The Pilgrimage

Costa Rica is a Catholic country and in the tradition of Catholicism, the country has many days to celebrate Catholic Saints. I am not EXACTLY sure of all the details, but every year there is a HUGE pilgrimage to a beautiful Catholic Church in Cartago. The point is that people from ALL over Costa Rica WALK to the church. So being adventurous Peace Corps Volunteers…clearly we wanted to participate in the pilgrimage! About 15 PCVs met up in a central location and we walked 12 miles over the course of 5.5 hours to Cartago – along with the rest of Costa Rica!
The only thing to compare the CROWDS of people to is Franklin Street in Chapel Hill on HALLOWEEN! The streets were claustrophobically packed with people for 12 miles (not just between McAllisters and Spankys!).

So you’re probably thinking – “Kim, what the heck did you do for 12 miles?”
1. The two different PC programs intermingled and caught up.
2. The SONG game – where one person sings a line and the next person has to come up with a song that has one of the words from the previous song.
3. The Would you rather? Game – example: Would you rather eat ONLY apples for the rest of your life or ONLY bananas? (although that was a tame example, clearly)
4. We ate – fruit, ice cream, sandwhiches, fried bananas, chilly willies…
5. I had a deep intellectual conversation about racism in the US.
6. I heard a few LIFE stories.
7. I reminisced with Ryan about when we were NATIONAL CHAMPIONS.

And then we were there! It went really QUICKLY, and as we got closer there was lots of entertainment! We arrived at the church around 11:30 just enough time to get a small dinner and sit down and watch about 30 minutes of fireworks and listen to the Hallelujah Chorus and Ave Maria!

Then a few of us actually entered the church and it was beautiful! It was an amazing experience! The pictures above are the BEFORE and AFTER pictures of our trip…we were still VERY HAPPY and going strong 12 miles later. (The pictures above are the BEFORE and AFTER pictures!)