Pura Vida

COSTA RICA TIP #1 – For heaven’s sake, remember your Yellow Fever Card!

While home over the winter holidays, I woke up one morning at 6am with a start – “I don’t have my Yellow Fever Card, it’s in my Cartagena apartment.”  CRAP.  I have no idea why I thought of it so randomly.  I grabbed my computer and Google told me that you only need it if you’re entering from a yellow fever risk country.  Luckily Canada isn’t one of them, but I live in Colombia which was on the dreaded list.  Would they even know?  I was getting a fresh new passport that wouldn’t have my Colombian visa or stamps (or Southern Africa stamps for that matter too).  I was flying to Cartagena from San Jose afterward, but who’s to say that wasn’t my first time entering Colombia?  Would it be on the customs form?  What would happen if they found out my Colombia connection?  Would I be quarantined?  Denied entry to the country?  Arrested?  I didn’t know what to think and with under a week before my departure, I had no idea what to do.  The travel clinic was closed for holidays (surprise, surprise – I don’t know how doctors aren’t ragged on as much for vacation time like teachers), so there went the idea of having them rewrite me a card (they’d have it on file, right?).  CAA Travel told me not to worry, and asking about five friends that I knew had been to Costa Rica before made me calm down a bit because some didn’t even know what it was.

As it always turns out, I didn’t have to do anything.  The border guard said a grand total of two words to me (“Hola” as I walked up and “Gracias” as I left), and the first hurdle, which I thought was the biggest, was overcome!  The next one was finding the mysterious bus that would take me from San Jose to Parrita where Sheryl lives.  Arriving with 30 minutes to spare, I found the bus and took that time to remember how to breathe and relax.  Turns out I didn’t have to rush because we waited probably an hour past when we were supposed to leave, waiting for late people who had been on the bus reservation.  Central America and South America officially had similar outlooks on timing and the lack of set schedules.  I finally made it to Parrita, met up with Sheryl, and had the whole pool house to myself to avoid the dog and two cats in the house.

That’s Sheryl’s main house taken from the pool house.

Over that week, it was a wonderful combination of crazy extreme sports and doing nothing at the beach.  My Fitbit definitely reflected that, sometimes getting my 10,000 step goal easily, while other days I struggled to get halfway.

The first adventure was rafting (no photo evidence because of the water).

Then there was ATVing!  Sheryl said I was a bad driver, but the rain made it more slippery for the person in the back, making it seem like they were going to fall off!  And going through the river parts would make us swerve and it was tough to keep it straight!

Some of the scenery and us on the ATV.  You can see the rain drops!

Sheryl had injured her leg before I got there, so the ATVs the day before were a little much, so she sent me off to do ziplining alone.  But it was still an amazing time, flying through the trees and seeing monkeys and poison dart frogs.  The other people in the group were all in couples, so I took my pre-tour picture with the guides!

Good advertising right there.

Then there were the beaches!  About 30 minutes away in Manuel Antonio, there was a beach just outside the National Park where Sheryl knew a bunch of people who either worked at the beach with the chairs and umbrellas or in the restaurants.  She knows everyone!  We did meet some new people, including my new friend Diego who is from Cuba.  He is temporarily living in Costa Rica with a big group of Cubans that are on a huge journey to the United States.  They actually started in Bogota and worked their way through Panama to Costa Rica.  They are waiting for their visas and immigration papers to come through before finally getting placed in the States by the government.  It sounded like it had been a tough journey, but very exciting too!  Him and another guy from the tour company he is working for recruited Sheryl and I to go do the ATVs, and then another day on the beach he helped convince me to do parasailing behind the boat!  We also hung out a couple other days too before I left.  I’m hoping he gets to the US soon and is able to start his new life there!

Diego slackin’ while on the job, but then he took sweet pictures of me parasailing.

Sheryl actually lives across the street from another beach that was pretty empty all the time, not touristy at all!  So there were always beautiful sunsets and great pictures to take of them!

