AsoProLA

This weekend my EA and SD class took an incredible field trip to the rural town of Altamira.  Altamira, along with several other neighboring communities, is part of an association called AsoProLA.  I'm not sure what the acronym stands for, something like Asociasion para la Proteccion de La Amistad.  La Amistad is the country's biggest national park, and is shared with Panama, hence the name.  We stayed in a hostel type building, and Saturday morning I was woken up by the sound of shovels hitting dirt and a rooster crowing.  In AsoProLA, there are several organic farms, an organic coffee plantation, and a small barn where cows are raised solely for the purpose of composting their poop.  On Saturday, we traveled to the national park where we took a hike and were eaten alive by mosquitos.  After lunch at the hostel, we ventured out on another hike, this time to visit Pancho, who lives on top of a mountain.  It rained gatos and perros on the way up there, so the hike was slippery.  The view from Pancho's place is breathtaking, but as I stood there taking pictures, I was greeted by an ant hill.  Pancho, a slender man with half grown-out dreadlocks, is the brains of the operation, and has constructed an edifice, for lack of a better word, out of garbage.  He gathered several buoys from illegal fishing operations and uses them as planters and decoration.  Two boats are suspended on the second floor of his establishment, along with a motorcycle, animal skeletons, glass bottles, dentures and other odds and ends in the first floor workshop.  His 14-year-old schnauzer Hippie follows him everywhere, even though he is deaf and blind and has no sense of smell.  After our initial introduction, Pancho took us down to the river (I'm not sure why) and I got stung on the ear by a wasp.  Back up near Pancho's place, we planted a tree that I had helped carry up the mountain to Pancho's place.  For some reason, it took us about half the time to get back down the mountain as it did to get up, but I thought it would be better to not ask any questions.