Costa Rican Holiday

Image via Wikipedia August 2 is a holiday in Costa Rica. Everyone gets the day off. It is not presidents' day or veterans' day, but the it has to do with a young girl. The story of how this became a holiday goes back some time. A young girl, Juana Pereira, went out to gather firewood. She found an image of the Virgin Mary about eight inches high. She took the image home. The next day she saw another image and took that home. She thought she now had two images. When she got home, the image from the preceding day was not there. Juana kept finding images and they kept disappearing. She gave an image to the priest and it also disappeared. When the priest went into the woods, he found the image on a rock. She wanted to build a church on the spot.
This traditional story has become a symbol of equality in Costa Rico. The Virgin Mary is a symbol of equality of all people regardless of the color of their skin. A beautiful byzantine church was built in the area in Cartago. On August 2 the day that commemorates Juana Pereira's story, people flock from all over the country and walk to the great church in Cartago. People who cannot walk to Cartago have local walks to their area churches. The highways are full of pilgrims walking to their churches. Traffic slows down and moves along with the pilgrims.
This is just one way that the people of Costa Rica express their spirit and their traditions. All people have their local customs. Understanding customs helps us understand others and ourselves.

Adventure Gear

When dealing with family vacations and student trips to Costa Rica you have to be sure you are using only the best equipment and gear for your adventures. Costa Rica is a country that lends itself to some amazing adrenaline pumping activities such as rafting, ziplining, and rappeling. These are all adventures where your gear can not be bought at Wal-Mart. You need to find proffesional gear used by proffesionals. Here we are going to give you an introduction to some of the basic gear you will see during an adventure trip to Costa Rica.

First of all you have ropes. In a country that is only 50 miles wide and has a peak of 13,000ft you can imagine that many things are vertical in Costa Rica. In vertical situations ropes are your best form of transportation unless you have a helicopter which mine is in the shop.
There are many different types of rope some are called Dynamic which means it has a bungee feel to it which works well on belay lines. Other ropes are called Static lines which stay firm and dont give. These are good for rescue lines. Ropes come in different sizes, braids, and materials.

A second piece of equipment is a caribiner. This is probably the single most popular piece of equipment for any adventurer. A caribiner you will find from rafting, rappeling, zipling, or even hooking gear up during a hike. The caribiner is made up of different parts. Different caribiners are made of different shapes and materials. They are measured by how strong they are by what is called kilo-newtons which is marked as KN on the caribiner. For each KN the caribiner can hold 225lbs of pressure.

The next and happens to be my favorite piece of equipment is called webbing. This is my favorite because it is by far the lease expensive. Webbing is incredibly strong and used as an achor to hook ropes up to rocks or trees inorder to do your descend.
On rafting trips the guides often use webbing as flip lines. The flip line is used to flip the raft over.

Another piece of equipment that you might see or you might not see are called handled ascenders which are used to go up the rope. This is the easiest way to climb up the rope but these ascenders have little teeth in them and over time they can damage the rope. Keep in mind they are not used for a rescue which means only one person can use them at a time. This is also a very difficult excercise and should only be done with experience. As you can see in the picture its a face of struggle.

There are many many more pieces of equipment that you might see during your adventure to Costa Rica but if you are into the outdoors and on a student travel trip or a family vacation this is a good start at what you should expect to see.