Thursday, Sept 5th - Hero: Ticos

This is what people in Costa Rica are called. Ticos.

They are lovely people, the second happiest people in the world.

If I was to try and say why, I'm not sure I could put my finger on any one thing really. Of course, the country is phenomenally beautiful. They have white sand beaches, black sand beaches, pink sand beaches, beaches made out of ground up seashells. They have Dry Tropical forests, rainforests, cloud forests, and just plain out jungles. They have swamps and mangroves, high desert and low desert, gulfs, cays, and wide open beaches that have waves big enough to draw World Championship Surf tournaments.

The wild life is amazing. As you drive down the road you see great big scarlet macaws flying around. Walking down a trail you will encounter sloths, capuchin monkeys, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, deer that will walk right next to you, and every kind of lizard and reptile you can imagine. The hummingbirds are enormous and the most brilliant colors of purple and green and red imaginable.

Still, there are other brilliantly beautiful places on this earth whose people don't have that 'Tico' pleasantness. Could be their government, which doesn't support a national military and can therefore provide free education and free medical care to all their citizens. Might be the fact that their largest GDP is tourism and they deal with happy vacationing people most of the time. Their other large GDP is Agriculture (coffee, bananas, palm oil) so they are outside a lot.

Sure, sure. All that rolls up to equal happiness, but as we made several different treks through numerous small towns we were told that the 'center' of every town no matter how big or how small was the church.

AHHHHH...

God. At the center. Happiness. I see now.

All that beauty was just the icing on the cake! Kind of like the Angels having to cover their eyes with their wings at God's beauty as their bowing at his majesty...

Peace, Love, and GOD,
Tracy