Costa Rican Thanksgiving

Over Thanksgiving break, I went to Costa Rica with my friends Stephanie and Ruth. We had a great trip, relaxed a lot, and tried to spend as much time in the sun as we could. It did end up raining every day while we were there but we worked our schedule around that. We flew out early on Thursday morning, almost missing our initial flight! The taxi driver that we had arranged to pick us up didn't show, then the taxi that was coming that we called didn't make it. The next taxi that they sent couldn't get into our neighborhood, later to be found out that the guards were sleeping at the guardhouse. Nice! We made it with about five minutes to spare at the gate! After an easy, short flight to San Jose, we caught a ride with two other teachers that were there that had rented a car. It was nice to have a ride and to get to stop and see a few other places as well. Here are some of our first views of Costa Rica. It was beautiful and I loved seeing all of the green everywhere!!!!

We stopped along the road at this one bridge across a river and there were a bunch of crocodiles (maybe alligators.....I can't remember!!!) just chilling out down there. What a sight! It was so cool! There were seriously about 30-40 of them!!!

They were BIG!!!

This was where we stopped to view the crocodiles/gators. It is obviously a big tourist stopping point, so they were of course selling things at this area!

I just love all the colors!!!

Palm trees everywhere!!!!

Our friend was telling us that they have palm tree farms where they harvest the palm nuts and palm oil and stuff.

With the national beer of Costa Rica....Imperial! It was pretty good. This was our Thanksgiving dinner! I had arroz con pollo, a traditional Costa Rican dish, chicken and rice.

Stephanie with her Thanksgiving dinner of fish (I think!)

The pool at our hotel, the view from our room!

It was so nice to be able to take the public buses in Costa Rica. This is one "luxury" I really miss from Korea. The safety issues in Guatemala keep us from riding the public buses around. I miss easy and cheap public transportation!!

We found this little open air market near our hotel in the town we were staying in. It was really cute and they had all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables that you can imagine. It was fun to walk around and see what we could/would buy if we lived in Costa Rica!

Our hotel was connected to a casino. One of our rainy evenings we took our ten dollars and messed around in the casino for a little bit. I think you can see from the picture who was the big winner and who lost all her money!!!!

Everywhere we turned in Costa Rica was a sign for pollo frito (fried chicken) at these little hole in the wall establishments. Stephanie and I decided to try a few of them out. Wow, were they good!!! We miss our pollo frito!

This was the view from our hotel where we ate breakfast every morning. Although it was right in front of the beach, we didn't hang out on this beach much. We took the bus to another area and went to the beach.

One day when we were taking the bus home it was very very crowded, so the bus driver let me sit on the metal part right there where the money is kept. He started asking me if I spoke Spanish and we were trying to have a conversation. I just thought he was pretty much the cutest thing ever, so of course I wanted a picture with him!!! ha ha. There were a lot of cute Costa Ricans (Ticos.....that's what they are called!)

While we were there, I even caught part of the Kansas/Missouri footbal game!!! Can you believe it, it was on air in Costa Rica!!!! And of course look who is winning!