Uvita
Sept 30 - Oct 12
Sept 30 - Oct 12
Our next stop was to the town of Uvita, which sits on the
Southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, and where we had lined up a work
exchange through a website called workaway.info at a treehouse hostel that was tucked into the rain forest. Below, Eian will recap our time volunteering in Uvita:
After a six hour ride from David, Panama, we arrive in
Uvita. The bus ride is like riding in a cramped refrigerator and there's
a Jackie Chan movie called A Police Story (in Mandarin with Spanish
subtitles) on repeat. When we get off the bus and look around we soon
figure out we're in the middle of nowhere.
Uvita is in the least
developed part of Costa Rica. We walk from the bus station/restaurant to
the main part of town, which consists of a bank, grocery store, bakery,
and a weirdly big appliance store. After stocking up on groceries,
which are more expensive than back in the States, we take a cab down a
terrible dirt road to our hostel. The road is so bad that drivers charge
four dollars just to take you on this five minute drive. We get to our
hostel and are taken aback. The hostel is a huge treehouse with a
beautiful terrace overlooking jungle all around. There's a waterfall nearby. Minutes after arriving,
a howler monkey family starts screeching just one tree away. Our plan
is to stay for three weeks, and we're thinking this will be perfect.
The owners are two German ex pats with a two year old
daughter. The first thing they say to us is, "you won't be as good as our
last volunteer." After a tour of the hostel, they take us to a small
shack out back -- this is the "volunteer house." In the center of our
room is a moldy mattress with moldy pillows. In fact, all our clothes and our backpacks would also soon become moldy. There's no escaping it.
Moldy pillows |
Our living quarters |
Our jobs are to clean the kitchen, two hours in the
morning, and two hours at night, water the plants, and to babysit their
kid for four hours in the middle of the day. And to do whatever else
they want us to do, at any time. Six days a week. In exchange for a
goddamn moldy mattress!
Baby sitting the two year old is the hardest of the jobs,
especially since every side of the hostel ends in a 20 foot drop over
the edge. It takes all of our energy to keep her entertained and from
falling out of the hostel. She's a smart kid for her age, and she knows
three languages, but she also throws tantrums every single day. By the
end of a shift I need a beer. The cleaning part of the job isn't that
bad, but when we're done the owner always re-cleans everything after us
anyway, which is a bit annoying.
We have some free time during the day, but it's hard to go
very far, or do much because we're hanging around this place basically
doing free work (excuse me, working for a moldy mattress). And just
buying food is costing us more than it cost us to travel all over
Colombia or Panama for a week. After a week and a half, the decision is
pretty easy to never do a work exchange again, and we decide to keep
traveling North instead.
But we got some good stuff out of staying in Uvita, like
surfing and Spanish lessons. On our day off we went to Manuel Antonio
National Park, which is the most famous park in Costa Rica, and it was
amazing. The rain forest is alive with sounds of monkeys and birds.
After hiking for a half hour the main trail leads out to beaches. White faced Capuchin
monkeys play in the trees and try to steal tourists' phones. Huge
raccoons roam around and steal bags and food from sun bathers. It's
great.
Phone-stealing monkeys |
The sun sets on our time in Uvita |
Come on, no point of cleaning for a German. Though you'd think they would be bothered by the mold.
ReplyDeleteGood job keeping the kid alive.