Discovery tour - Day 1, abrazos y amor

Friday when we arrived in San Jose with the bus we first got picked up by Bram who had made a little cute map in his notebook of where all of the busstops in San Jose are. In San Jose it's really tricky with the buses, because there is one busstop for each destination. In one part of downtown San Jose leaves the bus for Nicoya, 500 meters away the one for San Carlos and on the other side the one to Heredia. So it was really lucky that Bram was prepared. When everyone had arrived we could finally go and eat lunch. After eating we decided to go to the hostel where we were going to spend the night to drop our big and heavy bags off since it was so tiring to carry them around. Without any bags, Valentina and I decided to go out and do "free hugs". We found a  cardboard box in the middle of the street and took it to a small shop where you cou repair your car. There we asked them for a knife and a pen so that we could create our "Free hugs" and "Abrazos gratis" signs. They were really helpful and as a thank you they all recieved a free hug.

With the signs in our hands we made our way to one of the shopping streets in San Jose. A lot of people just avoided us, but many many persons also gave us big hugs. It was the best feeling and one of the funniest things I've ever done. Sadly we failed taping it (Beatrice taped it all in slow motion...) but I've got some videos that I might put together later. Anyways, so we went around recieving hug after hug after hug, and it was just amazing. Some people just laughed, some said  things like "que dios la acompana" which means "may god protect you" (they say that often here) and a lot of them asked us why we were giving out free hugs. If I could I would totally do this every day, from just hugging we got so close  to some of the persons that we met, and it felt like we were actually making peoples days better. It was simply so cool.

Later we went back to the hostel, stayed there for a while and then some of us went out again to see a big park that we had heard of. However, when we got there it was so dark and so we didn't really feel like entering it anymore. We walked back to the italian restaurant next to the hostel, had dinner and went back again. We sat on the balcony and talked and had a really nice time. I was so happy to get to see everybody again and I realized how much I've missed them. We have gotten so close and are kind of like one big family now. Just love it.

So day 1 of the Discovery tour had come to an end and it was time to sleep and get prepared for day two with canyoping and rafting. Chiva!

Where the hugs started