said he was going to find a frog for us to look at. Eventually, he found a poison dart frog! After we took some pictures, he told us to quietly follow him through the forest. In the quiet, I could hear all the sounds of the farm include a hum I just assumed were the bugs that lived there.  I thought he was finding us another frog to look at until I saw everyone else in a group outside the forest looking concerned. Apparently, the hum I was hearing was actually a very unpredictable species of wasp that had started to become agitated for whatever reason. People that are engulfed by a swarm that are annoyed, usually die…

Speaking of bugs, we were having our human ecology class outside one night at the hotel. During Aly’s presentation every started freaking out because a HUGE BEETLE was flying from the jungle straight towards us. 

I have very spotty service here, so I don’t think I’ll be able to post any of my blogs, but I’ll write them as drafts so I can post them when we get back to Panama. I’m going to sleep well tonight and I can’t wait to work on the farm tomorrow!