Another Vacation?

I gave my 9^th grade English students an assignment last week to describe an event that didn’t turn out the way you thought it would. Little did I know I would have a prime example to share with them so soon.

One week ago today I had a meeting with the immigration office in Tela, and I found out I needed to leave the country within the week to renew my visa. The only rules – I must travel by airplane, I must be out of the country for at least three days, and I can’t go to any of the surrounding countries (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua). After a few hasty phone calls and emails, the amazing Young Adult Service Corps staff booked me on a flight to Costa Rica to leave that Friday. Lucky for me, fellow Honduras YASCer Claire also needed to leave the country by the end of the month. So within a few short days, we found ourselves on a flight to San Jose.

Getting on the plane

What I'm pretty sure is Lago de Nicaragua taken from the plane.

I have to say, I am absolutely amazed by the way so many people worked together with such little time to make this trip possible. With only three days’ notice, Yanick who works for church in New York was able to book our flights, and communicate our arrival with the Episcopal Church of Costa Rica. The Costa Rican church in turn arranged for a van to pick us up from the airport, helped us book bus tickets and a hotel room for a vacation paradise at the foot of a volcano, and got us on our way.A few hours later we arrived at Hotel El Silencio del Campo in La Fortuna at the base of the Arenal Volcano.

After the craziness of the week leading up to that day I was so happy to be in an amazingly comfortable hotel with a hot shower. To top it off, the hotel had natural hot spring pools. Claire and I had an amazing time lounging in the hot water discussing all sorts of things from what we miss the most from home to what have we learned about ourselves and God during our time abroad. We also enjoyed a wonderful hike through the rainforest. The funniest thing about our trip? We never even saw the volcano. It was raining so much the clouds were covering it the whole weekend.

Hot Springs

Believe it or not this is a ficus growing around another tree and slowly suffocating it. Crazy!

Claire and me in the rain forest

View of Arenal Lake, the largest man-made lake in Central America.

La cascada escondida - the hidden waterfall (and that's me!)

Butterfly!

We also got to milk a cow, I guess I can check that off my bucket list :)

On Sunday we headed back to the Episcopal Church guest house. We had a great time hanging out with a young adult missionary from the States named Paul. He took us to a great place for dinner. The next morning, Claire and I took a bus downtown to do some exploring, and then Paul took us to see one of the church’s community projects. It was such a great experience for me. The Costa Rican church has put a lot of time and energy into creating what they call a daycare center. But it’s really much more than that. It’s a place where single moms can take their children from 6am to 6pm, giving them an opportunity to work or go back to school. I will definitely be posting more about this in a separate blog post. Afterwards, we got lunch and then headed to the airport.

Apparently this is what we would have seen if it wasn't raining (I found this poster in the airport).

You may be thinking this is the end, but this story doesn’t turn out exactly as expected. After waiting in the airport for a while, we were told our flight would be delayed an hour. As that time drew closer I began to get concerned about the fact that we weren’t boarding and the employees were talking on the phone with concerned looks on their faces. Come to find out, our plane was having mechanical issues, and the flight was cancelled. The airline put us up in a hotel and comped our dinner and breakfast before flying us out with another airline the next day. After several lines, a few hours of waiting in the airport, a 20 minute van drive, a 2 hour bus ride, and a short taxi ride, I finally made it home to Tela. It was really nice to sleep in my own bed last night, but I can’t really complain about an extra day of vacation in Costa Rica :)