Pura Vida

Puerto Viejo

Amy ziplining in Cahuita-Puerto Viejo

How else can you expect me to title an entry about Costa Rica?

It´s their country´s saying.

So we´re currently situated at Hostel Pangea in San Jose after three days in Puerto Viejo. Tuesday we arrived and settled at Casa Verde (I highly recommend it. $12 a night for 3 people, shared bathroom and shower.) Wednesday we started out on the beach of Playa Negra and took a surf lesson in the afternoon with Johan and Jordan, friends of Topo (aka the surfer of Puerto Viejo, the neighboorhood man...or so it seemed). Stood up my first wave...no big deal... We also met with them Salvador, who we were a fan of automatically because of his name. The three of us and Salvador has lunch, then met up later for reggae night at Johnny´s Place, a bar on the beach. It could have turned out smoothly, with a ton of fun on the side, BUT Amy and Ally both got their money and cameras stolen after all three of us left our purses on the side table while we danced a comfortable 4 ft. away...with not many people in between us. My cell phone and money wasnt touched, which blew me away. Tough night. Didn´t stop us from doing a huge canopy tour zip-lining through the rainforest the next morning. Ally and I rented bikes in the afternoon and biked up the dirt roads to Cocles.

Never a dull moment on this trip, now thinking back on it.

When we were laying on the beach at Cocles, I turned to my right and 30 feet away a man was struggling to get back up on the beach from the water - he was crawling in the sand. I ignorantly assumed he was drunk and shouldnt have been swimming in the first place, and decided not to go check on him for fear of my safety. Thinking back on it, I feel horrible. What would he have done in daylight with a ton of people around? The reason why I´m being so hard on myself is because he ended up being taken to the hospital after a young man running on the beach went up to him. After summoning Ally and I over we found out he had rip tide or even a heart attack.

I question more and more why I didn´t go over to this man in need, obviously struggling. If I want to be a doctor, why do I look away at a time like that? I should be running toward him.

It hurts.

The bus drive to San Jose tonight was 4 hours, again. During this long drive through the cloudy rainforests and little towns that remind me of Antiguo and Santa Tecla, I got to thinking about what I want to do. I need to figure out where I will be a year from now. Getting ready to graduate, obviously, but what else? I want to go to med school, yes, but I want something more than that. I want to use my Spanish. I want to be connected to El Salvador, but also to those 40 million in the US who can´t afford proper health care or insurance. So what? What does that mean?

I´m thinking I want to go back to East Boston. Find somewhere where I can either do some research in my year off about the inner city Boston, including the immigrant population, maybe tie this into health care somehow and from my future based around my ability to serve these people.

I´m really excited about this new idea. I just need to find a launch point in Boston. And if anyone reading this knows of something, I´m so open to ideas and help. Bring it on. I´m ready.

Surfing on Playa Negra with Ally, Jordan, Johan, and Salvador