Costa Rica

Mission Trip – Feburary 2023

Hello all,
so this trip was different then my other trips. While in school for Nursing, we were offered a chance to go to Costa Rica to with the Dental and Business schools to assist a community. This community was called Asoprola, it was in a rural part of Costa Rica, close to border of Panama. As I said this trip was with school, so pricing with meals and stay for most of the week I can not help with, however a few of us did stay a couple extra days.

To start, we flew from JFK to San Jose, CR (not to be confused with San Josa, CA). The flight was roughly 5ish hours, however it was an overnight flight with a layover in which we had to deboard, go thru security, and reboard. This process was not told to us in the beginning, so it was a bit annoying to find this out at 3am and having to throw out my water. Other than the flight was not horrible considering it was a $250 round trip flight.

Once we arrived in Costa Rica, we stayed in a sorta hostel/hotel, again I do not know the price, however it was a decent place. The rooms had a their own bathrooms and could be a single bed, two double beds, or three beds. There was a smaller pool, a restaurant on site, and they offered breakfast. It was called Hotel Aeropuerto . After a night here, we took the hike to Asloprola.

To get to Asloprola, there was two different way and both were long, about 6 hours in a van with about 30 other people which wasnt great. Once we were at Asloprola, it was very beautiful and more hostel like. The rooms did each have a bathroom but not have air conditioning which was not great after a long day.

In Asloprola, we were educationg the people in the community regarding their eating habits, regular exercise, and how to check blood pressure, and when to see a doctor. The area we were in was very mountainous, so hiking boots were a must and to get anywhere you were most likely going up and down a mountain and we were around 10,000 feet high in elevation.

The mission portion of the trip was like nothing I have ever done and I would probably do again. Once we were finished at Asloprola, we went to Jaco to spend the day at the beach and then back to hotel we stayed the first night. Most people went home but we took advantage and took a couple days for vacation before school started again .The vacation part of the trip we stayed at Wyndham San Jose, it was not the most luxuarious hotel but it was what we needed. When we stayed, there was a lot of construction being done and it was empty which was nice. We mostly had the pools to ourselves, as well as other part of the hotel. We mainly stayed on the hotel but ventured out one day for lunch. There was a store and some restaurants within a 10 min walk and some other attractions. Like I said we mostly stayed at the hotel since we were so tired from the mission trip.

I would love to revisit Costa Rica, however I would stay in the Manuel Antonio area, which is where the beaches are and a volcano which would be cool to see. They also have a sloth encounter that was be nice to see. Til the next time.