Week 5 – what Lars inspired!

January 20th, 2009 by Zoe Methven

In week 5, Lars, a great friend that we travelled with in Week3 to Tortuguero came to visit us at Playa Buena Vista. You must understand that our camp was very hard to get to. Usually 3 buses (8 hours) to the next town of Samara then 1/2 hour walk to the crocodile river which at high tide is chest height! then a kilometre down the beach to our camp… so we were thrilled when Lars showed up! We asked if he could stay a night at the camp and help out, (he also offered to pay) but unfortunately “this is not possible” was the response, because there weren’t any beds (translation, he didn’t wear his bikini), so we asked if Julia and I shared a bed could he stay in the spare bed, but unfortunately “this is not possible” was the response, so then, we asked if we could spend the night in Samara with Lars and have dinner because he had come such a long way (especially as we were too full of volunteers), but unfortunately “this is not possible” was the response.

As you can imagine we were slightly pissed off by this point. Lars went to Samara. Came back the next day to more of “this is not possible”. The co-ordinators made him feel really unwelcome and Julia and I were very annoyed. The previous day we had found a cafe, it could have been ‘illegal’ if we had asked… so we didn’t because we thought the response might be “this is not possible”, so Lars, Julia and I went to the cafe for the afternoon, and lay in hammocks for the first time. This was a good afternoon! Sorry Lars, we wish we could have done more but… “this is not possible” !!!!!!!!!!

So, Lars LEFT and we started to feel a little trapped! The next day Julia and I needed to go and get our bus tickets in Samara, (you always should buy them a few days in advance) we also needed to decide what we wanted to do, where to go and when to leave. After a morning battling with , “we need to go to Samara to get our bus tickets” and “this is not possible” was the response, we were infuriated!!!! unfortunately the whole camp was within earshot of the argument. So we went anyway… and decided that it was time for us to go, 2 days early. We found a nice place in Samara to stay and to get clean – we removed our tans in the process so we returned to camp and said we would leave the following day after lunch. This caused a small exodus, 5 of us left to get clean in Samara and to have cocktails on the beach! hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

We had a great time at the project, met alot of great people, named a lot of turtles Zoe and Julia, and learnt alot about turtles, camping, our limits and our addiction to freedom (wine).

2 days in Samara, 2 nights on the town and we were back in full force to travel for another week…