cookbaketravellive: Travel/Live - Costa Rica

This past weekend was my last big trip and it was the one I was most looking forward to as well. I went to the mountains of Monteverde where they have lots of coffee, zip lining, and trees! It was beautiful there and the small town of Santa Elena was extremely charming! It was about a 4 hour bus ride but the last 16km approaching Santa Elena were on a winding dirt road so we were moving pretty slowly. I went with a friend who is working at the same project as me and we stayed at a nice hostel and met some other girls who were also volunteers! On Saturday I went on my own to go zip lining through the forest and it was fantastic! I met a couple from D.C. who moved their family to Costa Rica for the year while the husband was on sabbatical. I thought that was amazing and their kids (4, 6, 8) are still young enough that they would feel like they were being dragged away from their already established lives. They were super nice, and the husband even went bungee jumping! The scenery was beautiful and although there was some uphill walking between the lines I didn't care because the air was nice and clean! The very last line was the "superman" where you are laying face down going along the cable, looking at a huge valley below. The cable was about 1 km long, so you get to enjoying it quite a bit. After that I had to wait a while and then I got to see 2 people go bungee jumping. This particular jump is the highest in Latin America. I wasn't prepared to jump but I did want to do the huge Tarzan swing which happens from the same point as the bungee. Instead of jumping you are attached to a rope that gets pulled tight and then they lower you out of the little car that you are sitting in and then they drop you! You free fall for a little bit and then the rope catches you are you start swinging! It was terrifying before I fell but then it was so fun! I have a video and photos from the zip lining so I will try and upload at some point.

Later that day I went on a tour of a coffee, sugar cane, and cocoa plantation. I elected to take the tour in Spanish and was happy with how much I understood. I was in a group with for people from Spain. I have decided that I like the accent here better than in Spain. My Spanish teacher told me that there was some reasearch done and the nicest sounding Spanish is actually found in Colombia! Anyway, I got to learn about the coffee process, how they grow and harvest the sugar cane, and how the cocoa beans go from fresh to ground. After lots of samples my stomach was not impressed, but it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience so I wasn't too worried about it.

On Sunday I went to mass, and my friend actually elected to come with me although she is not a practicing Catholic nor can she understand Spanish very well. Then we went to the hollowed out tree in the forest that required us to walk up a very steep hill. We went with the brother of the hostel owner and the three other volunteers that we had met. It was beautiful and the forest was very serene. After that we had some lunch and caught the bus back to San Jose. There was some rain which I would assume was the cause of the accident we passed so the trip lasted about 5 hours. The worst part was they double booked some seats so the aisle was completely full of people, either sitting or standing. We also met two more volunteers on the bus that were also doing construction but were with a different organization and a different city. They are actually building a house, which sounded awesome!

We changed projects this week, so I now have a few blisters from chiseling some concrete that was flaking off. Apparently the kids at the day care were eating it… not good. I have been told we are going to do some tiling, so I am really excited to see how that goes; I will take photos!