alan test blog

We began the trip to Isla Chira monday morning. A little while into the trip, we stopped by a beach for lunch.

We hopped back in the van and continued on our trip.  This time, we took a boat.








Here are a couple of photos from the boat tour a few hours before we departed back for the mainland.  I still find it hard to believe, but there are animals that live in places other than zoos.

Two weeks ago we descended from the mountains to accompany a health campaign in Trujillo´s newest barrio... La Esperanza. It is what amounts to a shanty town, an area of sand at the edge of the city where poor people began to put up makeshift housing 2 years ago. It has grown incredibly, yet still lacks running water and electricity. Water has been promised them for July of this year, but you never know. We´re on Peru time. I hope it´s soon, though, because sickness is rampant and the area is dangerous, filling the ER with gunshot wounds on the weekends (something I have seen first-hand). Here, Tyler is using his doctor skills to check out the kids that came.
It never rains in Trujillo... or so we were told! And so everyone thought. El Niño has done crazy things with the weather here and we had to put tarps on the roof to keep the rain from ruining our work. It was quite the process!
These kids are waiting for their parents to move their houses so that the bulldozer que level out the hill upon which their house resided. Imagine living on the side of a hill of sand! I was just impressed that a bulldozer had finally come to help out!
A typical street in La Esperanza.

Here´s the health campaign we helped out at..... starring Tyler and his star ;)

Alright, so last weekend we went to Monte Verde for some fun.  One of the activities we've heard about that we "must" do was ziplining.  I did not know exactly what ziplining was before coming to Costa Rica, so for the uninitiated, ziplining is basically a way of traveling from tree to tree via a series of wires strung high off the ground.  The adventure starts when you strap on the harness, attach the carbiners to the zipline, and let gravity do the work as you plunge into the cool mist.  Saturday morning we eagerly put on some warm clothes and took the bus to the cloud forest where the ziplines are located.  It's called a cloud forest because the elevation is so high that the forest is enveloped in clouds year-round.  The activity didn't go by that smoothly, however.  Boramee explains:

With a smile on her face and bravery in her eyes, Sukhi was then transported to Clinica Biblica in San Jose, one of the top hospitals in Central America.  Surgery was required to fix her leg.  After rating her pain on the happy face scale, she was transported to the OR.

 The surgery was successful.  The nurses celebrated with a feast of a sandwich and mac & cheese served with a side of baby food.
The next day, other members of the team visited the Bains as she recovered.  It was my birthday that day and it was a great present to see that my friend was OK.



Coming soon:  Monte Verde gives Sukhi a present.