Last Saturday we had the opportunity to visit two other married volunteers, Chris and Tarah, in their site. They have been in Costa Rica for 8 months now and have been living in their site, a very small town called La Colonia, for 5 months. Our adventure began at 7:00 am when caught a bus from La Fila to San José, then walked halfway across the city to another bus station that would take us to the region where Chris and Tarah live.
We had about an hour to spend in the bus station, so I decided to look for some ginger ale to help my stomach, which was still motion sick from the windy, crowded, exhaust-smelling, lurching ride to the capital. During my search, I missed a small step coming down from a shop and rolled my ankle with a crack, crack, crack sound. Fortunately, my ankle was fine but I had completely bruised the top and side of my foot. It swelled up considerably and turned all sorts of beautiful colors, but it never hurt to walk or run, so I figured I was all right. Even so, it still looks pretty gross after 6 days.
At 12:00 we arrived in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, a good-sized town with just about everything you could possibly need. It’s one of the bigger towns in the Sarapiquí region in the province of Heredia and the closest medium sized town near La Colonia. Tarah and Chris met us at the bus station there and we spent a few hours eating lunch, exploring the town and getting to know each other. They are a super nice and adventurous couple with lots of good insight into the live of a PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) and were happy to answer all of our questions.
From there, we took another hour-long bus ride to La Colonia, which is totally surrounded by banana fields. The fields are owned by Del Monte and Chiquita, and the majority of the adults in La Colonia work for those companies. The banana companies have built groups of small houses (or quadrants, as they call them) for their employees and their families, and each quadrant has its own well-maintained fútbol field. Other than the housing quadrants, La Colonia basically consists of a small downtown area with 3 bars, a couple churches, a few sodas (small restaurants/cafés), a grocery store, a bike repair shop, an ice cream shop, an elementary school, a makeshift high school, and a few other miscellaneous shops.
I say makeshift high school because it’s really a gym donated to the community by the banana companies that they’ve partitioned with 8-foot high wooden walls. Imagine about 100 7th-11th grade students and teachers crammed into one large gym and trying to hold classes all at once. It was unbelievably loud. Most ironically of all, the music class was practicing Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence” on recorders the whole time. Fortunately, the real high school is being built and will be ready for next school year. We were able to sit in on both a high school and elementary English class, both of which were interesting learning experiences for us.
Chris and Tarah’s host parents graciously let us stay in their comfortable and well-decorated (Christmas is on it’s way, you know!) house during our stay. Their kitchen/dining room area is open-air and looks out onto the chicken and turkey pen behind the house, which was pretty cool. On Sunday, the four of us went on a nice long hike to a nearby river (Río Sucio) and through lots of farmland. The hot, humid, and often rainy climate in La Colonia makes for some fantastically muddy roads, hence the muddy shoes picture (on Facebook). It was great to get out and see a little bit more of some beautiful country.
Tarah and Chris invited us to the English class that they teach on Sundays, which was really fun, and we played basketball with many neighborhood kids. We headed back to La Fila on Tuesday after an exciting, fun-filled and informative weekend. We’ll be getting our site assignment in about 3 weeks, and now we have a much better idea of what to expect as real live PCVs.
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