March 2006 Trip to Costa Rica Page 2!
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Above picture is the Church at La Colina. (The village name, by the way) It's the tin building. It's a fair sized building with a concrete floor. Quite nice. And it has an actual working toilet!! The house to the left is Richardo's, the Pastor. His house is quite nice, with an inner room that has wood "siding" walls.
We took MANY supplies down with us. Clothes, tupperware, dishes, batteries....and more stuff. This is just a couple of the church pews we took over to sort it all....much much much stuff!! All of it was very appreciated by the indians.
Above is another shot of the "community center" and also last years project.... There used to be a house here, and that pile of dirt (we called it the "recharge station")....well, that's a cooking stove...um, WAS a stove. Someone figured out how to make wood burning cooking stoves out of mud and other things so the indians could get the smoke out of the house. However, the mixture was not correct, and the stoves fell apart. More experimentation needed. Anybody done this kind of thing before? Input is greatly appreciated.
Back to the "recharge station." We brought down these solar lawn lights. They work great! So everyday, we set them up here to recharge in the sun, then took them inside the houses with us at night. By the way, it gets dark at 1730hrs everyday, and the sun was up at 0400. That took some getting used to. The whole 9-5 routine didn't work at all down here.
Somebody, I think the government, bought the indians a long cable, and the indians strung it over the river. They had a "hand cart" built (tied to the tree on the right), and this way they can cross the river most of the year. They said during the rainy season, the river swells so much that the cable is under water.....WOW! That's a long ways up there and that would be a LOT of water! An elder has the key to unlock the hard cart, so several people built themselves "tails" to cross at their leisure...here a gentleman is showing us how to "fox." For those who are not familiar with the terms... "Foxing" is New Zealand for what some call "zipline," or traversing on a cable via a pulley. Therefore the "tail" (pulley) is what one hangs on to....
Above is one nasty tree! We were warned about the Fer De Lance (snake) and scorpions and poison dart frogs, but no one told us to be on the watch out for the plants! The indians said there is a chemical on those barbs, and if you get poked by one, your skin feels like it's on fire. Hence the name, Ant Bite Tree. (I'd say bush, but maybe it's a translation thing)
Another nasty plant. This is "just" a vine hanging from a tree. I'm very happy the thorns showed up on camera, because the vine just looked fuzzy to my eye. I've had run ins with prickly pear cactus, and can only imagine what it would be like to grab hold of one of these vines.....Tarzan don't swing here!!
Yet another nasty plant. This one is a tree, about the size of a power pole. The top was normal branches with leaves. Are you familiar with thorny honey locust trees? These thorns were very simaliar to those. Strange how the rings are concentrict. These last three pictures are just what I got pictures of, so the moral of the story? Look before you put your hand out to rest or catch your fall!!!
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