Sure enough, a travel day later and I’m ready to go again. Here’s what I’ve been up to for the past week.
The originally planned end to my service trip included time in Barra Honda National Park. I was lucky enough for this to be my second time there, but, unlike the first time, I was there for a lot longer and felt a lot more prepared. Instead of 5 of us flooding the camp at the same time, I came up by myself last Wednesday. I felt myself getting more and more excited as we drove up the pitted road to the park entrance. When we arrived, I jumped out of the car and ran straight to the kitchen to say hi to everybody who was around. I gave Meicel a HUGE hug before running around looking for the other staff an volunteers I’d missed. I felt instantly comfortable again, like I was home, or at least somewhere I’d spent a reaaaally long time. After hello’s, Rich immediately put me to work clearing a trail. It was so wonderful to be back and working in the forest again with the terrific people I’d been missing.
Day 2, I was up for a bird walk at 5:30 with our terrific biologist, Eduardo. Luca (another volunteer) and I hiked through lots of mud and mosquitos to spot lots of local birds, both inside the park and out. After a delicious breakfast, courtesy of Meicel, Stephanie, Tiki (one of the staff) and I set about the surprisingly large task of cleaning our cabin. We emptied the entire room including matresses and attacked the whole place with hoses, scrub brushes, and no moderate amount of disinfectant. Stephanie and I, who were barefoot at the time, were less than thrilled to find a couple live scorpions (and some dead ones too) floating around in the swamp we were calling our room. After being thoroughly covered in soap and involuntarily sprayed down with the hose maaaany times, we were very proud to show off our clean room to our roommates who were considerably less impressed by our work than we were. After a very short afternoon nap, Luca and I were off on another investigation task: bat project. Even though it was drizzling (and later, raining) we still were able to set up the bat nets and collect a couple. All four that we caught came right at the beginning of our six hour shift and we spent the rest of the time laying in the mud under a tarp swatting at the mosquitoes that were trying to take refuge on our faces. At eleven pm, we finally called it quits and headed back to the camp, considerably wetter and more tired than when we started but happy that we’d gotten to collect a couple more bats.
Saturday was The Cabalgata. Not just any cabalgata. The Cabalgata. From the time I showed up in Barra Honda, it took about 5 minutes for every single person to tell me about The Cabalgata. It’s not everyday that something actually happens around here. Read: “Never.” We made a special trip to the closest town to get clothes for the day’s events and were already tired before the festivities even began. The Cabalgata took place in the village of Barra Honda (about 3 miles away from the park). All of the locals showed up on horses, dressed in lots of leather, jeans, and cowboy hats. With admission came all the food and drink you cared to partake of and we really enjoyed the meats and drinks that were provided for us. After everybody had said hi to everyone else in the very small village (even we knew some of the people), everyone mounted off and rode off to the next stop of The Cabalgata. This one was back in the woods (instead of in the village center). Those of us who weren’t lucky enough to be riding horses piled into SUVs and pickups and fishtailed our way through the mud and rain to join the riders. After almost 5 hours of this fun, we headed back to the village and waited in the city center for the evening’s festivities to begin. Around 9 pm, after all the riders had washed off their thick coat of mud and put up their horses, The Dance began. The live band played a selection of almost exclusively cumbia (the most popular dance here in Costa Rica which I, coincidentally, am really not at all good at) for four straight hours. We occassionally got a salsa, merengue, reggaeton, bolero, or bachata song, but I could die happy without ever hearing another cumbia. Nonetheless, I had an amazing time dancing the entire night with different guys from the park and the local community. Definitely a highlight in every sense.
Monday was a crazy day in camp. What felt like thousands of volunteers showed up at the same time and the prep work had everybody a little on edge. The sudden influx brought the total up to 20 volunteers, more than comfortable capacity for the facilities. I spent the afternoon constructing beds in a spare classroom for extra volunteers and then trying to find sheets for all of them. The dynamic of the whole group changed with the sudden appearance of a whole group who knew nothing about where they were or what they were doing there.
Monday also marked the second 4th of July I’ve spent outside of the US. But unlike last year, I actually got to celebrate with other Americans. Our group demographics also meant I was celebrating with more Englishmen than Americans, but so be it. Everyone drank to “Mur-cah” and we called it a night. Y’know, work to do in the morning!
My second to last day was the greatest as far as work: mixing concrete and breaking rocks. You think I say that sarcastically, but I really had an amazing time. I’ve never gotten to lay concrete before and it was fun to work with our group to haul over gravel, bigger gravel, sand, and concrete and then to mix it all up with a shovel. I think for me part of the significance was the permanence of what I was doing. That concrete will long outlast the time I could spend in Barra Honda and, if I ever come back, I can point to it and say “I helped build that!” Rock breaking was kind of the opposite. There’s a waterfall that hasn’t started running yet this season. While it’s still dry, we’re trying to dig out a pool underneath for future volunteers. Unfortunately, some rather large boulders were laying there impeding progress. I had the afternoon off so I went out with three of the guys to see what we could get done. We took turns digging around for a little while before setting in with the sledgehammers. There were a couple mutters of “Don’t worry about it, you’re a girl. We’ve got it.” that gave me extra determination to see what I could get done. When the guys had unsuccessfully worn themselves out, I jumped down in the whole and began patiently working around the rock with the shovel, trying to roll it over where they couldn’t. Sure enough, it was patience not force that won the battle and I managed to do what they couldn’t and got the rock to a more “vulnerable” face. The guys went back in with the sledgehammers and only one of them managed to lop off anything more than chips. I whined about “Guys getting to have all the fun” until they finally gave me a hammer and sat back to watch. Turns out, I’m not so bad with a sledgehammer. Much to their chagrin, I whacked off huge chunks, more than two of the other guys combined. The walk back to camp included a very happy, endorphin filled Megan and a little bit of blood dripping from all of us courtesy of the flying rock shards. Success indeed! My night assignment was a night walk with Luca, Stephanie, Eduardo, and another volunteer. We walked around in the forest in the dark for almost three hours, finding all sorts of strange insects, spiders, frogs and the like. We even managed to walk down huge dry waterfalls under Eduardo’s knowledgeable guidance.
My last morning, I got to go on the butterfly collecting trip. A not-too-strenous hike took us past the 12 traps that the previous day’s group had put up. Each net had to be taken down and each butterful carefully grabbed to figure out what kind it was. I absolutely loved getting to take the butterflys out. Each time I put my hand it, there was amad flutter of wings beating around my hand until I could finally carefully get my hand around one to pull it out. Eduardo wrote down the species of each butterfly we extracted before we let it go. The constant struggle of the butterflies left us all with a coat of butterfly dust of all colors on our hands. Metalic blue, brown, white, yellow, grey, and black specks like a fine glitter all over.
Basically work this week was a ton of physical labor and terrific investigation activities. I spent hours raking, digging holes and ditches, cleaning, and mowing. But I also played with frogs, bats, butterflies, and birds. Another amazing week. I think part of the reason that it’s so easy to get attached to the people of Barra Honda is the group’s productivity. Not only are we living together, but we also accomplish big physical tasks together. I’m not sure why, but that seems to really bond people. Multiply that by countless hours spent hanging out and a lack of cell phones or internet and you end up with a lot of people you’ve gotten really close to in an extremely short period of time. Leaving this time was even harder than last time. I hope someday I can go back again to be with the amazing people I’ve met in Barra Honda and spend even more time in the park. For now, it’s on to Panama!