Adventuras y Despedidas

Greetings again from San José!

What a fun-filled adventure week we´ve had! We finished all three of our projects last week in Las Mesas. Our bodega at the school is wonderful! For the final touch, we poured cement into a sidewalk and signed all of our names so we'll always remember the work we did in our beloved Las Mesas school. The rock wall we built at the church looks fabulous, and the students are incredibly proud of both the wall and the freshly-painted Sunday school rooms. Blue has never looked so good. Last but certainly not least, we completed our community service projects in Las Mesas by painting a fence and a shed at the local cemetery. Although the cemetery was the farthest walk away from our homes, it had the most beautiful view. Rolling mountains, incredibly clouds, and miles of coffee farms could be seen from our worksite.

After a week of living with families, we all said tearful goodbyes to Las Mesas last Thursday. I think that many students would say that their homestay week was the most positive, interesting, and captivating part of our stay in Las Mesas. We all worked on our Spanish, ate delicious meals, and became close very quickly with our ¨mothers, fathers, and siblings.¨Our fiesta de despedida was a huge hit with the tiniest of children successfully opening a pinata, many community members in attendance, and our final farewell to the community as a whole. Thursday morning was hard. Las Mesas had become our home for three weeks, and we were all sad to say goodbye to it. But say goodbye we did.

And we were off for the beginning of our adventure travel week. Our first stop was Pura Suerte, a beautiful organic farm up in the mountains of the Perez Zeledon region. From our cabins on the farm, we hiked to a magnificent waterfall, where we swam for hours in a fresh water pool. And we completed our Pura Suerte day indeed with pura suerte (pure luck). A few of us made it to the top of the mountain to see the most beautiful sunset we have ever witnessed. From our viewpoint, you could see the entire Osa Peninsula and the Pacific Coast all the way up to Manuel Antonio National Park. It was so magnificent!

Adventure week continued at Corcovado Adventures Tent Camp, just outside of Corcovado National Park, where we lived in platform tents, ate ceviche for an appetizer every evening, saw a locust larger than we could have imagined in our dreams, lounged on the beach, went snorkeling off the coast of an island, and completed our day with a close-up view of at least two dozen dolphins, swimming right along side our boat! We had a truly wonderful week of viewing animals (including monkeys!), sunsets, beautiful vistas, and, of course, so much of the Southwestern region of Costa Rica.

Now, we are returned to the Hemingway Inn in San José, where we will sleep a good night and wake up early for our rafting trip down the Rio Pacuare tomorrow. We´re all looking forward to it, although we know that the end of the rafting trip means sad goodbyes to each other!

Hope all are well at home!

Take care,
Hannah and Jesús