Day 3

Morning came early today. On the bus by 7:30! We enjoyed our breakfast buffet at the hotel again. Quite good again! Busses left for La Paz waterfall at 7:30 sharp. It was about an hour and a half track through San Jose and another city and then quickly into the northern mountains of Costa Rica. Our coach drive, Jorge, was amazing negotiating extremely narrow roads on mountainsides! One false move and we would have gone off the side of a mountain! 

Our guide, max, was extremely informative talking to us about what Costa Rica is best known for....their coffee! As we climbed in elevation, we came upon a variety of huge coffee plantations, with crops plastered all over the side of the mountain. Apparently, the best kind of coffee you can get is "shade grown" coffee. This is where the coffee plants grow under the shade of many different variety of trees, alleviating the need for adding chemicals to the soil. The shade of the trees allows for a natural cycle of nutrients. Costa Rican coffee is a consistently rated one of the top 3 coffees in the world, and we haven't had a bad cup yet!

We got to La Paz and were greeted by about 10 hummingbirds circling a feeder. The Waterfall lodge complex was as extensive and impresssive a structure as we've been in to this point. They made a special point of asking us to visit the restrooms, which were pretty cool! After some gathering time, we began our excursion down the mountain. W could immediately feel the humidity and environment change dramatically, it's kind of like breathing in vapor from a humidifier. There were man made stairs which allowed us to move along the side of the mountain path, when we came upon the first of several waterfalls. While there was little to no wildlife to see, the incredible vistas and unpredictable terrain made for an incredible hike. 

An hour later, we had lunch - by far the best food we've had so far according to Dr. Biddlecombe. Fresh chicken, pork, tortillas, pico de gallo, and fresh vegetables. The Biddlecombes have been on plenty of choir tours, and this tour has the best food we've ever experienced on one of them. A departure time of 2:30 sharp brought us back to the bus, and nearly everyone caught a nap on our way to the Instituto Nacional de Musica, and their choir, Coro Juvenil. Here's where the most important part of this tour was another to take place. 

After meeting the choir and their director, Marcela Lizano, we began work on 'Soy Tico', a favorite song for the Costa Rican people. The Coro Juvenil students had the piece memorized (there's a lot of Spanish) and gave us a much better idea of the context of this piece. Marcela told us that this piece is beloved because its about the 'green' of CR, a point of pride for every citizen. The combined choirs then worked and sang through 'Hope For Resolution', a piece that the composers wrote around the time that Nelson Mandela was released from captivity. The students sang with power and emotion, led by their wonderful directors. After that, the directors taught 'Vela Vela' to the combined choirs, an African wedding song with an accompanying dance!