So I finally made it to Tirimbina Thursday morning! I was supposed to get here Wednesday, but there were a few hitches, because nothing can ever go according to plan. I got up at 4:15am Wednesday and mom and I were on the road at 4:30. My flight was supposed to leave at 7, but they had to de-ice and anti-ice the plane before we left, so of course we left late. I was supposed to get into Orlando at 10 and get on my connecting flight to Costa Rica at 10:35, but my plane didn’t get in until 10:25. Luckily they let the people who were going on connected flights get off the plane first. I just made it to my second flight. The plan was to fly into San Jose, take a taxi to the bus stop, get on a bus to the Sarapiqui bus stop, and take another taxi from there to Tirimbina. Once I landed safely in San Jose, Costa Rica, I got a taxi to the bus stop. Once I got to the bus stop, around 2pm I tried to buy a ticket to Sarapiqui, but the first guy I talked to spoke quietly and wasn’t very patient with me, and all I understood was that something was closed. So after a brief panic attack, I asked the other ticket guy and he gave me a ticket and said the bus was leaving at 3:30. So I got on the bus (I almost missed it because it wasn’t labeled) and was on my way to Sarapiqui (after the bus hit a taxi on the way out of the parking lot). Two hours later, we stopped at a bus station rest stop and I was very confused as to where we were because my instructions said the bus would only be a 2 hour ride.
So I asked a woman who I had heard speak English what was going on, and she explained to me that the main road that the bus usually takes to Sarapiqui had a landslide and is closed (I guess that’s what the first ticket guy was trying to tell me), and the bus we were on was going the long way around the landslide. Instead of 2 hours of a bus ride, it ended up being a 6 hour bus ride. I got to know the woman who spoke to me in English, she was from the U.K. and now lives in Costa Rica as a biologist (AWESOME!!!!). So we didn’t end up getting to Sarapiqui until 9:30ish at night and there were no taxis in sight. So Alex, the woman from the U.K. and her boyfriend Felix, said they’d give me a ride to Tirimbina in their cattle truck, in hopes that someone would be there to give me a room. Alex had already offered the third seat in her car to another woman she met on the bus, so I ended up sitting on Alex’s lap for the first few minutes until we dropped the other woman off. When we got to Tirimbina, turns out everyone had already left, and I was S.O.L. So Alex and Felix brought me back to their place to sleep for the night. They live about 5-10 minutes (drive) away from Tirimbina. They were soooo hospitable! I don’t know what I would have done without Alex!! Probably would have had several breakdowns.
Alex and Felix have this quite large farm with dogs, and cows and ponies! Alex told me a little about the research she was doing, and I hope I get time to go help her out! In the morning, they made me a traditional Costa Rican breakfast!!! When I was talking to Alex in the morning, she said she had missed the 1:30 bus to Sarapiqui by 5 minutes, and I told her that it happened for a reason! So she could adopt a poor lost student!
Then Alex brought me back to Tirimbina where I was welcomed by the volunteer coordinator and showed my room. The woman in charge of the environmental education program wasn’t here when I arrived so I prepared my room and walked around a bit when it wasn’t pouring. Since the kids are on break, I am just pretty much grading quizzes that they did last year and putting them in excel. The fun part is that I get to read all of the names of the kids, which have at least 4 names to them, and they usually write their whole name. LOL.
Other than the small hitch in the beginning, everything else is going pretty well. The food is great (they really do have beans and rice as a part of every meal) and even though it is pretty much constantly raining, it is warm (60-70s). The internet here is sporadic so I will update when I can! The next adventure I assume will be walking to town to buy supplies (by myself!).
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