So I'm just finishing up my last week in Costa Rica. It's been amazing. This week we actually had to do some school work. What a concept. Tuesday we spent the day preparing for our presentations and Wednesday we presented. Yesterday we went to a rum factory. It was quite the production. First pirates envaded our bus and then they led us around on a journey to keep the treasure of the rum a secret. It was entertaining and we got to try a bunch of different kinds of rum. Yes, this was a Miami sponsored event. Last night we had an international students party at Veritas. It was interesting because they brought in these guys playing drums and some dancers with crazy headdresses. But it was entertaining.
This afternoon we are going to an Artisan market and dinner at an Asian restuarant. Then I'll be up nice and early to catch my flight. See you all soon!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Las Palmas
Finally after 3 long weeks of roughing it (okay, so my version of roughing it, but the tents were pretty bad), we made it to our resort between Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo. While I wouldn't by any means say it was the nicest resort I have been to, it had air conditioning and hot water which are hard to come by. When we arrived at the hotel, the boys from our group, they're gentlemen let me tell you, grabbed their keys and bolted to their rooms. The girls we left behind to patiently wait for their keys.
I roomed with Jillian and Becca. There were three beds in our room, two doubles and a single, but you could have rolled across all of them and never fell to the floor. Also, our room had sliding glass doors which was strange, so we had to be extra careful to close the blinds. That night we had probably the most fabulous dinner we had so far. We got to pick out any meat we wanted (from like 7 different kinds) and they cooked it up fresh in front of us. That night we just hung out at the resort and went swimming in the pool. We were told to stay away from the ocean, even thought it was right there, because there were crazy rip tides.
On Saturday we left early to go to snorkeling on the Carribbean coast. It would have been really cool if it hadn't rained the day before because the water was all murky. So after we had enough of swimming through dirty water, we go to lay out on the boat which was amazing. On our boat ride back we stopped at the point of the penninsula for a fruit break. Everywhere we go we get fruit, usually pineapple. While the fruit was tasty, the exciting part was that we stopped where all the monkeys hang out. We got back on the boat, but instead of taking us to where we started, we got dropped off on the beach to casually stroll back for lunch. We ate at a traditional Costa Rican-Carribbean restaurant, but it took forever. We stayed around the town a little while, but there was nothing much going on. One of the most exciting things we got to do was watch TV. We never get to watch TV (especially since our TV is behind the dining room table). Oh, I forgot to mention the bathroom in our hotel room. We had a jacuzzi. And our shower was in the jacuzzi. And there was no shower curtain. And there was a mirror right in front of the shower. Special I know.
That night we decided we wanted to go into Puerto Viejo. Only 13 of us went because everyone was trying to scare us by saying how sketchy the town was. But we were safe and made sure we were always together. We got into town around 9:30, but nobody told us that nothing happens in town until at least 11. We wandered around for a little bit and ended up at a bar called Johnny's that was right on the beach. We just sat at tables on the beach because we were the only people there. Then we checked out this Carribbean themed place with live music, but it was mostly Ticos, so we went back to Johnny's. This time there were more people there. And guess who would be there, but Kathleen Suwanski, my old next door neighbor. Fancy that.
Suday morning we got up and went zip lining. I went in the first group at 7:45 am. We took a nice long drive on unpaid roads probably all the way to Panama. We were only 40 km from Panama and we drove forever. The zip line place we went to was amazing. There were 15 zip lines. Most of them were connected, but some of them had killer walks between them. On one of the zip lines we got to go upside down, which was super cool, but a little painful because the harness was digging into me. That afternoon we lounged by the pool and by the ocean. It was so relaxing and completely necessary because we have been going nonstop all trip. That night we went back to Puerto Viejo, but with more people this time. However, we forgot to take into account that it was a Sunday night, so most of the places were closed. That was an interesting trip because our bus driver decided to go out once he got to Puerto Viejo and he seemed drunk when he took us home. And I say seemed drunk because we had to pull him out a bar and then he peed in the woods before he took us home. Somehow we survived, and the trip probably wasn't any more ridiculous than normal because we had to dodge all the potholes anyway.
Monday morning we left early to go to Earth University. That was not fun. We took a tour through the farming section and after lunch we went to look at all the livestock. However, they forgot to mention that we were going to get eaten alive, so no one was really paying attention. We were more focused on keeping the bugs off. That night I counted my bug bites on my legs, and I had 48. Yes, 48 bites. I think that's a record for me. The other weird thing about that tour was that the guide spoke in Spanish to our guide and he translated for us. But later on in the tour we heard him talking in English. But finally around 4 we got back to San Jose for our last week.
I roomed with Jillian and Becca. There were three beds in our room, two doubles and a single, but you could have rolled across all of them and never fell to the floor. Also, our room had sliding glass doors which was strange, so we had to be extra careful to close the blinds. That night we had probably the most fabulous dinner we had so far. We got to pick out any meat we wanted (from like 7 different kinds) and they cooked it up fresh in front of us. That night we just hung out at the resort and went swimming in the pool. We were told to stay away from the ocean, even thought it was right there, because there were crazy rip tides.
On Saturday we left early to go to snorkeling on the Carribbean coast. It would have been really cool if it hadn't rained the day before because the water was all murky. So after we had enough of swimming through dirty water, we go to lay out on the boat which was amazing. On our boat ride back we stopped at the point of the penninsula for a fruit break. Everywhere we go we get fruit, usually pineapple. While the fruit was tasty, the exciting part was that we stopped where all the monkeys hang out. We got back on the boat, but instead of taking us to where we started, we got dropped off on the beach to casually stroll back for lunch. We ate at a traditional Costa Rican-Carribbean restaurant, but it took forever. We stayed around the town a little while, but there was nothing much going on. One of the most exciting things we got to do was watch TV. We never get to watch TV (especially since our TV is behind the dining room table). Oh, I forgot to mention the bathroom in our hotel room. We had a jacuzzi. And our shower was in the jacuzzi. And there was no shower curtain. And there was a mirror right in front of the shower. Special I know.
That night we decided we wanted to go into Puerto Viejo. Only 13 of us went because everyone was trying to scare us by saying how sketchy the town was. But we were safe and made sure we were always together. We got into town around 9:30, but nobody told us that nothing happens in town until at least 11. We wandered around for a little bit and ended up at a bar called Johnny's that was right on the beach. We just sat at tables on the beach because we were the only people there. Then we checked out this Carribbean themed place with live music, but it was mostly Ticos, so we went back to Johnny's. This time there were more people there. And guess who would be there, but Kathleen Suwanski, my old next door neighbor. Fancy that.
Suday morning we got up and went zip lining. I went in the first group at 7:45 am. We took a nice long drive on unpaid roads probably all the way to Panama. We were only 40 km from Panama and we drove forever. The zip line place we went to was amazing. There were 15 zip lines. Most of them were connected, but some of them had killer walks between them. On one of the zip lines we got to go upside down, which was super cool, but a little painful because the harness was digging into me. That afternoon we lounged by the pool and by the ocean. It was so relaxing and completely necessary because we have been going nonstop all trip. That night we went back to Puerto Viejo, but with more people this time. However, we forgot to take into account that it was a Sunday night, so most of the places were closed. That was an interesting trip because our bus driver decided to go out once he got to Puerto Viejo and he seemed drunk when he took us home. And I say seemed drunk because we had to pull him out a bar and then he peed in the woods before he took us home. Somehow we survived, and the trip probably wasn't any more ridiculous than normal because we had to dodge all the potholes anyway.
Monday morning we left early to go to Earth University. That was not fun. We took a tour through the farming section and after lunch we went to look at all the livestock. However, they forgot to mention that we were going to get eaten alive, so no one was really paying attention. We were more focused on keeping the bugs off. That night I counted my bug bites on my legs, and I had 48. Yes, 48 bites. I think that's a record for me. The other weird thing about that tour was that the guide spoke in Spanish to our guide and he translated for us. But later on in the tour we heard him talking in English. But finally around 4 we got back to San Jose for our last week.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
White Water Rafting and La Selva
So the day after the soccer game we had to be at the University at 6:15 in the morning. Amazingly everybody made it. Then we started on our way to Pacuare River. It was only a few hours away, but obviously everybody passed out on the bus. At the beginning of the trip, I never really slept on the bus or anything, but now I sleep on every moving vehicle we're on. Bus, boat, car, whatever. We got to the rafting place around nine in the morning to enjoy another fabulous Tico breakfast of rice and beans. Joy.
After we ate we had another half hour bus ride to get to our starting point in the river. Somehow our buses managed to drive us all the way down to the river. We saw other people walking on the road because their vans wouldn't go any farther down. At the river, we split up into 7 boats. And of course, my boat was the best. All of the other rafts were guy heavy, so they thought they were going to kick butt, but we had 4 girls and 2 guys and we won. I guess it wasn't a contest, but we started off last and ended up in front because we all have such huge muscles to paddle down the river.
We stopped for lunch at a random clearing on the side of the river, and what happened to be there- a wild boar. Just hanging out. We had to scare him away a few times because he was getting a little close to our food. All the guides on the rafts prepared the food for us and it was amazing. They were super efficient and knew exactly what they were doing, unlike many other trips we've taken.
When we got back on the river after lunch, it started to rain. But that didn't really matter because we were already wet from dodging waves and jumping in the river. Luckily none of us ever fell out, but we did have to hit the deck a couple times and take some huge waves. We were the first group to finish, so like I said, we are the champions.
So after we were all finished rafting we got on the bus to head to La Selva. La Selva is a biological station, actually the best biological research station in all of Costa Rica. Somehow us crazy college kids got to spend the night there with a bunch of serious scientists conducting intense research. La Selva is a nature reserve that protects primary tropical rainforest. It is run by the Organization for Tropical Studies. If we were science majors, this probably would have been a very interesting place to be. However, we are not. We are mostly business majors who have been on too many hikes. But yet again we went on a night hike and a hike in the morning. Apparently most of the animals in the forest are nocturnal, but whenever we go on night hikes we mostly see bugs. On the morning hike we say a bunch of birds, but we (or at least I) are not very outdoorsy people, so we weren't very enthusiastic. The most animals we saw were right by the dining hall. There was a snake in the tree and a toad on the ground at night. In the morning there were a bunch of birds that like the trees by the dining hall better than the ones in the forest, plus an iguana that was just hanging out.
La Selva is a in a very humid part of Costa Rica, and that's saying a lot because Costa Rica is very humid to start. So needless to say we were all kind of gross. We lined up early with all our luggage so we could claim our seats on our lovely air conditioned bus. Then we ate lunch and hit the road.
On our drive we stopped at a Dole banana plantation. However, there was a miscommunication between the travel agency and Dole, so we showed up at 3, but they were expecting us at 2. So by the time we arrived, it was pouring, which meant we couldn't get the full tour of the plantation. Instead we got to look at the processing plant and stand under a tin roof to listen to the rain pound. It was kind of interesting to hear about banana production, but I couldn't hear that much, and we didn't get to taste any bananas. Luck most of the other products we've looked at in Costa Rica, all the good stuff gets shipped to the United States and the Ticos get jipped with the crappy stuff.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
USA v. Costa Rica soccer game
Wednesday we went to see the United States play Costa Rica in soccer. It was amazing and super intense. All the girls bought Costa Rican soccer jerseys because we are in Costa Rica and they were only like 5 bucks. Jillian and I went to a soccer, excuse me futbol, store and asked if they had Costa Rican jerseys. The guy literally laughed at us and told us that Costa Rica was going to win. So anyways, we met at the University to take our bus over. All the guys in our group either decorated shirts or painted their chests in support of the good ol USA. Even though all the girls were wearing Costa Rica jerseys, we were still cheering for the United States, so we painted our faces. It was probably confusing to other people because it looked like we were cheering for both teams.
