Puerto Viejo - Caribbean Baby!!

So I could fill this thing with descriptions of my finals (Both of which I am done with!! WHOOOO) But I won't. Because that is boring. It's enough to say that I took them and I did fine. However, I would like to describe my last weekend here in Costa Rica. It was our free weekend which means we didn't have a planned excursion with ISA. We could go anywhere we wanted. My roommate actually ended up flying all the way back to the States in order to take a plane to Antigua to see her boyfriend. Wow.

I wasn't up to leaving Costa Rica yet and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. Long before I was even signed up for this program I knew that I wanted to go to the Caribbean Coast and check out the Jamaican vibe at Puerto Viejo. I started trying to get a group together that was willing to travel together before we got here and finally found a group of girls.

Friday I took my Spanish final and then took a cab to the bus station. Back home, a 5 hour bus ride will cost you around fifty bucks I think. Here it cost me 9 bucks! Whooo!

We got to Puerto Viejo around six and started looking around for a place to stay. Our travel director at ISA had advised us against making reservations and we were a little worried about it but it turned out fine. We found a hostel that had a room with six beds for us for ten bucks per person. Not bad!

Then we hit the town! We went to a dance club across from the beach named Mango where they had free daiquiris. They sucked but the music was awesome. We ended up going to the beach and dancing for hours under a palm tree. It was one of the highlights of my entire trip here. Seriously, if you ever have the opportunity to go dancing on the beach . . .  Do it!

Dancing under the palm trees

The next day we rented bikes and rode around for hours checking everything out. It was great. We rode to this beautiful beach we were told about and swam for hours. (Yes, I got sunburned. I had a ton of sunblock but it could only do so much.) After a few hours of swimming we were finally exhausted enough to wonder what all the red flags stuck along the sand were for. Finally we found on an itty bitty little sign a half mile down the beach tan explanation that red flags meant it was too dangerous to swim that day. Oops.

Later on my friends and I decided we needed to spend at least one night at the notorious hammock hotel, Rocking J's so we packed up all our crap and checked out a hammock.  We paid 7 bucks for a hammock, a sheet and a locker. This place was seriously cool but seriously crazy. The entire place is crammed full of mosaics and murals from traveler before us. I meant to make a mosaic but with everything else, I forgot until after I left. Oh well.

My cocoon! So comfy! 

So after the long day of riding and swimming this old lady took a nap. Fortunately, this meant I slept through most of the craziness. Unfortunately, this meant that I woke up just as everyone was running around drunk (chasing armadillos, yelling "This is a chance of a lifetime!!!"). Most of the people there were under twenty one so by 11 O'clock most people were passed out. This left the entire place for the ones that managed to stay awake. It was pretty cool. The owner came down and gave us all free beer and we sat around the bonfire for hours. I even made friends with a tico couple. We went down to the beach and sat around talking in some really bad Spanglish until it got light. BTW, My spanish still sucks.  :(

Oh, because of this couple, I no longer freeze up when someone tries to do that cheek bump kissing thing. I used to stiffen up and be like Why is this person moving in on my cheek? Are they going to bite me? But the tica broke me of this. Every single time she saw me the next day she would run up and do the kiss greeting thing and then again when she left. And . . . I never once forgot and leaned in the other way. Which has always been a fear of mine because you would end up with more of a kiss than you were intending on. :D

The next day we went back to the beach (one that was safe to swim in) and lazed around until four when our bus left. Oh, right. Okay, so we had all bought our tickets back to San Jose the day before, knowing that they sometimes sell out. Well apparently we needn't have worried because they over sold the tickets anyway! By like 30. We were waiting in line to load when the bus abruptly left, leaving our group of five split into two groups. Of course I was in the group that was left behind. We were like . . . Um . . . that was the last bus of the day and WTF? We have tickets. And of course it's not like we were at a bus station to ask someone. It was only a random spot on the road. So we wait around. And wait. Then wait some more. Finally we heard a rumor that someone had talked to someone who had talked to someone who said that they were sending another bus. Which finally arrived almost an hour later.
Pura Vida
The bus ride back was more fun than any bus ride should ever be. My friend Katie and I decided that I had contacted Dengue (from the 24 bug bites I got in Tamarindo) Tuberculosis (One of my classmates that sat next to me found out she had it right before she came here.) and Malaria from Puerto Viejo (It is the only area in Costa Rica that occasionally has Malaria). Because of my collective diseases, I was going to immediately die and did not have to worry about the fact that I was leaving Costa Rica. Therefore I was the lucky one.

No, we were not drinking. I can't even blame it on sugar.

It was a wonderful weekend.

Poas volcano, coffee plantation, and La paz waterfalls!

So it is monday the 1st of August but I never got around to sharing about last monday so I thought I should get around to that. :) Darn school, finals, and paper. Not to mention spotty internet. It messed up my blog schedule.

Sigh

Anyway, last Monday was a school holiday. I have absolutely no idea why we didn't have school but I'm glad we didn't because I had an awesome day. I signed up for this three in one tour and toured a coffee plantation, saw the crater of a volcano and walked through five waterfalls.

