Costa Rica - Week #3

This week Costa Rica celebrated a religious holiday to celebrate the Virgen de los Angeles. The celebration takes place on August 2nd in Cartago, at the Basilica (San Jose). For the region where we are staying (Guanacaste), that is ~4 hour drive so a town near by (Cartegena) held its own day of celebration. We stopped by briefly to see what a local festival looks like.

The food was all prepared by local peeps. Here is a woman making tortillas and soup:

The first portion of the festival was a service (mass) in the church:

Snap of the street (the horses were for a parade, not transportation):

Traditional ox cart:

The kids only lasted an hour before it was too hot and they wanted to leave :-)

Exchange rate: $1USD = 500 colones

This game was intriguing... Each person holds onto a string, connected to a card. They draw a card to announce a winner (there was more to the game but we were totally confused). This was definitely a hot spot of people wanting a piece of the action!

The winner won a chicken:

Super fun xylophone players:

For the weekend we took a trip to La Fortuna to see the Arenal volcano. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy, rainy, and we didn't get many pictures or a full view of the volcano. We took a horse ride that took us to a great viewing area to see the volcano, but just as we got there a massive storm popped up and we got drenched. Total downpour, lightning, thunder....the works! We stayed on the horses to make the trek back (total time 2.5 hours) and even though we were soaking wet the kids had a great time. They told us it was the highlight of their weekend. Meanwhile we were happy when it ended!


The one photo I got of Arenal (top is covered with clouds):

Exploring the critter park nearby:

A Tucan!

View from a roadside stop on the way out of the mountains:

Matt sharing a bloody mary with our friend, Annette, who made the trip with us: