Hello all! Today we had an exciting day of touring a cacao farm and medicinal plants in San Cristobal followed by volunteering at San Cristobal‘s community center. We started off our tours by meeting the Ngobe ladies who ran the farms and our translator Sergio who helped with the Ngobe to Spanish translations. Although I did not go on the cacao farm tour, the medicinal plant tour was quite informative. Our guide, Rosa, presented a strong knowledge of San Cristobol’s native plants, the land, and medicinal remedies. We all finished our tours by cracking cacao beans and watching Rosa and the other Ngobe ladies make us a delicious chocolate truffle treat. We later got lunch at a local restaurant then continued to volunteer at the community center. As someone who had previously volunteered at the Basti center, it was interesting to see the language, economic, and cultural difference between the two islands. San Cristobol did not have the Creole influence that Basti had, or as much tourism. The children, nevertheless, proved to be a lot of fun and very entertaining. We ended the day with dinner at Basti and a reflection at the end of the night.
~Corienne
