Our community was divided into three groups: BARAT, DUCHESNE, and STUART and began our rotations, heading to Hacienda Baru and zip lining while learning about animal conservation, horseback riding to Nahuayaca Waterfalls, and the final group engaging in Community Service with a local school.  Some snapshots:

HACIENDA BARU

Ronald explains the history of Hacienda Barú

SERVICE

Free time

Adding a fresh coat of paint to prepare for the new school year

One of the local school children

Handing each child school supplies

Student Reflections:

Our time in Dominical has come to an end. We say goodbye to our time down south with the morning at the beach before heading north to San Jose for tomorrow’s flight. Here’s a video with some testimonials from the students about their experiences:

From here we traveled back up to San Jose to stay at a hostel near the airport. No pool, no pool table, no dart board meant just some basic fun together: cards and circles of boys and girls chatting and hanging out- not even missing the fact they’d now been close to a week without cell phones!

Our last full day and we split the group into two sections to rotate from river rafting and helping at Hacienda Barú’s turtle habitat preserve. Although not turtle season, we helped dig up the nursery, a large raised area of the property a short distance from the beach. This involved turning the sand so that that sun could clean off any bacteria left from the previous hatching. While some dug up the nursery, others added fresh coats of paint to signs while a third group cleaned up trash along the shore so as to prevent the returning turtles from ingesting items which could jeopardize their health. The efforts of the preserve increase the chances of the hatchlings’ survival from 1 in 500 to 15 in 500. Even with no direct contact with the turtles or the turtle eggs, our work was instrumental in helping give the turtles a chance at survival. Here’s an article from Hacienda Barú’s website about their work.

Here’s a clip about the work we did:

While digging in the turtle nursery, we found an iguana nest. It was odd to feel the leathery texture of the eggs and we were all surprised by the flexibility of the eggs as we squeezed them slightly and felt their give, very different from the hard shell of other eggs.

After the turtle preserve we went river rafting. Although the river was not as full as some wished, it did provide enough rapids to get everyone wet and made for some great photo opportunities.

And a video montage from my raft:

Tomorrow is our last day in Dominical. We’ll spend the morning at the beach before hoping on the bus and making our way back up north to San Jose to spend the night. Oh, and cell phones? I don’t think they’ve been missed!

The last of our three day group rotations today saw us headed to Hacienda Baru, , a short drive from our compound. This is an amazing place with a dynamic history typical of this country. The owner, Jack Ewing, author of Mokeys Are Made of Chocolate, greeted our group and explained a bit of the history of his 830 acre wildlife preserve. Hacienda Barú started 30 years ago as rice fields and cattle pasture. Jack shared about his personal and professional transformation over the years which led him away from farming and hunting to the eventual establishment of this wildlife preserve. Here is Jack greeting our group: