Santa Teresa / Montezuma

Montezuma has been my home for the past 4 days and I really enjoyed this sleepy town.  Its tiny, quaint and full of character.  I met a few really fun people along the way and absolutely loved the waterfall nearby!  I didn't do much so it was nice to save some money.  I hit up two yoga sessions and had a few beers with my new amigos. 

Today a musician friend and I took off to Santa Teresa and brought a few people from Montezuma!  My new crew is a lot of fun so far!  We hit up the beach for an amazing sunset!  Later in the evening we met a couple that owns a surf shop who teach yoga and surfing!  I think the next few days are going to be rad!

The best part is my lil cabina!  I paid $20 for a really clean room with TV, fridge, private shower and my own toilet!  There is also a communal kitchen out front and I'm a 5 minute walk to the beach.  I was planning on staying 3 nights but may do 5 nights!

This is going to be an awesome few days!

Blind trust ain't easy

So far one observation I have made while travelling in Central America is that you have to be able to trust people easily, however you have to be sharp in judgement because people will take advantage of you to make a buck.

The first week was easy, I had a group of Salesforce nerds to hang out with and never thought about trust issues because we had our team leads kept an eye on us and organized our days. 

I bussed 2.5 hours to Bocas with a family who was part of my volunteer group.  I also met a nice American lady on the bus so I had a few people to meet up with for drinks and such.  I also met a crew from a $20 million dollar yacht that was about my age and loved to drink. 

So it was nice to have some company while I visited a strange and wonderful paradise.  I trusted these people because I had to...but also I could read them quite well and they were all lovely people.  I also met 2 locals who showed me around Bocastown  One of them was a cab driver and they showed me around for a couple hours.  I paid them for their time and then saw them a few more times on the trip.  At first it was difficult to trust these guys, but over a few conversations I knew they were good people just trying to make a living.

For the past 3 nights I stayed at a beautiful cabina just outside Dominical with a really pleasant Polish woman. I was the only guest on her property and there was no internet so I had lots of time to myself. Sabina was easy to trust because she knew everyone in Dominical and she always handed me off to people who made sure I had a great time and would arrange for transportation to get me back to her cabina in the jungle. Today I took a bus from Dominical to Quepos then to Jaco. The ride was about 3 hours in total without issue but now I find myself in an empty hotel with a German man, bartender and cleaning lady. I met a couple from Belgium who spoke broken English and a local lady at the beach. I'm sure I will make more friends tonite and this weekend.

Day 2 of volunteer work

It's amazing that I work for a company that gives me 6 volunteer days per year and will let you use them in Central America. I am volunteering for an organization called Surf For Life that builds schools, community centers, and even basketball courts all over Central America.  I raised half the required funds and Salesforce.com matched the rest.

Today was not as rough as yesterday though it was just as hot.  We did a bit more cement mixing however I only got 2 hours of sleep so I my batteries were running low.  At lunch time we got to play soccer with the kids.  It was so much fun but holy cow it was so hard to keep up because of the heat and let's be honest, these little kids had some great soccer skills!  I actually scored a goal while playing goaltender!  It was a lucky bounce!

We had one semi scary moment when Michelle nonchalantly found 2 toads hiding below a piece of tin roofing.  When we showed one of the workers he freaked out so we figured it was poisonous!  It was one of these buggers.  So that makes 3 poisonous species I've seen this week.  We saw a golden viper while zip lining the other day as well as a cute green dart frog.

Its a jungle out there!

Chocolate and Bread

...is the best restaurant in Puerto Viejo!

So this exists

And its delicious!

Day 3 in Puerto Viejo

What a day!  For some reason I couldn't sleep last night but somehow was able to stay awake in 30+ C blistering heat working my bollas off on the school project.  We started with a lovely eggs, fruit and bagel breakfast at Bread and Chocolate around the corner.  We arrived at the work site just after 9 and got started right away.
There are 5 major tasks we need to complete:  tiling, adding a tin roof, adding fence windows, painting and completing a concrete walkway around the building.  Today we nearly completed the concrete walkways and finished the first coat of paint.  I've never appreciated cement mixers more in my life.  We had to do muchos shovelling !  Costa Rican builders don't generally use machine cement mixers for these types of projects so we had to shovel lots of dirt to mix with cement and water.  I think our fellow builder Coco was entertained by our lack of skill.  Remember, we are a team of weak ass computer nerds who spend 40+ hour weeks in a cubicles click - clacking away on our keyboard and mouse while sipping on stale burnt coffee.
It was easily +30C in the blistering  heat with very little shade for most the day.  Sweat was pouring down my face as my deodorant seemed to be ineffective after about 10:30am! I drank at least 5 bottles of water and only peed once...I was leaking so much.  We got a lot done today but I feel like a huge wimp!
Tomorrow shouldn't be so rough...so says our foreman Ernesto.  I guess we will find out tomorrow.