ants in my pants (literally)
Our welcome to the agricultural mountain town of Guadalupe was more amazing than I ever could have hoped for. Our host family greeted us at the door with warm smiles...all six of them. We're living with:
-Alina, an extremely kind woman with the prettiest smile and most heartwarming laugh who will give you the shirt off her back (literally. Ava asked where she could buy a jacket, and Alina gave her hers)
-her husband Javi who hasn't said much to us yet, he works in a vegetable processing plant 20 mins away and is a man of very few words
-Javi's parents who's names I'm not completely sure of still...Nina? is very kind but makes a little bit much too yuca haha, and the grandpa doesn't say much, but every time he speaks it's a joke that is quickly followed by a cheeky smile or a thumbs up
-Alina and Javi's daughter Arlette is a six year old FULL of energy at all hours - she constantly wants to play with the soccer ball, color, play teacher...I thought she was going to annoy because of this, but she's so funny and full of joy that I don't think I could ever get annoyed by her
-and finally Alina and Javi's son Joel - he's 14 and trying to learn English so most of our conversations are in 1/2 English and 1/2 Spanish
-there's also two pets that live outside: Manchas the super cute cat that only ever wants to be held and Paddington the dog who's very cute, but is insane. He'll try to climb up your body if you start petting him and he acts like he's never been looked at before so he's very jumpy. Arlette had to teach us how to distract him to be able run away into the house
This will be our fifth day here and every day has been an adventure. On Saturday Arlette took us to see a beautiful flower garden behind our house. We also hung around the house and colored and played games with Joel and Arlette. Alina actually lets us help with things around the house, including cutting up a very large bag of strawberries at 10pm.
On Sunday we went to a church/school event where the strawberries were used to make fresas con crema, a very yummy dessert originating from this area. The first hour or two of the activities for the kids was fun! By the third, fourth, then fifth hour, it was less fun haha. But we stayed the whole time and watched all the performances. That day I went to a nearby hike called Los Senderos Queztales with two other SIT girls (Megan and Luci). We went out to find ants for my study because when I told Alina I was going to do my project on ants, her immediate response was that there are no ants here..... I was determined to find them, so we set out to go 30 mins into the forest and then head back to rest before dinner. An hour later we stumbled upon the entrance to PILA (International Park La Amistad) which is a famous international protected area.
Well, we couldn't leave without having gone in PILA, so we entered the park and found all of these man made bridges, pools, and cabins. We followed them to a cobblestone trail that led us to beautiful cabins with an incredible view. We hung out for a while watching hummingbirds fly around the feeders on the cabins and then finally decided to head back. On our way back, we walked into a group of birders that had Senderos Queztales jackets on. They had all of this fancy equipment trained on a queztal nest just off the trail. We started talking to the main birder and someone name Carlos who seemed like one of the higher ups of the trail. We introduced ourselves and he was very interested in the program we were on. We talked for an hour before we insisted that we had to leave. This is when we were introduced to Eric. Some of the first words out of his mouth were telling us about a very ~interesting~ conspiracy theory about how homo sapiens were clones made my intergalactic beings that were on Earth before us. Mid sentence, Luci interrupted him by saying "queztal queztal queztal queztal queztal queztal". We looked up and there was a queztal! I leaned over to Megan and asked if the bird was rare or if it was just endemic to this area. She responded that she thought it was just a really pretty bird. We watched it go to its nest and got some amazing pictures of it. Some of the group that had wandered off, came back and one of the men said that seeing the bird was a once in a lifetime experience and that he had been searching for the bird for 50 years. 5!! 0!!
our faces when we saw the queztal (photo compliments of Carlos)
The entire situation was extremely serendipitous. We almost turned back many times, we tried to leave the conversation with the guys a few times... we saw a bird that people search for for half their lives!!!! Megan ended up interviewing Carols for her project and we may or may not have an in to staying in one of the cabañas.....
On that hike we saw a queztal, but we didn't see any ants. I was pretty upset because I thought I was going to have to change my project, but ask and you shall receive. On Monday the grandparents very kindly took me to their daughter's house in Bugaba (an hour drive away). Going down the mountain for just an hour made for weather just as hot as the city...BUT there were ants.
The family that lives there were so welcoming and very interested in why I wanted to study the ants haha. They have two kids as well who were very talkative and followed me around. I've decided that I'm going to make the commute to Bugaba every day on the bus (only adds a half hour) and successfully got to the house by myself yesterday! I'm taking a break today because I need to modify my experiment a little, but I'll head back down tomorrow!
I'm so thankful for staying with such a kind family. I love when everyone is home at night and how full of life the house is. We've been there for four days, and we're already forming amazing relationships with our host family and having amazing experiences. I'm SO excited for what these next three weeks have in store for us!
Comments
Post a Comment