So for the regional Peace Corps meeting I got to go to Tortuguero village for two nights and visit the national park. Every four months volunteers from each region in the country meet to discuss how things are going in their sites, obstacles encountered, planned activities, suggestions, questions, whatever. My regional VAC representative (from Limón province) decided to host the meeting in Tortuguero, and since there are two Peace Corps volunteers living in the village (an older couple named Ben and Millie), we also managed to secure large discounts for all the tourist activities making them affordable on our Peace Corps budgets. So we—I believe there were 13 of us in total—went on a guided morning canoe tour through the national park where we saw a wide variety of wildlife, from birds to monkeys to caimans. At night we went on another guided tour, this time to see green turtles laying their eggs on the beach. Since it was really stormy and as the guide told us not great weather for depositing your progeny in the sand, we only saw two turtles and no egg-laying. However, the turtles were very impressive, some five hundred pounds. Pictures were not allowed since flash cameras scare turtles off the beach and back into the water (somehow a bunch of people standing around staring does not scare off turtles, which are apparently hell-bent on laying their eggs because they come back as many as five times to the same spot on the beach during the same breeding season). The trip to and from Tortuguero is quite entertaining, since it requires an hour boat ride each way. My site, with the obvious exception of Ben and Millie’s, is the closest of any volunteer, so the total travel time for me was considerably less than the other volunteers. On the way back from the village our boat ran into a heavy current running the opposite way, due to a large amount of rainfall the previous night. It took all of the 400 horsepower the boat had to make it back to the landing. After packing into the bus that was waiting for us (there was absolutely no room for one more person on that bus) we managed to make it about a hundred yards down the road to a point where the river had overflowed and flooded the road. So, in order for the bus to pass, everyone had to get off the bus, luggage included, ford the river and then get back on the bus after it barely managed to squeak by on what was left of the road. I took a picture of that. Peace Corps Costa Rica.
Regarding my site, I now have a pretty set schedule. I take care of the gym at the Iglesia Centroamericana and help the kids train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons. Wednesday evening I’m in charge of volleyball, which involves getting the net setup, the court marked off, balls pumped up, etc, and monitoring the some 30 kids who come to play. On Tuesday and Thursday I help out organizing bad practice for the parades celebrating independence on September 15. Every other Saturday night we put on a film in the church. Saturday afternoons for two hours I help out with Guias y Scouts in Cariari. And next week Kim and I will begin to teach an intermediate English class twice a week for 3 hours to some fifteen students who passed her beginning class. All that and I have to finish the community diagnostic by the first of September. So I’m keeping busy. I’ve been following the M’s down here as much as possible and they aren’t sucking so bad this year which is nice to see. With the recent hot weather in Seattle I’m sure evening baseball games are quite enjoyable. Hope all is well with everyone.