La Semana Santa

So I was a little confused about exactly where we were going and what we would be doing for the holy week, but it was still a lot of fun. My family kept telling me about going to the middle of nowhere and getting out of the truck to cross a river and walking a couple hours further into the countryside to a relative’s house. Naturally I thought this is where we would be staying for the whole week since it was the only piece of information I had to go on, but it was just a side-trip. I guess it’s the highlight of the week for them so that was the only thing they told me beforehand. They also told me that they were saving up a lot of money because the trip would be expensive. Maybe I’m naïve, but given that, I was expecting to go to the beach, eat out at restaurants, go to the movies; you know, a typical vacation. But I guess their idea of expensive is different from mine. When I think of an expensive vacation, I think of paying for gas, paying for a place to stay, eating out, going to movies or other activities, etc. Their idea of an expensive vacation is going a week without working. Other than gas and food, we literally didn’t pay for anything else. We stayed at my host mom’s parents’ house and didn’t leave the house for an entire week. I’m not complaining at all: I had a great time. But I want you to know what a vacation is like for a Costa Rican family. We’re going back for two weeks in June and it might be different when it’s not a religious week. They did the rosary thing a lot so maybe we didn’t go anywhere because of that, who knows?

My brother and I refused to sit in the house and do nothing all day every day so we made some adventures with one of our cousins. The first day we went to a waterfall about an hour away on foot. The water was really cold but it’s so hot in that part of the country that it felt great. The second day was the infamous hike to the relative’s house in the middle of nowhere Costa Rica. I actually had been close to that place before when I took my trip down to the southern part for my PCV visit so I kind of knew where we were. The highway follows a river, which was huge when I went at the end of the rainy season last November but was practically dry last week. There are stories about people getting eaten by crocodiles in the past in this river before they had decent bridges. One of my cousins told me that they built the bridge first and later the water ran underneath… It’s not funny in Spanish either. After we crossed the river on a less-than-reassuring footbridge, we followed a dirt road up over a mountain, down the other side, across several creeks and through the valley until we got to my great aunt’s house. Apparently my dad has a tradition of running the seven kilometers and getting there first, so I decided to join him. Well we didn’t run the entire seven kilometers but we did arrive first! I literally sweat for two hours afterward. The place we went to was like a farmhouse with cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and other farm animals. They make a lot of cheese there, the kind that squeaks when you chew it, and it’s even better when it’s fresh like that. I never had squeaky cheese before in the States, so most of you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s no joke. I don’t really know how to describe it… it’s a unique texture for sure. We also cut down some trees that look similar to palm trees. I reckon that’s why they’re called palmitos. Near the base, the inside is soft and edible and they can use it to make picadillo. It seems like a waste to cut down an entire tree for a part of it about the size of a softball but there’s no other way to get to it. On the way back to the highway I ran with my brother. My dad had to carry a bag so he couldn’t join us, but he must have given it to someone else to carry the rest of the way because he caught up to us close to the end! Imagine a 45-year old dude running up and down mountains in work boots haha…

The third day we went to a different river an hour away in another direction. We left the house looking for guavas, which are different from what we call guavas in the States apparently. The outside looks like a mix between a banana and a pea pod. It has the length and shape of a banana but it’s flat like a pea pod and inside the seeds are in a line. The seeds are coated with what looks like cotton candy and that’s the part of the guava that you eat and you spit out the seeds. Anyway, I thought we would only be gone for an hour or so, so I didn’t bother putting on sunscreen before I left, but we quickly gave up the search and decided to head for the river instead. Just like all the rivers in Costa Rica towards the end of the dry season, it was pretty shallow but we were able to find some spots where we couldn’t touch the bottom. I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible but I got burned pretty good on my shoulders. Not so bad that I had blisters like the other time, but still. While we were there, we ran into a Canadian guy that married a Nicaraguan and has two kids that are Costa Rican citizens. He’s been in the country for fifteen years or so I think he said. Normally I don’t like meeting other foreigners in other countries. I think it’s because the kind of people that travel a lot tend to have a lot of money and are kind of snobby. That’s not to say that everyone who travels is like that, but that’s been my experience with the majority I’ve met. But this dude was really cool. The type that actually lives and works in a foreign country, as opposed to spending a work or two sightseeing, knows what’s up. That’s really the only way to learn the language, experience the culture and to come into contact with the people as they really are. Someday when I’m rich and snobby I’ll be able to travel from place to place, but for now I’m fine with working a year or two in each country I visit.

