7
Location: Uvita
We spent the night in Suenos Tranquilos and woke up early to eat breakfast which was fresh fruit, beans, and rice, toast with coffee and juice. Then we had a 2-minute drive to help Gail’s son, Fransisco, to help build homes for a volunteer and paint a building that kids stay in after school to give them a place to hang out rather than wander the streets. We had a construction crew and a painting crew. The construction crew put up drywall on the base of the building, and the painters painted a mural along the wall of the clubhouse and repainted a few walls on the inside too. Francisco helped us along the way and told us about his life and what life is like for Costa Rican locals. He’s a lot more fortunate than other Costa Ricans, but he still works very hard to have a good life. To prove his service to others, he has been camping in the construction for 15 days because “why waste money on a hotel that can go to this organization.”. After helping, we went back to the hotel for lunch and went back after to finish painting and drilling in walls. We were all super exhausted and had some down time where we ordered fruit smoothies and passed the time at the pool. For dinner, we went to a pizza place that had its pasta factory and made their pastries fresh. We finished dinner by sharing ghost stories, and that was the perfect way to end our day of volunteering building a house. Continue reading our 2018 Costa Rica travel blog to see what else we did during this journey!