I knooow this is super late, considering I got back from this trip Sunday afternoon and it is now Thursday! I wish I could say it's because I have been SO super busy with school and stuff but really, i just haven't found time or been full-of-thought enough to get to it. (Don't wanna force an entry right? Or else it'll just come out horribly written!) =D
Right, so last weekend began on Thursday for me. (Not that every day here isn't almost the same as any fun weekend day anyway ;) ) This trip began for me at 3:55am when my alarm went off, waking me up from the night before's "nap" (due to mind full of a million things, preventing me from sleeping, NOT due to being out all night with friends, promise!) and (wonderful, i've got a long trip ahead of me, including at least 3 transportation changes and my body chooses the night BEFORE to not let me sleep?! Thanks alot!) =P
Anyways, thanks to a friend, I was able to call a taxi in the morning to take me to the meeting place where i would find the others who i was to be traveling with. Meeting time was 4:30. I, thinking it would take 15minutes or so for the taxi to arrive, since i had never called one before and didnt really know how it worked, called the cab around 4:00, just before putting a bowl of oatmeal in the microwave. Well wouldn't you know, as much as nothing else in this country is very 'fast', the taxi arrives 30 seconds after the microwave 'dings' telling me its ready. Well that's wonderful, I wonder if my Tica mom would like a cold bowl of oatmeal, cuz that's what I had to leave on the counter since he came so quickly!!
Let's see how short we can make the beginning of this story so that I don't go on and on forever! Hmm. Left in a taxi for the bus station around 4:45 , after all the others had arrived. Got on the bus, slept the whole way (first 1.5 hours of sleep I got since Tuesday night!) Got off the bus and onto a ferry. (This one had AC!! woohoo!!!! =D) [The ferry was the next 45 minutes of sleep I got to add for the night/day) After the ferry, we got onto another bus in Paquera/Tambor , not sure where exactly the ferry stops. Took the bus to Santa Teresa or something I believe? (next 30 minutes of sleep.) Then switched buses AGAIN, for a 15/20 minute ride to Montezuma. [These weekend trips really provide QUITE the adventure!]
After we got off the bus, we found pretty much the first hostel we could find and put our stuff there. It was uhm....well HOT! and humid! and the rooms had 1 tiny little fan! It was 3 of us in a little room - which we were only ever in just to sleep. There was a kitchen downstairs that we could use (its a pretty common thing) which even came with free flies, ants, and cockroaches! The refrigerator was one-of-a-kind. Kept closed by placed the round part of a stool in front of the door in a special position to keep it from opening. We found a cockroach 'chillin' inside the door of it, first time we opened it. And gosh, what a lucky guy, at least HE was gettin some cool air , while we're all stuck outside in the hot and humid air! haha. Anyways, the kitchen was nice to make dinner so we didn't have to eat out for every mean (as i said, extra protein was included via: a few ants here n there crawlin' around)
Once we put our stuff down, and checked out the place, we changed into our suits and went to the beach for a little bit. I laid out on the beach and fell asleep immediately! (which, i guess i dont mind that i didnt sleep much the night before because it allowed me to fall asleep on the beach rather quickly, allowing me to tan sightly without being aware of the wicked heat and humity that surrounded us! Normally, I can't stand more than 20 minutes "soaking up the sun" without having to get up and into the water to cool off.)
Afterwards, we just walked around a big, grabbed some food from the store, I cooked some pasta (sea shell pasta with some PREGO SAUCE!!!) it was incredible. annd then we met up with some of the other ISA kids who had come the day before, to make a bonfire on the beach. And I must say, the fellas did a mighty fine job makin the fire! (Though, needless to say,it was quite hot sitting around it , so we weren't really out there for long.)
Afterwards, we went back to the room, I read a little bit, then crashed for the night, only to wake up again at 8:00am to grab some breakfast and get ready with the other two for our snorkeling/boat trip to Tortuga Island.
I was slightly disappointed with this trip, that cost $40 (really not too expensive) but the boat had a "roof" you know, that makes shade, so i didnt get to tan on the boat rides! And well, i think they definitely tried to make as much money as possible cuz the boat was FULL as can be with people. It was a small boat, i feel i should mention. Anyway, so we had about a 40 minute boat ride out to Tortuga Island - which im not even sure which part it was , I really think it was just these giant rocks in the water...that they call Tortuga Island. hmm. Oh, and did I mention they advertised that we would see a "beautifully amazing" waterfall on the way? Well, this is a little bit of what it looked like, I even believe I had zoomed in slightly for this picture!
Okay got, this is getting to be super long. So we snorkeled, and I was a little unimpressed, but even still, just chillin in the middle of the ocean among a bunch of random fish was kinda cool of course. I saw a few neat looking fish, but one thing I noticed about snorkeling here is that the "reefs" are like....rocks....where as in the Caribbean, its like actual coral reefs with more cool stuff to see.
After snorkeling, the boat guys (this was a tour company, not random boat guys, don't worry - they come later ;) KIDDING!!! kidding kidding and KIDDING about that 2nd part!) hehehehe. As I was saying, they grilled on the beach for us , and it was quite delicious I must say as well, and the fruit, even more so! Check it out :
Afterwards, played a little beach volleyball (very briefly - the sand was wicked hot. Almost as hot as that one year at sand soccer a few years back! (mom n dad you know what im talkin bout) Went swimming a bit, and hung out. We only had about an hour on the beach there before leaving for our 2nd snorkeling spot. Which was another beautiful giant ROCK in the middle of the ocean! That was literally like 100 yards from our first spot (ooh and as i'm typing this there is a mesquito flying around me plotting how its going to suck my blood in my sleep i think! oh dear.) But as I was saying, talk about false advertising!!!!