The worst part of the day was waking up at five so I could be picked up at the Holiday Inn hotel at 6 in the morning. Ugh! Luckily they were nice enough to start the day off with breakfast at the coffee plantation where I got to drink enough coffee to make it through the day. Whew!

After breakfast we had the tour that conveniently ended in the souvenir shop. I ended up spending way too much money but hey, some of you are going to love your CR gifts! ^_^

Coffee Trees

Then it was back to the bus for the trip to the volcano. In our group were 12 of us from the U.S. Two from Spain, one from Brazil and one or two from Mexico. So our tour guide would say everything in spanish and then repeat it in english. I had a great time trying to figure out what she was saying before she switched to english. I could follow about 20 percent of what she said.

By the time we got up the mountain, the sun and heat had turned to cloudy and rainy. When we hiked up to the crater of the volcano all we could see was pure white. It was actually pretty funny. There were about 50 tourists, all with camera's out, looking at nothing but a block of white. No matter which way you looked you could only see two feet in front of you.  

Finally, the fog lifted and we could see in the crater. It was amazingly cool and beautiful. There is a lake in the middle that is supposed extremely hot and acidic.

Inside the crater

After a while the clouds came back so we left. We headed back down the mountain and went to the La Paz waterfalls and animal sanctuary.
There were so many animals!! It was crazy. At one point I was trying to talk this Tuscan into crawling onto my hand but he was being stubborn. He ended up chewing on my fingers for a couple minutes and then flew off. :(

It tickled

What are you looking at?

After the birds we went to the butterfly farm and there were so many! Thousands! I had like half a dozen land on me.

The next stop was my favorite . . . . . . MONKEYS!!!!! I was talking to one and it all came up and was like Hello, who are you, why are you here, what are you looking at, do your clothes taste good, can I try them? It was adorable!

Moooom, Can I keep them???

After the monkeys I went to the Snake house. For some crazy reason there was no one else there but it was pretty cool.

Everybody liked me here

One last stop before we left for the waterfalls.


Big cats!! There were two cougars!!! Woot! Woot! Go COUGS!!!!!

There were quite a few different types!

Then it was on to the waterfalls. There was a whole row of them, one after another. So cool.

All in all, it was a freakin great day!!!

Monteverde, zip lining and much much more

I wrote this all last week but the internet was being a jerk so I couldn't post it. Just be aware that this post is a week late.

So on Friday (The 22nd)  we went to Monteverde which is a cloud forest. Basically that is a fancy way of saying that the mountain is so high up and the clouds are so low that the two join together. It's very pretty but too chilly for me. I didn't really need more than a jacket and long pants but that was more than I wanted to wear. However, it was totally worth it for Saturday. I went Zip Lining and jumped on a Tarzan Swing. For those of you that don't know, Zip Lining is when you hook yourself into one of those harnesses that wraps all over your butt and then you slide on a wire that is suspended between two trees.

Don't worry. I got this. 

I went on eleven. The first few were baby ones that taught me how to brake so I didn't run into a tree but then it got fun. I went on one that was thousands of feet long where I was flying through the trees, probably about 30 feet up, looking around when all of a sudden -WOW! The trees dropped away, the sun hits me and I am flying 240 feet over the forest. It was incredible! I wish I could explain it better but I can not find the words to describe it.
Just WOW.


Then it was time for the Tarzan Swing. I stood in line for twenty minutes pretending I didn't know what I was in line for. I was like Hmmm. There seems to be a line in the middle of the forest. It must be for ice cream. This was totally ignoring the fact that I had had been looking forward to the Tarzan Swing for months. Then when it was almost my turn I told myself Oh Look! I get to walk on a suspension bridge! I love suspension bridges! Finally I started walking down the bridge towards my doom, I mean the two men, the bridge stopped abruptly over the forest, the men hooked me to a rope, I bent my knees and . . .


~Free~


        ~Fall ~


                   ~ing~




One hundred and something feet later the rope caught me and I began to swing. Freaking Awesome! I now want to bungee jump so bad but I can't find the courage. I think I would love it if they could just throw me off of the bridge. Definitely the next thing on my list of things to do!

The rest of the weekend was a lot less adventuress. A few friends and I went to a discoteca to dance for a while but the music was terrible. While the DJ was in charge all we heard was Rihanna and Pitbull. When the band played all we heard we 80's english songs massacred! The only cool thing about the place was the number of dogs chilling in the bar. At first I thought they were strays and I kept my distance but I finally noticed that they were all clean and healthy. Then I thought it was adorable. However, we couldn't handle the music. We called a cab and asked him to take us to a bar where there would be no gringo music. And he did. Me and one other girl were the only white people to be seen. It was soooo much fun!

The next morning I ended up going on a hike in the Cloud Forest National Park (or something like that) My two friends and I can not read a map so we ended up on a wrong trail and didn't make it to the continental divide but I think I liked it better that way. We saw no one else from our group and it was kind of nice. We pretended we were hiding from the dinosaurs. (Jurassic park was filmed in Costa Rica.)

Yes, the leaves are this big.