|
|
Sunday, 30 December
This morning I was supposed to meet Maria at the beach at 8am again, but I just did not move very quickly so I ended up catching the 8am bus and got there at 8:30. I could not find Maria anywhere so I sat in the shade for a while and read my book. Still no Maria, so I went down to the water and started gathering shells. Still no Maria, so I decided to walk down the beach. I was wearing my CCS shirt (the group I went to China with) and two ladies stopped me and asked about it. They are currently in CCS in Costa Rica and taking a long weekend trip to the beach. After chatting for a bit, I kept walking and decided to walk all the way to the end for I had not been all the way to the end yet.
Continue reading Maria's Last Day
Saturday, 29 December
Got on the 7:30am bus again and it was not too crowded today – yeah! Maria got on the same bus and we went and got her breakfast. We then went to the Manuel Antonio National Park (my 3rd time) and it was freaking full with the damn tourists. Notice how I do not consider myself one. Anyways, there were a lot of tour guides leading groups down the trails and stopping every few feet to show them something. I was a little annoyed for I just wanted to go to the beach, but Maria was tagging onto the end of the groups so she could see the animals or whatever they were looking at. We eventually made it to the second beach, found a spot in the shade and then went in the water. Maria took of swimming again and I was about to when I noticed a crowd of people approaching our stuff. This could only mean one thing – monkeys. Damn them. So I got out to make sure our stuff was not taken and the monkeys ended up hanging out for awhile for the guy next to us was feeding them. Damn him. Eventually one of the tour guides came over and told him to stop and eventually the monkeys went away.
Continue reading Back to the Park
Friday, 28 December
Meliedy and Melissa went to San Jose today to check out the university so they had to catch the 6am bus. I decided to sleep in instead of making breakfast. I got some money for the sailing deposit and then headed to the bus stop and was greeted to a long line for the Manuel Antonio bus. I ended up making it onto the bus, but had the joy of standing. The bus was the most packed I had ever seen it, and it was only 7:30am. Maria ended up getting onto the same bus and we got off at the beach. We quickly paid the deposit for the sailing trip and then went to the public beach. I got us some chairs and an umbrella for I did not want to fry ( and I didn’t – yeah! ). I mostly sat in the shade and read my book or did soduku. I did a little swimming, where I actually swam instead of just playing in the water. Maria was telling me how in Russia they actually swim in the water instead of playing in it so I figured I should give it a shot. The waves were not as good as before but I was able to catch one wave for body surfing. Maria really wanted to swim so she swam from the public beach to the first beach in the national park. She then walked to the second beach to see what it was like. She was quite tired when she made it back.
Continue reading A Three Hour Tour…
Thursday, 27 December
A lot of people left this morning – about 7-10 people. Our van was supposed to arrive at 8am but did not show up until 8:30. I was getting worried that there was another communication problem and we were going to miss the ride. Unfortunately, this was a very packed van. When we got in, there were already 4 people so we made 6. Then we went to another place and picked up 3 guys. Then we went to another place and picked up a couple. 11 people plus the driver – very packed. One couple was from Prescott and seemed to be traveling a lot through Costa Rica. The lady that sat next to me was a school counselor from NY with two years of teaching english in Turkey. I talked to her a bit about it and she said that Blondie songs were very good learning devices due to her clear voice and use of words like watcha. She and her husband also traveled a lot and one of the places they liked the most was Thailand. Apparently, they were very close to not coming back. They stayed in little out of the way towns instead of the big touristy places and loved it. We dropped them and the Prescott people off in Peurtavita (or something like that) so they could catch a ferry and get to Montezuma.
Continue reading Back Home – Tico Home that is
Wednesday, 26 December
This morning our ride to go to Selventura did not show up so we went downtown to the tour company to see what happened. Apparently, there was miscommunication so they got us a taxi to the place. We got there just as people were getting geared up for the canopy tour (zip lines). We had to dress in orange jump suits, a helmet, gloves and a harness. We then took a van to the starting point where we were giving brief instructions on hand signals, how to brake with one and two hands and how to pull ourselves to the end if we got stuck. I think this not being my first time helped a lot for I was not nervous at all like I was before I first went in Cancun. There were a total of 11 zip lines that we went on with the longest being about 700 and something meters. It was very cool and fun but I wish that we could do more for I never real got a chance to see the trees and stuff that I was flying through or over. The longest one was very cool because the clouds had moved in and you were flying through the mist while looking over the forest below you. Sadly, I got stuck three times. Two of them were my fault for I had slowed down too much from swinging my legs around. I had to turn around and pull myself in which killed my back for I was trying to do it fast before the next person ran into me. The last time was due to something getting caught between the cable and my pulley – I have no idea what it was but it caused me to stop about 40 feet out so the guy had to come out and pull me in. Pretty damn embarrassing and not the way I wanted to end the zip lines.
