WOW! What a week! Since school ended the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Dani and I set out to explore and experience the beauty of Costa Rica Friday monring, after a wonderful American Thanksgiving meal! For Thanksgiving Karla prepared a Paula Deen style turkey and sweet potato casserole (with Costa Rican sweet potatoes of course), we also served a few more dishes and made up a pitcher of sweet tea! You can´t get more American and Southern than that!! We had a nice Thanksgiving dinner with some of Karla´s firends and new friends that we have made during our stay here! It was very nice, we shared the tradition of our Thanksgiving of going around before dinner and saying what you are thankful for! It was great to share our American way of Thanksgiving with our Costa Rican friends.
Friday morning we woke up early and headed to Ostional excited to see a black sand beach and the Olive Ridley sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs! After one broken down bus, a very bumpy ride on another, and an 40 min walk we finally arrived in Ostional. We went striaght to the beach when we got there and were able to see quite a few turtles coming out of the ocean to lay eggs! Ostional is an area where scientists and biologists study the Ridley turtles. Also in this area Ostional villagers are able to legally harvest turtle eggs in the first 36 hours of an arrival of eggs. So, while we were walking along the beach they were many Ticos laying on the beach digging holes in search of a nest. This was interesting to learn about because even though a small percentage of turtles actually survive after birth, the community is allowed to remove some the eggs that may possibly survive for commercial purposes. Yet, there are many nests on the beach that are blocked off and villagers cannot collect eggs from these areas.
After we left Ostional we traveled to Costa Rica´s surf capital Playa Tamarindo. There we just spent time on the beach enjoying the beautiful weather and swimming in the clear blue water! Dani and I just returned today from La Fortuna and we had a great time. While in La Fortuna we visited three hot springs, the Arenal Volcano, and we rappelled down 4 waterfalls, one that was 220 feet tall! We also ziplined at Los Lagos Resort! We had an amazing time, got some great pictures, and really got to experience the beauty of Costa Rica like we wanted! For the remainder of our time here we plan to visit some more beaches and soak up as much sun as we can before returning to NC!!!