PURA VIDA

Hola. Saludos des de Costa Rica!  We've arrived at our first destination.  San Jose, Costa Rica - said to be the happiest country in the world.  We are staying at Nelson and Liz's house in Coronado.  Liz is Andres Quesada’s sister (Muthoni knows Andres from campus ministry in NJ).  Andres and his wife McEmsara and their two beautiful little girls are also in Costa Rica on vacation.  

Carrying big packs we stood out as Tourists. Didn't help that there only seemed to be one exit so were kind of funneled into a zone of solicitation (Need a ride? Need a phone? Need a hostel? I can help you contact your friends. You are American? I can help.) Thankfully we didn't have to wait too long 

The next day we hit the road for Arenal Volcano and Lake.  It took us 3 hours about 100 km (~62 miles). The windy mountainous roads made for terrible motion sickness. What you see about Costa Rica in magazines is true.  It's very green and mountainous.  The rainforest has unbelievable animal and plant spieces.  The most interesting animal we saw was the pizote.  A long tail rodent looking creature with a long snout, friendly - likes cookies.  

Muthoni feeding the Pizotes

We stopped at a roadside restaurant for a traditional Costa Rican breakfast… Gallo Pinto - Rice with Black Beans and a side of eggs. 

Arenal Volcano

Hotel we stayed at - thanks to Liz and Andres.

 

View from Hotel

 

Lots of plant and animal species

The weather in the rainforest is unpredictable.  It was mostly cloudy and it rained off and on.  Unfortunately because of the weather we were unable to see the top of Arenal Volcano (2 days later, the skys were super clear - que mala suerte!).  We did however go to thermal springs for a swim (our friends swam but V&M didn't).  These are warm natural springs of water geothermally heated.  There are losts of hotels in the area and makes a great vacation spot for those with children.

Beyond tourists attractions, C.R. is bustling.  There is a lot of traffic in San Jose and the surrounding neighborhoods especially during rush hour.  Almost all house are connected to each other.  There are very few stand-alone houses and none of them look alike.  Interesting find - when you use the toilet (no.1 and no. 2) you do not flush the TP.  You have to throw it in the the trash.  I saw this at the airport toilets too (blew my mind to see that stuff in the trash can----eeeewwww!).  Later we found that there's no central sewer system but each building has a septic tank and flushing TP leads to blockage and overflow.



Liz, Nelson y Vernon

On Sunday morning Vernon woke up at 6am to go biking with Nelson and Liz.  These guys are serious.  A lot of professional bikers come to C.R to train because of the mountainous terrain. Vernon survived the 16km trip which took 1.75 hours to go up the mountain and 20 minutes to come down.  It was really steep.  We went to Church later that day.  It was great to be with our brothers and sisters.  Though I don't know spanish the singing was awesome - I just had to plug in my own words and enjoy the worship.  Andres translated the entire service for us.  Several of the disciples speak English so we fellowshiped for almost an hour after Church.  We met a sister from the LA Church, Marisol Guzman, who was on a 6 month mission trip to Honduras, Guatemala and C.R.  

Typical neighborhood - surrounded by mountains.

We left C.R. on Monday Jan 9th.  Off to Peru...?