Costa Rican Thanksgiving

On Wednesday of last week we found out that our Visa’s were expired for Honduras and that we had to leave the country for a day in order to renew them. Unfortunately the visa law says that we cannot go to a boarding country – so instead of going to El Salvador as we had planned, we had to go to Costa Rica. (oh so sad) So, within 12 hours of finding this out, we were in a van (the 9 of us North American’s) and heading through Nicaragua and into Costa Rica. We had some problems at the border and Honduras was not going to let us out – so we waited around while our driver was trying to negotiate a deal with them. We finally paid them a “tip” for helping us and then drove on. After a 15 hour ride, we got into Tamarindo, Costa Rica at 8:30pm. At first there was no room for us at the inn’s, but we finally found one.

Friday morning we explored the town and found a hostel to move into! It was cheaper to stay there for two nights than the hotel for one, so we moved into two small rooms at the hostel. It was quiet an adventure – Tristan and I shared a single bed in the room of the boys (it was hot and smelly in my opinion J). But it was an adventure and nice to save the money to do more exciting things. After that, we went Canopying through the woods – which is a string of ziplines about 60 feet in the air. It was a blast! Some of them were really fast, some were slow so we went upside on them. It was a set of 10 ziplines that took over an hour. It was very cool – now we want to do some over canyons and see monkey’s or something. We rented a scooter (Dan, you would’ve loved!) and drove that around town – we looked like complete dorks! Friday night we all went body surfing in the full moon watching the fireworks in the distance… wow!

Saturday morning we went with Sarah and Vanessa (who also had rented a scooter) and left the town to find a beach to go snorkeling. After a 30 minute ride through the country, and having to wait for the cows to cross the road, we arrived at a beautiful and quiet beach. We then walked another 30 minutes to a black sand beach (wow!) where we tried out the snorkeling. Unfortunately we didn’t see much and the waves were crazy so we ditched that idea and just enjoyed the sun. But we did get to see some pretty angel fish. I also collected some really cool shells and coral to give to my kids for the ocean unit in science that I’m starting. Saturday night we went to a local restaurant and ate their ‘typical plate’… once again … Wow! It was amazing. It was funny because the whole time all of us were talking about how good the Honduran typical plate sounded.

Sunday we left Tamarindo at 5am and arrived back in Honduras safe and sound by 5. The boarding crossing was very interesting and were very happy to have a drive take care of us. To both enter and leave a country you have to pay somewhere between 1 and 7 dollars a person. This depends on the mood of the person who is taking your money. Lempiras (Honduran money) is about 20 Lempiras to a dollar. Nicaraguan money (Cordobas) is about the same. However, Costa Rican money (Calones) is 525 to a dollar. So it was very confusing to have to convert from the dollar, to lemps, to Calones for every transaction.

We really enjoyed Tamarindo but next time we go we’re going to leave the tourist area and find something more ‘normal.’ We found out that Tamarindo was 80% foreigners living there.

So, that was our Thanksgiving break and we are now legal again for another 90 days. Hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We thought about you all and wished you were in Costa Rica with us.