La Tigra

La tigra - well that was an adventure. We had been informed by the group of students that hiked through the park the previous week that it was pretty intense. Given they got lost and hiked quite a bit more than they needed, I thought maybe they exaggerated just a bit, but no - they sure did not. We were dropped off at the top of a road that wound down into San Juansito. Once in San Juansito, we had to walk up to the entrance to La Tigra. This was a 3 km distance, with at least a fricking 70 percent gradient. It took us more than an hour and a half to get to the entrance of the park. By the time we made it to the visitor center, I was beat. After walking up a hill for an hour and a half, something my feet were not used to doing even in my tennis shoes that I wear running for an hour - I ended up with blisters. They were painful, but I prevailed. I put on band-aids - thank you Melissa - and kept on truckin’. There were nine of us that went on this journey, and we were all able to keep each other motivated. After leaving the visitor center, we only had 15 more minutes of hills and then it flattened out, thankfully. This part of the journey - actually in the park - was beautiful. The area we have been in is different. We have pine trees and dusty, deserty ground. La Tigra was a jungle. Dark green big leaves and vines, actual moisture around us. It took us about two hours to get to the waterfall that was our final destination. It was gorgeous, but not what I was expecting. It was a 75+ foot tall straight up rock cliff with small bits of water streaming down. In the rainy season, I’m sure there is a lot more water running, but still it would never be like some of the awesome waterfalls I have seen in the states. But, it was till very beautiful.

What took us 3.5 hours to hike in, took us 2.5 hours to hike out. Downhill is always easier, but we were also just in a hurry to get off of our feet. By this time, I was not the only one complaining about feet hurting. But, also, by this time, my feet hurt 50 times more than they did when we were only just starting our journey. Thankfully, after inspection, I only had two blisters that were going to be a problem. The next day, I wore my flip flops to training - even though it is against the rules. I was not about to put my feet into shoes and make my blisters 10-times worse. I wanted one day for them to heal before I started putting band-aids over them and sticking them in shoes. So, I covered the blisters in Jean’s Devil’s Club Salve, put on my flip flops and went to training. I thought I was in the clear, but then right before we all sat down for our Monday-morning debriefing, Luis, our director came up to me and said he was going to drive me home really quickly to change my shoes. I told him about my blisters and that I simply couldn’t put shoes on yet, and he didn’t force me to go. It is one of those things, though. He saw I was breaking the “rules” and even though it isn’t that big of a deal it is something that he had to approach me for, which I don’t like. I want all experiences the staff have with me to be good ones! The next day, though, I put band-aids on and toughed it out, and they were glad to see that I did.

This week was packed full of activities in Training - NOT!! Monday and Tuesday were ridiculously boring. All the language trainers and techs were doing site visits for our Field Based Training, which starts next week!!!! So, we had two days - 8 hrs a piece - of sitting in the main salon being talked at. We had a couple more safety and security discussions, which was mostly a bunch of repeated information that seemed unnecessary in my book. We did get the chance to chat with quite a few current volunteers, though, which was nice. The intercultural talks were the hardest parts. Some of these were fun and gave us the opportunity to get to know each other a little better through some games, but then there was one afternoon (4 hours straight) that was completely unnecessary and made me feel like I was in 7th grade or something. Thankfully, on Wednesday, we had our language facilitators back. Four days with out Spanish class was too much. I felt like I lost a lot of my Spanish because of course, when I’m spending time with other trainees, we talk English. I know we shouldn’t, but we do. Friday, we took our language skills and put them to the test. All the language classes were broken up into different groups for field trips. We had to take the bus to Tegus, take a taxi to a bus station and ask questions about buses, then take a taxi to a market and buy some things out host families had asked for, then we had to make our way to the Peace Corps Office for a tour. I loved it. We did have a language facilitator meet us in Tegus, but we had to get to Tegus ourselves and then get to the location we were meeting our language facilitator. From their, they accompanied us to the market. My group got done at the market quickly and were able to walk to the town center and shop around a little bit. We ended up just going to Wendy’s because a lot of people wanted Frosties!!! I ended up getting one too, and I must say - it was DELISOUS! Tegus is about 30 degrees hotter than it is where our training center is, so I was dieing and the cold Frosty at 10 a.m. just hit the spot. After Wendy’s we walked to the Peace Corps Office. It is good to know where that is! I had actually driven right by it when I was in Tegus last Saturday with my family, but I didn’t know it.

Tonight is another Friday night!! This is our last weekend of training here before we head to Field Based Training, which I am very excited for - except for the fact that I have been told that it is even hotter where we are going for FBT than it is in Tegus. So, I am literally going to die of heat. So, anyways because it is our last weekend together - all the projects, health, business, and water and sanitation go to different FBT sites - I planned something fun. Slater, my neighbor who always likes to go out and meet the Hondurans and have a good time, found out that a restaurant we always go to near by has Karaoke on Firday and Saturday nights. So, the seven of us in my pueblo were going to go, but, I wanted everyone to be involved. The downside was that Karaoke starts at 8 and goes until 10 and the last bus is at 8, so nobody else from the neighboring pueblos were going to be able to join us. So, I asked Luis and Javier - the directors - if it would be ok if we stayed out past our curfew of 9pm (if it was OK with our host families) to go to Karaoke, and they said it was OK, and Javier suggested renting a bus to drive us all home - otherwise we couldn’t do it. Some people would have to walk 2 hours to get home. The bus I asked was going to be way too expensive, but Slater found a cheaper one, and we got it all arranged. So, in about a half hour I will be getting on a bus, with hopefully 30 other trainees on it, to go to Karaoke. We are going to take over the restaurant, but Slater did give them a heads-up last night that we were coming, so they should be ready for a bunch of gringos. It is going to be an interesting night, that is for sure. I’m interested to see how it will pan out. I’m hoping nothing goes wrong, but I’m definitely worried about the bus picking everyone up and dropping us all off - language barriers are fun, and I’m hoping nothing got lost in translation. Although, Slater’s Spanish is great, so I’m sure it will all be fine. I just know that if anything goes wrong it is going to fall in my lap because I was the organizer of the endeavor!