Doc in Costa Rica - by Pickaxe the Puma

16 May - 30 July, 2006

G'day folks, my name is Pickaxe the Puma. For the last 10 weeks I've been following around 6 Aussies, 6 Canadians and 2 Ticos who call themselves Team Rigid. They've been volunteering in the Costa Rican wilderness spending 4.5 weeks in Herradura and 4.5 weeks in Altamira. I've been keeping a close eye on them, hoping to get a chance to eat them, they've also been trying to capture and eat me but I've been too elusive for them. I have some interesting stories to tell about their adventures.

PROJECT 1 - Herradura 4.5 weeks

In Herradura Team Rigid spent 2 weeks working up Cerro Chirripo, the tallest mountain in Costa Rica, developing a trail to the peak. The current route to the peak goes from a nearby community and takes one day. The community of Herradura are developing a 3 day hike to the peak to bring more tourism to their town. Team Rigid spent most of their time swinging machetes, pickaxes, and being amazed by the crazy cloud forest that they were emersed in. They were also planting traps to try and catch me, unsuccessfully of course. They had a 5 hour hike with their heavy packs and all their gear from the town to their work site and little mountain shack where they lived without electricity for 2 weeks. They were working at over 3000 metres altitude which was pretty good for their fitness. They all seemed to be pretty good cooks, adding flare and excitement to the onslaught of rice, beans, lentels, pancakes and porridge.

The second 2.5 weeks were spent in the community of Herradura. Here they helped repair the road through the community, digging drains, painted the school canteen and worked with the school kids teaching English, planting trees and picking up rubbish. They also organised two conferences on first aid and recycling. One of the guys in team Rigid took on the nickname Doc for his role as medical officer and also because he is a vet at home. He did a lot of vet work while he was in the community including castrating a pig, looking at heaps of sick dogs, cows and horses, trimming goats feet, examining dying chickens and preg testing cows with a garbage bag for a rectal glove. There was one stage where I had a bit of an infection that I would have loved Doc to look at for me but I was a bit affraid he might try and anaethetise me and eat me.

Team Rigid also did a lot of fun stuff in the community. They played soccer for the local team, Doc played striker and scored 2 goals and loved it! They visited a sugar cane plantation and made their own dulce (brown sugar), milked cows the old fashioned way, watched the world cup with the community. They played with the kids, had cooking lessons, learnt how to salsa and karaoke in Spanish, went trout fishing, dressed up as super heros for a birthday party (Doc was Bloke Man the shearer) and they even had a cross dressing night, I stayed away that night. Doc loved it a bit too much.

PROJECT 2 - Altamira 4.5 weeks

After a bit of time on a bus, I mean cattle truck, Team Rigid arrived in Altamira. Here the plan was to spend 4.5 weeks building a lodge on an organic coffee plantation to attract more tourists into the town to learn about the sustainable agriculture practices that the community have adopted. They already have a restaurant (soda) and a bus stop built in extravagant fashion with a lot of mosaic tiles. Four YCA groups have visited the community in the past, compared to Herradura where Team Rigid were the first. Unfortunately the work on the lodge was interrupted after about 10 days. They got as far as laying all the foundations and digging a very large septic tank, but the timber failed to arrive before the team left the community so they were unable to continue working on the lodge. Instead they spent the rest of the time laying mosaic tiles on the floor of the restaurant. Tedious work which was like a fork being driven into the heart of Team Rigid.

Luckily they were an exceptional group of volunteers who had something special that a lot of similar groups lack. They pulled through and managed to make the most of their experience savouring every moment together. They spent a lot of time running, doing abs of steel, guns of iron, pecs of fury. It was good for me, as I watched them turn themselves into yummy buff meat!

Nearly every night throughout the project they had a special time called story time. The two people in charge of cooking and cleaning for the day (the home bodies) were in charge of picking a topic for story time. It might have been your most embarrasing moment, or say one nice thing about the person on your left, or maybe just PST - personal space time, where you have to be quiet for half and hour. Story time became a ritual that helped Team Rigid get to know each other better and formed a strong bond of honesty and friendship between the group.

