WARNING: This is about to be a long post.
My friend Alexandra invited me and my other friend, Alannah, to tag along with her and her friend Jonathan to stay in Guanacaste at his parent's house there. I figured I shouldn't pass up the opportunity for free room and board and Jonathan has a car....which means no smelly hot bus ride for twice the amount of time. So we leave on Friday, around 10am. The trip to Guanacaste by car is about 4 hours, not bad, I bring everyone the last of the brownies, some huge mandarin oranges from the tree at my house, and of course my chatter. It was an awesome car ride.
We reach the house that Johnathon grew up in. THE HOUSE IS AMAZING. Here's why:
The History
Johnathan's parents are both Yoga instructors who moved to Costa Rica over 20 years ago after working in New York City. They moved because Johnathan's dad was so upset, and infuriated when he found out that the head guru that he had so much love and respect for had actually been sleeping around with some of the students. So they had had enough and up and left. They moved to Guanacaste and formed this Yoga institute where people can learn to teach Yoga, or retreat there for a month-many months, and just do Yoga. Apparently his parents are pretty big Hippies, they have every sort of religion represented in their house from the Virgin Mary to Ganesha the Hindu elephant god. So I find myself at a Yoga Institute that has a beautiful section for Yoga and Jonathan's parents beautiful home. I'm of course attaching some photos. The Yoga Institute is called the Nosara Yoga Institute. (Nosara is the name of the town we stayed in)
So we've arrived at this hippie realm of amazement. We're greeted with the cutest golden lab ever, his name is Pepe, and lunch that has already been prepared for us....talk about spoiled. It was great food. Everyone in the area it seems is vegetarian, so all of the food was super fresh and super healthy. Their house is chalk full of wonderful, beautiful, nice things. There kitchen is pretty high class and filled with all kinds of food that I love. Everything was Le Crueset too...one pot is over 200$....yeah we're talking high class here. It was great. They also had this weird pH water balancing machine? I don't know but the pH of my water was 9.5 for three days....I got to cook though, a little. One morning I cooked pumpkin pancakes with craisins for everyone. They loved them! A different morning we ate leftovers and I cooked up some plantains!
The beach is literally a 1-2 minute golf cart ride from their home and it has to be my favorite beach so far. The water only went up to our bellies, the waves were wonderful and not dangerous, and the beach had a maximum of 20 people on it. All of the people who live there are either locals, other Yoga instructors, or other Americans just trying to escape life....basically everyone is really cool, really chill.....and a hippie.
My friends and I did two Yoga Flow classes this weekend. They were great. I'm sore from the last one. If anyone is under the impression that Yoga is easy, they are greatly mistaken. Restorative Yoga is the easy one, it's just mainly relaxation, but Yoga Flow? Whew! It can get pretty difficult, but everyone should try it! You feel so amazing afterwards.
This weekend was mainly just a bunch of relaxing, swimming (oh yeah they have this amazing, super deep, saltwater pool too), playing games, watching movies, going to the beach, in general just hanging out. It was sweet. I got a little sad during parts and here's why.
-We went to this great restaurant that's owned by a woman who is a Buddhist Monk in India for half of the year. She lived in France for 20 years and then decided she wanted to become a monk. She did, and was there for many years, but then decided she wanted to do it only half the time and the other half I guess she wanted to be in Costa Rica at this tiny restaurant cooking AMAZING food. Once again, it was all vegetarian. I split an Avocado-Hummus sandwich with Gouda, Tomato, and Lettuce, on just baked wheat herb foccacia bread. I also split a seaweed sushi wrap. They were all so mouth-wateringly good. For dessert, the buddhist Monk of course makes her own gelatos, and I had 1 scoop of coffee and 1 scoop of Dark Mayan Chocolate with cocoa nibs....oh and I split a vegan chocolate chip cookie. Oh and the woman gave me a complimentary glass of carrot-goji berry-ginger juice. SO GOOD. Anyways, it was all delicious but it all reminded me of Seattle, which reminds me of Peter and Kelsey and the good times we had in Seattle. I miss you guys!
We also went to another great restaurant where I had sweet potato fries, a handmade black bean burger with avocado and at every table they have Lizano salsa which is only made in Costa Rica. I drenched my burger in it...it was Heaven. I also had a quinoa salad....Yes...again, I was in Heaven. If only it wasn't four hours from where I live. They had a lot of other stuff I wanted to try, as did the Buddhist monk restaurant.
Here are some photos:
The amazing salt water pool
Religious symbols were everywhere!
The entrance to Jonathan's parent's room
The entrance to our room (which was Jonathan's when he was growing up)
The tub that was connected to our room....
This photo doesn't do the bed justice. We slept three girls in this bed and still had a TON of room....I don't know what size it was...it was the widest bed I've ever seen.
Amazing chairs that were on the balcony of the house...they had two more on the opposite side of the house. So comfy.
aaw Pepe!!
This is Jonathan.
All of the big trees surrounding the property said "Shri" followed by the name of the tree. This is the Guanacaste tree. Shri is apparently a word used in Sanskrit for a most highly respected person.
I thought this tree was cool since it looks pregnant
Same pregnant tree
This is where we did our Yoga classes! All of the instructors were really nice
A giant frog in the house!
Pepe
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