Cotis, Coatis, and Cahuita

The trip to Puerto Viejo felt like ages ago, but Katy and I visited last weekend and it was stunning! On Saturday, we walked 8.3km (~5 miles) through Cahuita National Park in hopes that we will spot some monkeys, snakes, or alligators. Sadly, we did not encounter such a diverse set of wildlife but we were joined on our hike by a raccoon+fox looking-like animal that we have never seen before called Coti. They were just casually strolling the trail, and as kind visitors of their habitat, we stopped and let them pass. Of course, we saw a million lizards, plant-eater ants, colorful butterflies, and different kinds of bugs that fed on our blood and left many scars on our hands and legs. However, considering the beauty of the national park and the incredible views we have forever engraved in our minds and phones, we forgave the bugs! The park consisted of rainforests on one side and white-sandy beaches on the other. The trail of the park was almost U-shaped, so at about the halfway point we were basically surrounded by water. You truly have to visit it to appreciate the beauty of it, but the pictures I included give a glimpse of what I saw and hopefully prompt you to visit! For the rest of the trip, we spent our time at the calming beaches by our hotel and walked around the town to buy some souvenirs. We were back at Selena at around 6:30p on Sunday after about a 5-hour bus ride. Raniyah and Laurel already cooked us a delicious pasta dinner so we wouldn’t have to when we got back. I love my Selina gals <3. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VACAY OVER, IT’S WORK TIME…OR IS IT?

The end of this week marks the halfway point of our trip and the end of our 3rd week of this internship (Not gonna lie, It took me a while to figure out what week we were in). The first week of the internship we spent in San Jose, 2nd week in Siequres, half of this week in San Jose, and the other half in Los Chiles + San Carlos. That’s right, we took yet another trip from Meditek out of San Jose (I love my job!). On Monday and Tuesday though, we visited Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia Hospital again in San Jose (visited last week as well) with Lucia and Eric who are field engineers. Every week we meet new field engineers which I love because everyone at Meditek is super friendly and helpful, and by the end of this internship we will be besties with all the engineers. At the Calderon Hospital, we mostly worked on changing the mattresses on Hill-Rom beds. While that may not sound that complicated, there were a lot of screws and wires we had to be aware of since it is a smart bed. Usually, if the mattress is worn-off, it is not healthy for the patient and after replacing it we have to make sure the smart beds are capable of performing the same functions they did before. For example, an air-line is connected to the mattress which fills the mattresses with air for varying positions or for different in-built therapies. It is important to test that all those functions are working correctly and that wires, tubes, and screws are correctly attached. By the end of Tuesday, Katy and I were able to successfully change the mattress and foam pads on those beds by ourselves. We also worked on more anesthesia machines which we are pros with now. We know how to successfully take apart the important parts, clean them, and calibrate the machines for preventive maintenance. The calibration is mostly to check for any air leaks in the circular ventilation system because leakage in anesthesia machines is a huge issue, especially for the newer machines. Most of the maintenance that field engineers perform on anesthesia machines is to ensure there are no leakages. 

On Wednesday, we left San Jose to drive to Los Chiles with Marcos and Stuart. Since we left a little late and it was a 4-hour drive, we did not end up getting there until 6p and did not get a chance to visit Hospital Los Chiles the same day. However, we did go to the hospital the next day to look at a sterilizer. An autoclave sterilizer uses a high temperature to kill off microorganisms for sterilization of surgical tools. Pressurization of the steam is important to reach those high temperatures in a timely manner. An important part of the sterilizer is a pressure regulator which maintains the chamber and jacket pressure (a jacket is filled with steam surrounding the chamber) at the pressure required to reach a certain temperature. The regulator in the sterilizer at Los Chiles was damaged because of a water leak and had to be changed. So, Katy and I helped the engineers replace it with a brand new regulator. Marcos proceeded to perform some regular checks to ensure the sterilizer properly works which can be tested by putting a temperature-sensitive paper in the sterilizer. If the color of the paper changes it means the sterilizer reached the temperature it was supposed to. The tests also take a while because after changing the regulator, the sterilizer has to reach the normal operating pressure conditions before the actual sterilization process starts. After properly testing everything and spending about half the day there, we finally made our way to San Carlos (about a 2-hour drive), and with that, we also drove away from insanely huge mosquitos. Sadly though, the next day when we went to the San Carlos hospital, the engineer that is supposed to sign us off on the machines was on a vacation and we could not work on any machines.

Since we basically “finished” work early that day, we left for San Jose early but made a fun stop along the way at the La Paz waterfalls. On our way there, we saw another new animal. It had a similar name to the one we saw at Cahuita but looked completely different, it is called the white-nose coati! Once we got to the falls, we started by admiring the falls from a far from a restaurant then inched a little closer and stood right in front of it, and then somehow made our way to stand right behind the falls! Showering in a natural shower from behind a waterfall: check. Pictures below show our whole La Paz waterfall viewing journey. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, this week I got to dive in the Caribbean sea, discover 2 new animals, perform maintenance on 3 different machines, get bit by huge mosquitos and got to take a natural shower. A pretty successful week I would say! All this traveling is for sure getting tiring but this upcoming weekend will be a relaxing one. I will sleep in tomorrow, have a delicious breakfast at Selina, and hang out with the rest of the GMI crew 🙂

 

Until next time,

Jhalak M.