Chitwood-Hille reunion

Sarah: This past week and a half, Matt Chitwood has graced Costa Rica with his presence once again. Matt is David’s best friend, who also studied through LASP a year after David and I did. He is currently living in China, after living in Taiwan for almost 2 years. It had been 2 ½ years that we have seen Matt, given the fact that with all of us traveling and living abroad, our visits home haven’t coordinated very well together. Matt started off his trip here in CR by meeting up with a friend in San Jose, Chino, whom he met in Taiwan. Matt also is starting up an English teaching program here in CR, setting up recent grads with a teaching position and a host family for a year. He already has the program up and running in Taiwan, with 4 graduates teaching, and kicked off this year with one student teaching and living in San Jose. While Matt was in San Jose for the first couple days of his trip with Chino, he set the recent graduate up with his new family and started seeking out a place to teach. After a couple days in the city, we met up with Matt and brought him out to QERC. Unfortunately we had been having some crazy weather patterns and some heavy rain hit us hard for a couple days. It was nice to lay low and relax and catch up, before heading out for a beach trek.

We left Sunday for our beach time and started off the week at Dominical, a lazy surfing town only a couple hours from QERC. David and Matt tried out their mad surfing skills, and we enjoyed some time to throw the Frisbee around on the beach. Next we headed down to Uvita, another beach along the Pacific coast. We spent one day inside Marina Ballena National Park, where we walked along the beach out to the Whale Tail, only accessible during low-tide. We experimented a bit with snorkeling, though the water was pretty cloudy, and threw around the Frisbee some more, playing 500 a few times. Our national park pass allowed us entrance into other beaches, so we explored a few other beaches around the area as well, while David and Matt body-surfed the waves at each place.

After Uvita we headed even further south to Golfito, stopping in Palmar Norte to have a quick lunch with our old housekeeper Liseth, her son Diego, and Liseth’s in-laws (also Ana’s in-laws) Vera and Francisco. On Thursday morning we went into Piedras Blancas National Park to hike around. The national park was bought by Austria and given back to the Costa Rican government, and after visiting their research station near the entrance of the park (Tropenstation, best said with a thick German accent), we were given a map and some rubber boots. We took off for a hike and passed a waterfall, found the trails to be shorter than we realized, and decided to do the longer loop. Though the signs were maybe a bit confusing, we continued on the trail we were convinced was the right one. After about 2 hours of hiking…we started to second-guess ourselves. All of a sudden we came up with the idea that this trail could be a longer trail that would somehow lead us all the way to Corcovado National Park…which would have been bad news. We made the decision to turn around and make our way back to the confusing signs. Once there, we figured out that we were indeed on the right trail, and could have been within minutes of the end of the trail. Instead we hiked yet another hour to make it back to Tropenstation, passing Caiman Pond on the way and seeing a few caimans nearby.

Thursday evening we drove a short distance north to Sierpe to stay the night, so we could get up in the morning and kayak through the mangroves. This was a real highlight of the week, as we spent 4 hours out kayaking in search of wildlife. Matt saw what he was looking for – crocodiles, including 2 baby crocs that we were able to get very close to. And David saw a new bird, a hummingbird found only in the mangroves. And I found a snake – not the desired fer-de-lance, but close…a boa constrictor! It was a great morning. Friday afternoon we made our way back to Dominical to spend the night so Matt and David could get some last quality time in boogie-boarding.

And finally, after a good week of adventures, we made it back to QERC Saturday afternoon – just in time for community Bingo up at the school. Matt won a prize, a set of nice cooking bowls. And David…almost won a prize. It was a big box of a variety of stuff up for grabs, and once David got his beans 5 in a row, he stood up and yelled “Bingo” as Matt and I were going crazy at our table. Wendy, who was reading the numbers, then proceeded to read off the next number. So we yelled even louder, assuming she didn’t hear us. And it was then that we realized we were on the last round, which was a Blackout round. OOPS. Most people were laughing (hopefully with us rather than at us!) and especially our Costa Rican friends at our table were laughing very hard for most of that round. Good times with the community. :)