Hola amigos! My time in Costa Rica is coming to an end, and while I'm loving my time here, I'm ready to get back to the states (and have one last Papa Dels pizza...) I still had a sick week (both literally and figuratively) though!
Although this may not seem like a big deal to most of you, Monday I finally heard "Huevos man" as we have dubbed him. This guy walks along our street very early every morning with a loudspeaker, yelling at people to come out and buy eggs from him. Everyone in our group had heard him except me, probably because I'm a ridiculously sound sleeper, so I was pretty excited!
Tuesday was a girl in our group's 30th birthday. We all went out to a Mexican restaurant by fake Fridays and had an absolutely delicious meal. It's a relatively small restaurant, and we managed to get almost 20 people there, so we pretty much took over. It was a fun party, and we were even able to buy a strawberry cake a Mus Anni, this amazing chain of bakeries they have here.
Wednesday, everyone had a barbeque here at the casa. Unfortunately, I got sick with the plague that was going around the group, and was stuck in my room not wanting to do anything but sleep - and that includes no eating for almost 24 hours. Everyone was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to make it on our long weekend, but I was going regardless!
Thursday morning we had to get up really early to catch a bus to Monte Verde. We got to the bus stop, and I realized I had forgotten sunglasses, so I bought a pair of "Ray Bans" for 1500 colones (a little less than $3). We were all settling into the bus when Liberty told Davis to check his pockets. I guess he had been leaning over, messing with something in his backpack, and a guy had pretended to drop a piece of paper. He leaned over and reached in two of Davis' pockets, but luckily didn't get anything. A woman overheard us talking, and told the bus driver. He walked up to the guy and said "If you're trying to rob these people, I'm going to call the police," and the guy took off running. The bus driver was ranting about tourists and how people take advantage of people before they're settled on the bus - but the best part was he was ranting in Spanish and I understood most of it! It was a crazy situation, but luckily it reminded us that we shouldn't let our guard down, without anything horrible happening.
When we got to Monte Verde, we discovered that our hotel was very far out of town, so we took a cab to another place within walking distance of town. The group split up, and a couple of people went on a sky walk in the cloud forest, while my group went ziplining. It was an amazing experience, with 14 lines, some over 2000m long. There was also a rappel, where they dropped you straight down, a tarzan swing, and a chance to zipline "Superman style." Unfortunately, we couldn't take many pictures for fear of dropping either the camera or our gloves, but it was one
of the best things I've done here.
Friday we took a jeep-boat-jeep to Arenal. The weather was awful, and it didn't get much better all weekend. Luckily, we were staying in a really nice place. We all sat around in the hot tub for a while, then I got a wonderful massage. We saw tree frogs, and blue and gold macaws, just flying in and out of the hotel as they pleased! That night we had a nice dinner, and people came and hung out in our room for a while before calling it an early night.
The next morning, we woke up early and taxied into La Fortuna, the town nearby. A couple of us decided to hang out and just walk around the town, because there was pretty much non-stop torrential downpour. We ran into another group from the program, and hung out with them until it was time for the hot springs. These hot springs were pretty much the best part of Arenal. We went to a pretty exclusive place called Tabacon, which lets in only 100 people per night. There were eight or nine springs, ranging in temperature from 37-42 degrees Celsius (I'll let you all calculate that in Farenheight, but it was hot!) with waterfalls and volcanic rock on the bottom. We hung out there for five hours, even eating dinner at a bar in one of the hot pools, and sliding down extremely hot water slides. We were climbing the waterfalls, and some of the other patrons looked at us like we were nuts, but we all had an amazing time.
Today we had asked for a taxi to be ready at 7:15 am so that we could be at the church to be picked up for caving by 8. The guy at the front desks response when we asked where it was? "Oh, the cheapest one I could find was $35, and I figured you wouldn't want that one." Sigh. We got into town only 10 minutes late, and drove an hour to the Caverna Gabinarraca. After a short introduction that basically terrified me (chest high water? spiders that are half spider half scorpion?) we donned our gear and headed into the cave. Words can't really describe what it was like in there, but it was definately a once in a lifetime experience. We walked through an underground stream, a large waterfall, and spaces so tight that I had to hold my breath to get through. We also had to crawl army style through areas so small that I was sure we would never make it. Although I was terrified, I had fun and I'm really glad we did it.
We had one last adventure on the way home. Because it had been raining so much, there had been several landslides. The first one we came across was being flattened down by a tractor - what a horrible idea! We saw several trucks try to make it through, slip, and have to be pushed back onto the road. We were afraid we were never going to get through, but our bus driver came through for us, and paid the taxi to tow us through!
One more week to go, then adios Costa Rica!
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