Reflecting on the Past Nine Months

The gap year trip that I can’t find the words to describe has finally come to a close. It was everything everyone wanted it to be and so much more. The volunteers left just over a week ago but I didn’t have the time to type this up until now. Plus, it also hadn’t really hit me that this trip was over and that the people that I had been with for nine months had gone home until I sat down to type this. I really didn’t notice until after they had left how big a bond you can make with people that you see almost every day during the course of nine months and it was a sad goodbye because we knew that some of us wouldn’t be seeing each other for a very long time.

What brought everyone even closer were all the great experiences that we shared. I know I, as the rest of the group, will never forget the Taj Mahal and it’s breathtaking beauty or the Himalayas, a place where we found peace. Peace with nature, with others, and peace with ourselves. I will never forget Semuc Champey and being completely awestruck by nature’s beauty in our world. Or Tikal where we could still feel the presence of the great Mayan civilization even though they’d been gone for a thousand years. I will never forget Corcovado and Tortuguero and their natural beauty that will always be a reminder that we can’t keep living the way we’re living. I don’t know how I, as I know others of the group too, could bear it if those precious trees that give us life were cut down and all those animals were chased from their home.

I will also always remember events like the hygiene campaign or the opening of the Elephant Village school or our small though important environmental campaign in Guatemala. I will never forget building the recycling center in Costa Rica and teaching kids English while at the same time teaching them how to live sustainably and take better care of our world. All these events have been even more moving than the amazing places we visited and I will forever remember the impact that we made on so many communities around the world.

What will be engraved in my memory even more than all those life-changing experiences were the even more life-impacting people we met. I know I just said that I wouldn’t forget the impact we made on the people but at times I think their impact on us was greater. I don’t think anyone in our group will ever stop thinking about Radhika and Arun, or Elmer and Mariano, or any of the kids that we have met on this trip that have taught us all so much. From Radhika I learned to always be strong and never give up hope. From Arun I learned to always be open to everything and never underestimate. From Elmer I have learned to simply be happy even when the situation is hard and maybe even dreadful. From Mariano I learned to always keep trying and view every little victory as a great victory.

From all these kids I have learned to help people with all these resources at our disposal that some people are battling daily to have. We shouldn’t be sad or guilty or think that life is unfair, but instead look on the positive side of things and fight just like all those people we’ve met around the world who keep fighting and never see the negative side of things. Before, I would never have imagined learning so much from kids under the age of 10 without them even knowing it, but now I wonder how I ever could have doubted. I will be forever grateful for this trip and all it has done for me and I know I couldn’t even come close to expressing to you how much I appreciate it. Even though the gap year is over, I still have more than a month left in Costa Rica and Guatemala, and I intend to make the most of it. 

Appreciating Nature and Wrapping Up Our Volunteer Work

Who knew that nestled deep in the small crevices of the world, protected from mankind, nature could have so many treasures. Corcovado was yet another of the many gems of the planet we have seen on this trip. It has 3% of all the biodiversity of the world and 60% of the biodiversity of Costa Rica. We saw more there than any other place we have been so far. I think that in the three countries of this trip, we have seen works of nature that I wouldn't have imagined seeing in my life. For example, the Himalayas in India,  Lago Atitlan and Semuc Champey in Guatemala and Tortugeuro and Corcovado here in Costa Rica. All of them were different but all of them took my breath away. Corcovado was much like Tortuguero with its vast rainforest at the edge of the ocean, even though they were on different sides of the country. As we were arriving, when I barely had a glimpse of it, I could tell it was a very special place. We had to get there by boat, just like in Tortuguero but this time we didn't just go in a river. The river opened up to the Pacific Ocean and we rode with the waves for a while. Corcovado is the name of the national park but we stayed in a little town called Drake Bay. The name of the region was Osa Peninsula. The ride on the ocean was amazing. We saw green as far as we could see in one direction and blue as far as we could see in the other. When we first got to Drake Bay we settled into our hotel and then went to the ocean. Like Tortuguero, Drake Bay isn't known for its beaches, but it was still fun to play by the waves.

The next two days were really what we were looking forward to. We woke up really early to get on an hour boat ride further into the rainforest and Corcovado National Park. It was huge, way bigger than Tortuguero. We hiked all morning even though it was raining. Then we had lunch on the edge of the forest where it meets the beach. On our hike, we saw the usual (the animals that by now we had seem many times like sloths and howler monkeys) and then we saw so much more. We saw another kind of monkey, called the Titi monkey, which was tiny, the smallest in Costa Rica. We saw a big rodent type thing that in Spanish they call a Paca. We saw a bunch of piglike creatures without tails that smelled really, really bad. We saw some birds that looked like big turkeys in trees. One species had a red face and another species had a yellow face. We saw a koati which is an animal like a raccoon with a long striped tail that sticks straight up. We also saw a ton of cool plants and trees that I've never seen before. Even though we saw so many animals and plants, the coolest thing we saw, that we spent almost an hour out in the rain looking for, was a Danta, or in English, Tapir. I think one of the only ways to describe it is like a small elephant. It's pretty big, probably 500 or more pounds and has a small trunk. When we first found it it was sleeping but then it woke up and we saw it was pretty tall. The Tapir is really rare, few people see it so it was really special. It was cool to see all of this in its natural habitat instead of a zoo. Who knew that in just a small chunk of a huge rainforest, we could find so much? I wonder what else is in there.

As the volunteering starts to come to a close here in Costa Rica, we're wrapping up all the projects, naturally. As I said in my first blog in Costa Rica, the recycling center was our most important project and now it's pretty much done! We finished making the eco-bricks, that formed the walls, which were then painted several times. The recycling center is now a bluish-gray and the wooden poles that support it are a dark brown. We cleared the space leading up to it from the road and we even laid down some cement to make it even easier for trucks to back in to pick up the recyclables. It's been amazing to see how much it has taken form since when we arrived. It started as a bunch of dirt and now it's a structure that will help Providencia make the best use of its trash. This week we are finishing up the trails for the reserve and pretty soon it'll be ready for student groups to study the changes happening in the forest. We also made some progress on the organic coffee farm and it looks pretty good, even though you can never really finish that project. The other project has been to teach environmental education and English to the elementary school kids. Originally, the volunteers were going to be teaching the kids for only about two weeks, but that isn't enough time to teach somebody English. So now it's been four weeks and I feel that the kids have a basic English vocabulary including vocabulary about nature and understand basically what sustainable development is. We've accomplished so much here in Costa Rica, as much as in the other countries but it seems like more since we can clearly see the final product.