Modeling Our Way Through Peru (first week and a half of Peru)

After a 17hrs in the bus from Costa Rica to Panama City, a mountain of border crossing scares where we didn´t have the right papers, buying these papers from the window of bus in the back of a building, and a sleepless night in a freezing airport, we made it to Lima where we were picked up by our first couch surfing host, Jose. He lives with his family, who also happens to love to cook Peruvian cuisine for all their guests. Good thing I am not trying to be a vegetarian on this trip, because Peru loves meat and that is what we have for every lunch and dinner.

Jose showed Christina and I all around Lima, and one night we were able to take a bus to a mountain and see all of Lima at night. Jose also is the owner of Destination Peru, a tourism business, so in trade for being showed all around Lima with our personal guide, Christina and I took photos with a blue Destination Peru sign at every beautiful place we visited. We felt a bit silly at times, but being able to meet Jose and his family, and being shown around Lima was all worth it.

Really ready to leave the city, Christina and I successfully navigated the insane city buses of Lima, and made our way to Miraflores where we would spend the day and take a bus to Tingo Maria, our next destination, that night.  Miraflores is a really wealthy  part of Lima on the ocean, and incredibly beautiful. We met with another couch surfing host who showed us around, and we finally got to ride in one the mototaxis. There are a three wheeled motorcycle with a shell on the back, what putter around on all the cities of Peru.

We arrived that night to our bus station, which of course was in the middle of nowhere and a bit sketchy. It was supposed to be a 12 hr overnight bus, but the bus ended up being 2 hrs late and then showed up to our destination 3 hrs late. This was a problem because we were staying with another couch surfing host who we had told we would meet at 700 am, and no way to let hime know where we were. When we were almost to Tingo Maria, we got stopped in traffic, and our entire bus was swarmed by women trying to sell food, and then a man got on the bus pointed at us, and told us to come with him. I was not for it, but Christina got out to talk to him, and he apparently was our couch surfing host, we all headed down the road, and then cross a bridge into the jungle (the whole time I was not really sure about this who thing), then we arrived at the Tingo Maria National Park headquarters, where we were going to be able to stay for free in one of their cabins.

Tingo  Maria used to be a really scary drug trafficking area, but now that the gangs are all gone, it is a really safe and beautiful area  in the jungle. Unfortunately, it is still has a bad reputation, and by having us come stay with them via couch surfing, was the park staff´s way of bring tourists back into Tingo. For three days we stayed at the headquarters with the rest of the staff. They were an incredible group of people, and every day  they had planned for us walks to waterfalls, caves, and plantations.

Every meal was also provided for free, and everyday we got to eat mountains of Peruvian dishes Similarly with our stay with Jose, they wanted to have photos of Americans visiting the national park so they could spread the word that it was safe to come again. Christina and I must have had hundreds of photos taken of us and Julia (a park volunteer from Brazil) smelling flowers, holding coco fruits, jumping into waterfalls, holding butterflies. It was so much fun, and visiting the park with the park rangers had some huge benefits.

On my favorite day, we visited the Cueva de la Lechuza, a really huge cave filled with parrots and in the very back a bird called a guacharo. They look a bit like owls, are nocturnal, and nest in the roof of the caves. When we reached with end of the path, there was still about 200 feet of cave, and Juan Carlos, another of the park workers, told us to jump the  gate and walk to the back of the cave. We ground was covered in about 3 meters deep of seeds from the fruit the guacharo´s eat, and thousands of giant cockroaches. It felt right out of Indiana Jones as we crunched our way across seeds and bugs with giant birds screeching a clicking our heads.

There is so much I can´t possibly right, but I am running out of internet time,

Kate

Tea, craters, and Peru (photos)

The volcano that I could not see, I hiked the like lump next to it. Doesn't look impressive, but I was definitely sore the next day, so that volcano must be a monster.

 Ecstatic bush woman cheering my one my way.

 The trail to the lake

We made a nativity scene! A few blistered fingers and lots of moss all over the house, we made something special.

Tea, craters, and Peru

Yesterday was the last day of semester! Very bittersweet, with the majority of my wonderful friends leaving to start their lives back in the states. I got to have one last hurrah, and decided to do a solo trip over out Thanksgiving break and hike the Cerro Chato crater next to the Arenal volcano. The Arenal volcano is HUGE, and I was staying in the town right underneath it…however, it poured the entire time, and I never actually saw the volcano. 

My hike to the Cerro Chato crater was a muddy, windy, and wet event. My reward was being able to jump into the cold lake at the crater, eat some of my refried beans, and start the way back. It was most definitely one of my favorite trips I have done.

