viajes.

So far, I've been in Costa Rica for a little over a month and other than a bit of homesickness and food culture shock (overload of rice and beans) I have had a really great time. Since I've been here I have been somewhere every weekend. The first real weekend we went on a Canopy and Crocodile tour in Jacó and then decided to spend the night in Manual Antonio. Manuel Antonio is the best beach ever. There is also a national park where you can see animals of all sorts. Next time I visit I'll go in the park, I just went to the beach this past time and went to a beachfront church service. 

Here are a few pictures of the experience:

Fidel Castro

Church in my bathing suit! 

The second trip was just a day trip to a beautiful Cathedral in Cartago (one of Costa Ricas provinces) and to a coffee farm. This was the first time I encountered rain in Costa Rica so when I got dressed in my shorts and so I didn't know I was going to freeze for the first half of the day. Luckily, by the time we got to the Coffee Farm it cleared up and was wonderful. This experience was really nice because I think that Coffee and Catholicism are two very important things in the culture of Costa Rica and without this planned trip I probably would not have seen these places. For you to enjoy:

La iglesia de Cartago

I love stained glass.

Beautiful ceilings

YES, thats coffee! 

All the different roasts, I didn't know there was this many!

yeah, just hanging out with beautiful landscapes 

mm.. coffee in my COW MUG!

My culture professor CARLOS!

Coffee on the tree, you learn new things everyday

beautiful Costa Rica!

so pretty!

hmm:)

This is what I would look like if I was a construction worker!

And this past weekend I went to Puerto Viejo and slept in a hammock! It was very lovely! Puerto Viejo is on the caribbean side which is super nice but it was an adventure but a very fun adventure! We arrived at about 6:30 to this small hippie town and settled into to our hammock hut. Then went into to town to find some food. We ate and headed back to party central (our hostal) and hung out. Everyone was drinking and partying it up so me and my crew headed down to the beach and hung out for a bit. It was nice to sit on the edge of the ocean and enjoy life. After a while we headed to our room full of hammocks and cozied up in our hammocks. It wasn't the most uncomfortable night of sleep but it wasn't great because everyone came in at different times, talking about different things so I didn't get too much sleep the first night. We woke up early to head into town to eat at this place called Bread and Chocolate. Sounds delicious right? AND IT WAS. Leah and I shared some sunny cinnamon pancakes and a banana muffin while everyone else indulged on the delicious organic food. We bought our return tickets to San José and headed back to get ready for the beach. We rented some bikes and biked for about 30 minutes to a beach called Punta Uva. Here we encountered huge waves, a few showers and a ton of sand (black sand at that!) After toughing out a rain and dodging some waves we headed back to the hostal to clean up. For lunch we decided to just get chips and salsa and such from the grocery store to try and stay on budget and then we spent the afternoon relaxing around the hostal before the parties started. Before our bike time ran out we took one last bike ride into town and took some pictures. Here are a few:

always a long line for the girls birthday

BIKES!

beautiful

COCO, and check out my outfit!

our hammock hut.

some of the mosaiccccs:) it was so cool!

Later on we decided to get "street meet" in town and head over to an organic icecream shop where the icecream blew my mind. As I began to get into the good part (yes, the cone) I thought I should locate my bus pass for the morning and OF COURSE being a part of the Pittman family, I had lost it. Boooo. I suckered for the rest of the night about me being stupid. Blah, I'm tired of writing ... so yeah. It was super fun and I'd go back any day!