I know it has been a realllly long time since I updated but its been very busy here! So this entry will be about my spring break---what an adventure it was! I had 2 weeks off for spring break and the whole group went to Nicaragua for 3 days. It was amazing. We stayed in Granada at this beautiful hotel. We went on tours of Granada and Managua. We also went to a volcano and the lake of Nicaragua. It was really cool to see the differences between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
After Nicaragua, 3 others on the trip and I traveled around Guanacaste for the next week. We stayed in Liberia for 2 nights and while we were there we went to a bull rodeo/fight--which was actually really cool. The next day we went to a national park, Rincon de la Vieja. We hiked for almost 7 hours that day. First we hiked through a part of the forest that was pretty dense--we saw so many animals, a few different species of monkeys, so many cool birds and a couple others that I don't know names of. We also went to mud pits heated by the volcano that the national park is at. After the first hike, we hiked to this gorgeous waterfall, which took about 3 hours to get there and back. This waterfall was huge and we swam in it for about an hour. So beautifull. On the way back from the waterfall we swear we heard a Jaguar which was scary but also really cool.
The next day we traveled to Braselito, a smaller beach town. We stayed at this great hotel that had bunk beds and a full size bed, a fridge and a kitchen. That was really nice because we were able to buy food at a grocery store and cook our own meals to save money. Also the owner of the hotel let us use his bikes, snorkeling gear, and kayaks. We were about a 15 minute walk from the beach. We spent most of our time on this beach called Playa Conchal that was full of quarter sized shells instead of tiny grains of sand, it was really neat. Also the waves at this beach were HUGE. So we had a blast playing on the beach. We also went kayaking in the ocean. We saw probably 20 poisonous snakes...scary. We were kayaking by these huge rocks and the waves were white capping on the rocks which was kind of terrifying, but we survived...no problems!
After our 4 days in Braselito, we traveled to Nicoya and stayed at these cabins in the middle of the woods. We were staying there because the cabins were close to the caves we went exploring the next day. This hotel was really neat though because we were the only ones staying there. They only have 5 rooms and we occupied 2 of those. There was also a pool that we relaxed in during the day. It was neat being out in the middle of the woods because we could hear so many animals at night especially the howler monkeys and we could also see so so many stars.
The next day, which was friday, we went spelunking at this national park. We had to hike about an hour to get to the caves...completely up hill. It was a pretty intense walk. The caves were really cool. We had to climb down about 40 feet on a ladder and explored this cave. We had a guide with us and he took us through crevices that you would not think a human could even fit through. It was a really cool experience.
That night at 5pm we got on another bus to travel back to San Jose to get back to Santa Ana. It was a 4 hour bus ride which was pretty comfortable and went by pretty fast. Our spring break trip was so neat because the 4 of us were able to travel around parts of Costa Rica by ourselves, using the bus systems and staying at different hotels and learning more. It felt like we were more immersed in the culture. I loved it.
St. Patty's Day was yesterday, we went out to a bar but ticos don't really celebrate St. Pattys so it was very chill. I missed having corn beef and cabbage and a guiness. Next year though!
