Sabanillas de Acosta

A while back Nicole B., a volunteer from my training group invited me to go back to visit our training community as her host family was hosting a party for their daughter, who had recently turned 15. It was not a full out fiesta de quinceñera that are common throughout Latin America when a girl turns 15. The family, and Margaret, their daughter are pretty low key, and didn't want a party like that. The party was lots of fun aka lots of whisky and lots of grilling! Nicole has visited our training community a lot (she's geographically closer and was closer with her old host family). For me, it was great to see El Rosario again. I stayed with her host family, where I had spent lots of time during training, but had a chance to go visit my old family, have lunch, and catch up with a few of the sons. 

A more interesting aspect of the trip was staying at Nicole's for a night before we went to El Rosario. I thoroughly enjoy visiting other volunteer's sites. It's interesting to see the differences between their sites and mine, as well as to get a bit of a glimpse into different regions of Costa Rica-small towns tend to be very representative of the region. As I learn more about Costa Rica, I've learned which institutions are controlled locally and which are controlled nationally-using this knowledge, a fair amount can be gleaned about a town's organization level based on a few institutions. 

Nicole lives in Sabanillas de Acosta, a very small town nestled in the coffee hills southwest of San José. As the crow flies, it looks like it's super close to San José, but as the bus goes, it takes almost as long to get to her site as mine, despite mine being five times the distance. The second leg of the journey to her site is fairly adventurous/incredibly uncomfortable and dangerous-depending on one's perspective. Up and down bumpy mountain dirt roads, crossing one lane bridges as one crosses one's fingers that this bus won't be the one that breaks it, and having to back up for 200 meters so an oncoming truck can make the turn (oh, yes, all the turns are effectively one lane). But, by far the oddest thing about the journey was that the bus driver seemed to know everyone on the bus, but me of course. He checked to make sure I knew where I was going when I paid for my ticket-apparently not a lot of people visit Nicole's site that don't belong there. The chatty, friendly bus driver was the exact opposite of the drivers that I encounter on my bus route: they're just trying to move things along as fast as possible. And, with 13 different buses a day, it's not like I'm going to be getting to know the drivers anytime soon.

(me in front of Nicole's house)

Her town is one of the smallest I've been to in Costa Rica. I think she said 250 people, or something like that. The incredible mountain views were quite different than the views around my town: semi truck parking lots. Additionally, I was in jeans and long sleeves in the evening-and under plenty of blankets at night. We might be in the tropics, but her site, like much of the Central Valley, gets quite cool at night-being up in the mountains. A nice respite from Liverpool, where I occasionally sweat at night: no blankets, just boxers. It was obviously due to the tiny population of her town, but it felt almost ghost town like to me, there were so few people walking on the streets. I went to the pulpería just down from her house to buy some Tang, and there was no one there. As in, no clients and the lady running it was across the street, apparently making coffee, because she popped over after a minute or two with a hot cup. This was very different from Liverpool, where I've never been at the pulpería without at least one other customer. One more thing about the bus, in case you're wondering where the school bus you rode in as a kid is, it's transporting people from San Ignacio de Acosta to Sabanillas, among other stops.