Hi! I have had such a fun start to our Summer – I landed in San Jose around 1:00 pm on Friday (luggage lost in Miami – yay) and was able to get past the hoards of available taxi drivers in the airport to be able to take my (illegal) Uber safely to Selina. The first few minutes of my ride were pretty basic driving through what looked like regular downtown areas, but as soon as our view opened up to the city and the mountains in the distance, I was in awe. Being from Louisiana and staying mostly in Louisiana for most of my life, the view was definitely different from what I was accustomed to. It’s been a few days but I still catch myself taking pictures over and over.
Our first night was spent at Lolita, which I would describe as sort of an outdoor food court. It had so many options and the food all looked amazing. We ate and exchanged the basic “How was your flight in?”, “Where are you from?” conversations, then took a walk around some of the city. We were able to get a pretty cute little glimpse of some of our local shops and food locations, bars and dessert shops and all sorts of in between. We made our way back to the hostel and hung out and most of us were in bed decently early. The second day, I spent most of the day with the girls in our group just learning our area more. We met up with Dr. MW and fam at the farmers market and got to witness him in full dad mode, which was adorable. We tried some cute fruit that was similar to a regular passionfruit but I honestly do not remember the name haha. We walked around a little more, ended up finding our local Auto Mercado for groceries and making dinner for the four of us that night! We stayed up pretty late just talking and getting to know more about each other, which was so wholesome.
Today was definitely the most eventful, as we all spent the day at Hacienda Alsacia, the Starbucks Coffee Farm. It was honestly so so insightful and definitely put simply making a cup of coffee into a whole new perspective. The way that our tour guide was describing their plants was so sweet. She spoke about how they referred to the plants as mothers due to the fact that they provide so much nourishment and safety to the beans themselves. The views – as expected were absolutely immaculate. Ill definitely include pictures, as others will I’m sure. A few of us ended the day (by doing this, technically) at a German Pub super close to Selina. I had the loaded fries and loved them!
I am so so excited to continue our trip and though some things will for sure take some getting used to, I think overall we are going to have so much fun 🙂