4-in-1 tour

Pretty interesting, huh?? This is one of MANY vacas (cows) in the middle of San Jose! There is an exposition going on right now and they are all over the downtown area. Katherine and I spent the day Saturday in San Jose. Apparently the cows will be there for 3 months total and then there will be an auction and probably some of the hotels, etc. will buy them. The artists have donated them to the city, if I understand correctly. The thing I enjoyed most about visiting San Jose was simply the hustle and bustle of all the people. There is an "Avenido Central" that is closed to traffic where there are lots of people, and as you can see from the picture below, plenty of street vendors selling various articles. There were also people singing, preaching, playing musical instruments, etc. We went to the Gold museum and also to a small museum of Costa Rican money. We had lunch at a fabulous restaurant in the Grand Hotel, which has an outside patio which is great for watching the people. We also went inside the National Theater, which is very beautiful. The other main activity was shopping at the Mercado Central. It was quite amazing! There were LOTS of different kinds of shops selling souvenirs, meat, chicken, fish, leather goods, herbs, spices, etc. You name it - you could probably find it there! We got lost a couple times, it is so big!

Sunday we went on a "4 in 1 tour" which included a coffee plantation, Poas Volcano, La Paz waterfalls, and a trip on the Sarapiqui river. I really enjoyed the coffee plantation. It was so interesting seeing the "cherries" and the whole process by which they produce coffee. Below is a picture of the cherries. They pick them by hand when red and then wash them and process them. If I remember correctly, they go through about 4 different times and pick them because they ripen at different times. Different types (European roast, French roast, etc.) are roasted for different amounts of time. All of the coffee produced in Costa Rica is Arabic, which is the highest quality. They don't have as much land as many other countries, so they make it up by having the best instead of the most!

The next stop was Poas Volcano. It is up in the mountains and was freezing cold! Unfortunately, we couldn't see anything because of all the clouds that rolled in. Oh well - such is life. Next we visited La Paz. There were areas with exotic birds and monkeys, a butterfly garden, and a hummingbird sanctuary. I really enjoyed sitting and watching the hummingbirds (colibris) and could have spent a lot more time there. After a good buffet lunch, we walked to the spectacular waterfalls. They really were quite beautiful. Finally, we drove to the River Sarapiqui where we got on a boat to view the wildlife. We didn't see a lot, but we did see a large black iguana, a caiman, some howler monkeys, and an anhinga. I've now seen (in the wild) two of the three kinds of monkeys Costa Rica has.

Templo Waterfall - 85 feet

I apparently have some kind of stomach virus, which is not much fun, but fortunately it doesn't seem to be too bad. It could be from some food we ate, but there are a couple others at the school who seem to have something as well, so we are surmising that it is a virus. Hopefully it will run it's course and I will be well very soon! Classes this week are good, with just two of us with one teacher and then in the afternoon I have private tutoring. In the afternoon we've been going over my diary. I've been writing it in Spanish - very good practice, but it sure takes a lot of time. It has provided some very good examples for my professor to correct me and help me understand the grammar!