Costa Rica Faves

I decided to go through and pick some of my favorite pictures from my trip to share!

My friend Ari and I spent a month in Mastatal, a small town of only 150 people located in the mountains. It was beautiful there.

Every day we each had Spanish classes.

Our homework was to go practice what we learned by talking to our host families that spoke no English. Here is Mine! They were amazing.

Here is our home.

My host mom Arabella was an amazing cook. I never went hungry. Here is our outside kitchen!

Here is my room!

If you look closely you can see some dark stuff in the middle. It's bat poop and it reappeared every single morning in the exact same spot. 

 This was also in my room one day. Thank goodness for my host dad Isidro who took care of it for me.

Here I am trying to get a frog out from under the wardrobe. 

Arabella came to the rescue. 

She also made this (which was longer than my hand!) fly away and killed a cockroach for me. She was incredible.

For thanksgiving Marcos got Sarah a turkey. Turkeys are hard to come by in Costa Rica but he found one!

We all got to help prepare it.

Know what this is? Cocoa fruit. Inside are the beans that are dried, peeled, dried again than ground to make chocolate!

Star fruit.

Ari and her brothers!

In the mornings we helped the volunteers. Here we are laying concrete to build a new composting toilet.

Yes you read that right. Composting toilets!

This hammock was heaven on earth. I could lay there for hours after a hard morning of work. 

Anyone want their counter mosiaced? I am pro at it now. 

Every few months there is a dance and everyone goes within miles goes. 

Everyone danced the night away, well until Midnight, maybe one, which is super late for these small town folk.

The songs kept being interupted by the DJ and later we found out that he was auctioning of a chicken and a bottle of whiskey.

Other weekends were spend here at Seco's bar where we practiced our Spanish with the locals.

One weekend all the volunteers went to Manuel Antonio on the coast.

It was beautiful there! 

We saw all sorts of Monkeys, sloths, racoons, and Iguanas there!

And got to see the pacific coast.

Afterwards we went up North to Monteverde where we went ziplining. 

Black sand beach in Puerto Viejo

Ohh the Caribbean Coast.

Thank goodness we didn't have to visit them!

San Jose

3Musketeer Mcflurrys. Soo good and not available in the USA.

We spent our last night in Costa Rica in the poor part of San Jose wrapping Christmas presents for poor and homeless kids. Such an incredible night.

There's Costa Rica in a nutshell!