Pura Vida en Costa Rica

Sorry for the delay.  Thank goodness for Sundays, to give myself a self-imposed chance to step back and slow down.  Last month I had my very first ever official spring break. (Yeah, bet you didn't know there's no such thing as spring break at BYU, did ya?) Thanks to Marcia and her willingness to serve (that's another story...that I would love to tell, if you care to hear it), I got to spend my break in beautiful Costa Rica.  Just to give you a run-down of our adventures...

We first spent a day in San Jose.  Coincidentally, a friend of ours had a cousin living down there, Sheldon, who took good care of us while we were in the city.  He was there to get us from the airport, he showed us around and entertained us, and when we couldn't find our hostel he arranged for us to stay at the one where he worked.  (Hotel Los Angeles.  Great place.  I would wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.)  

I can't say enough good things about Sheldon.  Chivalry is not dead.  I hope he comes to visit DC sometime so we can return the favor.  He also took us to church the next day and dropped us off at the bus stop to take us to La Fortuna afterward.  (One of the most adventurous and interesting parts of this trip - traveling via public transportation!)

We decided to take a later bus to La Fortuna, so we could explore the city a little.  When we came back to the bus stop an hour later, we learned that it had been the last bus of the day.  Interestingly, this did not even create a hint of panic in me, or in Marcia once I translated the news to her.  We asked the guy if there were other buses in town we could take instead, and he told us we could take the one that was leaving immediately from that station, and connect in a different city.  We stopped in Quesada, got off the bus, wandered around for a minute, and then heard some guy yelling for anyone who wanted to go to La Fortuna and got back on a different bus.  Just like that, problem solved.  It was almost too easy. We even got a sermon from a bus pastor (it was Sunday).

La Fortuna was the adventure segment of our trip.  We rode on ziplines through the canopy (in the rain)...

...went horseback riding (and swam across a raging river to see a waterfall)...

...relaxed in some of the natural hot springs... ...and hiked around Volcan Arenal.  Our guide for the hike was born in the area and was around when the volcano errupted in 1968.  Prior to that, they'd just thought it was a big hill.  When all the rivers started heating up, they didn't know what was going on - and then it just erupted!  It's been doing so constantly ever since. We didn't get to see any lava on that hike (raining), so the next night we tried again.  We got a cab to take us to a bridge where we could try to see the volcano through the clouds.  We thought the cab driver would get bored after 10 minutes and make us leave...an hour later, he was the one still saying, "You just have to be patient, as soon as the clouds move, you'll see lava!"  Marcia and I sang songs to the lava and did cloud dances, and we tried sucking the clouds away.  This was the result: The beach segment of our trip was spent in Manuel Antonio/Quepos.  It was beautiful, sunny, and relaxing.  We even got to watch the sunset!  Even though I spent most of the time in the shade and covered with sunscreen, I burned. Good ol' Scandinavian skin. At least it's consistent. But Marcia trumped me on the sunburn. We also went on a tour of the mangrove with an AWESOME tour guide - by the end, we loved it as much as he did! We also got to see the smallest anteater in the world (it has a prehensile tail!) So, okay, we may have heard about a live band performing and gone out dancing on our last night. I noticed that there are a lot of happy people in Costa Rica - all over the place, we'd hear people whistling or singing. It's just not possible to do that when you're unhappy! I also noticed a LOT of Americans in Manuel Antonio. What's that all about? Over the course of the week, my spanish got gradually better, and I had two milestones to illustrate. I got into a long religious conversation with a woman on a bus somewhere between La Fortuna and Manuel Antonio. We both walked away feeling fulfilled. On the last day I got into a haggling session with a dude at the beach. I walked away feeling aggravated...and then it changed to exhilaration when I realized that I'd held my own in an emotionally-charged conversation in Spanish! I close with a random list of some of my favorite Spanish words:  catarata (waterfall), relampago (lightning), murcielago (bat - like the animal, not the athletic equipment), semaforo (stoplight), and Oaxaca (city in Mexico).