Our bus dropped us off a little ways from the stadium, so we got to walk through all the crazy people. They even had cops on horses. It was quite the event. Once we made it inside, they have us boom sticks, which is probably a bad idea for college students, but whatever. We got to the game around 6:30 even though it didn't start until 8, but there were tons of people there already. The seats are first come first serve, so we were in the nosebleeds. Somehow we got shoved into a section of Americans, which was probably a very good choice. I didn't feel unsafe there or anything, well except for the stadium which I'm pretty sure will crumble in a few years, but it was nice to be around Americans to sing the Star Spangled Banner and such. We even met a guy who went to Miami. It was funny being in a group of Americans because the Americans were the only ones who stood throughout the whole game. The Costa Ricans sat. We should have followed their lead.
It was tons of fun before the game started cheering and everything, but then Costa Rica scored two goals in the first 16 minutes. That was not so fun. Finally in the last few minutes of the game, the US got a penalty kick and scored the only goal of the game. Needless to say we lost 3-1.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Jacó, Osa Pennisula, Caño Island
Hello again everybody. I have been super busy since we last talked. Last Wednesday we had a free day, so we went to Jacó Beach. We met at school at 6am. Yes, 25 college kids got up before 6 to go to the beach. We got to the beach around nine and spent the whole day outside. It was a little cloudy, but super humid. There was lots of lying out, trying to ride the waves, and drinking. It was really fun and super chill, until we all realized that we were terribly burned. This took part way through the drive home. And yes, we did apply sunscreen, but none of us took into account our proximity to the equator, and that killed us. I'm pretty sure most of our group was burned, and now a bunch of people are pealing. Pleasant, I know.
Then bright and early at 6 am again on Friday morning we left for the Osa Penninsula. That was quite a long trip. It was a 6 hour bus ride and a 2 hour boat ride. On our bus ride we got to drive along the Pan-American highway and drive over el Cerro de los Muertes (aka the Hill of the Dead). It's about 10,000 feet in elevation and it has a tendency to get foggy and cloudy making the steep hills even more dangerous. Luckily we were there super early in the morning, so we made it with no problems. We picked up the boats in Sierpe, a little town along a river. We all put our bags in garbage bags to protect them from the water, but we were not nearly protected enough. I was in the front row of one of the boats, and obviously it started to rain. But I had fun with it because there was nothing else we could do. When we arrived at Drake Bay, we hopped out of the boats in the water because docks are a foreign concept. Then we had to make the trek to our "hotel." It was only like a mile and a half from the beach, but it was way up a hill, so we had to take trucks. However, only 12 people could go at a time, so we had to make 3 trips. Of course I was on the last truck, which means I was one of the last people to arrive at lunch. And of course, they ran out of food so we had to wait for them to cook another meal for us four unfortunate souls.
And now prepare yourselves as I explain our "hotel." Let me start by staying there is no way I would stay in a place like this in any situation other than this trip. Our "rooms" were tents on raised, covered platforms. Technically we had beds, but you might as well have been sleeping on the bed frame because you could feel it through the mattress. And technically we had electricity and running water, except they turned it off at different times everyday. Apparently Osa penninsula did not have electicity until 4 years ago, so they haven't made much progress. I'm sure all of you who know me would not exactly describe me as outdoorsy, so needless to say, this was quite the predicament.
