On the morning of November 9th, we all said farewell to our wonderful host families as we began our full day journey to Bona Fide Farm on the island of Ometepe. Carrying our backpacks with us, and thankfully not misplacing any of them, we prepared ourselves for two back to back two and a half hour bus rides, 2 taxi rides, and eventually the one hour ferry ride (which was more like a small, leaking, fishing boat) that would eventually take us to Ometepe. We arrived on the island about 1:30 in the afternoon and had about 45 minutes to explore Moyogalpa, a small town, where we could pick up snacks and prepare ourselves for 2 weeks of isolation on a small farm in the middle of the jungle. We were eventually picked up by a microbus and then drove another two hours to Bona Fide. We picked up our farm contact, Mitch, who is awesome, and on the way he gave us a little introduction to the farm and what we should expect this next coming week. Once we arrived to the farm, we carried our backpacks through dirt trails, rocks, mud, some say it was like the trek all over again, until we got to our rooms which were outside without walls. We quickly learned that we would be sharing our room with bats, whip scorpians, turanchulas, cockroaches, and other various breeds of spiders. The first few days we had orientaion and an introduction to the farm. We met some other awesome volunteers from all over the world, and it was great getting to know them and hearing their travel stories. During the course of the week, we all were were assigned specific tasks. Some of these included working in the garden, the nursury, the kitchen, or being a free agent, which meant you would probably be carrying a machete and chopping something down. Highlights of this week include: Alexa climbing up a tree to cut down a termites nest for the chickens, but that termites nest accidently dropped on Kevin; Ā Jamie, Zach, and Graham made garden beds with both horse and chicken manure; there were logs being carried up steep hills; the chickens were fed; machetes were used to chop down banana trees; and we each took turns preparing meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Also, on Saturday at 1:00am, Kevin, Hunter, Graham, Noah, Zach, and Byron watched a cow being slaughtered and purchased a few pounds of fresh meat afterwards. We heard it was quite the once in a lifetime experience. I wont go into too many details… We finished week one at the farm by having a fresh dinner on Saturday at Compestre, the favorite local hangout spot about a 25 minutue walk away from the farm. We are all excited to be here, and looking forward to what next week brings!
Kaela