Trendy Tina Travels: August

I just got back from an amazing trip to Costa Rica with my uncles John and Travis, my parents and brother, Jake. Costa Rica is so beautiful! We saw tons of animals including three species of monkeys, poison dart frogs, and macaws. We were able to see many parts of the country. We went to the Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast, Lapa Rios (in the middle of a rain forest) on the pacific coast, Monteverde cloud forest, Arenal volcano. We went on a tour of a coffee plantation and the guide knew EVERYTHING about coffee. I learned that most companies add sugar to the coffee to make it look better, and in the states they are not required to say that they have added it. Our guide told us that the only brands he knows that don’t add it are Stumptown (I think its called) and another one I don’t remember. I also learned that you should only drink decaf coffee if it has been decaffeinated a special way with water (it will say so on the package). Most decaffeinated coffee is done so by chemicals and may cause cancer (but what really doesn’t these days). Also on our trip Jake and I did a canopy zip lines in Monteverde that included a Tarzan Swing, which was sooo much fun!

In June I began watching another volunteer’s dog while he is on vacation. He is an 8-month-old husky. My community thought he was so beautiful and everyone wanted me to give him to them or breed him with their dogs. There is not really an enclosed space where I live to keep him, and everyone told me that someone would steal him. because he was easily the nicest dog in the community. He usually stayed around so I didn’t really worry about it too much. When I left for Costa Rica I gave the dog, Tristan, to another volunteer to take care of him. While Tristan was staying with this volunteer, a guy from outside of his community came and stole Tristan. The crazy thing is that the volunteer saw it happen and the community knew the guy and where he lived. The volunteer went the thief’s house with the police to try and get the dog back, but it turns out that the thief used to be a policeman and is buddies with the police that came with the volunteer. They talked to thief and he admitted to stealing the dog, but said that the dog jumped out of the car before he got back to his house. This is a lie because they later talked to his neighbors who said he had a new dog and confirmed it was Tristan when they showed them a picture. Even though he admitted to stealing the dog, the police did nothing. So now there isn’t much we can do. Some volunteers are thinking about staking out the house or posting lost dog posters by his house. We will see what happens, but I don’t expect we will ever get him back.

The week before I left for Costa Rica some doctors and medical students from the states came to do a study on Chagas disease. I helped translate for them while they were in the area. Some volunteers and I were going to go camping and hike to a waterfall and we invited them to come with us. They brought along an American nutrition student that they met at the hotel. Everything was great we went to the waterfall, went swimming, came back, ate dinner, and the students and doctors left to return to their hotel. Us volunteers stayed and were hanging out at the river, as it was getting dark. About an hour later some police cars came, which was weird because we were in the middle of nowhere. They told us that someone called 911 and said that there was a lost American in this area. We said it wasn’t us because all us volunteers were here and the doctors all left and we were pretty sure that they were all there too. After a few minutes of arguing that it couldn’t be one of us we called the doctors just to make sure. Turns out we all had forgotten the nutrition student that was with us and she was lost somewhere between the waterfall and the campsite. By now it was dark and we had to go looking for this lost student in the forest with the two policemen. I stayed at the campsite with a couple of volunteers while the police and the other volunteers went to search for her. None of us really knew or had really talked to her, so we didn’t even know her name. For some reason the policemen and the volunteers split up. After about 45 mins of running around a dark forest the volunteers found her off of the trail and returned to the police truck. The policemen had locked the truck (which has a loudspeaker) and left the radios inside, so there was no way of contacting them and telling them that they had found the girl. So they just returned to the campsite. It was so crazy! She could have just followed the river down but instead she was walking around blindly trying to find signal. She had been the one to call the police but only told them what color her shirt was and not her name. We still don’t understand how she got separated from the group because there were a lot of us and we weren’t walking fast. She said she fell, but that it doesn’t seem like you could get that far behind. Anyway it was the craziest thing that has happened to me here.

My stove project has been very successful. We built 18 and have 2 more to go. My community loves them and I have a list of 22 more people that want them. We are going to do another round of stoves. I just have to close this grant and turn in another grant asking for more money this week. The NGO Trees Water People is from the States and was started by a started by a retuned Peace Corps Volunteer. They are one of two NGOs that are working with me on this project. They came and trained a guy in my site to build the stoves. They are coming again next week but are bringing people from the States to see my stoves, pretty exciting!

Also next week I will be travelling to the States for my cousin Emily’s wedding! It will be so nice to see friends and family! I am very excited! I have had an eventful summer so far. Also exciting news is that I got an interview for the PA program at the University of Colorado. I am very excited about going back to school and PA school is very competitive so getting an interview is so exciting, hopefully I get invited to interview at the other 4 schools that I applied to.

Tristan

Building the stoves

Inside the stove. The square is where the fire is the space in the middle will be filled with ash to help maintain the heat and the slit to the far left is where the smoke will exit out of the chimney