Another interesting part of the trip was that the house was lacking in water for most of my time there.  The lady who takes the responsibilities of the landlord because he lives in the States was not exactly very efficient at getting things done, so we were bathing in the pool and dumping buckets of water in the toilets to flush them manually.  Kind of a gross experience, but it could’ve been a lot worse.  We were being pretty good sports about it, Sheryl apologized a million times, but I knew she was doing everything she could to get the lady to get up and do something about it!

Overall, Costa Rica was a great trip and a super way to check off my 10^th country!  Vacation ended way too soon as always, but hopefully the next one comes fast!  But probably not as fast as my family doctor’s next one.

City & Country Hopping on Weekends

TRAVEL TIP #2 – Always have the address of the place you’re going in a foreign country. 

The next weekend we made a quick trip to Bogota to sort out passport things in the capital, but also see some of our students take part in the Binationals Sports Tournament.  We arrived at CNG, the big school in Bogota, and my 6^th SACSs School’s campus I’ve been at.  We walked towards the soccer fields where the girls were apparently waiting to play, and as we rounded the corner, I saw not only COJOWA students sitting on the stands, but GI students right next to them!  Everyone yelled “MS. WILSON” and I didn’t know who to react to first and I sat in the middle of both groups.  Then I discovered they were playing against each other (for the 5/6 place game, but still).  Of course.  All the girls from both schools asked who I would be cheering for and deep down I had to cheer for COJOWA, but GI would always be something special too.  GI ended up winning 2-0, but it was fun to watch both of my schools and both of the soccer teams I had helped with play against each other.

We also visited downtown Bogota for one afternoon and found the government buildings, including the Justice Building (above).  This was the site of the 1989 attack by the guerrilla group M-19 and thought to be orchestrated by Pablo Escobar.  It was kind of neat because we had just learned about it from watching Netflix’s Narcos.

The next weekend after that, the weekend trips kept rolling.  Christian has family in Orlando and his aunt works for Universal and was able to host us and help us get into the parks for free!  We were especially excited about the Harry Potter parts, both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, that Universal has at their parks.  After a long trip through US Customs (we didn’t think about asking for their home address before we left and of course had no way of contacting them in the foreign country.  Naturally, two suspicious Canadians were sent to a side room where we waited for another hour before getting a chance to talk to the Border Guards and phone his aunt who was waiting outside for us!), we had the evening to visit part of Universal Studios quickly.  We went on some rides that I had remembered from my last trip to the park, which I calculated to be around 10 years ago.  I had to take some pictures that I could match up from the previous visit, but some things had changed!

Then and now with the Back to the Future Delorean:

Then and now with the Universal Globe:

We also visited Diagon Alley (which is AMAZING by the way), had to get some Butterbeer, and had dinner just outside the park where a steady stream of people were exiting around closing time for a good couple hours.  The next day we got our passes for both Universal Parks, went on a bunch of rides, saw Hogsmeade and took the Hogwarts Express back to the Diagon Alley part in the other park.

Dragon on top of Gringotts bank in Diagon Alley

Wands for sale at Ollivander’s shop

By the end of the day, after much contemplation, we decided the trip wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t bring home some Hogwarts School robes, so I officially have my Halloween costume for the next few years at least!  In the picture, our wands are sticks from the backyard.  We didn’t buy the $40 wands, that would be too ridiculous!  Not that we weren’t ridiculous already…  It was an amazing trip and was very lucky to get to go on this quick trip to the USA.

The last couple of weeks before school ended went by pretty quickly.  We had a random holiday on a Tuesday and it was a holiday in Colombia called Dia de las Velitas where you light candles and let them burn all the way down, make wishes, and don’t go to school for some reason.

We had a group day trip to Playa Linda, a short boat trip from Cartagena, and I found some new friends who like math as much as me as we worked on some in the sand!

I was definitely ready for some time off to visit home and then off to visit my friend Sheryl who is now living in Costa Rica!