Ojo de Agua y Santa Ana

Fact: it is simply unrealistic to travel every single weekend. And it wasn't me who realized this. Rather, it was my host mom. We actually spent one Friday exploring Santa Ana, an area west of San José, to show me an alternative to the beach, to visit a family member, and basically just to have fun. First, we went to a famous river in Costa Rica called Salitral. The river has a special mineral in it, saltpeter. I even tried some of the water at a fancy fountain and it was definitely full of minerals. Yum...

We then went to her relative's house/office that is close to the river. Her sister-in-law Maritza is a orthodontist, and the building in which her practice is located is also part of her house. It's a small but neat setup: only two dental chairs but there's a narrow outdoor walkway that leads to the garage and the rest of the two-story house.

Later, we went to a Multiplaza which was basically a gigantic, American-like mall. We really only went there to eat lunch (first fast food I've had since I've been here: yeah Subway!) but we ended up walking around and checking out the stores, too. As I inattentively descended down an escalator, Yami said one word to me that lit up my eyes like never before: "Mira". I looked, and I saw a piano. A baby Yahama grand just inside the glass windows to a music store. I booked it down that escalator, hurriedly asked an employee if I could play it, sat down at the bench, closed my eyes and felt those sweet, sweet keys under my long-awaiting fingers. I played through 3 old tunes that were the firsts to come to mind before I felt it was time to say goodbye...for now. I'm determined to come back with my sheet music and play for hours over one of my super-busy fines de semanas :)

We also visited a water park called Ojo de Agua. It gets its name (Eye of Water in English) from the large hole in the ground that gushes out 5,000 gallons of water a minute. It has a few Olympic size swimming pools with 3 and 5 meter diving platforms, a waterfall, a small lake for kayaking, a golf range, soccer fields, a playground, and more. I thought to myself, this would indeed be fun to spend a day here with some friends...so I did:

The famous Ojo de Agua

A few ducks on the lake.

Yeah. That's me there in the middle. What, you guys don't remember what I look like? It hasn't been that long has it? Haha, I actually snapped this photo; that's my friend Jordan in the middle. I did go under that waterfall though. And MAN! I've never felt so ALIVE in my LIFE!! An intense brick wall of cold water hits you so hard it takes the breath out of you. SO ridiculous!

The water in the pools was also FREEZING. I probably jumped off the diving platforms 10 times but only stayed in the water for 2 minutes total. And regardless of the afternoon rain that cut our fun short by half an hour, we had an awesome time.

Topics for next post: classes, teaching and ticas :)