The Rainforest

Written by: Joshua Brown

These past few days have been an amazing experience for me. During the past few days I have seen and heard many things about the Costa Rican culture that I never would have experienced at home in the United States. The rainforest is a beautiful place and it is something that needs to be preserved in order to maintain its beauty. During the course of the past couple of days I am proud to say that I was a part of doing this.

The worst part about the rainforest was getting there, and getting back. The trip started with a 3 hour drive from San Jose, in which we stopped numerous times to buy coffee, or to stop and see giant crocodiles. Once we got to the rainforest the vans dropped us off at this very shaky looking bridge. It was a giant cable bridge, but it didn't have much support in the middle. The bridge swayed from side to side with each step, and people ran across it. After that, we had to walk an hour uphill for the most part to Quebrado Arroyo. The entire walk we were warned it would rain, but it didn't actually rain until we arrived which was a good thing.

Working for the people of Quebrado Arroyo was an amazing experience. The village had been struck with fungus on their cocoa and vanilla in the past, forcing them to switch to ecotourism as an income. This meant that people had to get to the village, which is where we came in. During our time there we helped to make a retaining wall to help keep the paths from running off. Also, we helped fix a variety of holes in the roads, and filled them with sand that we had to move up and down the hills. It was a very difficult task for both of these jobs, and it required lots of physical labor. This was great for us as a group though because we worked together as a group to get the job done, and we all had to overcome the difficult tasks in front of us.

When we weren't working in the rainforest, we were either sitting around playing cards, or we were swimming, or in my case, playing soccer. As for the card playing, it seemed that we all became addicted to playing one game. Mr. Z taught us all how to play a game called euchre. At the beginning of the trip no one was playing, and now you can't go 20 minutes without someone asking you to join a game. Other than that, I really enjoyed the soccer as usual. On the second day we played a game with the locals. They split us into different teams, and of course my team ended up winning. Neal was a really good goalie. He was diving around and stopping everything somehow.

After the rainforest we had to walk over 6 km to get to the vans. They picked us up after our long walk and took us to the zip lines. They were really cool, but half way through it started to rain extremely hard. It was storming so much that they actually cut it off and made us finish early. In the end all of our bags were soaked, we were soaked, and it turned into a pretty upsetting morning. Later the vans took us to Manuel Antonio. We spent the majority of yesterday, and half of today there as well. Last night we just walked around in the rain and bought a lot of food. Later that night Mike P., Neal, Nick, and I through our own mini-party in a room and played euchre all night as we drank coke, ate chips, and laughed.

This morning we visited the national park and beach. The beach was awesome. We got to see a variety of monkeys, a sloth, and many different lizards. On top of that, the beach was a pretty fun place to be at. I kept attempting to build sand castles, but the ocean had other ideas for the sand. After a few hours of swimming we headed back to the hotel, which was amazing by the way, and headed back towards San Jose. When we got back we bartered with merchants, and prepared for the final night of the trip.

Overall this trip has been an amzing experience. One thing that I will definitely take away from this trip is being grateful for what I have, and being nice to others. Everyone in Costa Rica is grateful for what they have. They are not greedy, and they don't try to rip each other off. They are nice to the tourists, they are nice to each other, and they are just overall a really nice nation. If everyone was more like Costa Ricans, I feel like the world would be a much friendlier place. I am not sure how it is going to feel going back to America where people will get angry at you for the littlest things, where as here they will give you a hug without even knowing your name.

Well, that is all from me. I really enjoyed this trip, and to all of you who have contributed to this experience I thank you for letting me come on this trip. Goodbye, and I will see you all tomorrow. Pittsburgh here I come!