Day 1: Friday

If you are reading this, you most likely know that I got back last Wednesday night from Costa Rica! Myself and some fellow students traveled there as a part of a mission trip put together by our Spanish teacher, the wonderful Mrs. Tann, through Joshua Expeditions. It was such an amazing experience and all of us learned so much from it. I kept a journal each day so that I could share it with all of you.

Day 1 - around 9pm
Wow. Our first day was very interesting indeed. We all got up super early to drive to the Cincinnati airport with time to spare for our 6:15 flight. I had stayed the night at the Tann house, but we still had to get up by before 3 am. After checking baggage and all, we waited around for a while, then finally got on our flight. Our flight arrived late at Houston, and since we had a very brief layover already, we had to run to our next flight gate, which was several terminals away on the other side of the airport. After getting a good workout in, the plane was (thankfully) still waiting for our group. Our flight from Houston to Costa Rica arrived in San Jose at around 11 with the time change, then we went through Immigration and Customs without any issues. We met our guide Ariana right outside the airport. She grew up in Costa Rica, played soccer on the national team, went to Liberty University with a scholarship, and now lives back in Costa Rica with her parents and sister and is being a Joshua Expeditions guide while working towards her masters.
We went to our hotel, but it was too early to check in so we went to lunch instead. We drove to a nice little restaurant in San Jose called Soda Tapia that Ariana suggested (We had a driver, Melvi, that drove us everywhere in his van). I ordered gallo pinto con huevos y jamón. Gallo pinto (black beans and white rice) is a Costa Rican staple and they eat it with most meals; huevos are eggs; jamón is ham. What an absolutely splendid first meal in San Jose!

Gallo pinto con huevos y jamón, along with some fried plantains and bread

We also ordered some fruit to share. Definitely a good choice. Costa Rican fruit is fabulous. We ate it with each meal but it was love at first bite. The most common ones were pineapple, watermelon, and papaya. Even more delectable than the fruit were the fruit juices that we got to try. Almost every restaurant we ate at had its own unique juice. We tried cas, pineapple, blueberry, watermelon, mango, passionfruit, blackberry, and guanabana. My favorite had to have been the cas. It tasted similar to lemonade, but with its own special flavor. They were all sweetened with real sugar and I'm really starting to miss them :'(

After lunch, we drove around San Jose for a while, taking in the sights. It was really cool to see the city landscape with the tightly-packed houses, cars whizzing past, lots of noise, but then whenever there was a space between the buildings, you could see the mountain silhouettes looming in the distance. It was gorgeous.

 

Another interesting experience on our first day was the driving in Costa Rica. The roads there aren't paved very well, and there aren't a ton of traffic laws, so THAT was fun. Except for a few speed bumps here and there, we didn't see many speed limits (if at all). Every drive through the city was a roller coaster :P . Also, there were motorcycles everywhere. And each of their drivers appeared to think they owned the road. The bikes would fly past, speeding ahead of the cars, winding in and out of them, and driving where there was no road. I saw pedestrians almost get flattened by motorcycles a few times. We also saw some unexpected sights. One man was driving along the road in a backhoe with his wife sitting up there with him as if it was totally normal.

Seems legit....

There were also tons of beautiful flowers as we drove through less busy parts of the city. Driving by homes, there were lots of vibrant blooms, most often pink, white, or red.

After driving around, we arrived back at our hotel to check in and put all our things in our rooms (I got to share a room with the lovely Ruth Kiger and Claire Smiddy). We had a nice deck with a view of the hotel pool area.

Then we went to dinner at another restaurant nearby. Ariana had placed our orders ahead of time, so they were ready for us when we arrived. Frankly, I don't remember exactly what I ordered, but it had to do with rice and chicken and was delicious. We tried guanabana juice, which was very sweet and very good. By this time we were exhausted from our long day, so we were eager to get straight to bed once we got back to the hotel.