Continue reading Finally, Good Weather
Tuesday, 25 December
When I got back to the hostel last night, I met some new people. One was a lady from Russia – it took my awhile to place her accent, but once she said where she was from it was obvious. She lives in NY and was surprised to hear that we thought she had an accent. She says that everyone in NY has an accent so she just did not notice hers anymore. Adam, the new person in my room, and I talked and I told him my story of quitting, going to school, etc. He did not like my reason for quitting my job (burnout) and thought that there was something deeper there. To some degree he was right – I am trying to find my path in this world and I realized that it was not doing what I used to do. It was a good thought provoking session.
Continue reading x-mas
While hiking in the forest, I took a video to record the sound of the rain falling. I closed the camera so the video is black – wanted you to pay attention to the sound, not the images. Listen to the cloud forest.
Below are my photos from the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve:
[...]
Monday, 24 December
I got up early this morning for I had an 8:30 pick-up to go hiking. I ate breakfast and made pb & j for lunch. I also packed lots of layers since I do not have a fleece. I got to Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve around 9ish and was immediately cold. I put on all of the layers that I brought and was able to maintain some warmth. The Reserve is higher up than the hostel so it was more in the clouds and more wet. The wind was also blowing so the combo of the two just made it fun! I decided to do the long trail which the board said was almost 5km, but based on my experience in Manuel Antonio, who knows how long it really is. The trail was muddy and wet. I know that I used the word muddy to describe the trails in Manuel Antonio. That was nothing compared to today. Luckily, my Keens did a good job of keeping my feet dry when the mud would sink up towards the top of my foot. For the first 1-2 hours, the mist was thick and I could not see more than 50 feet. As the trail went along the edge of a mountain, the sun came out a little and the visibility probably doubled or tripled. I kept thinking that I needed a hiking stick to help me navigate the mud patches and I eventually found one. It was a godsend until it broke in half towards the end and smacked me on the temple. Stupid stick, I didn’t really want you anyways. I was coming down into a trench that was about 2 feet deep. When I put my weight on it to swing down it snapped and man my head did not appreciate the thump to my nogin. I was already feeling a little bad due to the fried chicken yesterday (sidenote: no more chicken – especially fried!), but luckily the pain did not last too long.
Continue reading Getting Down and Dirtry
Sunday, 23 December
Got up and had breakfast. Romy gives you fruit, granola, eggs and toast and it was all great. Ralf and I then decided to go to the frog exhibit that we can see from our windows. The exhibit was alright but since we were there during the day, the frogs were all sleeping. Luckily, they said that we could come back tonight using our ticket so we could see the frogs in action. Well, not lucky for Ralf since he is living, but lucky for me. Overall, we saw about 2-3 frogs in each aquarium. I was disappointed that my camera could not focus on the frogs when I tried to zoom in, so no pictures of frogs. Overall there was about 15-20 aquariums and the guide gave us a pretty good description of each one like how many eggs they have, where they lay their eggs, how much typically survive (usually about 2%), that the tadpoles will sometimes eat each other and that even the mom will eat the tadpoles for food. Also, we learned that the poison dart frogs are named ‘dart’ because they jump in a darting style, not because they were used for poison on darts. This is what I thought the name meant. It is the poison arrow frogs that are toxic (can create a heart attack in about 6 seconds) that you need to avoid and apparently they are only in Columbia.
Continue reading Football!
Saturday, 22 December
I got up and started packing all of my clothes. After breakfast I packed some more and then went to the bus station to see Katie and Sean off. Others left earlier in the morning and that was just too early for me to get up. Katie and Sean had a 9:30 bus ticket, so that was more reasonable. Oddly, the lot the buses go into was blocked off for a party. Lana and Sara were on the same bus and they made it sound like this happens often. So the buses had to park on the street and block traffic. Just does not seem like a smart thing to do. Besides, who wants to have a party at a bus station?
Continue reading Now it Feels Like Winter
|
|