Irazú Volcano y Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles y Hot Springs y Coffee Plantation y Get Togethers

Best day of my time here so far!

Irazu

We took a bus at 8 am on Wednesday to visit one of the famous Costa Rican volcanoes. It's an hour or two bus ride east of San Jose, accompanied by a significant gain in elevation.

Side note: We reached a point along our bus route that has a fun fact: At this location, the landmasses of the North and South American continents is split exactly in half. Kind of cool!

It got cold. I'm thinking the temperature was around 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Add a breeze and some pelo de gato, you've got yourself a legitimately cold environment. More so, it was the foggiest day I've ever seen in my life.

That made it really hard to see the volcano, haha. We weren't able to see anything but the wooden rail around Irazu right in front of us. Perhaps I'll come back another day to see the volcano, because on a clear day, you can look down into the volcano which would be worth doing.


Another side note: Apparently on a really clear day, standing on top of Irazu one can look into both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans! There's another place in Costa Rica where this phenomenon exists, too, on top of the country's highest peak, "Chirripo."

The visitor's center/gift shop was absolutely packed with tourists. I got a cafe con leche but didn't like it very much. Not sweet enough, haha. Anyways, we soon left for our next stop to...

Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles

This church, in the city of Cartago, is the most famous church in Costa Rica, and arguably the most famous in Central America.

Every August, Catholics from all over the world go on a pilgrimage to Cartago, similar to the pilgrimage that Muslims make to Mecca. It's common for them to backpack across large parts of Central America on a month-or-so-long journey. The reason this place is mostly famous comes from a religious folkloric story: In 1635 a child found a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary; it's known as "La Negrita" because it's made of a dark wood. The child brought it to her home 3 back to back days, but during each night it mysteriously returned to its original site. The priest of the tribe tried to keep it too, but it still returned to its original site. The statue was then believed to have great healing powers and remains in the church today (locked up in some secret room, shucks). We happened to visit the church on Ash Wednesday, so the town was thriving with Catholics. Because of this it felt a little more awkward than usual as a tourist to snapping pictures and gaping at the architecture.

Hot Springs

Backtracking back to San Jose, we went to a coffee plantation/hot springs. The place was absolutely gorgeous!! It looked like, well, take a look for yourself, haha:

Even the pictures don't show the beauty in its entirety. It really blew me away. Colorful birds flying around, exotic flowers everywhere, surrounded by breathtaking mountains, this was truly a haven. We swam in the hot springs for a while, had a delicious lunch of rice, beans, potatoes and chicken, sipped on pure Costa Rican coffee and ate "orejas," a kind of sweet caramel biscuit snack that is meant to compliment the coffee.


Coffee Plantation

For the tour of the coffee plantation, everyone took their full mugs of coffee and headed up the mountain to the factory site. The coffee beans are mostly picked by hand, and anyone can do it and get paid for it. Tourists, locals, schools, anybody. There are a few machines that shake the beans off of plants but they are surprisingly not used that often. After collection, the coffee beans are separated by their ripeness and then de-shelled. The shells get piled up in this massive heap which smells like poop. A very disgusting smell. We passed this heap on the way up the mountain, mistaking it for the actual coffee and first thinking, "coffee is not supposed to smell like that!" Anyways, the beans are then heated (not roasted) and kept barns in gigantic piles. Each pile was about 10 feet wide and 12 feet deep. Our tour guide allowed us to go inside one barn, something generally not done on most tours. Furthermore, the guide asked me if I'd like to jump into one of the pits of coffee beans! Of course I said yes, and she gave me a bag to fill with beans. It was amazing. I sunk waist-deep in the bean pile (which was surprisingly warm!) and had to empty my shoes of coffee back at the hot springs.

Get Togethers

To celebrate the birthday of a sister of my host stay dad, we had 20 or so people over for lunch and cake Friday afternoon. Sisters, husbands, brothers, daughters, nephews, nieces, everyone came. And everyone talked so fast. It was so hard to understand what was being said.
Saturday night, Diego's girlfriend and good friend from high school came over and we had pizza (Pizza Hut take out haha) and talked for hours and hours. Again, it was hard to understand everyone. Dinner conversations are a completely different monster compared to classroom discussions. I was starting to get frustrated. Not understanding a joke and having to still laugh (or at least crack a smile) is not fun.
Today, a nephew of the family came by for lunch. He looked about my age and the four of us chatted. He was the hardest yet to understand. Real nice guy but gosh darn I just can't contribute to any conversation because I am only understanding fragments. Asking everyone to slow down doesn't work because then every single sentence has to be explained to me 3 times in 3 different ways and I end up looking up words in the dictionary every 8 seconds. Sigh...I know it always starts out this way and that I'll get better soon enough, but it's still very frustrating.

Random Comments

- I have had more cups of coffee in the last 24 hours than I've had in my entire life.
- I've also stepped in more gum here than in my entire life - weird!
- Sidewalks should be called sidetreks or something instead. They consist of patches of cement here, a higher-up patch there, then a hole in the ground...followed by grass...steps...another hole...car ramps...the list goes on. Haha
- First time in my life I've had a TV in my room (excellent Spanish learning tool) :)
-I doubt I will ever eat on a paper OR plastic plate here. Everything is glass and ceramic. Even at our park picnic last weekend the catering company brought glass dishware and utensils. It's a little ironic because the city streets are lined with trash.
- My host mom cleans my room once a week. So far both weeks she has literally rearranged my room. Chairs move, lamps move, my shoes move, clothes, etc. It's just the way things work around here! Haha

Thanks for reading everyone