We left San Diego around 7:40 pm on Friday March 18th, not too far off of our planned 7:00 pm departure. We had 7 members and 3 cars. The other 5 members were meeting us at LAX. I drove 2 other members (Ashley & Eliza) and we arrived in Westminster (Mimi's House) around 9:30 pm. We were lucky to have Mimi's dad drive us to LAX. I got to avoid airport parking fees by leaving my car in their driveway for a week :).
We arrived at LAX at 11:00 pm where Derek, Daphne, Beatrice, and Isai met us at the terminal. I had only traveled twice before (once when I was a baby coming to the U.S. and the other time with my daddy and brother to Vietnam). As expected, I w
as a bit overwhelmed but everything went a lot smoother than I anticipated and all 12 of us boarded our fli
ght.We arrived in San Jose Costa Rica at 9:30 AM and met our driver. The drive to La Paz Waterfalls was quite scary. We were going up the mountain making sharp turns without any rails. As we were driving up I took note of the beautiful landscape. There were trees, cows, and coffee plantations almost at every turn. La Paz waterfall reminded me the American zoos with all of its exhibits. There were snakes, monkeys, butterflies, and frog exhibits and at the end we got to try pudding cake, cheese, and a sugarcane drink. The
cow in which the cheese was from was right outside... We then walked along the guided trail towards the waterfalls which were absolutely beautiful! This was the first time I had ever seen a waterfall. It was even more beautiful than I had imagined.Since, we weren't able to see the volcano, our driver offered to drive us to a town about an hour away to sight see. The name of the town was Barva. We visited the iglesia (church) and saw sooo many pizza places. A few of us went into our very first panaderia which would become one of the highlights of my trip. The smell of fresh baked empanadas and bread was too good to ignore! I got a pastry for less than .50!
We then drove to San Jose where we would be staying until the next morning. We stayed at Hostel 1110 for $12 a night! Not bad for a bunk bed and 1 bathroom and shower to share among 12 people! haha We definitely became 10X closer because of this! For dinner we went to a very touristy restaurant for som
e rice & beans! I only got a salad because I was trying to stretch my dollars but then realized at the end, the salad was more expensive than the rice & beans :(. We had quite the night when we all got back to the hostel. As we were trying to go to bed, some strange man came through our door and went straight into another door. This other door was an entry to the store next to the hostel. When we notified the hostel attendant, she just told us that it was normal and that the hostel shares the door with the store... Welcome to Costa Rica :)
