Day 70 Last Day in Costa Rica

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Last day in Costa Rica and how to sum it all up?

I had a perfect paragraph composed on the bus but now that I am actually writing, I can’t remember how I summed up ten weeks in a few sentences. It probably listed a few of the highlights like white-water rafting and the Chocolate Tour this weekend, maybe mentioned the amazing experience we all had at the Colegio Santa Teresa for four weeks, where the staff and the students were so good to us and it was very hard to leave. We’ll never forget Ana, our host mother and her son Kenneth, especially after this evening when Ana invited her whole family (four sisters and a great many nieces and nephews) to her house to meet us and wish us well on our travels. Her hospitality, good cooking and warm friendship will make leaving her very sad.

We had two wonderful weeks at ICLC, a language school near Alajuela, where the boys were treated to a special program with a few local kids to learn some Spanish and Chris started classes throwing out French words all over the place and sometimes coming close to speaking Spanish.

The days we spent at the ASVO Turtle conservation project on Playa Buena Vista near Samara will always stand out for me as an experience of a lifetime. While being on a stunning beach, watching heavenly sunsets, meeting other volunteers from around the world, watching baby turtles hatch and helping them scurry down to the ocean, and having plenty of time to swim, build sand-castles and play volleyball was fantastic, I think what sticks in my mind is the feeling that we were living at such a basic level. The floors were dirt, the mattresses were soft, the food adequate but not great, the showers cold, the toilet functional but basic, only flashlights and candles after dark to provide light, but it was enough to survive - no more than what is needed to live, even though at times we may want more. There was something incredibly liberating about the simplicity of life at this level. No TV, no internet, no shopping malls, no electricity at night, no hot water, no washing machine, Of course it’s a little false, since all of us paid good money for the privilege of being filthy for almost two weeks, and it is not a sustainable lifestyle, but still I can thoroughly recommend the experience of living like this for a while to put our “real” lives in perspective. When we showed up one day with several pastries from the van that parked at the end of the road by the beach, and our fellow volunteers reacted like we had brought them the one thing they had always wanted, I realized that we take so many perks and treats for granted - what a gift to be able to be made ecstatically happy by something as simple as a sweet pastry.

Other experiences from our time in Costa Rica:

• A weekend trip to Manuel Antonio, a beautiful but over-developed area around a small National Park.
• Renting a car (first time driving in CR) and heading up to La Fortuna to visit the Arenal Volcano. Day at Baldi Hot Springs. Cloudy and rainy, didn’t see the volcano.
• Day trip to Poas volcano – cloudy and rainy, didn’t see the volcano.
• Day trip to La Paz waterfall with Ana and Kenneth.
• Day trip to Sarchi with Ana and Kenneth
• Coffee tour
• Weekend trip to Selva Verde on the Sarapiqui river (white-water rafting and chocolate tour)
• Dinner at Antonio’s
• Many more to add....

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Photos

Leaving Costa Rica
On the runway just before taking off for Orlando

Comments

[Ray]

Is that an Airbus?
Another memorable page turned in your life's story book...onto the next chapter! Bon Voyage!