This weekend

This weekend I went down south with Pamela to visit her family. To get there, we had to take 3 buses and go over Cerro de la Muerte, which is a cold mountain (3,491 meters) with lots of windy roads. The scenery was beautiful, but unfortunately I couldn't enjoy it completely because I got a little nauseous from all the turns. (I did on the way back though, because Pamela's sister works at a pharmacy and got me some anti-nausea pills!) Pamela's parents and sister are very nice and treated me like I was part of their family.

Pipa! Coconut milk is delicious.
Empanadas... yum!
The extent of my "wildlife" sightings have been insects so far... still pretty exotic looking.
Perritos (really friendly but I ended up with an arm full of flea bites after petting them!)Beautiful pericos.

Since I spent this weekend outside of the city, I actually felt completely out of my comfort zone. I was obviously the only European-American around and the only one who wasn't fluent in Spanish. It was definitely quite and experience and I think it was very good for me. Pura vida!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Switzerland!

Image
I was able to see quite a bit of this beautiful country! Need to return for more of the Swiss alps (Zermatt area). View of Lake Zurich. This summer, I finally made it to Switzerland! For years, my mom and I have promised our former foreign exchange students we would come visit them.  In June, I met my mom in Zurich (she was "on the way" home from a vacation to South Africa) where we were greeted by Silvia, one of our former students and friends.  We went up to the top of a hill in Zurich, overlooking the lake and city.  Turned out this was just the beginning of our adventures with her - Silvia was an excellent tour guide, and she found some spectacular places to take us hiking and exploring. We also met her sweet boyfriend Iwan , who loved telling us the history behind a lot of the architecture and churches we drove by. They even cooked us a traditional Swiss meal called Raclette , which we devoured in their home in front of their HUGE aquarium. Toward the end of
Read more

Rappeling and Tortuguero weekend trip

Image
Friday morning I went rappeling... do wn a waterfall! Once again, I had to face my fear of heights (t he waterfall was 60 meters t all), and I had a lot of fun. (After bungee jumping, it really wasn't that scary) I didn't reall y know what to expect, but it sounded fun so I signed up and volunt eered to go first from my group. As you can see f ro m t he p icture, it was extremely beautiful. Operating the rope to descend was a little unnatural, but I m ade it down with no problem. After desce nding, we had to take a short hike up the mountain to get back to our car. I ran into some interesting butterflies and crazy looking caterpillars on a tree. This weekend I went to Tortuguero , a beautiful National Park located on the Carribb ean side of the country. Getting to Tortuguero took a while because we had to take 2 buses and a boat through the canal, but the ride was relaxing and we caught some animals on the way. We also stopped at a banana plantation to learn a little
Read more

Mariposas: A metaphor for human transformation

Image
Yesterday morning we went to the butterfly farm in town... I'll let the pictures do the talking for this one. It was one of the most amazing things I've EVER seen, seriously. My new friend :) In flight Halloween Butterfly Butterflies have a very short lifespan: 5 days to 2 weeks, at most. From this... To this! At different stages... The ones just hanging there are drying their wings, getting ready for flight. They like banana and mango just as much as we do! These guys can cost up to $5 each if you wanted to buy them as cocoons. Soo... next time you go to a zoo and see some butterflies like these, keep in mind they were probably imported! Anyway, everything else has been going well for the most part. The food is s till super delicious (a sundae I had at a local cafe on the right!) but it does give me quite a stomach ache. Class is really fun. Yesterday we played "Taboo" in Spanish and talked about whatever. Our teacher is very lenient and mostly lets us talk ab
Read more