Monday, March 22, 2010

Milestones and Kilometer Markings (Meterocks?)

I know there’s lots more to catch up on, but I want to make sure to get out two exciting things that happened very recently.

Milestone: As of March 11, I have been in Costa Rica for one year! Time is a very weird thing here. I know that the passage of time is relative to one’s rate of movement, but I think it also has something to do with life experience. There are definitely some days (and lots of meetings) where I feel like I may go crazy before the minute hand makes any kind of progression. But overall, the time here is volando like it’s got some emergency to attend to. I’ve made friends that I am confident will remain important throughout the rest of my life, learned much more Spanish than I ever could in a classroom, participated in projects that have impacted people’s lives, but I think more than anything else, I have been forced to get to know myself more than ever before.

Attempting to process the last year, I am surprised at how little and how much has changed. I still love my family and friends, never feel like I am working hard enough, and still have dinner and movie dates with friends (granted with food only as exotic as the local super allows and usually on laptop screens instead of theaters). But the changes take much more contemplation. I am in a completely different culture and language, but that’s just geography and semantics. The kind of experiences I am having, aren’t necessarily exclusive to Peace Corps, rather anyone that has started life over with new friends, a new home, new rules, new daily routine, and most importantly, realizes that they have no one to blame or thank but themselves for their sense of accomplishment and general happiness, can relate to how I feel. Sometimes I think PC has made me bipolar - feeling so joyous and complete one day and useless and depressed the next. But I am coming to realize how much my personal decisions determine those feelings.

Not that I ever doubted that really, but when I had so many more people and ‘norms’ telling me what to do, it allowed me to shift responsibility and blame a bit more. And though it doesn’t give me an easy out for explaining my craziness, it is empowering (though sometimes daunting) to know that it’s all on me. I don’t have a perfect summary conclusion, but I guess I have another 1.25 years to figure it out. :)

Kilometer Markings: On the day of our March 11 milestone, two of my closest PCV friends (Katie and Adrienne), Katie’s dad (Jim), and I made arrangements to climb to the top of Chirripo. Standing at 3,800 meters (almost 12,500 ft or 2.36 milestones) the summit is the highest point in Costa Rica and would represent the highest I had ever been (without a seatbelt). But before we could get to that altitude, 14.5 km of hiking had to be dealt with just to get to the albergue, then another 2 hr hike the following morning to get to the summit.

When we had originally discussed the possibility of Chirripo, I thought to myself, “I’ll definitely train before we do that!” One guess as to whether I actually did train at all (I’ll give you a hint, the answer’s the same in English and Spanish). You would have guessed my lack of training by the gasps of air that I sucked in as I struggled up the mountain. But the view was amazing, so my out of shape body gave my eyes extra opportunity to take it in. We passed from cloud forests to high altitude shrubbery, so I started taking pictures of each of the kilometer markings (more pics on facebook) and the scenery in between. Each km was named pretty appropriately.

We saw the white-faced monkeys on Los Monos km, a female quetzal (not quite as resplendent as the male but still awesome) on the Resplendent Quetzal km, the burned trees on Los Quemados km, and I was repenting (though I wasn’t sure what I did wrong) on Los Arrepentidos km. But we finally arrived at the albergue after 7 hours of climbing (which accordingto my guide book is on the low end, so there!).

The albergue was very simple where you have to provide your own food and linens and the cold showers don’t help with the freezing temperatures. Though it did not drop below freezing during our stay (it does occasionally there), I was happy to have all the warm clothes that I felt crazy for packing as I sweated in the heat below.

The next morning, we set out early to hike to the summit. The view was amazing, even as we set out, looking across the valleys that were set thousands of meters above sea level, and looking down on the clouds that were forming. The hike was much less challenging than the day before (not just because it was less than 1/3 of the time) but the last 100m of straight up climbing at the altitude we were at, left me gasping once again. But as we reached the top, it took my breath away for a very different reason. Standing at the highest point in Costa Rica, one year into my service, the beauty and sense of accomplishment was incredible. On clear days, you can apparently see to both oceans. Though we didn’t have such luck, it was amazing to look out over the sea of clouds, the smoking volcano poking out, and the half dozen glacial lagoons around us. We all signed our names in the book and left a haiku that would make our 5th grade teachers proud:

Mountains, lakes, and clouds

Tired, hungry, breathless, cold

This is Chirripo

On the way down, we went to one of the lagoons, then headed back to the albergue to prepare for the descent. The trip down was grueling in a very different way. My breathing definitely wasn’t a problem, but my knees, and the rest of my body, for that matter, wasn’t very happy with me. But after 5 hours, we reached the bottom, all ready for the hot shower and sleep that was in our very near future. Jim treated us to one of the most delicious dinner’s I’ve had in Costa Rica – perfect ending.

Though the 12 hours of traveling back home to Bijagua on bus after bus wasn’t the best for my aching body, it was a great time to contemplate the two significant events of the week – very substantial accomplishments, challenging steps to get there, pushing myself to do more than I had before, and trying to enjoy the journey and sights along the way to the ultimate goal, all flying by faster than ever expected.