La visita de mi madre (Part One)

Happy Monday everyone!

My mom came to visit last week, and it was wonderful 😊 We spent the first part of her visit in La Fortuna, the town closest to the Arenal Volcano.  After that, we came to UGA's campus (where I'm living and working) for a few days.  It was so nice to have the chance to explore another part of the country with her and then to be able to show her my space and have her meet my friends.  I took a ton of photos while she was here, so I've split her visit into two posts. 

The trip started with a 4:15am alarm and a 5:00am taxi to get to Santa Elena for a bus to the airport.  The trip went smoothly though it was a very early start.  Transportation in CR can be crazy...the 20 minute taxi ride to Santa Elena cost ~$16, and the entire 4 hour bus ride to Alajuela (near San Jose, where the airport is) cost only $6.  

The bus station in Santa Elena randomly has a beautiful wall

Off we go!

We stopped about halfway through at a rest area

Made it to the airport!  These are the flags of all seven provinces in Costa Rica. 

My mom's flight arrived right on time and we found each other no problem.  We had a few hours to kill before our shuttle transfer to La Fortuna, so we went to a nearby restaurant. If you ever visit Costa Rica and fly into SJO, Taco Bar in Alajuela was so good!

SUCH A HAPPY KATIE 😀

As delicious as rice and beans are, it was really nice to have some variety during my mom's visit.

The rest area for this leg of the trip was much prettier than during my drive to the airport.

Casual beauty

 After a full day of travel (5 hours on a plane or 4 hours in a vehicle plus another 3.5 hours for both of us in a vehicle), we were both pretty kaput when we got to our hotel.  So we figured out our next day, got some food -- Mom had some delicious ceviche -- and went to bed.

The next morning, we got on a bus and went to the Mistico Arenal Hanging Bridges Park.  It was about a 30 minute ride out of town and it was beautiful.  We went with a guide to learn more about the flora and fauna of the area, and there were 15 bridges to cross (6 of them hanging).  It's the rainy season here and there was apparently a tropical storm/depression affecting the whole country, so it was a very wet morning.  That didn't stop us from seeing some bats, a tarantula, a night lizard, a blue jeans poison dart frog and obviously a whole bunch of plants.

Our guide!

Before crossing one of the hanging bridges

Hard to capture with a picture.  Even with the rain and mist, it was pretty incredible

They had some great signs at this park

Any WAT guides reading this: these were not like our bridges...we had no harnesses, and you walked on pretty slick metal instead of wooden boards.  Doing this tour made me miss Little Africa 😧

Behind us is the Arenal Volcano...you can totally see it, right?

See?  Really great signs

After the tour we went back into town and got lunch.  I was super excited to find a vegetarian restaurant, Fortuna Organico, that also had a ton of vegan options (almost everything on the menu was vegan-izable). 

Our food was too pretty not to photograph

I got nice cream (banana ice cream) for dessert!

That afternoon, we had wonderful massages and dinner at a Chinese/Peruvian restaurant.  It was an interesting mix with flavors I hadn't enjoyed in a while. 

The next day we had a later start and spent time exploring La Fortuna more.  There were a ton of really nice shops (with both more touristy offerings and some really nice jewelry/art places).  We ended up back at Fortuna Organico for breakfast because they had vegan pancakes and they were perfect. 

These are mamon chinos, a fruit similar to a lychee that's in season right now.  My mom and I both tried them for the first time, and they were good!

There was a wonderfully located bench right outside the main square in town that we enjoyed

For lunch, we got supplies from the supermarket and a bakery and had a picnic on that lovely bench.  I don't think a tomato and avocado (cheese for my mom) sandwich has ever been more delicious. 

 We moved to a different hotel for our last night there, Baldi Hot Springs Resort.  It. Was. Incredible.  It's a luxury hotel with beautiful rooms and nice restaurants and a spa.  Those things alone would definitely make it worth a visit.  However, because it's so close to the volcano, it also had a ton of geothermally heated springs/pools for lounging in.  There were 25 thermal water pools and each of them had a sign telling you what the temperature and depth was.  Some of the pools were crazy hot and some were cold pools to cool off.  We got there in the afternoon and basically spent the rest of the day hanging out in the pools, trying all of the different ones to see which were our favorites.  There was definitely a Goldilocks effect going on, with some of the pools too hot and some too cold and some just right.

Right when you walked in to the lobby, there was a swim-up bar

Our room was so nice...and very slippery

So peaceful

We finally got to see the volcano while there!  The clouds cleared up enough.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and then got on our Jeep Boat Jeep to get to UGA, which I'll cover with my next post!

Have a great week everyone!

Bonus photo!  There's a story behind this one, but I'll just say that it's a beautiful watercolor and ink painting that an artist in La Fortuna, Florencia Figueroa, created just for me and I love it 😊

100 Años de San Luis!

Happy July everyone!

I hope everyone enjoyed the Fourth of July at home.  We didn't really do much to celebrate it here, which was a first for Fourths I've spent abroad. 

I'm continuing to add activities to my repertoire.  From last week, I've now led a guided hike and night hike solo, plus campus and sustainability tours. 

San Luis (the town I'm living in) just celebrated 100 years since its founding!  There was a celebration last month (I'm a bit backed up on blog posts) in Bajo San Luis that I went to and it was really cool to see how they celebrated. 

The schedule for the weekend.  Everything ran on "tico time," so the times were more of a suggestion

The first event we went down for was the "Obra de Teatro alusiva a la Historia de San Luis."  Basically, it was a theater show telling the story of the first people to come and settle here, the Leitons.  It was put on by members of the community.  

 "100 Years of Community"

Full house!

My Spanish has been improving since I arrived, but it was not up to the challenge of understanding this show.  So I pretty much just smiled throughout and laughed when everyone else did. 

After the show, there was dinner.  One really cool thing about it was that even though the women who prepared and served dinner were feeding a whole bunch of people (easily over 50), the plates and utensils were all reusable.  I think most of the cups were as well, so there was so much less waste from this meal than for a comparable sized event at home. 

I brought Clif bars with me because I wasn't sure what would be available for me.  Sure enough, pretty much everything being served had meat in it.  I still went up with my friends to get food, and when they ordered one of the women asked if I wanted anything.  When I said no, she guessed that I was saying no because I don't eat meat...so she offered to make me a plate without any.  That night I ate rice, salad with a pico de gallo-like sauce and yucca.  Overall, everyone from this community has been so incredibly friendly and helpful with me being vegan.

We didn't stay too long after dinner, but there was also bingo and dancing.  Dancing here is a bit different than it is in the States, at least the dancing I've experienced in both places.  People actually know cool dances and do them here, like merengue and cumbia.

Live music!

The next day we walked back down for an event called "Carreras de Cinta."  It was nuts.  Basically, they had a rope tied up across a pretty wide grassy path.  On that rope they attached three or four rings.  Small rings, with a smaller diameter than a key ring.  Those participating in the event (mostly men, but some younger kids as well) rode under the rope on a horse and had a wooden stick (kind of like a wand) that they tried to get through one of the rings.  While on a horse (in case you didn't get that the first time).

Please appreciate this slow motion video 😊

 There are always a ton of dogs whenever we go into town, and this day was no exception.  I made a friend with a dog who just wanted to lie down.  He kept lying down on the grass about a foot away from where the horses were racing by.  Eventually he came up and sat by me and fell asleep on my lap.

That's it for now!  It's a pretty quiet week on campus, so I've got some more time to work on other things.  Which include getting ready for my mom's visit next week! 😊😊😊😊😊😊

Bonus photo: This picture was taken from inside a strangler fig (so where the host tree used to be) looking up.