Costa Rica – Pura Vida!

So the days leading up to Costa Rica were filled with activities on the ship including the Students of Service auction and the Talent show. The students of service (SOS) is a group of students that try and raise money for non-profit organizations in the countries that we have visited, Ebonie, one of the other RDs is in charge of this group. Students, faculty and staff donated items ranging from expensive baseball cards, breakfast served in bed and chance to steer the ship to a weekend in someone’s home in Puerto Rico. I think this was the first time I truly saw how privlidged (how much some of these kids have) some are on the ship, considering they raised almost $10,000!!! Lets just say I didn’t bid for anything in the auction…

The talent show was fun, yes, there were some awkward moments (OTL auditions anyone?) but my friend Tania who is famous on board for rewriting lyrics to songs wrote the following lyrics to Seasons of Love and called it Summer at Sea. Myself and 6 other people sang/acted it out…it was cute!

Summer of Love
(sung to the tune of Seasons of Love)

Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
Ninety three thousand moments at sea
Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, a summer at sea?

In life vests, in lectures, in dolphins in Sea Olympics
In Preports, knots, in adopted families.

In Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a summer at sea

How about, Friends
How about, Friends
How about, Friends; measure in friends

Summer at sea, Summer at sea
Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
Ninety three thousand, journeys to plan

Ninety three thousand six hundred minutes
How do you tell the tale when your back on land

In the language she learned
In the new foods he tried
In the credits she earned
Even through Co-lab died (colab is a paper submitting program on the ship that broke 2 weeks ago)

Its time now, to sing out
Before the Voyage ends.
Lets Celebrate the bonds we’ve made with our new friends
Feel the, Love
Feel the, Love
Feel the, Love
Summer at sea

Summer at sea
Summer at sea.

So the song was cute, and yes, now it is stuck in my head again!

So Costa Rica! Well 4 days in this beautiful country is definitely not enough to truly enjoy it. A little over all reaction before I really start to get into the trip is that in my opinion Costa Rica really lacked a sense of nationalism from what I experienced. Maybe it was the experiences that I did have, but mostly all I did was see touristy spots that didn’t really give me a sense for what Costa Ricans really are as a people. In all the other countries that I visited I got a sense of what Panamanians cared about, or Chilean people, etc. The only thing that Costa Rica seemed to have was the huge love of Eco-tourism and a laid back attitude that fit their “Pura Vida” or “Pure Life” a saying which I love and am going to try to bring back.

Puntarenas was the port where we docked which was literally a small fishing town that may have at one point been a cruise terminal, but is now just a long pier that probably had not seen a ship in a while. It was very cool pulling up though because we literally pulled up to a beach, we were so close I almost felt that I could jump off and swim to shore to a beach…very cool! OH YA! I saw my first bit of sea life…a sting ray!

Our first day we had planned on meeting up with some students to try and find a way to do some sort of adventure sport on the first day. The 5 students we met up with very quickly turned into 25 students, to many for a relaxing afternoon on Isla Tortuga. At this point we had hired a boat to take us over to the island and at the grocery store were we were going to purchase water and snacks, students started to purchase large amounts of alcohol…and of course it was some students that I am not all that found of that were purchasing large amounts of rum and coke. Yup. That was enough for Doug and I to bal out of the trip. Doug and I headed back to the ship with our purchase of water and hot sauce (I have been buying hot sauces in every country).

When we got back we met up with Nicole and Ray who had plans to head out to a resort. Nicole works in the field office who works with the tour agents in every country setting up the semester at sea sponsored trips, so the tour guide in this Costa Rica gave us a free ride and a free pass to lay at the pool of a 6 star resort on the top of a huge cliff over looking the pacific coast. Breathtaking. So the four of us spent the afternoon laying out at the infinity pool (which is basically a pool that looks as though it has no end) and had a couple of fruity drinks (I had a tasty passion fruit margarita…mmmmm).

We ended up heading back into town for dinner and meeting up with Aaron, the video guy on the ship. We tried to find a small restaurant we read about which led us on a long walk through what we found out was deserted Puntarenas…we found it and had a decent meal at a little hole in the wall restaurant.

The second to third day I was trip leading a trip to Manuel Antonio beach which is a national park in Costa Rica famous for the jungle coming right down to the beaches. The drive was about 3 hours, we made a couple of stops. This picture is of Jaco, a small town famous for its surfing.

Manuel Antonio is the national park, but has a ton of hotels outside that are really close to the entrance and located up on a cliff above the park. The cool thing is that along the rode you notice a lot of electrical and telephone cables and then a lot of bright blue ropes tied across the street as well. We found out that in the past the park was finding a lot of dead squirrel monkeys fried by the wires so they installed ropes which they quickly learned to be safe. As we were driving we say 3 little squirrel monkeys crossing the ropes, it was so cute, little bright orange guys.

We were staying at a hotel right near the entrance to the park and got there just in time to eat lunch and then have the afternoon free. One thing that we learned about Costa Rica is that sun and weather play a huge role in what you can enjoy. Costa Rica is located just south of Tampa, Florida but has the same time zone as Salt Lake City, translate that to a 5AM sunrise and a 5:30pm Sunset. Costa Rica being a highly agricultural country has not changed there time zone and likes this early sunrise and sunset. The other thing is that we are in the rainy season, so every day by 4:30pm expect rainfall…and that exact thing happened. Doug and I went to the beach around 1pm and had to go back around 4 because the sun was gone and DARK clouds were moving in.

We spent the evening in the hotel room watching TV in English (we randomly had 3 channels from Denver) and got caught up on US news (scary stuff about the bridge!). Dinner at the hotel and then some drinks in the pool with some of the students and we called it a night!

We were up early and headed out for a day in the actual national park and some more beach time! The park was truly breathtaking seeing the jungle come to the beach front and enjoying the large amount of wildlife. One thing that I have learned on this trip is that I am not a huge of large tour groups that ask a lot of redundant questions (or that spend ten minutes pointing out the obviously HUGE sloth that everyone else in the group has already seen in the tree). So after about 30 minutes, most of the students and myself decided to split from our tour guide and enjoy the park on our own. We grabbed a beach spot and enjoyed the quite time. We saw some wildlife including howler monkeys, lizards, iguanas, birds, long nose koatamundies (SP?), and my favorite, the white face capuccine monkeys. These little guys came right to the trees were people were sitting and started interacting with everyone (we had already been given a warning to watch our belongings as these little guys were famous for stealing snacks, clothes and cameras! I was literally less then a foot from them…so fun!

We headed back to the ship around 3:30pm and got back around 6:30pm and ran into Anne and Rasa who informed us that Ray had broken his foot playing volleyball the previous day and that they were going to try and get him off the ship for dinner. Poor ray was on crutches and a bandaged foot. After a long treck down the pier and a good dinner close by we headed back to the ship for an early night. We had planned on getting a ab to drive Ray down the LONG pier, but as I mentioned earlier Puntarenas is DEAD at night and not a single cab was coming by, so after about 15 minutes of waiting I got Ray on my back and carried him about halfway down the pier till Doug was able to get a wheel chair off the ship. I am sure he will kill me for putting this picture online…

Our last day in port was pretty chill and a good day of just relaxing with friends that sadly I will not see after another 17 days L it can be summed up pretty quickly by saying Ray is in a cast and mostly likely needs surgery, lunch was whole fish, laid out on the pool deck on the ship, dinner was the best Costa Rican Chinese Food I have ever had J

So we are on our first one day crossing right now, which means that scary but true, we will be in Nicaragua tomorrow morning already! We rented a house on the beach, so this should be a fun relaxing time! Love ya all!