Costa Rica- Day One

        As I stepped off of my plane and out of the airport, I couldn’t really read the name of it, as a lot of it was in Spanish. Before I made this trip to Costa Rica, I had to brush up a little bit on my Spanish, because the last time I took Spanish was back when I was a senior in high school. I spotted a small café just a few blocks down the road, so I decided to go check it out. When I got to the café it was crowded with younger people who were socializing with friends or just hanging out. I ordered some coffee and a scone as a light snack. The shop was also giving out free copies of La Nación, the most popular newspaper in the country, so I grabbed one just to have and maybe to try and translate when I had some spare time on my hands. When I was done with my coffee, I decided to walk around a little bit and get the lay of the land. Most of Costa Rica except for the large cities, is national park, so in these smaller countries, it is rare to find large amounts of private property, since the government wants to protect and preserve the beautiful land. As it turns out, Costa Rica’s national park system surpasses all of the other Latin American countries’ parks, which made sense, because Costa Rica is 38% forest. The parks are very pretty because none of the land was allowed to be developed. As I came upon a cluster of stores, I decided to take a break from walking a taking pictures and go into some air conditioning and get some water. I remembered reading in some other National Geographic magazine Costa Rica had some of the most elaborate bookstores in the Central and South American area, and Costa Rica also homes many large publishing houses. I walked up to a very modern building with a sign that read “librería”, which means library in Spanish. When I walked into the small building, the shelves were jammed packed with all sorts of books. I bought a book on the history of Costa Rica and two bottles of water to keep in my bag with a few spare Costa Rica Colón's, the Costa Rican currency, that the National Geographic offices had given me back in America. When I was done looking around, I started to get back to exploring some more. As I walked out of the bookstore, I decided to stop and have a late snack at another local café. As I was walking back into town to try and find one, I noticed all of the architecture was very cool mix of a few different types, so I slowed down for a few minutes to observe. Some buildings and houses were Spanish colonial style, others very much European and modern, which I didn’t know how this odd but cool clash of architecture came to be. This café had a little bit of everything, so I ordered some rice and beans with a banana on the side. Since bananas were nearly 10% of the county’s exports, I decided they had to be delicious. I saw through the windows that the sun was starting to set, so I decided I would turn in for the night. I wasn’t very hungry since I had just eaten, so I went to bed thinking about my trip so far.

Some of the very different Costa Rican architecture

Some deer I saw walking on a path in one of the national parks