Other photos from my trip

Here are my extra pictures I took in Costa Rica that were not in any of my posts. Enjoy!   

Clouds hanging right above the mountains

Birds flying as seen from the catamaran

A lighthouse we passed by

Boats docked with mountains in the background

Sun setting as we neared our dock

Dusk from the catamaran

A painting at the Ox-Cart Factory

A tiny cactus right by my hotel room

The view of the mountains from our tour bus ride

Boats anchored near Tortuga Island

An art display in the city

Driving at dusk on Saturday

First landing in San Jose

Flowers at the side of the road

A mural we passed while driving on Friday

The view from our van on Friday

My first selfie in Costa Rica - taken from our hotel room porch on Friday

The view on the way to Ariana's house on Sunday

Day 6: Wednesday

We got up bright and early this morning (5am) in order to be able to go souvenir shopping before we left Costa Rica. After getting ready and finishing packing, we met in the lobby to give Melvi our bags, and then walked to breakfast for one last meal of gallo pinto with eggs and fruit at the hotel. Then, we got in the van and drove around 45 minutes to a town called Sarchi that is known for its painted ox-carts and coffee plantations. We passed a lot of coffee plantations on the hillsides on the drive there. We arrived at a ox-cart factory/souvenir shop called Fabrica de Carretas Eloy Alfaro and were given a tour. It was really neat to hear about their handmade, hand painted carts and their system which had been run by water for 90 years. 

After seeing how they made the wheels of the cart, we walked through the painting area to watch a few workers painting right before us.

One of the amazing designs on display

After the tour, we got to shop for souvenirs for about an hour. They had lots of hand-painted/hand-made items that were really neat. I bought a ton of cool bracelets, a few necklaces, a mug, some Costa Rican coffee, and drumroll please.........................................a machete! How cool is that? There were so many neat trinkets there, I had a hard time choosing.

After a while shopping, we got back in the van, filled out a form, then drove back to San Jose. On our way our of Sarchi, we drove past the largest ox-cart in the world which was in the middle of what seemed to be the town square.

Then we drove to the airport. Our trip was finally coming to an end :'( . After checking our baggage, we had to say goodbye to Ariana. She wasn't allowed in the airport because they were asking that everyone who entered had a passport (because of the terrorist attack, the security in both the San Jose and Houston airports was more meticulous than usual). We then went through security without any issues and went to our flight gate. We had more than an hour's wait, so some of us got something to eat/drink while we were waiting. Eventually we boarded our flight and were soon on our way back to the USA. Our flight was a little more than three hours but with the time change we were lined up to leave San Jose at 12:30 and arrive in Houston at 5:30. After arriving in Houston, we went through US Customs, immigration, and made our way to the flight gate, where we waited for about an hour. After boarding that flight, we waited for a little bit to take off because there were several flights ahead of us that hadn't gone up in the air yet. It was really overcast and foggy in Houston, and once we took off, we could see for a few minutes, but then we entered the nimbo-stratus layer and couldn't see anything for a while. Then once we got above that layer, the sky was pretty clear and you could see the sunset in the distance. The clouds below looked like a huge, thick, fluffy pillow. In some of my pictures it even looks kind of like the ocean.

That must have been the coolest part of the flights: seeing and flying through all the different cloud layers. After a while, we got up through the next, less dense cloud layer.

By then it was starting to get darker. Then I saw something really cool. Once we got pretty high, I looked down at the thick cloud layers, and kept seeing big patches of light beneath the clouds. Eventually I figured out it was lightning. I kept taking videos because it looked so cool. (I apologize for the quality)

Wow. Isn't God great? Maybe it doesn't look quite as neat to everybody else, but I thought that was awesome! What a great way to close out a great trip! We landed in Cincinnati at around 10:30, where our families were waiting for us. After a long-ish drive home, it felt amazing to finally be able to sleep in my own bed again! Thank you to anyone who cared enough to read all of this, I'm so happy I could share my experience with you and I hope you were half as delighted to read it as I was to experience it firsthand!

Pura Vida!

Day 5: Tuesday

Tuesday morning we woke up really early to be ready to leave by 6:15 (we didn't eat breakfast at the hotel this morning). We walked to the lobby and got straight on a bus for our tour. We drove for around an hour and a half while our tour guide Carlos from Calypso Cruises explained some stuff about our day. We arrived to the Shrimp Shack for a breakfast (hmmm I WONDER what we could have eaten for breakfast...............just in case you didn't read any of my other posts yet, we ate gallo pinto with eggs and fruit, with some sort of fruit juice as well) and then after breakfast we put on a ton of sunscreen and boarded the catamaran. Wow, it was SO COOL! We spent most of our trip to Tortuga Island sitting with our feet in one of two little pools on the boat.

 

There were also two nets hanging about the water that you could sit/lay on.

 The crew were all very nice and brought drinks, watermelon and pineapple to the guests. It took around and hour and 45 minutes to get to the island.

Mrs. Monroe, Mrs. Tann, and Ariana

Ariana chilling with the crew

About to arrive on the island

Our gorgeous beach view

After getting off the catamaran, the crew set up their own kitchen on Tortuga Island. Isn't that neat? Our guide from earlier, Carlos, did a little welcome speech, we reserved a table for lunch later, and then headed out to try snorkeling.

The waves were pretty choppy, so they only let us out on the water for a little while. We could see the bottom in a few places, and some fish, but not too much. After we got back to the island, we were served lunch in courses. The appetizer, called ceviche, was a sort of seafood salsa with tortilla chips. It was very interesting, but good. Then we had salads. There were three types: regular salad, pasta salad, and a cucumber salad. I tried the second two. They were also interesting but I really liked them. For the main course, we had a typical Costa Rican barbecue which consisted of chicken, papaya sauce, rice, bread, and vegetables. The chicken was amazing! For dessert we had lemon cake.