In Altamira, some of the crazy things that they did included visiting a pineapple farm, killed some chickens and cooked them on a bbq, went on jungle walks, swinging off vines, swimming in waterfalls, saving lives on young local children. They wrestled bulls in a local rodeo, crazy Aussies. They saw heaps of tucans and other crazy native fauna including all sorts of massive bugs and insects. They had a huge tarantula walk into their house one day. They have some good video of the killing of the tarantula using machetes and broom sticks. The locals call the tarantula 'matacaballo' which means 'horse killer' and it sprays it's victims rather than biting them. Doc got sprayed with white stuff during the killing and I thought I was in luck because he would die and I'd be able to eat him. Not so, he survived, shame. Some people said it was spider guts that got him, but I reckon Doc is super tough.

10 weeks ended and I didn't get a chance to eat anyone from Team Rigid. They were an amazing group and all had an amazing experience with lots of good times and great stories.
Check out all of the teams photos on the link at the top of the blog.

Bye bye from Pickaxe the Puma.

Doc in Panama

30th July - 11th August, 2006 - Bocus Del Toro and Panama City

Can I say anything more than this... pristine, white sandy beaches; crystal clear, blue 30 degree Caribbean waters; palm trees flourishing with fresh coconuts; deserted uninhabited islands; restrictions on only allowing stunningly attractive people onto these islands; the toughest decision each day - do I hold my beer in my left or right hand?

Bocus Del Toro was where we spent most of our time, staying at one of the best hostels in the world called Mondo Taitu. Most days would involve a boat trip to a new beach, all of which contained variations of the paradise described above. We visited Zapatillo where they shot the European version of Survivor Panama.

Special mention needs to go to Tour De Bocus, a day of adventure on bikes when 5 amigos tempted death by tackling the Panamanian jungle in little more than wife-beaters and thongs (flip flops for you non-Aussies, although wife-beaters and g-bangers in the Panamanian jungle would be interesting).

We marched through knee deep mud, carrying bikes, dodging tarantulas, poisonous dart frogs the size of a fingernail, howler monkeys, crocodiles and the constant reminder that the 5 of us very closely resembled your typical cast of a scary movie. We had a funny guy, a black guy, a hot chick, a surfy guy and a stoner! So we all believed we were all going to suffer the same fate as you do in the scary movies, ie die! Fortunately we only suffered 2 punctured tyres and a broken chain and were home just before dark.

Marko, Dysko and I also had a lot of fun aquiring our deep water scuba licences.

Panama City was a great place to visit. The conclusion we came to was that you can't go to Panama City and not see the Panama Canal. It was great.

Doc in Peru

11-18 August, 2006 - Cuzco and Machu Picchu

Crazy Cuzco. After playing 'cop it' in transit for about 66 hours between Panama City and Cuzco via San Jose, Miami and Lima, I should have been ready for a bit of sleep. But it was a beautiful day in Cuzco, it was my first day in South America, I had just met up with Marie, so I went exploring. To cap off a sensational day I met with some random Aussies who were also having a go at the UK working holiday experience, listened to a live Peruvian band and had some local brews in a pub with an Aussie flag draped outside.

Cuzco was all about trying out the amazing and cheap local cuisine, including alpaca, llama, mate de coca (tea of the coca plant) and cuy, or in english, guinea pig! The alpaca and llama were delicious. The guinea pig was ok - chewy skin, not a lot of meat, and I couldn't bring myself to eat the head.

Cuzco was also about how many free drinks you could score on a night out. If you were up for a big one, realistically you could get away with only reaching for the wallet once or twice. There are hords of locals trying to usher you into their night spots with offers of free drinks. After doing a lap or two of the circuit and picking up two or three cards from each establishment you were set. When the cards run out for one place, you head to the next one on the list and on your way you pick up a few more drink cards. You just have to watch out for those dangerous urinating locals and pudgy dutchies!

