Life at La Hesperia

After a week volunteering at the La Hesperia Biological Reserve, I’m ready for a relaxing weekend in the hammock.
The schedule is fairly simple – breakfast at 7:30, work from 8:30-12, lunch at 12:30, work from 2-5, dinner at 6, sleep sometime between 8 and 9:30. At first I was worried about getting up by 7:30, and laughed at going to bed at 8, but after only a day here it seemed natural: how could I stay up late when the crickets chirp so sleepily outside my window and it’s so very dark? (There are no stars here. The weather is consistently sunny and beautiful in the morning, cool and cloudy – but rarely rainy – in the afternoon, and overcast all night.) And how could I stay sleeping when the birds sing so brightly to accompany the morning sun? Normally I wake well before my 7:00 alarm.
Our tasks reflect the dual nature as organic farm and biological reserve. So far this week I’ve tied up tomato plants, spread manure, cleared weeds with a machete, filled soil bags for planting native trees, milked cows, walked the mule down the road to bring the day’s milk to the milk truck, and sat in the jungle looking for orchid bees. The bees here are amazing – they don’t sting, and they’re iridescent blue and green and gold with little yellow pompoms for antennae.
Tuesdays we stop work early to listen to a lecture about anything from the politics of Latin America to the variety in butterflies in the cloud forest. Wednesdays are the weekly soccer match between the volunteers and the staff. Fridays alternate – free, so we can travel on a 3-day weekend, or a hike. Today was a hike, and what an epic hike it was!

Just beyond the cow barn the cloud forest begins, and we began our hike by descending down a steep trail over, under and around jungle vines and huge-leafed trees. The trail was so steep half the time we were sliding through loose dirt rather than walking, trying not to land in the river far below. We finally got to the river in one piece (or rather 10 pieces, we were a fairly small group today) and started wading through the water in our big rubber boots –easier than making a trail of our own.
At one point we had to jump from a boulder into a calf-deep pool and everyone squealed as water sloshed into our boots. But that was the easy part. The river turned into a series of waterfalls, and one by one we strapped ourselves into harnesses and rappelled down the cliff next to the waterfall.

Or at least, that’s what we did for the first 2 waterfalls. At the third, our guide said something about ‘mas facil’(easier) and we found ourselves rappelling down through the waterfall into a deep pool and then wading out to the banks to wait for the rest of the group.

It was cold and wet and fantastically fun.
Over one of the waterfalls, we saw a pair of black eagles watching us – apparently we were right below their nest and they had eggs. In the last waterfall, our guide lost the machete underneath the torrent and tried diving to find it but didn’t succeed, so we’re down 1 machete (I’m not too sad about that. Machete clearing is hard work).
The way back was equally steep and no easy work for the lungs and legs, but we ended up just beyond the peanut field in time for a hearty, though late, lunch.

And now – the weekend! You’ll be able to find me in the hammock outside the volunteer house, reading and keeping an eye out for toucans and monkeys.