two weeks in...

So, we have been at Barking Horse Farm for just over two weeks. We are in town for the day at the internet cafe so we can finally give a detailed account of our current lives. Unfortunately, we forgot the usb cord for the camera so there will not be pictures today but we have been taking them.

We are really enjoying ourselves. We get up pretty early each morning, around 7 or 7:30. We have three horses, always the pony Silky but the others change, who until yesterday were in a field behind our house, to feed. They are now in a pasture down the hill just a little bit. Sometimes feeding them is difficult, they fight a bit, we have to tie Silky so she doesn´t take everyone´s food.

Then we have goats, Mr Darcy and Isabella. Isabella is on the tail end of and Mr Darcy is just starting, an infestation of BOT FLIES, or torsolos as they are perhaps more scientifically called. So in the morning we take the goats out of the their house and tie them somewhere around the house so they can eat. They are currently up the hill a little bit with lots of grass. In the evenings before we put them back in we have to squeeze the bot flies out and then check for abcesses and maybe squeeze all the pus out of those. Elizabeth (the woman who we´re working for) is a nurse and is very adept at field lancing and things like that. We are not so adept. We are doing our best. Mostly that means David is doing his best. I help hold the goats but I have not gotten to the point where i can squeeze out a bot fly larva. Interesting tidbit of information - dogs like bot fly larva. a lot. they fight for them when they pop out.

That is the grossest thing we have to do. Maybe I shouldn´t have talked about it so soon, it might color the telling of our experiences. I´m hoping to take some pictures of it, though.

Our house has everything we need. It´s pretty big, actually. Definitely bigger than our apartment in Oregon. The back half is an open kitchen area with a toilet and a shower (indoor plumbing and hot water) where we spend a lot of our time. We have a lot of shade over the house so it doesn´t get too hot. There is a bedroom where we have most of our stuff and a second enclosed room that currently has the refrigerator and horse food. We took the second bed down and David has a spot for meditation (under a mosquito net - that´s how a wwoofer got bot flies, meditating without a net) and yoga. We have a delightful front porch with two hammocks. We sit a read a lot.

There are awesome birds everywhere. There are Keel Billed Toucans all the time and Fiery Billed Aracaris, a Violaceous Trogon, Kiskadees everywhere. And we are in the middle of a haven for Montezuma Orapendolas. Ticos do not like them because they eat bananas so our property is one place they are not molested. They are in the process of building their colony of haning nests around where the goats eat. I´m trying hard to keep track of everything as I see it.

About once a week or every two weeks we come in to town for grocery shopping. On Wednesday evening a produce man comes to Elizabeth´s house, we have gotten delicious bananas, pineapples, and avacados from him. We´ve also gotten great mangos and melons in town. We had an avacado with our black beans and rice the other night, delicious.

The kitchen accomodations are pretty spartan but we´re still managing pretty well. We breakfasts alternate between scrambled eggs and a corn meal mush. It´s finer than grits, so I can´t call it that. Oatmeal and cereal are all very expensive, so this has worked well. We bought a huge bottle of honey from a kid in a restaurant for $5 so we put honey and cinnamon and raisins and whatever other fruit we have. The eggs from the grocery store are very good as well. David is working on rebuilding the chicken coop at our house so we can bring chickens up from Elizabeths so hopefully we will have our own eggs at some point.

We also have a cat and two dogs. Salomon the cat is a skilled jungle hunter but also likes to spend the whole day sleeping on our bed and is very affectionate. The dogs are Osa, a big black lab, and Piglet, a small white and tan maybe terrier mix. They are both very fun, always up for a hike, and are in a stiff competition to see who can eat the most cicadas at night. The cicadas are everywhere and at times are deafening. You know how they get really really loud at night sometimes? It´s like that all day, except louder.

As I said earlier, we are really enjoying this experience. We are in a beautiful place and having our own little Walden set up, sitting around contemplating nature and doing our laundry at Elizabeth´s once a week.

Pictures will be on the next post, in maybe 2 weeks!

we have arrived in costa rica

We are at our voluteen position at Barking Horse Farm in Costa Rica. We flew on Wednesday, which was our 3rd anniversary, and spent a night in a hostel in San Jose. On Thursday we took a couple of buses and walked a little while to get to the farm. The house that we are staying in is about a 15 minute hike across the river and up a huge hill. We used a horse to take our stuff up to the house. We are in charge of three horses, two goats, a rooster, two ducks, a cat, and a dog. A more informative blogpost will come in the next week or so, complete with pictures!

and we're back

After our break in Atlanta/Harrisonburg Adventurequest phase 2 is underway.

We left Harrisonburg around 9am this morning and arrived in San Jose around 10:30pm (central US time). After some confusion with our ride (as in not really showing up) someone "representing" the hostel arranged another ride. legit or not we got here just fine.

tomorrow we are going to try our best and navagative the two taxi rides and two bus rides that will take us to Barking Horse farm.

my spanish is really rusty, but apparently that hasn't mattered so far. I imagine the rural areas will be a bit less english-oriented.

we'll see.

David