Costa Rica, Day One

We left for Costa Rica on Wednesday, February 27. Our flight to Liberia, Costa Rica left Atlanta at 10 am, so it was an early morning for us. We were up at 4:00am, on the road by 5:15, and at the airport by 7:00. We were the first of the UGA group there, but we were quickly joined in the ticketing line by several others on the trip.

Our plane took off from cold Atlanta, and after an uneventful 4 and a half hour flight, we were in hot and windy Costa Rica. We quickly went through customs and in no time were on the bus headed to San Luis.

Our first stop was about 45 minutes into the bus ride, and we had lunch at Rio Tropicales. It had a cute resturant and gift shop, and was a place where you could go rafting/canoeing. And I was delighted to find Coca-Colas in the larger glass bottles. Yummmm. . .so good! My resolution for one coke a day was out the window when I was outside the USA.

The view from Rio Tropicales

The roads in CR are rough, to say the least. They are bumpy and curvy and our bus couldn't go more than 40 mph. We took some Advil and pain pills to proactively prevent and back pain, and I had lots of dramamine!

We had a great tour guide that told us lots about the country, Juan Carlos. If you ever go to CR, you MUST have Juan Carlos as your guide. He was the absolute best and we all loved him.

We stopped along the way to take some pictures of an active volcano. On the other side of the road, it was beautiful and mountainous. We were there during the dry season, so it was a little brown. But it was still beautiful!

We arrived at Monteverde (the larger town outside San Luis) at 6:30p (central time) and checked into the hotel, but didn't go to our rooms. Instead, we loaded into smaller buses and headed to the UGA Costa Rica campus. We had a great dinner with the students who are currently studying there. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and crashed.

Marc crashed hard.

It was a long and exhausting day, but was worth it to see such dynamic students and faculty.