The fourth day my family and I minus our mom went to the beach; she was doing a lot of stuff around the house so my grandma didn’t have to do everything for everyone. I probably shouldn’t have gone since I was already burned from the day before, but this time I was careful to put on a lot of sunscreen multiple times throughout the day. They told me that we went to Dominical, which is one of the more famous beaches in Costa Rica, but I’m pretty sure we stopped at a random rocky beach several miles before the real Dominical beach. For one thing, the beaches are supposed to be super crowded during la semana santa, but there was nobody at this one. Nor were there shops, restaurants, hotels, nothing… Naw, it couldn’t have been Dominical, but it was nice to have a whole beach to yourself. I think I experienced my first rip tide at this beach, or at least the first one strong enough to make me worry for a bit. I don’t remember ever not being able to touch the bottom where the waves break, but that’s how it was at this beach. I like riding the waves so I kept trying to make it out to where the waves were crashing but I kept getting to this point where I could feel myself being sucked out and I couldn’t touch the bottom anymore so I got scared and swam back in. And it’s a good thing that I wasn’t stubborn enough to go all the way out there because a group of teenagers from the States all drowned a couple of days ago here in Costa Rica.

The following day I didn’t do anything because I had a killer headache. They said it was because I had been out in the sun too long too many days in a row and I think they were probably right. Although I think it was more the heat than the exposure to the sun. The heat that I experienced in that part of the country is what I had imagined that the whole country would be like before I came. The part where I live is in the mountains and it gets pretty cold here, especially when it rains, but in Platanillo (where we stayed) I was sweating just sitting on the sofa. There you would take a shower just to get out of the heat for a little while and then you would immediately start sweating again once you got out. I told you already that I sweat for two consecutive hours after jogging; I don’t ever remember sweating for that long in my life. At night I could hardly sleep. I had to wait until the sun had been down for several hours before it was cool enough to even bother trying.

The rest of the week we just visited other parts of the family in the morning and played soccer in the afternoon. Going home was just as much an adventure as getting there was. Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you how David (my host brother) and I got there and back. Keep in mind that I thought we had to cross the river and walk two hours and all that to get to where we were going. Also, they totally exaggerated that part of the trip anyway… it wasn’t a bug and snake-infested swamp haha. I was under the impression that we would all be leaving together in the same car at two in the morning on Saturday, but if I had been thinking I would have realized that all six of us couldn’t fit in one car and much less with all our luggage. So they sent David (pronounced “dabeed” haha) ahead on Friday with the school principal who was going in the same direction and I decided to go with them. Our principal has a really nice car, even for American standards, so here he gets a lot of attention driving it around. It’s not a hummer but it looks similar; it’s a Toyota something or other, I’m not into cars. So anyway, we went with him and joked around the whole time about picking up girls, but of course we never did. He dropped us off in the big San Isidro that’s kind of like the capital of the southern part of Costa Rica. When I tell people I live in San Isidro, they confuse it with this big one that’s actually called San Isidro General. From there we caught a bus to Platanillo. The story doesn’t sound so crazy now that I’m re-reading what I wrote, but it seemed crazy at the time. It all happened so fast: they asked me if I wanted to go just a couple hours before we left. And I thought we were going to have to walk through a swamp for two hours to get to where we were going. Also, it seemed adventurous because I had never been anywhere outside of our little zone with my family, much less alone with my brother, and I think it may have been his first time making the trip by himself. Well, he was with me, but you know what I mean, gringos don’t count!

On the return trip, we had to spend several hours in San Isidro General waiting for our bus, so we walked a half hour to an aunt’s house. It’s kind of crazy for me to be part of such a big family. My familia gringa as they call it only has ten members but my family here has well over one hundred. It’s like no matter where we are we could walk or drive a few minutes to a relative’s house to visit. We ended up spending a few hours there eating and chatting with some old guy who must be related to us somehow. He kept asking me about the agricultural products of Virginia but as I’m no farmer I only got as far as corn and tobacco. I forgot peanuts! The bus ride was rather interesting. They weren’t selling tickets and the driver lost count of how many people he had let on, so when it got to be my turn to get on he told me to wait to see how many seats were left. Well, there weren’t any and he had already let my brother on so I thought I was going to have to wait in the terminal by myself for the next one but David came back to the front and was like “Hey, this American is with me,” but in Spanish, of course. So the driver was like you’re OK but nobody else. During the ride, we started talking to these two ladies. I started talking to one because she looked like she could have been related to this teacher I know. As it turned out, she really was the sister of someone I knew, but someone completely different from the teacher I had in mind! And David was talking to this other lady just because they were sitting beside each other and she turned out to be the neighbor of the aunt that we visited in San Isidro General. Costa Rica is tiny haha.

Well I can’t say that what I experienced was a typical semana santa for other Costa Rican families, but that’s what my family does every year for it. I’m already looking forward to next year!