We did hear several Tucan, though.
Wow, another night of vivid dreams last night. This time, the dreams revolved around Elaine’s stories of her time teaching English (the bit about the boy on the bicycle) and Harry Potter. And no Panamanian sec to blame this time! It seems as though I am catching up on some much needed sleep.
Even my voice is finally next to normal.
This morning’s walk was decidedly shorter than yesterday’s, only about an hour instead of nearly three, but we covered over 2 miles, so it was worthy. We walked down the back of Darien’s hill, down the road and to the bridge, and then back up again to the pulperia.
Once back, I was on a mission for Lizano salsa and an electric Baygon mosquito wall plug-in. It took walking to two different pulperias, but the mission was successful, and we are now prepared for future foreign travel in lands with mosquitos.
From here, we began the mission of going to the recycling center - Darien has to burn her trash here, so she winds up burning paper products, some tinfoil and some other products, but the majority needs to go to a recycling center in San Vito, Asociacion Inclusion Sin Exclusion. We separated the products, loaded up the car, and headed into San Vito. First stop was the bank teller, second stop was the local Mexican restaurant (which Darien calls Mexican/Costa Rican, and Wayne termed MexiRican), which had some wonderful food.
The recycling center was amazing - they are taking in all the products, and either using them to create new plastics, sending papers to China to build walls, grinding up plastics to make other items, or sending product to Guatemala for reuse. A Japanese company sponsored sending over machinery to help break apart the plastics, and to do fine machinery tooling once the refuse is broken apart. They reap 1,000 Colones for each kilo of plastic that is broken down and sorted. There is also an IMAS project for students who have to do community service hours, and the service would include 100 hours per month at the reclamation facility. That would help with making more, and generate more revenue. They are also recycling and using all plastics, 1 - 9. They make the plastic benches using a combination of numbers 1 and 9. Imagine this - they do this very well in CR, it is a shame that they cannot translate it to places like Hawaii. In some ways, our “developed” country is far behind emerging countries.
Last stop of the afternoon was to the grocery store for some cooking supplies, and to the liquor store for a gift for Manolo and Maria-Emilia, good friends of Darien who definitely watch out for her. Maria-Emilia is a teacher at the high school, and a very good friend. Go figure what we found there…Spam!
Tonight we dine on leftover chicken, pasta and sauce, and will spend a relaxing evening prior to going to Cerro Pittier for an overnight with Aaron’s family prior to their return to the cold east coast. Sleep well, all!
