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Published: October 2nd 2012
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The whole group- at the site of the original railroad in Costa Rica. This weekend, or rather, the last 4 days we spent in Limon, Costa Rica- another of the 6 provinces. The Caribbean side of Costa Rica, as I observed, has a totally different culture. The food, people, language, and general feel are all different. The food, like always here, is rice and beans but it is flavored with coconut- which I love. In Limon there are many different types of people, the majority of the people are black people with Jamaican decent. They speak a mixture of Spanish and English, which almost sounds like its own language.
We left at 6 am on Thursday and didn’t arrive in Limon until around 2 PM. We visited Puerto Limon which is one of the main ports in Costa Rica. It was interesting to see all the large vessels, mainly banana boats, packing their shipments. We made a few other stops at National parks, where we saw a baby cow that had just been born. We arrived at our hotel, which was Oceanside, and had time to relax and play around. There wasn’t a beach, so we could only enjoy the ocean view. We had an African/ Calypso dance class. I can’t even begin
to explain how crazy/fun/exhausting it was. The following day, we saw our instructor in another city! How random!
Side note: it’s interesting to me that I have no problem staying the hotels we do. If I were in the United States I don’t think they would be acceptable, but here it’s almost normal for me.
The following morning we left, once again too early. We headed towards the city of Puerto Viejo, which I absolutely love. Puerto Viejo is a little bit more of a tourist place than we have been visiting. The beaches were amazing and there were little souvenir shops. It was down pouring SO HARD so we couldn’t go in the ocean : (. We did get to go and explore the night life, which was also a blast. Before getting to Puerto Viejo, we stopped at a banana plantation. It was SO interesting to see how the plantations work. It seemed like a lot of work, for a considerably inexpensive product. Pretty much all of the work was done by hand on a production line. They wouldn’t allow us to take pictures here, but I wish I could have. It was probably one of
the most fascinating things I have done so far. We made a few other, less interesting stops along the way…
Saturday morning we left for the mountains to visit an indigenous community called Bambo, or ‘Los Bribris.’ The Bribris have their own language and some of them speak Bribri, Spanish, and English while others only speak one language. They have a medicine man, who they call the Awa. The Awa is seen as sacred and they have a special hut where he practices his medicine. There is a fire going 24/7 and plants and herbs drying out everywhere. The awa only speaks BriBri, so the questions we were asking had to be translated by another member of the tribe. After visiting the Bribri’s we headed to Cahuita, another town in Limon.
Since I hadn’t been to the beach yet, the first thing I did was put on my suit and head for the ocean. It was so awesome : ). After the beach, we explored town, had dinner and went to bed early. The next morning we headed to a coral reef to go snorkeling! It wasn’t quite as pretty or colorful as I imagined, but it was
still really cool. I was really nervous before we got there and when I first got in the water, but breathing with the mask is easy and the flippers help you float. After snorkeling, we got dropped off in Cahuita National park and walked 4 km back to the town through the rainforest. We saw hermit crabs, sloths, monkies, lizzards, a racoon like animal, a sting ray, among other animals. It was the most animals we have seen- all in one place!
We didn’t get back to San Ramon until 8:30 last night and had homework to complete before this morning. I have 3 exams this week, a paper and a presentation next week. College life has begun.
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Thanks for the update. Love reading your blogs. Makes me feel like I'm along on the trip. Live you and as always stay safe?