Costa Rica…where to begin? It’s no surprise that I took another summer to travel but man did Costa Rica surprise me. I would describe it as exciting, fresh, and new. It is so vastly different than any experience that I’ve ever had but I’m loving it. For my first blog post, I am going to go into my different experiences of Costa Rican culture more specifically, social culture, food culture, environment culture.
The Central American social culture is so inviting and friendly, even on the plane from Orlando to San Jose, an elderly Puerto Rican woman sat next me and could only speak Spanish. Even after I told her my Spanish is very bad she talked to me the entire flight (I had to pretend to be asleep a few times to catch a break). The welcoming culture didn’t stop there either! Talking to the customs guard with some fantastic Spanglish was quite literally the best customs experience I’ve ever had. It’s very interesting and I deeply appreciate how the energy you give to a Costa Rican is reciprocated in equal amounts. Even the taxi drivers trying to pick up travelers were VERY respectful and would leave me alone when I responded with a singular no. At La Selva, I had good conversations with every tour guide that I’ve had. They are so kind, genuine, and deeply in love with the rainforest and the creatures within it. My favorite part of chatting with the tour guides is getting them to talk about their own experiences. One of my first tour guides for our bird hike, (I unfortunately don’t remember his name, but I do remember that he had two missing fingers on his left hand) and he was fantastic. He was so sweet and gave us so much information. I had not seen a monkey yet and so when someone spotted monkeys in the trees I asked if we could stop and he could show us. He helped me get some fantastic photos and also talked about how when he was growing up he one, didn’t have electricity and two, lived near a farm and so if they left their doors open spider monkeys would come running in and steal their fruit! My tour guide for the night hike, was named Jeremy.
You could immediately see how much he loves life in the forest. I asked him all kinds of questions like how he learned English (by himself in order to get jobs, and his English was absolutely fantastic! He got all my silly quips and jokes like a true native English speaker!). He also told me about the time he was bit bullet ant (for him the pain only lasted 3 hours). Overall, I have not had a negative interaction with anyone. Everyone always says Hola when you walk by then, the kitchen staff is always kind and patient with me since I’m gluten free, and even the laundry workers and gate guards that I’ve talked to are so so so genuine, welcoming, and helpful. I love Costa Rican social culture!
I ADORE the Costa Rican cuisine. Amanda and I arrived at the airport extremely early so we waited at a cafe. We were waiting in line to get food and was filled with my per usual sad acceptance that the only thing edible for me at this cafe would be fruit. To my surprise though, they had meals of arroz con pollo, or rice with chicken. To me, this was a rare win for a person with celiac in a cafe but little did I know that this was a norm with Costa Rican food culture.
The food at La Selva research station is amazing. Generally, I don’t usually eat breakfast since it’s all food with gluten but here, breakfast is by far my favorite meal. I love the beans, rice, and sunny sides up egg plus sausage like meat (a gluten free heaven let me tell you). Also they are INCREDIBLE
at cooking and flavoring meat!! The sausage and pork chops are to die for and the fish is super good too. Don’t even get me started on the fresh juices as well. Every meal there’s a different juice and I definitely think it is a top contributor to me being able do 15 hour days everyday without dying.
I also wouldn’t be in Costa Rica without talking about the nature here. My initial three words seeing Costa Rica was jurassic, vast, and green. My literal first reaction was that this has got to be where Jurassic Park was filmed (spoiler it was). My other strong reaction to the environment was seeing
how short the buildings in the city were and the amount of tin roofs. I wonder their efficiency especially since there is so much rainfall here. I looked it up and I found that Costa Rica has over 100 inches of rain yearly.
My mind was also blown with how lush and green it is here. Growing up in Colorado, it is very dry, mostly plains, and the majority of green is from pines or evergreens. Indiana’s greenery was shocking to me so coming to Costa Rica was flabbergasting. I had no concept of how green a place could be. Another interesting observation I had was during the drive through with the mountains to La Selva. On each side of the road, it was sheer cliff faces however similar to drives in Colorado mountains however, unlike Colorado, where the cliff faces would be red rock, Costa Rica’s cliff faces were all vegetation. It was crazy to see plants growing horizontally instead of vertically on these cliff sides. It is also incredible the amount of work that the Costa Rican President has done to reforest the country. I was astonished to learn that many years back Costa Rica had one of the highest deforestation rates in the world and now it looks like this. It gives me some hope for future conservation efforts being successful.
Anyways I hope you enjoyed my initial thoughts and anecdotes about this beautiful and intriguing country.
Until next week,
Alaina
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