The hostel I was at was filled with Europeans, and we had a lot of fun trying to communicate with each other in a mix of Spanish, French, English, and Dutch. After a lot of hiking, I drank a lot of tea, reread The Alchemist (wonderful book), and wrote lots of goodbye letters to the good people who are flying out tomorrow!

 Saturday the 6^th of December, my friend Christina and I are Peru bound! Well, first we are taking an obscenely long bus ride to Panama City, and then flying to Peru. We have mountains, deserts, art, and lakes on the menu. However, we aren’t very sure of the order, so stay tuned for Peruvian tidbits and photos. 

Pura Vida!

Kate

Weekend Adventures (Photos)

  Manuel Brenes

   Zarcero
Puerto Viejo: shark just swam by!!
 Blue Crested Motmot ( I did not take this photo)

Weekend Adventures

Hello everyone, it has been a while since I last wrote. School is ramping up, I am working to finish up my summer internship project, and I decided I could also pull off writing an enormous scholarship all by December 6th. Busy past couple of weeks, but I have still managed to explore and have a wonderful time here in the land on endless summer. 

The weather is changing from the rainy season to the hot season, so the result is wind, and the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets in the world. My camera is coming next Wednesday, so there will be photos soon! I don't know if I talked about it before, but my technology curse continued when my camera actually broke while I was taking a photo of the LITERALLY the most beautiful bird I have ever seen in my life. Google : blue crested motmot, you will die. 

Latest adventures:

Zarcero: beautiful little dairy town in the mountains. It looked like we were in a little Alps town, and when we walked down into the dairies, it looked just like the Arcata bottoms, pine trees, fog, cow poop smell and all. Zarcero is known for their topiary, and we got to help the man who has cut those shrubs everyday for the last 50 or 60 years.

Puerto Viejo: Small beach town on the Caribbean. We stayed in a crazy art hostel with 50 hammocks that we all slept in. The beach was wonderful, but we really only had one full day, and opted to slip and slide along a mud path in the jungle for most of the day. Best memory: standing on one of the bluffs above the ocean, looking down, and seeing a shark swim by! It was not very big, but still an incredible thing to see.

Reserva Manual Brenes: This is a research base near San Ramón owned by the University of Costa Rica. It was an incredible place with the biggest insects I have ever seen. Cockroaches as large as your hand!  We went with my plant taxonomy class, and spent the day and night identifying tropical plants.

La Selva: Another incredible research base that scientists from all over the world study at. We saw so many birds. So many. Macaws, motmots, great curassow, trogons (related to quetzals), honeycreepers, manikins (the crazy dancing birds), and many more. I was in heaven at La Selva...minus the bullet ants. There were all over the trail, and were over and inch long. We think one girl in our group got stung by one, but it was never confirmed. Whatever it was, she was in a lot of pain, and I spent a lot of time looking at the ground instead of the trees when there were ants about.

Now, it is crunch time to finish everything, and then on the 6th of December I leave for Peru until the 19th of January. Feeling VERY lucky with what I have been able to see in such a short period of time, and where I am headed.

Pure Vida!

La Comida de Costa Rica

I have discretely been taking photos of things that I eat at home. I LOVE Costa Rican food, which is 90% rice and beans. I thought that after a summer of eating pounds of dried beans, I would be sick of them. But, no, mixed with rice, they are perfect mix of quick burning carbs and protein that keeps you full all day long. 

Lets start with dessert. This is arroz con leche, and I would eat it every single day for all meals if I could. Recipe: Rice, milk, cream, butter, butter, butter.

Every single morning my host mom has breakfast and lunch waiting on the stove. I then can  eat breakfast, fill a container with rice and beans, and I am good to go for the rest of the day.

 Mangoes! When I fist got here, we had a mango tree in the back. This was the result.

 This is the fruit basket and my lifeline.  It is conveniently right next to my room, and therefore always empty.

 Because I need more fruit, here are some pictures of strange things at the fruit market. These are wonderful, but I forget what they are called.

 Homemade tortillas! Besides rice and beans, these are by far my favorite. I put sliced up banana on them, and my whole family looks at me like I am a weirdo.

 Rice and beans in the morning! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plus some fried cheese which very popular here. I think this is because these cheese here is not creamy, it is very bouncy, and only softens when fried.

 Well, now I am hungry and going to go eat some tortilla outside of library so that I do not get yelled at by the librarian. She has it out for me, and I get in trouble for one thing or another every week.
                                                                       Pura Vida!!!

Photos: Panama and Tortuguero