Almost Dying in Costa Rica

After I graduated from UF with my Bachelors in Business Admin, I took a trip with 6 other friends to Quepos, Costa Rica. This trip was the result of a spontaneous decision that my best friend Clara Vidal and I decided over dinner one day, as we were eating some Lomo Saltado in her apartment. During dinner, she told me: "Tien, we should have a summer trip to a tropical country this summer!" I responded, "I totally agree, since I am about to graduate; it could be a graduation gift to myself."

So, that dinner was what started the whole inspiration for the Costa Rica trip. We started to brainstorm which country and who would be down to go on this trip. It took about 2 hours to finally narrow down our destination: Belize, Costa Rica, Australia, and Japan. Our choice for a destination depended on cost, language barrier, transportation, and people's interests. Within 2 weeks of discussion and adding people to our summer trip groupchat, we came to a decision of traveling to Costa Rica! Somehow, I got stuck with renting the Airbnb and booking the Van for a party of 7 people. That was a whole nightmare in itself. Words of advice: Don't try to be a hero with booking everything, learn to delegate!

The month of May arrived and we were all excited to go on our Costa Rica trip. Our trip dates were from May 24-31. With each week of May passing by, our anticipation for this adventure got bigger. Finally, we got to May 24; we flew out of Orlando International Airport. Clara, Lauren, Claire, Lucy, and I flew out of MCO to meet with Elaine and Jessica at the San Jose Internatial Airport in Costa Rica. Once we united with them, we got our bags and exchanged our U.S. Dollars for some Costa Rican Colones. Each of us exchanged roughly $200-$300 for colones in hope it would last us the whole week. Also, we bought a new SIM card that was loaded with 5 GB of cellular data for internet and calling. It cost about $20 USD for each. This proves to be essential for any foreign travel.

We got our van rental from the airport and loaded all our bags within an hour after landing. Then it was me driving the next 4 hours in a completely new country with trust in my Iphone's google maps. Since I was the only male on the trip, all the girls voted me to be their designated driver for every drive. Instead of going through the details of every excursions we did, you can simply watch the Youtube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYC5D80myag&t=10s

To get back to the title of this blog post, we actually almost died twice on this trip. On one of our excursion, we made a reservation to this fancy hotel that had hot springs. It was call Tabacon Thermal Resort and Spa, located near La Fortuna, Costa Rica. Since our Airbnb was located in Quepos, we had to wake up at 3:30 AM to drive 5 hours to the resort. Being the designated driver once again, I was in charge of getting everyone out of the house and into the van. Waking up 6 girls at 3 AM was a challenge thats for sure. Driving through town that early in the morning when the sun has not come up was quite exhilarating because I felt a sense of responsibility and independence. Here I was, in another country with all my friends and I am responsible for these people's lives and fun.

3 hours into our drive and I've gone up to what seemed like an endless amount of mountains and dirt roads with huge ass potholes. On one of the mountain, there was a sharp curve that only had some whimsy bushes that acted as guard rails to prevent cars from falling off the cliff. Well with my inexperienced ass driving a big van, I fail to realize the size of the van and sharpness of the curve, so I almost slipped our van over the cliff because our right back wheel was over the edge during this curve. Thank god for my quick reaction to hit the pedal hard to give the van extra power and a sharp left to get all four wheels back on the pavement. This was the first brush of death that we encountered that day.

As we kept pushing up north and up these mountains, we are met with another adversity. We came up this small neighborhood that was sitting on a very steep incline. I slammed on the gas and gave it my all, but as soon as we got near the top, our wheels lost its grip and started to burn on the road. The smell of burnt rubber could be inhaled inside the car. To make it even worse, our van started sliding backward as our wheels lost traction. I even made all the girls get out of the van and asked them to push from behind. This proved to be futile since we would go up a bit and then slide back. This event was all recorded on Snapchat and was included in the Youtube video. Please check it out... it is quite hilarious. Anyway, God sent us a miracle because a random stranger came down the hill on his moped and asked if we were lost. His name was Ruben and was kind enough to tell us that there were going to be way steeper hills upward, so it was not smart to continue this path. Thanks to our two Spanish speakers on board: Elaine and Clara. True queens! They talked to Ruben and asked if he could show us a better route since our google maps was only recommending the current path. He agreed and we decided to follow him! After 15 minutes driving behind Ruben, he stopped and motioned us to drive next to him. He advised that we follow this road and our GPS would recalculate. Thanks to his kindness, we all pitched in and gave Ruben 5000 colones for his trouble of showing us an alternate route.

6 hours in total of driving and we made it to our first destination: La Fortuna Waterfall. The rest of this trip is on the Youtube video. I just wanted to discuss the near death experiences. Hope you enjoy reading this! Please check out the other blog posts to see what I've been up to.