Where to begin...

Hmm... Yeah. It´s been an interesting past few days.

First off, we flew out of Denver at 12:00 AM Wednesday morning and arrived in Costa Rica around 5:30. The flight wasn´t too bad. We sat next to a guy that was going to Costa Rica for a very different purpose than we were. He was going to chop down some trees and build vacation houses for Gringos. Needless to say, we got along pretty well.

When we tried to leave the airport we realized that the directions that we had received were missing a pretty large piece to them. We must´ve asked 10-15 people for directions, but each time we were given a different answer. We discovered pretty early on that Costa Ricans like to be helpful, even if they don´t actually know the answer to your question. They´ll make something up anyway. So yeah, it took us about 3 different bus rides and a cab to finally make it to the farm. I´m not really even sure how we made it to the farm. It´s pretty much a miracle.

Without sleeping for a good 30-40 hours we finally arrived to the last part of our trip. The 1 mile hike to the farm... all the way uphill. As we were celebrating finally getting to where we needed to go we saw two men on horses coming our way. One of these men was our caretaker on the farm and the other guy was another WWOOFer from Canada. They didn´t act too thrilled to meet us. As we started walking up the hill towards the farm we figured out why. Our caretaker told us that there was some serious trouble going down on the farm. He had just recently discovered that the owners of this farm were pretty much criminals. They were using WWOOF as a resource of receiving cheap to free labor to plant trees for them. These trees that we´re supposed to be planting are not at all for reforestation purposes, they are for the owners to sell to the logging industry. In other words, they were wanting to enslave WWOOFers. Not only that, but these owners are also hiring other local farmers and through different ways of deception, they are planning on basically stealing their farms for these people.

To make things even more interesting... Our caretaker informed us that the guy walking with us from Canada and his girlfriend just found out that they have scabies. Uhh... Yeah. The reason they got scabies in the first place is because the original owners did a terrible job of maintaining and santizing the WWOOFer living areas. Not only that, but when our caretaker informed the owners that some of the workers had scabies they told him that he was full of BS. So anyway, our caretaker told us that he was sick of all this lying and deception and that he was leaving for Caribbean coast in the morning. Therefore, just leaving WWOOFers to run the farm. We have all been discussing what we need to do to handle this situation. There has been quite a few crazy ideas thrown out about how we´re going to react. We´ve discussed letting all the animals free and taking over this place.

So yeah, as for our situation right now... Lydia and I bought some medication for scabies to make sure that we don´t have to deal with that situation. Also, the rest of the WWOOFers that we are living with right now are incredible people. Including both Lydia and I, there are 9 WWOOFers living on the farm. There are two girls from Germany, a couple from Canada, and three guys from the US. We cook and eat all meals together.

As of right now, we are trying to figure out what to do next. We will probably be asked to leave the farm within the next week or two once the owners find out that we have made it into a pirate´s camp. The actual farm is pretty nice. Since none of us really want to support what this farm is about anymore, we have only been working on crops that we´re going to eat. The rest of the day has been filled with naps, swinging, lying in hammocks, reading, eating lots of bananas, cooking, good conversations, and killing ormigas (ants). We would both be pretty content just staying at this farm for awhile, but we´re pretty sure that´s not going to happen. Today we are in San Isidro and we´re trying to figure out some possible plans for when our time at the farm runs out. It´s a pretty intimidating situation to face considering that this is only our third day here out of 2 months. We´re trying really hard not to wish our time away here, but it´s really difficult not to when we pretty much have to live hour by hour. Thankfully, we have both been healthy throughout all of this and we haven´t had any major breakdowns... yet.

We´ve done a decent job of surviving so far. We´ve been spooning every night to keep warm, eating our vegetables, and taking our scabies medicine. Although, both of us haven´t showered yet and we changed our clothes for the first time today. I guess you could say we smell pretty amazing. Well, that is if you like the smell of moldy garlic. Lydia and I both also discovered that a certain set of stairs is pretty slick in the morning. I have plenty of bruises and a huge knot on my leg to prove it.

To try and lighten things up a bit... Costa Rica really is a beautiful country. We have been going to bed around 8:30 at night and waking up at 5:30-6. There is a great view from el bano that overlooks the mountains. It´s quite magical really. The hike up the mountain is pretty breathtaking as well. Ha, get it? Last night as the sun was setting I was sitting on a swing that was hanging off of a tree overlooking a valley full of forests and rivers. Pretty incredible. Although we haven´t seen any monkeys or sloths yet, there have been plenty of interesting bugs and birds to observe.

We signed up for an adventure... and an adventure we have received.