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Published: April 4th 2013
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Semana Santos
Interesting words: In translation it means the “Holy Week” in Spanish. We have experienced the week of Easter - Costa Rican style. Let me tell you these Tico's know how to do it up right....but let me back up a bit because we were supposed to be in Nicaragua for Easter.
Well Nicaragua didn't happen. The last days the kids were here we all ate at a "soda" for breakfast. These sodas are where the locals eat. They serve good, cheap “typical food”. Well 3 out of 5 of us suffered some gastrointestinal distress later. Some of us got over it in a few days, others a few days longer and then there was me. Two weeks and a doctor visit later I am just starting to feel normal again. When we dropped everyone off at the airport we went looking for our bus ticket and were told we had to purchase it the night before we wanted to travel north. What we didn't take into consideration that we were “approaching" the Semana Santos ( Holy week) and that everyone and I mean everyone was travelling somewhere and the bus was completely packed for the next 3
Dam spillway
Thought of my dad here
days. So now we are stuck in San Jose. We found a cheaper hotel right downtown which was in the roughest area in town. However I didn't have to worry about venturing out as I got so sick I was confined to the room for the next 5 days. Ian was my link to the outside world as he ventured out and got meds and supplies. After 5 days of staring at the walls we ventured out of San Jose to a mountainous coffee area called Orosi. We rented a little cabin beside a river and I finished recovering there. This is where we experienced Semanta Santos in all of its glory. As we may have mentioned in previous posts, the Tico's (Costa Ricans) are mostly Catholic and very family oriented. So this week of Easter is spent shooting off fireworks and drumming. There are church services being offered all day long and people constantly milling in and out of the churches. All the towns shut down; buses are reduced to minimum, taxi drivers take days off, shops, pharmacies, doctors’ offices all close up. Everyone goes into vacation mode. Easter morning at 5am (before it was even dawn) we were
awoken to 2 monstrous KA-booms. These don't even sound like fireworks, more like someone setting off 2 cannons at the end of our driveway. Following that was the drum section of a parade (?) walking back and forth at the end of the same driveway that experienced the cannon blasts. Ratta tat tat.....ratta tat tat....ratta tat tat. No mixing up the beat, back and forth, on and on....every once in awhile just in case you might be getting lulled back into sleep, some clown would poke more gunpowder into the barrel of the cannon and KABOOM! For kicks and giggles the ambulance would also drive back and forth with his siren wailing. You should have heard the people cheering and clapping! It sounded like that canned laughter you hear on sitcoms, because it came and went at regular intervals and it sounded like lots of people. Then, abruptly 8 am, all fell silent. I don't know if these people had been "still" up from Saturday night, or were all up early and I don't know if they then went to church or bed or where but we could once again hear the rush of the river. But now we were
all wide awake. “We have risen.”
The couple that owned the cabana where we stayed invited us and bunch of friends over for an Easter brunch. I didn't eat much, but Ian enjoyed a large variety of food. We met some very interesting people, mostly retired gringos that have settled into the Orosi Valley. One was a young family of missionaries from Alberta with 4 kids who were moving to the Dominican Republic. They were in the area for a 6 month stop in Costa Rica to learn Spanish. The place we were staying at was nestled in the mountains and it was quite cool. Probably the coolest place we lived in, in all of places we stopped. In the evening we had to put on our sweaters and one night I even turned the oven on for a few minutes for heat. It was a nice break from the extreme heat on the Pacific Coast. It was not the weather I was looking for whilst in Costa Rica. One day we hired a driver and he took us out and showed us around the area. We went to some old ruins, built in the 1500's. We also stopped
at a dam on the same river our cabana was on. The oldest electrical generating dam in Costa Rica constructed in 1972.
Karen
Ok now my turn to finish off our final blog. We are on the way home after being out on the road for five months. Karen and I are still madly in love with each other and have learned so much about ourselves, the world and our relationships with those that touch our lives. Our Spanish was just getting good enough to ask for what we wanted and carry on a simple conversation. We met some interesting people on the road that have enriched our lives. For those that are thinking about travelling – Do It!
We are both feeling sad that our trip has come to an end but on the other hand excited that we get to return to those we love and miss. We are also excited by what lies around the next corner of our lives. You will have to stay tuned for the next saga.
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