The rainforest? That sounds wet!

Well, I think that it is safe to say that it is officially the rainy season. It rains everyday for hours on end. It´s nice sometimes, but it can easily be obnoxious also.

The time here is so strange. Lydia and I are convinced that we are in some twisted time warp of sorts. Some days that we have here go by so quickly and other days seem to never end.

On Sunday we went to church with the family. Lydia and I were having a hard time staying awake. It´s already difficult enough to try and stay awake during a sermon preached in English, but it is even more difficult to stay awake for a sermon in a language that you only understand part of the time.

After church we all went over to Luz´s parents house. Luz had been staying there for a few days with her sister that has cancer. Lydia and I were introduced to her sister. Luz told us that there is nothing more that the doctors can do for her. It was difficult to see their family trying to deal with this sickness, especially since Luz´s sister has four kids. There are a ridiculous amount of people in Luz´s family. She has seven sisters and two brothers. All of them have kids. We were probably introduced to about 30-40 people. Their sincerity and generosity towards us was almost too much to handle. Luz´s mom hugged both Lydia and I twice before we left with tears in her eyes (because of her daughter) and told us that we could come over any time we want.

The ride home from their house was pretty interesting. We rode in the same truck that the little chanchitos were taken away in. This time Lydia and I were the little chanchitos squealing in the back minus the feed bags and ropes. There wasn´t enough room in the cab for all of us so Lydia and I had to ride in the back of the truck. It was a crazy ride considering that it was raining, dark outside, and we were driving down a mountain and across rickety bridges. We both felt like we were in some scene from Jurassic park. In that moment I wouldn´t have been surprised if a huge dinosaur had started chasing after us. Despite the conditions, Lydia and I laughed the entire way back to Guillemo´s at the ridiculous situation we had somehow managed to get ourselves into.

Lydia and I have reason to believe that Guillemo and Luz are choosing specific days of the week to put us in uncomfortable situations with animals. On Monday morning Lydia and I were washing the dishes after breakfast. Luz came in the house and told me it was "cabello tiempo" in other words "horse time." Not long after we started living with Luz and Guillemo they discovered my dislike (or fear) of horses. After discovering this, they have graciously decided to take it upon themselves to relieve me of my fears and force me to ride a horse. I followed Luz out to the farm and found Guillemo standing next to a horse with that little mischievous twinkle in his eye he always has. He told me to "montar el cabello" (ride the horse). He showed me how to get on the horse and then made fun of me telling me that the horse was burdened with my heavy weight on its back. We walked down the road for awhile and then came back. Luckily, it was a pretty uneventful ride. When we came back Lydia got her turn to ride as well. Guillemo made me lead the horse. It really wasn´t that scary of a situation, but I still don´t like riding horses.

Later in the day Guillemo asked Lydia and I to follow him out to the chicken house. Guillemo and another farmer were giving the chickens some type of vaccination and needed Lydia and I to help catch them. This task was pretty overwhelming considering that they own close to 400 chickens. Lydia and I were pouncing around the chicken house attempting to grab chickens and then handing them to Guillemo. We started out pretty timid and trying to hold the chickens with tender care, but it didn´t take us long to start grabbing them by their feet and other various body parts. Later that night as we were having pillow talk Lydia confessed to me that she had grabbed one chicken by the neck. What is becoming of us? The whole experience of catching chickens was really frustrating. You would run towards a whole flock of chickens with your arms wide open and many times come out empty-handed and disappointed. After about half an hour of chasing around chickens Lydia and I started to figure out new capturing techniques. Typically, I would go to the other end of the chicken house and chase the flock towards the opposite corner where Lydia would be waiting. Out of that flock a few would run to the corner. Lydia and I would then both go to the corner and basically create a wall in which they could not escape. It was an extremely daunting task. Every time I would hand Guillemo a chicken I would look around to try and see some type of dent in the massive flock of chickens. Nada. I started to wonder if there was some type of 5 loaves bread action going on. Guillemo was merciless in capturing chickens. He would grab them by their wings or step on their feet. I would be lying if I said I never tried any of those methods. After about an hour or an hour and a half we finally had caught all the chickens. Lydia and I were covered in chicken shit and sweat. I almost gagged when I smelled myself. Waking up the next morning was a treacherous experience. I tried to roll out of bed and discovered that my right butt cheek was the tightest it had ever been. Lydia woke up shortly after and made some painful groaning noises. Apparently, snatching chickens is an excellent lower body workout.

