Dominical and San Gerardo de Dota

Hello to all of you who are following our Costa Rica adventure! Our group has been very busy! We arrived safely in San Jose, got on a bus at 5 am and drove to the coast to a surfer town called Dominical. We stayed at a lovely place called Hacienda Barú.


Dr. Cossel has taken our group on several night hikes. We've seen lots of animals, insects, etc, some of the chicas have had to face their fears about spiders, as we've seen some that are as big as your whole hand! We saw a toucan on our first hike, white capuchin monkeys, a caimen, several sloths and much more!



Our group enjoyed a few days at the beach where some of the guys surfed, the gals bought fun things at the market and we all enjoyed the fresh fruit 'batidos' (smoothies), like mango, guanaba, banana, papaya, etc.


On our last night in the lowland jungle, we hiked a pretty tough trail to an amazing camp in the jungle. We had fantastic guides, that pointed out birds, plants, poison dart frogs along our trek through the jungle. This was one of the most trying days for some of our group, but they rallied and pushed through the night in the jungle. We all enjoyed a cold shower with water from the stream. That night Dr. Cossel shared a devotional from Psalms that helped some students to see God's creation even in the creepy crawly things.


After our hike out of the jungle, we loaded back onto the bus with our faithful bus driver, 'Moma' (mow-ma). To really experience the culture, we stopped at a roadside fruit stand to try some local fruit. Dr. Cossel showed us a new fruit, and Ben used his knife to cut open a Costa Rican avocado.


Our next adventure took us to San Isidro, where students were given $25 each to buy lunch for that day, plus 2 lunches and 1 breakfast for the trail. The local currency is Colones, and the exchange rate is about $1 to 500 colones, so students had to do some figuring and work in teams to decide how to budget the money without the professors. Some ran into snags, but no one went hungry and all rose to the challenge. We continued to San Gerardo de Dota to Qerq (where we are not) had a flat tire on the way, but our driver had a spare and he got it changed even in the rain!


Our latest adventure was our hike yesterday morning to try and catch the sunrise on Cerro de la Muerte (the hill of death). Even after a full day the day before, our group chose to get up at 3:45 a.m. to go up the mountain on our bus, then hike back down to Qerq. Dr. Cossel shared with us on top of Cerro de muerte about why it is such a dangerous mountain.


Our decent back to Qerc took most of us the entire day, arriving with very tired feet and legs, but very glad to have seen all the amazing things we did. On a clear day, you can see both coast lines from the top. On the decent we saw the cloud forest change, as we followed streams, saw lots of moss, plants, oak trees, etc. We ate our breakfast and lunch on the trail that we had shopped for back in San Isidro.


Today is our catch up day for downloading photographs, getting in touch with family and catching up on journals. Tomorrow we plan to hike to the organic coffee farm, Mora farm, to stay for two nights. We'll be out of internet touch for those days, and will be back to Qerq for two nights before heading to San José again.

Thanks for keeping in touch with our trip and for all your prayers, help and thoughts for us and our students here! For the parents out there, you have some really great kids, and I personally and enjoying this experience with them! Keep praying for our legs and feet as we hike and our interactions with each other and the local cuture! Hasta pronto! Pura Vida!

Signing off-Profe Tucker (Jamie)