For our weekend in San Jose, we went downtown a couple of times to see the Children's Museum and go to the park for Zumba classes. The Children's Museum was so much fun. One of the highlights was an earthquake simulator! Supposedly it's very realistic, but I wasn't too impressed. Seeing as we're all earthquake experts now, I think we're prepared for just about anything. And just because the simulator wasn't realistic doesn't mean it wasn't fun! Unfortunately a school group was coming in behind us, so we couldn't spend too much time playing on the simulator. The museum also had sections on history, the human body, ecology, government, electricity, and some other completely random exhibits including a house of bubbles (yes, just a room full of supplies to make the coolest bubbles ever), a petting zoo (except I'm not sure if the petting part was allowed), and a house of illusions (but it closed right before we got there). Only a few of us went to the museum that day, and some other students want to go before the end of the program, so I think I'll definitely be going back! On Sunday we went to La Sabana, a huge park in downtown San Jose. There's a small lake to rent peddle boats, horses to rent, tons of sidewalks, soccer fields, basketball courts, jungle gyms, baseball fields (what are those actually called, anyway? Isn't there a name for that?), a track, a hockey rink, and tons of open areas for picnics. In general it's a pretty busy place, but it's especially crowded on Sundays. Every Sunday different hour-long classes are offered for free to whoever wants to come. They've got aerobics, zumba, and dance classes (and probably a bunch of others, too). We thought we were going to zumba, but we're pretty sure it was just aerobics. Either way, we had a lot of fun making fools of ourselves in front of strangers!
After our weekend in San Jose, we had a pretty normal week of classes at ACM. Everyone had a couple of essays due for different classes, and we all started to realize how close we are to the end. Everyone's glad to see the countdown for our essays slowly dropping, but that means our time here is almost over too.
The next weekend we took our first weekend trip by ourselves. We all went to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on the Caribbean. It's on the Southern part of the coast, almost to Panama. Our teachers told us to expect a very different culture, but I wasn't quite expecting the culture we saw! The general vibe in Puerto Viejo is tourist hippie town. Tons of people were selling handmade crafts on the sides of the road or offering hair wraps. Each and every booth, store, restaurant, bar, and hotel plays Bob Marley music 24/7. It's common for people all over Costa Rica to say "Pura vida!" which is usually used in the same way someone from the US would say "Take it easy!" It's common all over the country, but everyone in Puerto Viejo seemed to be 100% sincere about it every time. For the first night, we stayed at Rockin' J's Hammock Hostel. I'm not sure I will ever be able to accurately describe that experience, but it was certainly a different culture. The hostel is basically a tourist hippie haven covered in mosaics made by the guests over the years. It was definitely a new experience for me, and I'm glad I got to see the place, but the night we spent there didn't go so well for a couple of us. One of the guys in our group and I had a lot of trouble sleeping in the hammocks, especially in a room full of strangers with music playing all night and strange mosaics staring back at you. The two of us decided to next morning to find a different hostel for the second night.
But first, the two of us were off to the national park in Cauhita! We took a walk on a beach trail for the morning, and it was absolutely beautiful. For the first half, the trail was in the forest, just a few meters away from the beach. It was drizzling, but that just meant we had the park to ourselves. We didn't see any animals (other than lizards and crabs), but we heard some howler monkeys off in the distance. The rain eventually died down right as the trail started to drift closer and closer to the beach. Adam and I wished we could have stayed longer on the beach, but we were crunched for time to get back and meet up with the rest of the group. The hike ended up being about 9 kilometers, but we were both exhausted by the end. Hiking in sand is a lot tougher than you'd expect! Despite the many mixed messages we got when asking for directions to and from the park, we managed to get back to our friends without any problems. We got some delicious bagel sandwiches, which were well-earned after some of the conversations we had. We spent a remarkably large chunk of our hike talking about food. Our favorite foods, Christmas cookies, Thanksgiving food, comfort foods, Costa Rican foods, all of it. As hard as it will be to go home, at least we've both got food to look forward to! After spending a little while at a nearby black sand beach, Adam and I moved into our new hostel. It was absolutely perfect. The hostel advertised itself as "clean, cheap, safe" - exactly what we needed after a night in the hammocks. Our room was simple (2 single beds and bathrooms across the hall), but it was a huge step up for us (and several dollars cheaper than dirty hammocks, too!). We went out to dinner with a few other students, and both ended up going to bed around 9:30 that night. We slept so well!!
In the morning, the other students wanted to go to the park in Cauhita, so Adam and I explored some of the other nearby beaches. It was beautiful, but we got caught in some rain heading back to catch our bus home. We made it back in one piece, bringing home mountains of sand in our bags, shoes, and clothes.
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| The start of our beach trail |
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| Crystal clear water! There's a coral reef not too far off, but we only saw a bunch of washed up coral. |
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| A field of Sensi plants! Caitlin, you better be reading this! |
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| Playa Negra (Black Beach) near Puerto Viejo |
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| I forget the name of this beach, but it was FULL of surfers! |
The past week was another fairly normal week of classes, but on Wednesday we took a field trip to see the quetzals. We actually only saw one (a female, and supposedly the males are even prettier), but it was a great field trip. For the first time, we went on a trip with Mario and Chris (two of our teachers - usually they switch off for trips). We walked through the cloud forest for most of the morning, but stopped for a break on the side of a beautiful hill overlooking a field of cows. It felt a little bit like The Sound of Music to me. The trip came at a great time for a few of the other students. It was their test to see if they're read to climb Cirripo (the highest point in Costa Rica - supposedly you can see both oceans from the top). They left yesterday to begin the trek with ziploc bags full of banana pancakes and more tortillas than I could imagine. They were definitely a motley bunch as they pulled away in taxis to the bus station, but I'm sure they'll have a great time. It's been raining in San Jose since they left, but hopefully they can stay relatively dry for their hike! I can't wait to hear the stories about their trip.
Meanwhile, a few of us are staying in San Jose for the weekend. We are going to meet up downtown in a little while to wander in the Mercado Central, and hopefully I will be able to meet up with a friend from the University of Costa Rica this afternoon (she studied at CC as an exchange student last year). I was planning to make tomorrow my work day to get as many of my essays out of the way as possible so I can enjoy my last few weeks, but I might end up going to my host mom's childhood town instead. As much as I want to be done with my work, I'm sure we'll have a good time traveling together tomorrow. On Sunday I might go back to La Sabana with a couple of friends.
Next week will be our 3rd to last week here. Monday will be our last normal class for Intro to Costa Rica. On Wednesday we'll take our last big field trip to Cartago to see a famous church there. Otherwise it will be a fairly normal weekend. Hopefully we can take advantage of our free afternoons to explore a little more in the city, and then we're planning to spend our weekend hiking and ziplining in Monteverde! We have yet to plan anything for that trip, but we're getting pretty good at the last-minute scramble.
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