Since last time, Lydia and I have milked the cows two more times. We are getting better at it and are learning to put our minds in different places while we squeeze out the milk. Yesterday did not help my fear of cows. Lydia and I were both milking this one large dark brown cow. Things were going about as well as they can when the cow started to squirm about a bit. Since I am terrified of cows, I jumped out of the way pretty quickly. It was a good thing I did. About half a second after I moved the cow fell over right where I had been sitting. Supposedly, she just tripped or something and wasn´t able to gain her balance since her back legs were tied up. It was a slightly traumatizing scenario.

So yeah. The whole food situation. As I said in a previous post, we are eating well. Since that previous post, we have been eating a little too well to the point of where it is just getting miserable. The dosage of avocados has been pushed up to 3-5 a day. Every time we think that we´re going to be done eating Luz puts more food in front of us and pretty much forces us to eat it. Yet another thing we have in common with the chanchitos. It´s actually pretty awkward sometimes. How do we tell her that if we eat two more bites we´re going to puke all over the place? We have discovered that it is dangerous to tell Luz and Guillemo what we like and what we don´t like. If we dislike something, they force us to deal with it. If we like something, they give us morbid amounts of whatever it may be. Lydia made the mistake of telling Luz that she likes coffee. Lydia drank 5 cups of coffee yesterday not by choice. I drank 3. We didn´t sleep well last night. Not to say that the food is not organic and good to eat, but the amounts that we are eating is just not healthy. It is good to be in town today. I think that it´s the first time my stomach has felt any type of hunger for quite some time. I´m actually sort of enjoying it. This is a sort of ridiculous thing to be annoyed with. "Poor me. I have too much good food to eat. Oh, the toils of life."

As I said in another post, we were a little concerned about running into the owner of the previous farm we worked at. Yesterday we were given the opportunity to meet him. His name is Mario. He is a man in his 50s or 60s from the U.S. He has googly big brown eyes, a bushy white beard, a beer belly, and a slicked back little greasy/curly ponytail. He was wearing these navy blue windsuit pants and a huge tie-dye shirt. What a character. He was accompanied by another WWOOFer by the name of Adrien. When he found out who Lydia and I were he started to ramble about how all that we had heard about him and his wife was a big lie and that they had put their whole hearts and life-savings into that farm. Not only that, but he proceeded to tell us that he didn´t know about the whole scabies thing until five days after we had already gotten there and that scabies wasn´t really that big of a deal. He also fed us with more lies by telling us that the mattresses were perfectly safe to sleep on after 48 hours and that he didn´t want to throw out the mattresses (which were made of foam) because they were really expensive. I was quick to tell him that several doses of scabies medicine for 10 people is also pretty expensive. This guy was a complete joke. He was talking to Luz like she was completely incompetent. He has lived in Costa Rica for three years and he still doesn´t know how to speak Spanish well at all. The best he could do with speaking Spanish was using phrases like "tres-hundred" or pronouncing "bueno" as "boo-wayn-no." Lydia and I felt pretty sorry for Adrien. Adrien was one of the WWOOFers that we had sent an e-mail out to, but he still chose to come to the farm. Mario somehow convinced Adrien into taking care of the farm by himself for 2 months. We think that Adrien was finally starting to piece some things together yesterday by the eye language Lydia and I were giving each other and the things we were saying to Mario. Poor guy. He has no idea what he´s getting himself into.

We are looking into transferring to a different farm. Not that staying at Guillemo´s is at all bad, but we want to learn more about permaculture and gardening and not so much about animals. We´ve still been getting to garden some, but not as much as we would like to.

La casa.




El jardin.


El rio.




I don´t remember what the name of this fruit is. But it´s good.


A tender moment with the chanchitos.




Fresh-squeezed milk.


The chancho that wants to eat me for dinner.




Pina. If you plant the head of a pina into the ground it will grow into this. It takes 11 months to grow one pina.

Una culebra and Guillemo.


Supposedly, this snake is one of the most dangerous ones in Costa Rica. Its venom can kill a person within 24 hours. This one was dead.


The chicken house.


Paloma and Tigre. They are best friends. Paloma eats the ticks off of Tigre.

Pura vida.