Day 3 at Río Muchacho

We began the morning by planting a tree. Mine was an avocado, the others' were mandarin oranges. We harvested coffee and more yuca, and then we ground the yuca for the cook to make a dessert with later.

We then gathered palm seeds to make rings, tagua nuts to make necklaces, and mate gourds to make cups and spoons. The rings are so easy! You just saw them in two places, the center falls out and you sand it down to size. The tagua is equally simple, but you get to be more creative by where you choose to sand it down. The viens that run deep maintain their brown peel color while the surface goes white. The mate is harder in that you have to scoop out the insides and then really scrape all the remnants out, which takes awhile. You then sand the edges and carve whatever design you want. Aside from not being creative nor artistically gifted, the gourd peel is really hard to carve! The ones we ate from were by far prettier than mine!

After lunch we milked a cow to make cheese. No, actually Jimson milked the cow and we all TRIED to milk her. Holy cow! It's harder than it looks! I could not get the cow to be hole-ly because nothing would come out! Who knew it was that hard to do?

We then added some chemical/bacteria starter powder to curdle the milk (still not really sure) that was then ready in 15 minutes to be gathered from the surrounding liquid. We added pepper, salt, turmeric, and some other spices and put it in a press/mold to squeeze out the rest of the liquid.

While we let that set, we went to the river to fish for shrimp. Again, we proved quite imcompetent and ended up just wading around while Jimson swam along in the deeper pools and successfully found plenty! He helped me momentarily conquer my fear and made me actually hold one while I waited for Tanya to come with the bucket and he went off for more. ¡Qué asco!

When we returned, we ate the fruits of our labours, none of which I particularly cared for. The cheese texture was nasty, I'm not big on seafood, and the yucca dessert was disappointingly gross! I did enjoy the chiflas (banana chips), but we had nothing to do with them!

We quickly packed to leave, we said our goodbyes, and we arrived in Canoa just in time for an impressive sunset! I hadn't made plans yet and the dorm rooms were cheap at the beachfront Hotel Bambu where the Germans were staying, so I stayed there too!

I took a short walking tour of the town, all two main roads, and returned to spend the evening with the germans who had already gotten their drink on. We had joked the whole time of going crazy on unhealthy stuff once we got off the farm because everything seemed TOO healthy and pure!

So we chatted and chatted until about 10 pm when we walked the town again. I wanted to dance, and Peter had taken salsa lessons in Germany, so he wanted practice, too. There was only one bar open and it only had the bartender, but he promised to play salsa, so Peter and I stayed and Anya and Tanya left for the hotel. I had the best pineapple/orange juice of my life at that bar, but the dancing was less impressive. Peter wasn’t necessarily bad, but we had to dance on sand. It was incredibly difficult because it was deep, you certainly couldn’t spin, and there were chards of wood, glass, and rocks that frequently made us cringe and move to a new spot. But it was fun, nonetheless. I returned excited for a day in the sun!