Waking Up In Paradise

*** Still behind schedule on my posting… I’m on that “island time”

Saturday May 20^th, 2017

Buenos Dias from Costa Rica! With the birds chirping and other unknown creatures singing their early morning songs… and I mean early for this Texan girl… our natural wake-up call was with the sun rise at 5am. Definitely something I’ll have to get used to being the night owl I am.

At 6:30am, Marty (the other Graphic Design intern) and I joined Cynthia, Beeman’s wife for her morning walk with their dogs. As we walked down their twisty and curvy gravel road we met a neighbor’s dog, a Doberman named Pablo and witnessed the diverse wildlife in the area. Several flocks of green parrots flew above us nesting in palm trees and carried on their early morning gossip, while below we admired in awe the variety of tropical flowers such as Parrot flowers, Pink Hibiscus’s and Strelitzia’s among many many more.

Towards the end of our walk we were covered in sweat and feeling the burn in the foreign Costa Rican heat and humidity level, which I’m telling you is nowhere near Texas heat/humidity, when my eyes caught a mesmerizing view. A bright blue Morpho Menelaus butterfly appeared from nowhere fluttering past us in what seemed to be slow motion. With every glimpse of it’s outer bright blue wings that disappeared as its wings folded together exposing it’s brown underside, it’s huge wings created a gently breeze as it danced past up. Despite having my camera hanging around my neck I stood frozen in awe of the mesmerizing view not being able to take my eyes away for even a second. It was a beautiful welcome gift from Costa Rica. Pura Vida!

Back at the house we showered, ate breakfast, photographed the hummingbirds on their front porch, which were DOUBLE the size of the ones back in the states, and headed out to move into our permanent house for the reminder of the 2 months. At our casita we met our house mother, Maria who lived in the front house in front of the property. Our apartment was quaint but cute with one large room with 4 beds and a shared bathroom. We had a brief meeting with our boss, the owner of the magazine that we are interning for and around noon we ate our first Tico meal: ensalada, arroz, frijoles y carne. I started feeling under the weather, but Maria came to the rescue with a homemade remedy made of mandarinas y sal that helped me ease into a nice siesta. When Marissa and I woke up, the girls and I ventured into town to look for some munchies and refreshments at a local pulpa (little store) … but on our way we were caught in an unexpected downpour which helped to half cooled us off from the Costa Rican heat.

Overall our first full day in Costa Rica was beautiful and full of new experiences and memories made. With one day down and many more to go I can’t wait to see what other adventures Costa Rica takes me on. Till next time. Pura Vida!