The Holidays in Costa Rica

Christmas in Turrialba, Costa Rica

2011

 My mom, Berto's mom and dad and I were walking from their house a couple blocks to his aunt's house for their family Christmas. Every year it's at someone else's house. His mom is bringing snacks and his dad is looking like Santa with all the gifts on his back! It was so nice for everyone to be together. I can't remember the last time I was with both of my parents for Christmas! :-) And I didn't have to choose between who to be with. 

 Uno Jenga!! So fun! My dad joined in and played too :)

Miriam is spinning the twister board and Berto is dancing!!

 Some games while we wait for it to be midnight. Here we are playing twister! Or "colocho" which is also the name for curly hair!

We put out mattresses on the floor for more seating during the gift opening and for beds after the gift opening finishes around 4 AM! The entire family has a sleepover and enjoys lunch the next day and watching the bulls on the TV, which are on TV until the new year every year beginning after Christmas. In Costa Rica, they don't kill the bulls, only put a bunch of people in the same space as the bulls while they try to taunt the bull but run away before they get seriously injured. Some are not so lucky and fly through the air from the horns of the angry bull. But many of the participants dress up in a themed costume for the night or red. They know exactly what they are getting into!

We turned on the radio just minutes before it became Dec 24 midnight, and every year the announcer says "FELIZ NAVIDAD, COSTA RICA!" And at that moment, everyone began cheering and jumping up and down and hugging each and every person in the room!

 Amanda is beginning to hand out some of the presents. The younger cousins go up to the pile of gifts and read "De: Rachel, Para: La familia Chacón" for example and everyone cheers. We did this system one present at a time for their gift exchange from midnight until 3:30AM on Dec 24th.

 Amanda hand made this little Santa Jack-in-the-box for my parents. It has a little striped sock below where it says Feliz Navidad! She thought of the idea and crafted it all by herself!

 She wasn't expecting to get anything! 

Berto gave my mom a typical carreta, the transportation used behind ox or bulls. They used to use them all over Costa Rica, now mainly only in the country. But it's something nice for her desk at work and very symbolic of Costa Rica!

 Even little Jorgito got to open some presents! New clothes!!

 Berto is wearing the hat that my mom gave him with the name of her company on it. And around his neck he's wearing the travel pillow that used to be mine but I gave to him especially for his trip and because he would always make fun of me for carrying that pillow with me everywhere. He brought both of them with him on his exchange to the United States!

A beautiful dress that I saw in Arenal that Berto secretly bought for me for Christmas! I put it over my shirt as soon as I opened it, too bad you can't tell how pretty it is! It has purple flowers, my favorite color!

Año Nuevo, New Years in Turrialba, Costa Rica

2012

Getting to Know the Locals

Getting to Know the Locals

When you come to Costa Rica, you can only hope to get a tour guide as good as Don Sergio! Here, he spotted some smoke and a fire burning outside of this local family's home and in the month of December in Costa Rica that can only mean one thing....tamal making!!!

We pulled the car over and Don Sergio got out and called inside, "Upe!" And asked if we could come in and watch the process. And here it is, the insider on a family spending time preparing the tamal for the month. They had some music, unexpected type of music, nightclub type coming from a radio as they were preparing them. 

A typical tamal has masa, arroz, meat, and a few vegetables. This family looks like they were making it with rice, carrots, green beans, chicken, and cilantro. Yum!! There is also a type of salty tamal. Stay tuned for the posting where I pull on my hair net and make a large pan of those hand made. Literally-mushed-between-my-hands-hand-made!

Here are a few wrapped up in banana leaves and ready to be boiled outside over the fire.

Here is their big fire where they will be boiling the water for the tamales.

Very nice family who let us into their lives for a few minutes. Gracias!

Guayabo National Park

Guayabo National Park

When I was a wee little Rachel growing up, I LOVED collecting rocks, smashing them open with a hammer, and pretending I was an archae-geologist. Well, coming to Guayabo National Park, the largest archaeological site in Costa Rica and the only real one I've been to, was pretty awe-inspiring experience.

It is located on the southern part of the Turrialba volcano. It is 540 acres of pre-Columbian ancient ruins, comparable (although much smaller in size) to the Mayan ruins of Mexico. My travel book tells me it was inhabited between 1500 B.C. and AD 1400, but so much of it is still shrouded in mystery. It says it supported a population of roughly 10,000 people before being abandoned for reasons nobody knows! The picture below is thought to be the center of the city, the biggest mound in the center is thought to have been inhabited by the chief. You can see where there's a separation of the trees in the background, is the 21 foot wide (HUGE) stone laid walkway, which is believed to have extended between 2.5-7.5 miles!! 

This is so interesting to me! If only we could go back in time for a day to see what it would be like with people walking around, and what they wore! And what they looked like and how they spoke and how they worked. I can tell you from seeing the perfection in every stone that was laid in the walkway, that they were very hard workers. Building every mound and every single step of a 7.5 mile 21 foot wide road stone by stone, piece by piece. I wonder how long it took! It amazes me...

^Illegally standing on the walkway. Don't tell anyone! You can see how wide it is. The road goes straight towards the chief's mound. Imagine how many traveled on it. It has held up a lot better than any road in Minnesota from summer to winter that's for sure! I also wonder if it has any other religious significance or other meaning, like the huge road runs in the direction of north and south. But since I didn't have a compass, nor could I tell where the sun was in relation to what time it could be, nor the direction of the wind blowing, nor nothing of the lost ancient ways of the people that lived there could probably be able to do, I couldn't find an answer to that.

Just look at how every small inch of space contains a rock that fits that space like a mosaic. And each piece is smooth and flat which creates a perfectly smooth road. And Look in the bottom of the photo, an ancient keen sandal! Who knew.

