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!