Mission Trip: Costa Rica

Our first full day in Costa Rica! On the agenda for the day:
– hour and a half bus to a volcano, Vulcan Irazu
– Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles in Cartago
– lunch back at the church (and a siesta)
– church service at Los Guidos

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Vulcan Irazu is on the outskirts of Cartago, Costa Rica. The bus ride was all of an hour and a half out of town and all UP. The volcano sits at about 11,260′ and the road is a small, windy road up to the visitors center.

One of the amazing things is there were a TON of bicyclists making the trek up the mountain, and there wasn’t even a race going on — they were doing this for fun!! Apparently road-bike races are common throughout the streets on the weekends. To drive on the road in this country means to dodge any thing that needs to get from photoint A to point B — cars, motorcycles, dirt bikes, mopeds, four-wheelers, bicycles, people and stray dogs.

As for the scenery, Cartago is made up of many farms of various fruits and vegetables. Costa Rica’s biggest export is bananas and pineapples. Sundays are a popular day for farmer’s markets to pop-up on the streets, most of the time on the road side near the owner’s property. The homes themselves are still mostly secured with bars, but not so much so as we traveled farther up the mountain. As the homes got nicer, so did the gardens and landscaping.

Vulcan Irazu really wasn’t much to look at, I’ll be honest. Yes, it was a big crater that had molten lava hiding miles below the surface, but then again, it was just a big crater. We DID enjoy getting out in the crisp mountain air and stretching our legs. There was a cafe at the visitor’s center where I had some great hot chocolate and homemade chocolate cake — 1500 colones, or about $3.00.

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On the way back we stopped at the Basilica in Cartago, Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Los Ángeles. This weekend happened to be a very significant time for the Basilica. On August 2, 1635, it is said that the Virgin Mary appeared to a little girl in the form of a black statue. Her message was to build a church on the exact spot she appeared instead of where they were already building one. The little girl took the statues to her priest and he locked the statue away and ignored the message. This happened three times, each time the statue disappeared from the locked case and reappeared to the little girl. When the church was completed, it was destroyed by earthquakes. The priest finally adhered to the message and built the church where it was destined, and still stands today.

-RB

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