Panama - Bocas & Boquete

Panama - Panama City

Panama City! I didn't quite know what to expect but it's a very cool place. We stayed in Casco Viejo which is the old part of town, it has seemingly endless amounts of construction taking place on every other corner, and loads of abandoned buildings, providing a quaint decrepit look. I love the graffiti art all over the place.

Other highlights include walking the vast esplanade dotted with public parks and gym equipment, the Amador Causeway and islands, and of course the canal.

Costa Rica - More Farm Shenanigans

Well we finally finished the garden! After lining it with the bottles and preparing the soil by mixing in manure and healthy soil we planted it with the goods: tomatoes, bell peppers, chile peppers, kale, lettuce, spinach...all sorts of veggies. Unfortunately I won't be here when everything is full grown and ready to eat, but that's some incentive to come back some day and treat myself. Here is the blog post I made for the Rancho delicioso website: http://ranchodelicioso.com/volunteer-garden/

Yesterday was all about food! First, another volunteer and I made cheese out of the milk we'd gotten from the goat, which is surprisingly easy and delicious. We spiced it with basil and oregano and pine nuts and it is quite nice.  Next I made flax crackers using the flax seeds I'd soaked the previous night along with some fruit and nuts and seeds, and put that in the dehydrator. So cool. I want to buy myself a dehydrator. Then after a nice walk down the road, I got to work making latkes for lunch for the group, since many of them had never had them before, one volunteer had never even met a Jew before and the Nica farmers didn't believe me that I'm Jewish. Oh well. After that I made a green juice in the juicer. This morning, we made pudding from scratch using the goat milk, in preparation for the MUD PARTY we're throwing for my going away tomorrow. We wanted to make mud pie anyway (chocolate pudding with gummy worms and oreos) then decided to have a whole mud themed party and then, get ready, I discovered via the world wide web that tomorrow, June 29th, is actually International Mud Day! So we're going all out. This morning we dug a big hole in the dirt and now that it's storming outside it's filling up perfectly with mud. Life is good. See mud fest photo below.

Costa Rica - baby animals and beautiful places

On Sunday, I took a walk with another volunteer down the one road to look at the cows. Almost all of the cows here are all white, they're really cool looking. Unfortunately it was super hot and sunny so the cows were all hiding far away in the shade, except for the few I photographed below. Also look at the baby chicks! Just born last Thursday! 

And check out the Rancho Delicioso website: http://ranchodelicioso.com/welcome-lisa/

Costa Rica - Rancho Delicioso week 2

We're moving along on the volunteer garden, unfortunately we did not predict how time consuming it would be to collect all the bottles we need and fill them all up with sand and dirt. Fortunately we can toggle between bottle work and other farm tasks.

The photo of me below is with a beautiful, wild mushroom that's been growing in the nursery for the last couple of weeks. You'll see also baby chicks 1 day old, super cute, and a baby goat a couple months old! Who doesn't love baby animals?

Costa Rica - Rancho Delicioso week 1

Today marks the end of my first week living and working on the farm. It is great, I've already learned a lot and tried many new things!
On June 1st I took a shuttle from San Jose to the farm, along with 18 women on their way to a month-long yoga teacher training at Anamaya. (A little background- the owners of the farm also own a yoga resort called Anamaya down the road. The farm was started a couple of years ago to produce food for the resort). The ride felt like the first episode of a reality show like America's Next Top Model. The women were getting to know the people they'd be spending the next month with, talking about their diets and cleanses and trying to out-yoga each other. Entertaining.
Anyway, as we approached the farm it turned out that the other farm people were at a rodeo in town, so I decided to get dropped off there to meet them. That was interesting. I'm not sure I care to attend another.

I finally arrived at the farm later that night and it wasn't until the next morning that I could see how gorgeous it is. All the photos here (except for the waterfall one) were taken right here at my home on the farm. The last photo is my home.

The casita I live in is cute, but its very rugged and open so I'm getting really good at dealing with bugs,  big and small. I'm also washing my clothes in a bucket, taking only freezing showers, and getting used to being generally a bit filthy all the time and having small cuts and bruises everywhere.

Every day, I wake up at 6:15 to the sounds of the 99 chickens which live about thirty yards away bawking as they lay their eggs. Tuesdays and Thursdays we walk over to the owner's house to do an exercise class at 7am, otherwise I make coffee and some breakfast before we start working. There are all sorts of things to do,  I'll try to list what I did last week:

-Harvest herbs and put them in a dehydrator
-Pull up a whole bunch of spinach that was getting eaten by bugs
-"Replant" spinach in little cups of water until they grow roots
-Weed whack (manually)
-Replant potted plants into the ground
-Plant seeds
-Turn big beds of soil and mix it with manuer to begin a new garden

That sort of thing. On Thursday we started a brand new garden right in front out my house, with the intent of growing food specifically for us volunteers to eat. It's pretty neat, we collected old wine bottles from the recycling center which we're filling with sand and using to line the garden. I will post a photo once it is finished.

Each day one of us is responsible for making lunch for the group. We eat really well here, fresh produce mostly. On a good day the chef from Anamaya will come and cook for us using ingredients from the farm. That only happened once so far but it was amazing.

I chat a lot with the guys who work on the farm, there are 5 total and all but one are from Nicaragua. It is quite common for Nicas to come to Costa Rica since there is more work here. They don't speak any English so it is great practice for me. The other gringos here don't speak much Spanish so I think they like that they can talk to me. One of them even asked me to teach him English so I started giving him lessons last week.

That's the gist so far. We took a trip to Montezuma Falls and I jumped off a waterfall for the very first time! It was only 10 feet or so but that was a big deal for me :)

Guatemala - Lake Atitlan

Surprise... another beautiful place! We stayed at San Pedro, one of the several little villages on Lake Atitlan. It rained almost constantly while we were there but it was possibly even more gorgeous because of it. Aside from the beauty of the lake, the village is very indigenous and the ladies wear lovely colorful skirts and tops. If I had more time here i would have loved to take a weaving class.
Highlight: kayaking on the lake with some backpackers from Ireland under awesome storm clouds. We sang irish tunes as it rained into our kayaks :) what a treat!

Guatemala - Antigua

Antigua- que hermosa!

Cristin and I spent just a couple days here, basically walking around with our cameras. The town is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes (called Volcàn de Fuego, Volcàn de Agua and Acatenango) and the clouds cover the peaks, very picturesque. Lots of gorgeous churches, artesanìas and loads of tourists. I'd love to return here someday.

Nicaragua - El Riíto

El Riíto is the small farming village where Rachel lives as a peace corps volunteer. This is the only photo from there that I've got on my tablet so far, but it pretty much sums up my 4 days on the campo. Beautiful,  relaxing, and hot.

Nicaragua - La Cascada Blanca

A pretty waterfall about an hour from Matagalpa.

For some size perspective, in the second photo the 2 little dots in the water are my and Rachel's heads.

Nicaragua - Matagalpa

We met Cristin in a little place called Sèbaco where she got off the bus from Guatemala. Rachel led us in the art of hitchhiking on pickup trucks (see photo of Rach and I basking in the breeze on a truck...Nicaragua was super hot) and we made our way to Matagalpa.

It's a very pretty little place in a valley of mountains. We did a hike one day which led to a phenomenal view of the town (see photo)

Nicaragua - Granada

Granada - super pretty colonial town!
I took a day trip here while Rachel was dengueing in Managua, mainly to walk around, visit old beautiful churches and take photos.

Nicaragua - Managua

I made it! But poor Rachel got dengue the day I arrived in Nicaragua. Before we got the diagnosis,  we spent one night in Masaya with a friend of hers from peace corp. After that we spent one week in Managua while she toughed out the fever.
Managua isn't the most exciting place, below are some sites that I saw: 
Loma de Tiscapa (statue of Sandino, little lake, history "museum" of Sandino)
& El Malecon (beefed up little area on lake Managua)