My job is awesome

Yesterday was a pretty rewarding day to be working in the tourism industry – a coworker and I created two new tours for the brochure that I made, so today we did a run-through of the first one. In the morning we hiked a hill that has a view of the city, and then we caught a bus to a nearby town that has a gold mine that was abandoned because it flooded. We had to cross a river to get to the mines = this photo shows a bit of the precariousness involved.

I think something like 600 people died total, including mining deaths and deaths related to the flood. In some parts of the mine, the water goes up to around 4 feet. Needless to say, I had water in my shoes for the rest of the day. We saw a few bat corpses hanging from the walls, a few live bats, snake sheddings, a tarantula, and a cave crab inside the mine. I felt like Indiana Jones, seeing the bat skeletons, covered in cobwebs. I’ll add photos of them. I carried my camera in a plastic bag and held it on top of my head so it wouldn’t get wet. We continued down the passageway of the mine for about 30 minutes, but someone heard rushing water further on and thought it wasn’t smart to keep going, so we headed back. We ate lunch outside the cave. My host-mom packed me some cheese, avocado, a boiled banana and a potato-like thing, Delenia’s mom packed her a bunch of tortillas, and we bought cuajada at a store before embarking on the mines, so we had an eclectic picnic between the four of us that were there. The three people I was with were all tour guides, although we were missing the other 10 guides who were supposed to come.

We saw this lizard while waiting for the bus that never came to take us back to San Ramón. We walked half the way and then hitched a ride with a group of people.

After the mines, we returned to San Ramón and hiked to Finca La Leonesa, a ranch that also has mine ruins on its property, where we received a tour. We saw a few different mine shafts, the abandoned and destroyed house of the owner, and walked a lot. The trails were really slippery and muddy, as it had started to rain, and we were climbing up and down hills so it felt a little dangerous, but we all survived and I was the only one to actually fall. When I fell, we were on our way back from seeing a waterfall on their property and I slipped on moist rocks. After this tour, we walked up the hill and crossed a bridge, which consisted of three felled trees and wire on either side. I initially assumed the wire was barbed wire, since that’s the only type of wire I’ve seen down here (and there’s TONS of it), so I didn’t think they were very useful rails until I discovered that you wouldn’t puncture your hand by using them to balance yourself. I was slightly concerned about falling since my shoes were covered in watery-mud, but it was fine.

Today we did the second tour package that my coworker and I created: this included going to Finca La Hermandad, a shade-grown coffee cooperative that has primary rainforest (I think cloudforest is also applicable but I´m not sure) and is trying to promote itself as a tourist site, but doesn´t have the resources right now; a waterfall called La Lima; a tour of the town; and a visit to a jewelry workshop run by a few women from a nearby community, in which they make jewelry from local seeds. We weren´t able to do all of it today because it was raining and the truck we had access to didn´t have gas for a while, but we did the most important parts.

I´ll have you know that I wore the same pair of jeans from yesterday, even though they still weren´t dry and there was mud caked around the ankles. That was one of the best wardrobe decisions I´ve made on this trip.

In the morning I left with a few of the guides for El Plomo once we found out that the truck didn´t have any gas. The workshop was closed so we stopped by the house of one of the artisans, who then opened up the workshop and explained what they did. We left pretty quickly and headed out to Salto La Lima, a somewhat nearby waterfall. We walked down a dirt road for a while and then turned to the left, ducked under barbed wire, and walked through muddy pasture to the river. We had to walk up the river to get to the waterfall and the rocks were ridiculously slippery - I had to bring my less-athletic shoes because my other pair was still soaked from the day before, and they had no grip so I ended up taking them off and gritting my teeth while stepping on rocks and twigs and thorns. I thought we were going to go swimming but the current at the waterfall was really strong, so we hung around there for a bit and then headed back. At this point, it started to rain. The route was already precarious and ¨thrilling¨without rain, so the extra water definitely intensified the experience. Salto La Lima. My friend Delenia was thinking about jumping in but we discouraged her.

There were a few moments where I imagined what my funeral would be like. At random parts of the river, someone strung barbed wire across so we had to duck under barbed wire while balancing on these slippery rocks. As I´m recounting this outing, it doesn´t sound nearly as... adventurous as it felt. It started pouring once we got back to the pasture. I put on my sandals and every few steps the mud would engulf one of my sandals. Once we got back to the dirt road, I was grateful not to be walking on rocks but instead we had another problem - pure mud for the majority of the walk back to town. Cows and horses often take this path and they loosen the dirt, so with the rain it just became a muddy river. Içm pretty sure that we´re going to cut the trip to Salto La Lima since the center would be responsible for any injuries, and I´m sure there would be injuries.

Yet again we returned to Casa del Niño soaked. I thought we definitely weren´t going to Finca La Hermandad since it was raining so hard, but Theresita said that we should all return at 2 pm (it was 12pm at the time) so we÷re energetic for the hike. I went back home and ate lunch, and during this time it began pouring even harder than before. I was just happy I was inside, but I was beginning to hate the rain. It knocked down our clothesline and launched all my newly-washed clothes into the dirt.

So we went to Finca La Hermandad, equipped with boots, and hiked through the rainforest in the rain.

A view of the coffee plantation at Finca La Hermandad.

It actually was really awesome, although I fell once and almost fell countless times since it was so muddy and the paths were so slippery. There was one point where I had a streak of almost-falls, so everyone was giving me advice on how to climb up this one part and someone warned me not to grab onto the tree for support because it had spines, and when I lost my balance, my hand immediately went for the tree so I had to force myself to not grab onto it and just hope I didnt slide back down the hill. I couldn´t help but laugh at how ridiculous it seemed, hiking in primary rainforest in the pouring rain. The ride back was pretty cold, needless to say. We were all in the back of the truck with the wind blowing in our faces. Thankfully it had stopped raining by this point. Yet again, we were all soaked and I was caked in mud.

I am pretty darn sore from the past two days, and am relishing in not being wet right now as I was either soaking or walking with mini-lakes in my sneakers for around 6 hours yesterday and 6 hours today.

The coolest part is that this was for my job!