Pura Vida in Costa Rica

It was a misunderstanding of epic proportions!
A few hours ago, we were shivering from stormy cold raindrops. Now, we were shivering from her cold looks. We’d got it ridiculously wrong!
You don’t mess with Costa Rica. Life may be pure there (they often greet each other “Pura Vida”), but you don’t go on a hike in the rainforest with no supplies and no raincoats. Nature didn’t care for us. Where were we? It was late August, the rainy season seattled in and we got off the beaten track to the Cerro Chato volcano.
After 3h hiking the steep volcano, we have been rewarded with a nature spectacle: a crater lagoon changing colors from aquamarine to lime green with the shifting clouds. But the clouds were shifting slowly, but surely into grey. We couldn’t even say “let’s get down” that we were soaked.
We came down in half the time, rather crawling then walking through the tide. Fortunately, the lightening missed us and we could say “Not now!” to Death. An old man saw us just in time before us making pneumonia. He took us in his lorry, covered us with dusty blankets and drove to his farm.
When we arrived in his humble home, his wife was washing her children in a pot. The room served as bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. Up in the mountains, people considered themselves ‘true’ Costa Ricans and stick to their traditions. If they met foreigners in need, they treated them like part of the family.
So, the old man headed to milk the cows to offer us a welcome drink. We were going to drink fresh milk straight from the cow.The woman saw our enthusiasm and told us we could go and milk the cows ourselves. “Wash before you go”, she suggested.
Our enthusiasm got lost that very moment.We were wet and dirty, we didn’t know how the milking process is done and two kids were being washed in front of us.We were confused, but thought that house rules are house rules (no matter where you are in this world).Okay, but how do we do this?
We watched for a while how the mother was washing her children.We had to fit in a 500 diameter basin, not taller than 600 mm.To make things worse, we had to be careful not to make a water mess in the room.
The woman left to bring towels, but by the time she got back, we were already naked. The kids were staring at us speechless. “What I meant was wash your hands. You can’t milk the cow with your hands dirty”, she said shouting. In our embarrassment, we were now two inappropriate guests who learnt the hard way how to milk the cow. Wash their hands first!