Pura Vida is the slogan of Costa Rica and means pure life. This week we got to spend time in Nicaragua’s neighbor to the south. While there, we got to be tourists, students, and we got to relax. We left our houses last Saturday morning for Managua where we went ziplining on Mombacho volcano. It was awesome! There were 11 platforms and various different types of ziplines. Then Sunday morning we got up super early to be on the 7:00 bus to Costa Rica. It was election day here in Nicaragua, so not many people were leaving the country and the border crossing went fairly quick. We got to San Jose by 3:30, an hour and a half earlier than expected. Then we got to go to where we would be spending the week.
We were each responsible for taking pictures of the people behind us ziplining, so here is Maynor on one of the lines.
We stayed at Whitworth College campus, in an old French restaurant up in the mountains. As soon as we got there, we knew we were going to be spoiled. It is a beautiful place with surroundings that remind me of Colorado. Other plusses of staying there: hot showers and really good food! The downside: it was cold!!! We were not expecting it to be quite that cold, so we spent many nights shivering in front of a fire. Because it was so cold up at the campus, we forgot that spending all day Tuesday in the city would be warmer.
A view from the campus of Whitworth University
We went into San Jose Tuesday morning to a neighborhood called La Carpio. This neighborhood is primarily made up of Nicaraguans who have immigrated over the last 20 years looking for a better life. We spent the morning with Christ for the City, playing soccer and volleyball with the kids there. Then in the afternoon, we went around with Cesar, a pastor who lives in La Carpio. Cesar is very well respected in the community and took us to a bunch of different houses and people walking in the streets. We got the chance to interview the people about their lives in Costa Rica and their homeland of Nicaragua. It was very interesting, as Cesar took us to the poorest of the poor in La Carpio. We even talked to a gang member who was staking out his gang’s territory. Unfortunately, none of us had thought to put on sunscreen that morning and we all looked like we had been at the beach for too long by the end of the day.
Monday we spent on the campus doing things for class. In the morning we had a long anticipated debate over different theories of development we have been learning over the semester. We weren’t entirely prepared, but it went fairly well I think. In the afternoon we got the chance to walk around the 27 acre campus, full of trees and blackberries. Then we watched a movie called Nica/raguense, about the Costa Rican view of Nicaraguans living in their country. It was an interesting preview of what we would see Tuesday in La Carpio.
To complement our learning about the Nicaraguan immigration, Tuesday night we had a speaker from the Costa Rican Housing department come in and speak to us. All of the discussions were especially interesting because we had Maynor, a Nicaraguan, with us. Maynor had never been to Costa Rica before, but had many preconceptions about the country and its people coming from a rivalry between the two countries. This brought an interesting twist to many of our conversations and gave us an extra view into the relationship between these neighboring countries.
The rest of the week we got to spend being tourists for the most part. We spent Wednesday in downtown San Jose, walking down the main drag and visiting the Museum of Gold. It is definitely a different world from Nicaragua in Costa Rica. Everything is much more American/European looking and it is not hard to see that Costa Rica is a richer country. It was really hard to believe we were still in Central America with the cooler climate and the modern things all around us.
Yesterday, our last day in Costa Rica, we were going to go to Volcano Poas, but it was too cloudy, so instead we headed to a Waterfall garden. It was rainy while we were there, but it was still a really cool place to go. On the walk down to the waterfalls, there were many plants and animals, like a zoo and botanical garden mixed in one. We got to hold toucans, see all different kinds of hummingbirds up close, play with a jaguar through the glass, and try some traditional Costa Rican cake and tea. Then we walked down to the 4 waterfalls. It was a beautiful hike, with many fun pictures taken along the way.
Me holding a toucan!! It felt super weird.
An awesome tree frog
One of the waterfalls
This morning we had to leave at 3:30, so most of us just stayed up all night and slept on the bus ride. Thankfully, our travels all went without any big problems and now we are all in Leon, although very tired. Next week, everyone starts their Service Learning portion of the semester. I will go back to Rancho Ebenezer, but this time I get to stay Monday through Friday, so I am hoping to get to do some new things. Four weeks from today I will be flying back to the bitter cold of Minnesota. Crazy! The time here has just flown by, so I am hoping to make the most of the last month.
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