We´re cold, wet, tired, and hungry.....and it was an awesome day!

This past weekend was incredibly fun for all of us. On Friday, Anna, Ben, and Kristen all came over to my part of the country – Heredia – to socialize, explore, and do whatever else we felt like for the weekend. Once again, I managed to make everyone wait for me, as I was late in finding both Anna (15 minutes) and the Ben/Kristen pair (allegedly an hour and a half). We’re obviously adapting to the culture down here quite well – la hora tica!

After we all found each other, we headed back to my home to introduce my friends to my family and to have some dinner straight from the increasingly famous kitchen of my host mother Elizabeth. I can’t even begin to describe how cordial and welcoming the families we’ve encountered here are. Anna’s family greeted us extremely warmly for the night we were in San Pedro, and my family here was more than delighted to shack up all my friends (and feed us, offer us car rides, feed us, arrange bedding, feed us, etc…). Ben and Kristen are very excited for Anna and me to meet their host family. After a lovely meal Friday evening, we decided to head to bed early for the following morning’s travels. There was hardly room for all four of us in the two rooms that we had, but we managed.

We decided to go to Volcán Barva, a volcano here near Heredia which has long been inactive. Most people recommend seeing Volcán Poás because you can drive straight to the top (in other words, no hiking required) and it’s more organized for tourists. Well, we prided ourselves as more adventurous people than that. =)

Getting to Barva was an adventure in itself. Despite getting up at 5:30 Saturday morning, we missed the bus we needed to take to get directly to Sacramento, a small village near the entrance to the Volcano Park. After navigating through a maze of buses (and the usual scrambled directions from helpful locals, of course), we finally found a bus to San José de la Montaña, a small town a little farther away. Once there we looked for a taxi rojo (the official, licensed taxis of Costa Rica), but not being able to find one we were forced to take a taxi pirata (pirate taxi) which was expensive, slightly illegal, and probably not entirely safe. Nonetheless, we arrived safely.

By arrived, I mean our driver took us up a road that made a sudden transition from paved street to 4WD terrain only, and he told us that was where we get off. We had read that one must either take a 4WD vehicle or walk to the ranger station/park entrance, but we didn’t know that this would be such a middle-of-nowhere switch. This was about 8:30 am, and so began our walking. Getting to the ranger station itself took about an hour, and hiking through the park another four hours or so.

The park was absolutely incredible. The beauty of the paths was well worth the mud that we trudged through. The pathways are surrounded by incredible flowers, trees, and other plants we’d never seen before, including sombrillas de pobre (poor man’s umbrella), whose leaves are unbelievably large (see posted pictures). After reaching an observation point (from which we saw mostly cloud, but plenty of green lands stretching far below as well), we trekked to a small lagoon. The lagoon was absolutely tranquil, and surprisingly majestic for being so small. Starving at this point, we rested and ate our soda crackers with PB&J we had packed. Shortly thereafter the clouds rolled in – we watched as a cloud gracefully descended the hillside and filled the lagoon. Not five minutes later, we literally watched rain approach us from across the lagoon and it did not cease until after we had past the ranger station on the way back to Sacramento. This made for a somewhat miserable hike back, but I don’t think my companions would disagree in saying the natural beauty surrounding us made up for the cold feet and wet clothing.

After finally getting some hot chocolate and food into our stomachs from a couple restaurants in and around Sacramento, we made our way back to Heredia (an even more adventurous myriad of means of transportation). Following a wonderful dinner at home – a meal whose taste was augmented by our fatigue – we spent the evening at a relatively quiet bar discussing all the important things in life, as only close friends can do.

I’ve certainly written too much for a single post, but as this weekend was shared by all of us, vale la pena (it’s worth it). Pictures of the weekend will be streaming in as soon as we can post them. We hope all is well with you back home. ¡Pura vida!