These past few days have shown me even more of the stunning environment all around us in this amazing country!  Our last day volunteering was spent counting seagrass to help monitor the habitat as it is an important area providing food for sea turtles and living space for small fish.  I loved helping gather data for a research project even if it meant wandering through mud.  Any job where the acceptable work uniform is a bathing suit and the office is a boat or the ocean is a job I won’t mind doing at all!

Later on that afternoon a local man took us kayaking through the bay and down a river!  It was fascinating the be on the water with the gorgeous mountains behind us, and we saw so many wonderful creatures!  Two sea turtles came up for a quick breath of air, a mother sloth was hanging in a tree with her baby, an iguana was sunning on a tree, and many beautiful birds flew overhead.  We traveled down the river which felt like floating through a jungle, it was so relaxing and simply gorgeous!

To finish our beautiful nature adventures we spent our last day in town hiking through the rain forest to a waterfall!  The hike was intense since the ground was wet clay and we were headed down hill, but it added a fun sense of adventure to the hike and made reaching the waterfall even more rewarding!  The waterfall was gorgeous, refreshing, and so much fun.  There were multiple pools to climb to and water rushing down to connect them all.  We spent the entire day climbing, swimming, and exploring and I was constantly fascinated since it was a habitat I had never experienced!  I could spend all day wandering this beautiful country exploring all the amazingly wonderful habitats!  I will be incredibly sad to be leaving this beautiful country and all of the amazing people we have met!

5/15/14

It has been so interesting to live in a place with such a unique culture!  Over the past couple days we have visited the local town of Puerto Jimenez, searched for more turtles, and learned the local art of making dream catchers!

Our trip to Puerto Jimenez was a fantastic example of the local culture.  The town is simply one street with a few shops and restaurants on either side, and more surprisingly than the size of the town was the type of shops in the area.  Everything was hand made by local artists or craftsman!  The emphasis on art itself let alone sustainable craft, using natural clay, wood, or bone, to make crafts or tools and sell them to support their lifestyle was simply fascinating!  The people in this area live in harmony with the environment and it is absolutely beautiful!

The work with turtles shows the same earthly harmony. The people of the Osa Peninsula have learned that their previous acts of poaching and hunting sea turtles and their eggs is negatively affecting the environment and the world around them, so they embrace the opportunity to live off eco-tourism and protect the turtles instead!  I am constantly fascinated by how much respect the people here have for their environment, and I wish more people throughout the world could share this passion for the world we live in!

We were lucky enough to have a hands-on experience with the natural crafts receiving a lesson on making dream catchers complete with our very own to take home!  The people working with the sea turtle project recommended we take lessons from a man just down the road, because their method of advertisement is good old word of mouth.  This man learned his craft from another man we met in town who also creates beautiful jewelry, and he was nice enough to bring all the materials to our cabins and demonstrate for us.  We all left with beautiful dream catchers made of wood, shells, bamboo, and seeds found in the environment we were living in.  What a wonderful memento of the earth friendly culture we were so lucky to experience!