St. John's Prep School 2026 Costa Rica
April 19, 2026
We arrived late at night, after several long hours, ranging from a five hour flight, two hour layover, and two hour flight from El Salvador to Costa Rica. We met our wonderful group leaders, Fab and Rebe who greeted us with a warm welcome and the great saying “Pura Vida”. We learned that this saying is the slogan of Costa Rica, and can be interpreted as several different meanings, depending on the situation. Then, we boarded two busses and traveled to our home for the night; the Honeybee hotel. We hurriedly rushed to bed, knowing we had an early wake up the next day. At around five thirty in the morning, just after the crack of dawn, we woke up. Scrambling to pack our bags, we rushed downstairs, lugging our suitcases and boarded our bus. After a long bus ride, we arrived at the meetup spot to prepare to go rafting. There, we ate breakfast, which consisted of rice, beans, and eggs. After eating breakfast, we headed in small cars to the river. After we arrived at the river, we got our life jackets and helmets on, and got in groups of 6. Then we got on the rafts and began to paddle down the river. The rafting was very fun and the weather was very hot. The level of the rafting was 2 and 3, with short but intense rapids. Midway through the rafting, we made a pitstop at a peaceful small lagoon. Then we continued on for several hours. We had the chance to get in the water while being taken calmly through the current of the rapids. Upon finishing the rafting, we made it to the beautiful villa-like camp right by the river, surrounded by the jungle in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t get to use our phones for the day, as there was no service and it was very remote. For lunch we had tacos and after lunch we had time to relax in the hammocks. After we relaxed we had the decision to go on a hike it took about 15 minutes to get to our destination and once we arrived we saw a beautiful waterfall with a little pool to swim in along with it. After we went swimming as a group we headed back to the campsite. Then we ate dinner – we had chicken and rice with mushroom soup. After dinner we went back to our 2 person tents and tried to get some rest. The night life at our campsite was very wild. There were frogs, snakes, insects, and a happy dog named puma. There was lots of wildlife making noise and all the nocturnal animals came out. Then after a long day, most of us got to sleep quickly but some were paranoid from the animals outside our tents.
By: Rishi, Wyatt, Lucca and Tasso
