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February 16, 2009
Ah Costa Rica...
... pura vida indeed!
So, I've hopped from India to Costa Rica. It was quite a trip. Another 30 hours of travel thanks to my frugal (possibly too frugal) flight planning. I flew from Hyderabad, India to Frankfurt, Germany (10 hrs). Then from Frankfurt, Germany to Atlanta, GA USA (10 hours). Then I flew from Atlanta, GA USA to San Jose, Costa Rica (4 hours). With layovers, customs, immigration in 2 countries, and security... it was 30 full hours of fun-packed drama. The highlight of which came early on in the trip from Frankfurt to Georgia when some lady in front of me allowed her baby to climb up the back of her seat and vomit all over my pants.
I hope my company's customers realize the crap I go through to flying coach for 24 hours with babies puking on me to keep costs down.
At any rate, I've been here in San Jose, Costa Rica for 4.5 days now and it's actually been a wonderful experience. I don't think I've ever fallen in love with a country so quickly as I did here.
Coffee is one of the main exports here and I happen to be a coffee fanatic so I decided to go on the coffee lover's tour put on by Cafe Britt. It may have been one of the best tours I've ever been on anywhere. The tour guides where amazing, hilarious, and the guy was so cute in his little plantation hat and boots (I tend to believe he has never worked in coffee fields before as his boots looked almost mint as did his uniform.
There are a lot of things I didn't know about coffee. For instance, I'm sure all my friends will mock me (being such a history buff) for not knowing that the coffee we know was first discovered while the Arab world was trying to discover new medicines for the various plagues of their time.
Also, a pope actually put his holy blessing behind coffee. It's good to know that the Holy-see has always focussed on the important things.
At any rate, I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, got to see some of the more beautiful aspects of the country. All-in-all a good time had in Costa Rica. Pura Vida!
Oh, and I have to say, for only having one semester of Spanish I retained a freakin' lot of the language! I'm not doing so bad communicating here. Kudos to my Spanish teacher Ms Caldwell who probably never would have guessed that a dorky underachiever in her high school Spanish class would need to know Spanish for a tour of a Coffee Plantation on one of his various international escapades. LOL Well done Ms. Caldwell, well done.
Posted by Decemberice at February 16, 2009 07:21 PM