Cuzco is also about ruins. Sacsayhuamán was great but Machu Picchu definitely lived up to all expectations. I trekked up to Aguas Calientes on my own and met a nice American girl on the way who I shared a hostel with. We got up at 4.30am and beat the crowds to the top of Machu Picchu. The one thing I missed was having someone to share this amazing experience with. For the first half hour all I could think of was what it would be like to have Fi sitting next to me being awestruck by the sights. But then I met Pete and Tom, two random Aussie blokes, not quite a substitution for Fi, but at least I had someone to have a bit of fun with and share the experience with. All I can say is you should go and see it for yourself. Everyone says it's amazing - and it is.

Doc in Bolivia

18 - 21 August, 2006 - Copacabana and La Paz

Only minutes after crossing the Peru-Bolivian border, the explosive diarrhoea began. It was luckily on a stopover in Copacabana amid a 19 hour bus trip between Cuzco and La Paz. So Marko and I were able to pitch camp for a night while I played 'cop it' with the toilet bowl. Copacabana is on the banks of the magnificent Lake Titicaca and our hostel, which only cost us 10 Bolivianos (about $2 AU) for a night, had a balcony which looked out over the crystal blue waters, 3800 metres above sea level.

La Paz, the highest capital in the world at 3660m, was another world. It's hard to find the words to explain it. The poverty was tremendous and obvious. Driving into the city we climbed over a crest amongst poorly kept roads and traffic jams, to reveal the massive city of La Paz hundreds of metres below in a deathly valley.

To give you an idea of how cheap things were... 8 Bolivianos is about $US1. We got a room for 10B's, a litre of petrol is 3B's, we got a 3 course meal for 10B's, a litre of beer would be about 10B's and we bought 25 DVD's for about 200B's (including 4 series of the original He-Man cartoons!)

HIGHLIGHT: The markets which were everywhere and you could buy just about anything. Our hostel was situated right in the middle of the witches market. I think it was called this because of some of the things they sold there, like the mummified crias and alpaca foetuses.

Doc in Argentina

21-30 August, 2006 - Buenos Aires 48 hour life cycle

Cycle begins: Get up do something interesting, cultural, exciting. Like visiting Recoletta cemetary where Eva Peron is buried and where you can see the coffins in thier tombs, visiting La Boca the working class area of BA and home of the famous Boca Jnr soccer team where Diego Maradonna spawned his career, or checking out the marching mothers and the pink palace in San Telmo, pink because it's painted in a mixture of animal blood and a white powder because they couldn't afford the paint.

Sometime during the day eat some steak. The best place was Seguir le Vaca (Follow the Cow) where for 34 Pesos (about $15 AU) you get all the meat you can eat, all cooked to perfection. You also get all the salad you can eat, which is practically none, because it's wasting good meat space, and a bottle of wine... each!

After dinner it's into one of the many pubs around BA, followed by one of the many clubs, or maybe to a random party at the BA vet school! A massive night probably comes to an end sometime between 7 and 8am.

The next day starts in the afternoon with some jamon y queso (ham and cheese) empanadas and a fresh OJ from the bakery on the corner, an hour or two on the internet, another feed of steak and then an early night. End of cycle.

The 48 hour life cycle restarts the following morning.

HIGHLIGHT: San Lorenzo v Boca Jnr football match, chants, flares, fights, goals. First time Boca has beaten San Lorenzo at San Lorenzo in the history of the game, and they did it 7-1. The away team always leaves the stadium first so the home team fans, who always outnumber the away team fans, can't wait outside and literally beat the opposition to death. Steak was also a highlight.

'Owzit goin' ?

Welcome to our crazy new blog. If you care, you can find out where we are and what we're doing. At the moment we're based in Felsted in Essex in the UK. Davo's just got back from Central and South America and tomorrow he finds out from the medic if he brought home any critters with him. Fi has started teaching at Felsted and it's probably the poshiest school she'll ever work in!

Stay tuned.