I can only laugh as I sit in the waiting area of a hospital that resembles a barn with a plywood room built in one corner. My left foot and ankle have more than doubled in size and with three days of riding left on the trek, I finally considered that I was going to have to sit it out.
Quick update: After finishing my class in San Jose and spending Christmas with family friends in a farm town just past Guapiles, I knew that I needed to get out of the city. I spent a couple weeks in the city looking for jobs and met a guy who had just finished volunteering in Monteverde on a coffee plantation. This sounded like a great idea- play with a machete and learn Spanish- but when I went back to my school to inquire about the cost of this venture, I was a bit disheartened. Roughly $1000 a month would cover room/board and Spanish lessons. Considering that most of my time would be spent working, I didn’t exactly think this was the best plan. Now determined to get out of the city and do something with my hands again, I scoured the internet for different volunteer jobs and other various ways that I could extend my stay here. I looked into WWOOFing and Workaway and found an opportunity to work with horses and take week long treks from the mountains in Puriscal to Playa Hermosa with Barking horse farm (barkinghorsefarm.com). The owner and I got in touch over the course of a day, the very next day I took the bus out to visit and “try out” and then returned to the city get my things and head back! What an answered prayer (and timely too)!
Just four days prior I was all jazzed about my new machete and went out to climb some trees with one of the kids on the farm to get some pipas (green coconuts that have a semi-sweet juice inside). Turns out I’m not the best at climbing this variety of tree and more so groped and squirmed up it than what would qualify as anything efficient. Once up as high as I could get I clung on as long as possible while swinging the machete around in an amateur fashion. With only the smallest fraction left of the a vine holding eight pipas dangling just overhead, I couldn’t maneuver any way that would allow me to complete the cut. Succeeding in nothing but spilling the precious nectar from two of them, I finally lost my grip and slid down. Repeating this cycle several times and sliding down each time with my legs wrapped “Indian style"* around the tree and hugging it at the same time, left scratches and scrapes on my chest, arms and legs. None of these looked in any way threatening, though. I washed and treated each with ointment and then thought nothing of them.
Even three days into my first trek, after one of the guests who happened to be a nurse said my ankle looked bad, I never correlated the fever I was experiencing to this small scrape on my ankle and assumed I must have been catching something. After a day of rest and some borrowed antibiotics prescribed to another guest for a tick bite, I rode one more day and was finally convinced to get it checked out when it swelled so massively. Speaking poor Spanish with the night crew at an E.R. is not the most forgiving field to practice on. The nurse was very inpatient (sorry, I know that was bad, but I couldn’t resist) and was not fond of repeating her questions. When I finally was passed on to the doctor, his initial reaction was to have me stay in a hospital for three days on an I.V. After explaining that this was not possible as we were in the middle of the trek, the nurse, I’m sure with great pleasure, administered my first ever shot in my right nalga. Those suckers hurt! I was then sent off with ten days worth of hardcore antibiotics, anti-inflammatory pills and a solution of ammonium acetate. All of this was free of charge, thank you CAJA (CR’s public health care system)!
By God, we got those pipas though.
I wrote this while hammock-bound, NOT drinking beer and washing my ankle with pool chemicals. Sorry for the long delays. I have many stories written down and I will do my best to transfer them to digital format in a more timely manner!
*I apologize to any Trail West staff (current or former) that may have been angered by my non-P.C. usage, when it clearly should have been “criss-cross apple sauce”.
Elsty...You are Living the dream. :) :) :)
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