Making Costa Rican Scammers Mad
By Oli Byrd
This year’s spring break was definitely one of the greatest things I have ever done. A few of my friends and I randomly decided to go to Costa Rica (we were tricked by the cheap flight costs). Our trip started out with a three hour drive to Washington DC to the house of a seventy year old Italian woman with a huge personality named Debbie. Debbie is a family friend of one of my roommates and was nice enough to drive us to the airport.
We had a six hour flight to Panama where we had an hour long layover before another hour and a half flight. We touched down in Costa Rica and spent almost two hours waiting to get our rental car. Once we got our rental car we immediately drove an hour and a half to hike up an active volcano. The volcano was kind of disappointing. There was no lava and the steam coming from the volcano was blocking the view for almost the entire time we were there.
After the volcano we drove another three hours to get to our AirBnB. Our AirBnB was owned by an old polish man named George and his dog Freddy. George was a real homie and told us about all the cool places to visit while we were there. We were all exhausted after so much traveling and knocked out at like six pm.
We woke up the next day and were starving so we decided to go to a local market to try and get some food. We were on a bit of a budget so we decided to play it survivor style and eat a whole lot of fruit and rice. Together I think we ate over 100 mangos.
After eating we decided to hit the beach, and hit the beach we did. We found a secluded beach about twenty minutes away from our AirBnB and spent hours and hours there almost every day. We took our hammocks and found a nice tree to set them up in and practically lived in them the entire week.
Halfway through the week, we decided to take a break from the beach and hike up to a waterfall. The hike up to the waterfall was so intense. It felt like I was trying to walk up a wall. It took about an hour and a half to hike the two mile path to the waterfall.
Our last full day in Costa Rica we decided to go to a more touristy beach instead of our regular one. Upon arriving at this new beach, a man dressed in a ripped shirt, dirty shorts, and flip flops directed us into a parking spot. Once we got out of the car he tried to tell us that he owned the beach and the parking lot and that we had to pay to park there (there was a sign thirty feet up the road saying free parking). After we told him we were not going to be paying him he had some very choice words for us. I am not fluent in Spanish but I understood enough to know that it was definitely not family friendly.
We ended our trip the same way we started it, with fifteen hours of traveling and about three hours of sleep. Costa Rica is an Awesome place to visit, but it is a little bit more expensive than advertised so if you are wanting to make a trip plan accordingly.
