Fleeting Capture: Pura Vida 2016

For the third year, I once again have the honor and privilege to accompany eight great students and a faculty colleague on an adventure to San Ramon, Costa Rica. We will grind through two projects: a wetland restoration project on the University of Costa Rica campus, and an expansion to an orphanage to accommodate older children.

Yesterday we traveled, tomorrow we start, but today we play!

It turned out to be an all day affair to get all the chickens in the roost yesterday - the travel day. Three different airlines, Delta and American both late. An extra three plus hours waiting for the last student to arrive before we could make the early evening ride to Hostel Sabana for pizza and decompression. The weariness of the students was worn like their shirts, yet their anticipation of the trip, the visual intake of all this new scenery and impressions, was palpable. I will provide a more detailed introduction to them in a later post.

I arrived 25 minutes late to the "Peter Hilger Walking Club", my usual morning jaunt, having soundly slept, and overslept - a rarity indeed. But Jenna and Ben both patiently awaited me and accompanied me on a tour of the neighborhoods and the downtown - the usual Sunday bustle with the basilica hosting mass, and folks quietly out and about, including a chance encounter with "Roy", a very well known muralist locally, painting a new mural a few blocks away. A great start.

Our raft descending the Rio Balsa

Anticipation!

But the "play" - I should perhaps call it "team building" - involved a whitewater (Class III) rafting trip down the Rio Balsa, clearly enjoyed by all. We saw several sloths and an iguana in the trees along with the usual abundance of flora. This was followed by a visit to Carlos and Magdalena's farm for a traditional Costa Rican lunch - all from the farm except the rice - including yucca, plantain, frijoles, pork, a cabbage carrot salad, and another cold, spicy salad, also with plantains, accompanied by star fruit juice. Carlos took us on a tour of the farm, muddied a bit by a pounding, but brief, rainstorm while eating, exposing us to the rich diversity of crops, coffee and cacao.