The past couple days at the villa have been packed with activities. We started the day off yesterday learning about coffee picking and Costa Rican agriculture at Don Tío Leo Café. There, we entered the plantation, picked our own coffee beans, and learned about the range of fruits and vegetables grown there. We got to see mango trees, yuca trees, guava, kumquat, passion fruit, and sugar cane. With the sugar cane, we took turns pushing it through a manual machine, that presses it into fresh juice. We also learned about some of the politics involved with Costa Rican agriculture as the majority of coffee pickers are from Nicaragua and Panama.

Following Tío Leo’s, we learned how to make tortillas at Coco Viquez restaurant, next to Villa Huetares, where we eat all our meals. We had a good time learning the art of patting down the tortilla into a perfect circle, and then eating our tortillas afterward. We spent the afternoon reflecting on our time in Costa Rica– we made art and wrote in an activity where we spent 40 minutes on our own. It was nice to have a change of pace and get to have some alone time where we could really express ourselves.

For dinner, we headed over to a restaurant on the beach called Aqua Sport. The students had a fun time dressing up and watching the sunset. When we returned from Aqua Sport, we had dance lessons! We learned bachata, salsa, and cumbia. We were all ready for bed, especially when we learned we would be waking up the next morning at 4:45…

An early morning wakeup makes for the best wildlife sightings! This morning, we had an estuary tour at the estuary that flows into Playa Grande, the beach where we went surfing. Before 8am, we saw dozens of monkeys, hundreds of birds (and countless baby birds in nests!), cranes, and a crocodile on a nature walk before the canoe tour. Afterwards, we got in canoes and paddled through the estuary. On our journey, we saw numerous crabs and lizards, and we even paddled next to a crocodile!

From the estuary tour, we headed over to San Vicente, where we ate lunch and learned how to make pottery in the indigenous community of Chorotega. We practiced making bowls on the wheel, and we learned about the importance of pottery and painting to the Chorotega community.

We returned around 3pm, and the students are having some much-needed time to rest, hang out by the pool, and playing with the hotel manager’s three kids.

Tomorrow is the despedida (goodbye-party) in Silencio, which will be bittersweet for most of the kids. It’s incredible to imagine how big of an impact just a week in Silencio has left on each of them.