Alajuela
On Saturday, November 17th, I along with around 30 other schoolmates boarded a charter bus and took two planes to San José, Costa Rica for a service project & vacation. What occurred in the next eight days became the best travel experience of my life.
On Sunday, right after we arrived in Costa Rica, I ate a traditional Costa Rican lunch of rice, beans, chicken, and tortilla chips before arriving at our hotel in Alajuela, a large province slightly north of San José. The hotel, called Casa Cielo Grande, was situated further up on the mountainside with a gorgeous view of the city below. At night, the city lights flickered as we splashed in the outdoor pool. I shared a large one-room, two-bathroom house with many of the other girls in my class, along with my sister. After a few long days of traveling and sleeping in the uncomfortable bus and plane seats, I gratefully sunk into the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
Cafe Florida & “The Jungalow”
The next day my group, which was comprised of mostly seniors and juniors along with a few sophomores, took a five-hour bus ride to a sustainable coffee & cacao farm called Cafe Florida. On our way, we stopped at a bridge to see crocodiles lying in the sun and at a Costa Rican supermarket to pick up local snacks and fresh-squeezed juice.
We stopped in the mountains at a roadside restaurant with a view of the jungle; it was beautiful. Next to the restaurant was a fruit stand, and the man who worked there was very happy to show us different kinds of local fruit and even let us taste most of them. My favorite was called mamon chino. It’s pinkish and spiky on the outside, and to eat it you break it open and a round, peeled-grape-looking fruit is inside. It’s very sweet and juicy.
After a long day of driving, we arrived at Cafe Florida and met Roy Cisneros, the farm owner, along with his wife, young son, and their adorable dog, Pecan. The Cisneros family showed us around their farm and let us try cacao straight from the plant, as well as their other plants and herbs. Cafe Florida is incredible because it is almost completely sustainable and eco-friendly. The Cisneros family uses fecal matter from their pigs to power their stoves, and they eat only what they grow or buy from their neighbors. According to Mr. Cisneros, the family grows bananas, coffee, cacao, coconuts, mangos, lettuce, and many various herbs. They also raise tilapia and shrimp in their pond, keep cows for milk, chickens for eggs, and guinea pigs to be pets for their son.
After touring the farm, Roy and his family led us to their porch, where we were taught how to make empanadas and were able to try steaming hot cups of Cafe Florida coffee with fresh cow’s milk. The family’s story and their farm were so inspiring and a great reminder to support local small businesses over large corporations.
After I devoured my empanada, we headed to what we called “the jungalows,” little huts in the jungle where we spent that night. The girls discovered a nasty surprise when we realized that we had left our back door wide open all afternoon, inviting all of the bugs and jungle creatures inside. What followed was a night of screaming and panicked scrambling around the jungalow when we found numerous beetles, cockroaches, and spiders. This was the first time I learned that in Costa Rica I had to learn how to be okay with bugs.
Nauyaca Waterfall
The next morning I woke up early and headed down to breakfast with the rest of my friends. We ate rice, beans, eggs, and fresh pineapple. During breakfast, we talked to a little boy named Matias, who was the son of another local farmer. He loved seeing himself and the rest of us in our Snapchat filters, but what he loved, even more, was making fun of the way we looked with the Snapchat filters. We all had a lot of fun with Matias, even though our Spanish was pretty rusty.
After breakfast, Roy (of Cafe Florida) took my group and a bunch of dogs to the edge of their village to begin our hike down to the Nauyaca waterfall. We began our descent into the jungle, and the hike turned out to be a lot harder than I had expected it to be. The path was narrow, and most of it was muddy and slippery due to the early morning rain. I would be lying if I said that many of us didn’t slip at least once. Hiking through the jungle was a beautiful experience, and I was able to see crabs, birds, termites, and various other jungle creatures. Thankfully I didn’t encounter any snakes.
As I got closer to our destination, I could hear the roar of the waterfall. We all hurried down the rest of the hill, excited about the prospect of swimming and playing in the waterfall. The trees opened and suddenly I could see it: a large, thundering waterfall ending in a huge pool full of people swimming and splashing around on the rocks. I stripped off my shorts and shirt and ran into the water with my friends and half a dozen excited dogs. The water was warm and felt amazing after our sweaty hike, and the rain that eventually hit was an added bonus. I sat on the rocks with my feet in the water and talked to my friends, splashed water at the dogs, and jumped numerous times from a rock ledge into the water. A more thrilling part of the day was seeing some daredevil tourists climb the actual waterfall with a rope and jump off of it, doing flips and turns on the way down. After we all got our fill of swimming in the pool, we took another shorter hike to the upper level of the waterfall, where we spent time doing individual reflections and just enjoying the roar of the waterfall and the spray against our faces.
Eventually, we began our grueling hike back up to the bus. Going up was, in a way, easier than going down, because the risk of slipping was minimal. However, it was very steep and it had gotten hotter since our morning hike. As we got to the top of the hill, our leaders JP and Travis told us that the bus had gotten stuck five miles away and we had to walk to it. I was about to just give up and take a nap, but thankfully it was a (cruel) joke, and we boarded the bus and headed to San Salvador, where we would meet our host families.