During lunch - this one guy found a wild pig looking animal (called a packera..or peckera...or something like that..) chillin in the shade and decided to hang out and pet it for a bit. He thought it'd be cool to put a Pilsen in front of it as well, you know, to add a little humor to the pictures we were taking ;)
This is still getting so super long! Gosh! I'm trying to make it short! okay, so after we got back we hung out, went to dinner, hung out a bit more and I was in bed Id say around 11ish. Woke up the next morning around 8 again to start hiking to the waterfalls. WHICH , that's to adapting way too much to Tico time, didn't start until 10am - an hour after we had planned to start hiking originally! haha. It was a group of like 8 of us gringos that went. There were 3 waterfalls. The first was quite simple to get to. The 2nd, required almost literal mountain climbing - like climbing a slightly slanted WALL - by using the oddly grown tree roots to hold onto and help us up! Surely if any one of us had fallen we would have either died or been severely injured. I LOVED IT! Here's a picture - not the best to allow you to feel the same we were feeling while climbing, but still might show a little bit.
Okay so , like i said the first waterfall was nice , we jumped off of a giant rock a few times , climbed up the waterfall a little and chilled behind it , letting the water fall in our faces - what a wonderful feeling. haha. then climbed that mountain, and a few rocks, and a few more things, then down this steep path that had a rope to help us climb down because it was so steep. THEN [here comes the best part!!!!] WE ARRIVED AT THE 2nd WATERFALL!!!! THE JUUMMMPPP!!!! There was a spot , where you could jump from, into the pool at the bottom of the 2nd waterfall - about 50 ft high is what the rumors are saying it is. I , for sure can't believe I did it! But it was wonderful! and I'm SO glad I did it! Check me out:
Then we all just hung out there for a good while - there was a pool and some tiny falls behind us - tiny like trickles that cant really be considered falls. Then there was a roap swing on the side - which i would consider a rock wall because it felt like a vertical wall when we were climbing past it to the third waterfall! Well, I spent a good amount of time with the rope swing while the boys continued to jump from the top of the waterfall over and over again. OH! and to get back up from the fall after jumping, you got to do MORE rock climbing. [Gosh, how much I wanted to do rock and mountain climbing in Costa Rica! This wasn't exactly it, but mighty close, and probably one of the best things Ive done here!!!!] Well, I was lovin the rope swing, reminded me of Beachmont for a minute actually! When the counselors would sit in a chair - like a lifeguard chair and swing from there into the disgusting algae filled pond, and all us campers thought it was SOOOO cool!!! haha.
Annny then heres just a random picture of the beach. There's plenty more, and this is DEFINITELY NOT the most beautiful of them, but the first one I grabbed.
As I said, sorry for the delay of the entry! I actually started typing this around 1pm this afternoon - it is now midnight, and I almost forgot about it! Can you imagine how much there would be to read if i forgot about it until next week? Then i'd have TWO weekend adventures to write about!
OH NO! I almost forgot to type about the ADVENTURE BACK HOME!!!!! I'll try to make it quick! But it definitely reminded us to be appreciative of the many HIGHWAYS and easy access roads we have back in the states...BRIDGES and such as well! Our journey home began at 6:30am. on the first bus, right outside our hostel in Montezume. Stopping 20 minutes later to pick up people getting off the 7am bus in Santa Teresa or whatever town we were in. 8am came around and the other bus still hadn't come. (That was the first hour of waiting, in the NON AIR CONDITIONED bus, and outside in the ridiculously humid hot weather.) After that, we drove about 45 minutes to the ferry - almost couldnt get there due to road paving. (OF ALL THE TIMES THEY DECIDE TO PAVE THE STUPID BROKEN ROADS THEY DECIDE THAT SUNDAY - THE DAY WE NEEDED TO GO HOME!!! WHO EVEN WORKS ON SUNDAYS IN COSTA RICA ANYWAYS?!?!?!) Right, so we got to the ferry, bought our tickets, and got onto the ferry. This one was not the same as the one we came on - it was NOT AIR CONDITIONED. Great. An hour on that, then - our bus driver had told us the bus to San Jose might be full - so we needed to hurry to it. SO to ensure a quick exit from the Ferry to the bus, we decided to stand near the exit when we thought we were 10 minutes away. Well we did, and we were. but we didn't know it would take another 20 minutes to dock the stupid thing! 30 minutes waiting , in a croweded, non-ACd area, only to exit the ferry and find the bus was not only already FULL but OVER-PACKED! So, we took the public bus to the central bus station in Puntarenas. There was a man in front of me on the bus, with a bucket of fish. He obviously sold fish on the streets or something, or even if he didn't i dont know, but it STUNK SO BAD! We rode with our HEADS OUT THE WINDOW (Still sweating, on yet ANOTHER , NON-AIR CONDITIONED bus. Then, missed the bus stop, and had to walk about 6 blocks to the station. (EVERYONE was quite irritable by this time for sure - if not already hours ago! - this heat and humidity was almost unbarable! We pretty much bathed in our own sweat. LOVELY.) Okay so around 12pm we finally got on a bus to San Jose. and Hey! GUESS WHAT!...SURPRIISSEEE! It was NOT AIR CONDITIONED either! 2 hours on this one-and arrived in San Jose around 3 to grab a taxi and FINALLY make it home. exhausted.
The end.
Phew. that was a loooooooot of things to type!
Going back to the beach at Jaco tomorrow morning -
wonder what kind of adventures this trip is going to bring us!!!
Costa Rica never seems to fail at providing us with many, always. hahaha
Will be writing again sometime next week!
Adios!
Nice jump Brittany, fear is not a factor for you. Thanks for the pics!
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