We had the rest of the afternoon free, so we went down to the beach. We didn't have to drive back down. No, no, we took the cattle path. So yes, on our walk down we ran into some cows and lots of cow poop. Lovely. Right at the bottom we got to see a monkey which was pretty cool, so it almost made up for the walk down, but not really at all. And since we were trapped in the middle of nowhere, we stayed at the "lodge" for the rest of the night. The "lodge" was really just a pavillion where they served meals and had a bar, but there was nowhere else to go.
Saturday morning we got up early so we could head over to Corcovado National Park. The park was on the mainland, but we had to take a boat to get there because there are no roads. At the park we split up into two groups. My group went on the super hard, long, boring trail first. Our guide was not very talkative, so he didn't point out many things. We saw lots of leaf cutter ants, and he had a tendency to stop right in the middle of one of their paths, so everyone got bitten. He also liked to stop when we were being too loud. It was like learning to walk quietly, single file in kindergarten. There was lots of trees and green stuff, but not too many animals. We did get to stop at a waterfall and play in a watering hole for a little bit, and it was completely necessary. It was super humid, so we were all super sweaty. When we got back from our 2 hour hike, the other group was just hanging out. We got to play in the ocean a little, but then it was time for lunch. And again, I was one of the last people to get to lunch, so of course they ran out of food. I got rice and pasta salad and no untensil to eat it with. Awesome.
That afternoon our groups switched trails, but the other group just got to go straight to the waterfall which was only like 20 minutes away. We got to go on another hour and a half hike. Luckily this one wasn't as steep/narrow/deadly as the last one. And on this trail we actually got to see some animals. But yet again, there were tons of leaf cutter ants.
So when we finally made it back to the "hotel," all anybody wanted to do was shower. And again, we stayed at the "lodge" all night. Everybody was playing euchre. I watched for a long time and learned to play. I actually won the first two games I played (because I had a good partner, but that's besides the point). It was one of the girl's on our trips birthday, so the owner of the hotel made us cake and jungle juice to celebrate.
Sunday morning we were all woken up by the sun and the heat at 5:30 am. Lovely. It was deathly hot and obviously the water wasn't on and breakfast wasn't ready, so all you could do was sit in the heat. This time we took a boat ride to Caño Island. Here we went swimming and snorkeling. Everybody was applying sunscreen and bugspray religously because we didn't want to get burned and there were these stupid little fly/bug things that were eating us alive. The first group went out right when we got there. It was taking them a long time, and there group was mostly boys, so when we saw their boat in the distance, we ran to the food and started filling up our plates so we wouldn't starve. We went snorkeling away from the shore a little bit. I had never been snorkeling, so I thought it was amazing. We saw lots of fish and a shark! The shark was only like 3 feet long, but come on, it was a shark. When our group came back, another group went out, but by the time they returned, the island was closed. Yes, the island closed. I have never heard of an island closing, but Caño Island closes at 2:00 in the afternoon. We took the boats back and wanted to be part of the first group to get back, but no no. The boys sprinted off their boat and got to the cars first. What gentlemen. So I was stuck on the last trip, and we had to wait half an hour, part of it in the rain, on the beach. That night again turned into lots of Euchre games, but everyone was really ready to leave.
Monday morning we at breakfast at 6:15 am so we could book it out of there. We made it back to Sierpe by 9:00. It was great to get back on the bus with air conditioning. Everyone was starving and craving American food, so we convinced the adults to let us go to McDonald's for lunch. We cleaned that place out. Luckily our food was on Miami, so we feasted. We spent somewhere around $250. What can I say, we're hungry college students. We got back to San José around 3:30. The first thing I did when I got back was take a shower, and it was glorious.
Tomorrow we are going to see the United States play Costa Rica in soccer, so that should be very interesting. Some of got Costa Rican jerseys, but we're rooting for the United States. The game is sold out, and it's bound to be intense. Then on Friday we leave for our last weekend excursion. This time we actually get to stay in a resort. We're also going white water rafting, zip lining, snorkeling, and loads of other cool stuff. I'll let you all know about it, but it probably won't be for another week.
Pura Vida
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