Back to Heredia...welcome by an earthquake!

13/05/2011

Well today was a long long day… Back at 6am at my place, had a short shower to wake me up completely and I finished packing. At 7am I was at the office, ready to work, my cup of coffee next to me (of course!!!)

At 1:45pm I grabbed my luggage, put them in the bus driven by Don Carlos (the director of CPI Monteverde) and got in. Two for his sons were travelling with us but I didn’t speak with them: I felt asleep as soon as I got in the bus and woke up 3 hours later when we were nearly arrived! Nice nap!

We stopped to have the bus cleaned before getting to the school. While don Carlos and the man were outside working, I stayed inside with the two kids. Julian was jumping everywhere and was moving a bit the bus. I was impressed for a second to see how he can make it move. 3 seconds after I thought that something was weird, the kid could make it move that way for so long. I was quite right: I had just assist to my first ever earth quake without realizing it at the time. Maybe it was because I was on the bus, it would have been more scary being directly on the ground.

We put the radio on and heard the news: an earthquake of 5.9 on Richter scale stroked Costa Rica. The epicenter was only 35 km from where we were that’s why we were able to feel it that well. With luck, we didn’t have a lot of damages and no direct death. One guy died because of a heart attack due to the seism but it’s what we called collateral death.

What saves us was the depth of the earthquake: 65km! It would have been a catastrophe if it had not been that deep!

I met my new family: they are just soooo nice! We went to the chinese restaurant where we had a very nice dinner. I can’t remember the dish I had (what a memory!) but it was very good! It was a soup with a lot of vegetables in it and next to it you have like a fried bread stick that you dip into the soup and eat. Delicious!

Back home it was time for a shower and the first real night of the week!