After lunch we played in the water for a while, then went banana boating.

By that time most of us were already burnt on our shoulders/arms/backs. We applied so much sunscreen over the course of the week, but getting burnt in Costa Rica is kind of inevitable. It's pretty close to the equator so the sun is much stronger than in Ohio. Ariana said that if you're not from Costa Rica, you're bound to get a sunburn while you're there. Somehow the other days I had worn enough sunscreen to not get a burn or even a tan, but not Tuesday.

Anyways, after riding the banana boat, we went back to the beach for a while, then we all went and sat in hammocks in the shade.

Heaven on earth

After a little bit, they told it was almost time to re-board the catamaran, so we reluctantly got up to get our stuff ready to go.

The view right after boarding

Most of the ride back to the mainland, I sat on the net above the water. The sun wasn't as hot and there was a nice breeze.

Towards the end of the ride, Mrs. Monroe joined me, and the other girls followed soon.

The sun began to set as we neared the end of our journey, and we all got some cool pictures.

I took this one right as we stepped off the catamaran

We docked at the restaurant, got off the catamaran, and boarded our bus back to the hotel. We had a nice view of the dusk from our windows, but after it got dark, most of us fell right asleep. After we got back to the hotel, we went straight to dinner. The hotel was serving a chicken and rice meal that was almost as good as the beach BBQ, but not quite. We ate pretty quickly, returned to our rooms, pack most of our things, and went to bed. We were all exhausted from our day, but it was so much fun and even though we got burnt, we had a blast!

#burnsquad

Day 4: Monday

Once again we woke up an headed to breakfast at the hotel. Take one guess what we had. Yep, gallo pinto with eggs and fruit 'n' other stuff. Imagine that. You would think it would get old, right? Wrong, I could eat that stuff with every meal 7 days a week and twice on Sunday. There's just something special about it. Anyways, after breakfast, Melvi drove us to the church once again, and the Pastor told us what we could work on. The first thing we did was all get back in the van with the pastor to drive to the home of the aforementioned church members. We brought them some food and supplies we had purchased and prayed with them. They were so thankful and it was really cool to bless them in that way.

After we got back to the church, two from the group stayed right in front of the church and were left with a machete for chopping down weeds. The rest of our group split up and walked around cleaning up trash in the drains nearby the church. After a while of that, we all walked around the neighborhood for about an hour handing out flyers for the VBS. It was a good chance to try out a little more Spanish and it wasn't too hard to repeat the same few phrases we saw the pastor use. (All the houses had an outer gate and then a little inner area and the the door to the actual house, which was normally open) So what we would do was, walk up to the house, knock on the outer gate, call out with a greeting (usually someone was already within our sight), ask if there were any children in the house, and if there were, tell them we had an invitation, and hand them the flyer. The children we saw were very polite and always said thank you, and that really struck me since a lot of Americans have grown rude in my opinion. We also saw lots of children playing with friends or walking with their family on the streets, so we handed them flyers.

After we returned to the church again, we were served lunch, then came the VBS. We had 68 kids come! Wow. I guess handing out all those flyers really paid off. We only had 17 the first day, so you can imagine how crazy it was. Everything actually went really well and we had brought tons of gifts for the kids, which they all loved. The kids kept asking about confites (candy) and chicles (gum). Thankfully we had lots of both. After we did music and the resurrection eggs at the beginning, we split the kids into an older and younger group for crafts and games. For games, the boys played soccer while the girls colored on the pavement with sidewalk chalk. I spent most of my time holding and helping little Roshell. She was the daughter of one of the ladies working in the kitchen.She loved watching me chew my gum and every time I blew a bubble, she would try to pop it with her finger before I did.

Me with Roshell

Ruth made friends with a boy named Joshua who even taught her a hand clapping game, which was funny and neat to watch.

At the end, when we gathered back together for music, it was cool to see the kids actually singing, since they hadn't been singing very much in the morning and on Saturday.

After taking photos with the kids, we hung around for a little while, then returned to the hotel. We had a few hours before dinner so we went swimming for a while. The sun was blocked by the surrounding buildings so it was actually cooler outside the pool than in it.  At around 6:15 we walked a few blocks down the street to Los Antojitos where we had a reservation. I had ordered the chicken quesadilla which came with guacamole, re-fried beans, and salsa. That has to be the best quesadilla I've ever eaten. It was amazing! After we walked back to the hotel, we had devotions in one of the rooms. Ariana had asked us that morning to think of one or two verses that had to do with our experiences on our trip so far. The verses I chose were Matthew 10:19-20 -

             ¹⁹ When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. ²⁰ For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

and Matthew 25: 34-40 -

                ³⁴ Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶ I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ ³⁷ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? ³⁸ And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? ³⁹ And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ ⁴⁰ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ 

For the first verse, while not the same context, the was the way I felt about my Spanish speaking while talking with the kids at the VBS. I had been pretty stressed about having to converse with the children but when it actually came down to it, the words came to me more naturally than I thought. For the second verse, I think that idea of loving the least of these is really important and you shouldn't treat those less fortunate than yourself as any less of a person. You should treat them with love and that is what our trip was about: showing love to the Guarari community. 

After devotions, we got ourselves cleaned up, hung around a little, and I went to the lobby to get ice cream and also bought some Nahua dark chocolate. We went to bed at around 10 because we had a long day ahead of us.