Smaller pathways around the mounds. 

The mound of the chief. And that green circular patch? Who knows, but my educated guess would say that it's a place where people gathered to hear the chief speak. Anyone seen Avatar? Remember how all of the Na'vi gather around the Eywa tree on their knees and listen and pray together? That's what I imagine haha..

^ something like this ^

Berto and I at the tree of Eywa...

Avatar reference #2 in 2 minutes. 

Actually just a really huge tree with some crazy roots!

We followed another path through an incredibly dense foliage to get to this amazing observatory point. How beautiful. 

Coffee Tour

Coffee Plantation Tour

This is how they heat the huge tumblers which dry all of the coffee beans. Can you imagine how much wood that must take? How much heat that produces? Believe me, you could feel it!

Que montón de café, verdad?

This machine shakes the coffee and separates it by quality. The heavier beans are better quality and fall to the right while the lighter and lesser quality separate into the left.

A bag of coffee!! Maybe I can mail it home?

We were lucky to see a shipment (a whole truck load) of coffee berries being dumped from a truck into the measuring mechanism at the coffee plantation. That aparatus behind the worker is how they count the coffee they bring in, abacus style.  

Don Sergio is showing us how the coffee pickers wear their basket and pick the berries off the plant. Coffee pickers are among some of the cheapest labor in Costa Rica. They wake up at the crack of dawn to catch the one truck that can load them in the back to take them to work, work all day long picking berries, fill several baskets each day during many hours, and make 

Another Unplanned Random Tour from Hospitable Ticos

Really, you can't get much more of an experience of a culture and country than to drive with Don Sergio, who everybody loves and gets along with, who drives you around and stops when someone's house looks interesting and asks if we can come in and look around.

Milk, Cheese, and Sour Cream Homemade Here

Giving the cows a massage..."utter" bliss...bahahhaha

Oink oink!

The father. Biggest thing I've ever seen. 

Big Momma! Bring her to the MN State Fair!! Poor thing was electorcuted accidentally and can no longer walk, lucky for all 15 of her lil piggies! 

Family Vacation in Arenal

Hotel Los Lagos

Arenal

We stayed at Los Lagos Hotel, which is known for their access to the hot springs. They have constructed  pools with slides, a swim-up bar, stone paths, all heated by the volcano. Definitely a sight to see! 

On this trip was Berto and I and my parents! We laughed a lot and had a great time.

 Feeding the ducks some tortillas!

 My mom at Los Lagos Hotel.

 A view of La Fortuna waterfall from an observatory point. We then walked down 500 stairs to see it and 500 stairs back up to the car.

 We all stopped at a coffeehouse in Arenal with comfy couches and chorreadores for real authentic Costa Rican coffee.

 Berto and I were able to get student/national discounts whereas internationals get charged more for almost everything. If they can see you are from the US, Canada, or Europe, you will be asked to pay more without you knowing. From what I remember I only paid $2 for the hanging bridges, $5 for the waterfall, and $2.50 for Guayabo National Park.

 We though the bridge we were on was high, then we looked up!

 Here is the view from one of the bridges.

One of the hanging bridges we went on. My dad unfortunately didn't enjoy the view! He held on tight and looked straight ahead the whole time. What would you do?

 A traditional type of coffee maker in Costa Rica, called the chorreador. The coffee grounds are put in the cloth hanging above the cup. Then hot water is slowly poured over the grounds and it leaks through in to the cup. Maybe this is part of the secret of great Costa Rican coffee!

Our hotel also had ant, butterfly and frog farms, crocodiles, and fish ponds. Here's a crocodile!

Meanwhile in Turrialba


My parents rented a private shuttle for us to get safely back to Turrialba. I think if you can afford to spend a little extra, it is definitely worth it. We had plenty of safe, our luggage nearby and safe, air conditioning, freedom to stop whenever we wanted for bathroom, food, or pictures, and it's quicker than a bus. In our case, we were able to take a short cut that buses are not even allowed to travel on! Faster travel when you're short on time= definitely worth it.

Cajeta! Coconut and sugar. This one was bought in a store and so lovely presented in a coconut shell. Don Sergio makes them himself, too and explained the process to me and I imagine it to be like cooking risotto, a long and slow process, constantly stirring and watching over it.

 This was taken at the Terramall in Cartago. We took my parents to see the movie Año Nuevo (English with spanish subtitles, because no, my parents do not understand spanish other than queso, baño and hola) at the VIP movie theater lounge.

 Berto went to the university in Paraiso which is about an hour away by bus. Here he is holding all of his bus tickets for the past two years.. and this is ONLY two years! He earned his degree in four. Let’s take a look at the stats!

In only two years...

422 bus rides which is the same as 422 hours on a bus or 17.6 days costing approximately 278,520 colones or $557. 

That means in four years it totals 844 bus rides which is the same as 844 hours on a bus or 35.2 days costing approximately 557,040 colones or $1,114. Ouch.

However, earning a university education in business administration and english from the most prestigious university in Latin America?...yep you guessed it. Priceless.

This Minnesotan muchacha is jealous that Berto's house grows chocolate trees and other exotic plants, attracts wildlife such as this bird, brings in fresh air and sunlight INSIDE their dining room. Very common in Costa Rica for houses to have at least some part of their home open to the outdoors. 

 There are two Rawlings factories in the world. One in Japan. The other in Turrialba, Costa Rica.

 Rawlings Factory!
I WILL have a tour before I leave Costa Rica. They say its prohibited, but I'm going to find a way.
Until then, I picked up all the red stitches I could find (from the baseballs) that were laying on the ground outside of the factory.

 "Future City" a.k.a. the cemetery

Love how Beyonce and J.Lo this dress makes my butt look. What I should've really said there <---- was "Look how nice this picture is of my family and Berto and his parents."