Weekend at Tortuguero

This weekend, Beth, DeAnna, Katie, Christine, and I went to this small island off the Caribbean coast called Tortuguero. It's not the easiest place to get to. We started by taking a bus from San Jose to Cariari (about 2.5 hour ride)

where we transferred to a smaller bus for a ride along dirt roads to La Pavona (about 1 hour)

where we then get on a boat which takes us on an hour ride to the town of Tortuguero.

Luckily we made all our connections and so we made it to our hotel within 6 hours (I swear everything is 6 hours away from San Jose).

Tortuguero is a very small island. There are no cars. Only dirt walk ways. The Caribbean Ocean is on one side and if you walk about 50 yards you are at the other water's edge which is a river that runs through the National Park. Both waters are very brown and gross. The sand on the beach of the ocean is almost black. The waves were too rough to swim in (even though we broke the rules and went for a dip - see below). There weren't too many restaurants and even fewer bars/clubs (only 2 on the whole island).

 

  

 

We spent Friday afternoon just walking around the town and going to all the different little shops. To let you know how small the town is - we walked the entire thing in about an hour (that includes shopping). They had a lot of fun jewelry and I bought a bracelet, ring, and earrings. We checked out a few of the places to eat and that night we ate a Miss Junies. It was one of the first places on the island and had the typical Caribbean food.

Since the restaurant didn't open until 6 pm, we walked back home for a little rest and to get cleaned up. On the way back, Katie found a coconut that she was determined to crack. Back at the hotel, she found a guy with a machete who kindly cracked it open for her. We sat on the dock drinking coconut juice and eating fresh coconut while looking at a very atractive tico working 2 houses over. It was great!

At 8, we headed back to Miss Junies. I got marlin in a spicy coconut sauce. I quite enjoyed it.

  

 

The waiter took us around the restaurant to tell us about the history of Miss Junie. Unfortunately it was mainly all in Spanish so I didn't understand most of it. Oh well. But then the waiter started annoying us pretty badly. We came over and just started talking with us and hitting on us all. As we were wanting to leave, he was telling us that if we really wanted, our dinner would be free. But it wasn't - we had to pay. He also asked if we were going to the Karaoke bar that night and we said that we probably would (remember - only 2 places that are open past 9 pm). Then we left.

Well...you guessed it! He followed us to the bar and latched onto us like a lost puppy. He was sitting next to me and I was trying my best to ignore him, but it's hard to ignore someone tapping your back for too long. I got so fed up with him that I finally just got up and walked over to the other side of the table to talk with my friends. Then we moved to the bar and HE FOLLOWED US AGAIN!! I mean - get a hint man. No one wanted to talk to him and he asked each one of us if we wanted to dance and we ALL said NO! We didn't stay too long at the bar since they were playing crappy music. We heard the real party was at the other bar so we checked that out. There were maybe 5 people there so we walked in and then left. Needless to say...we were back in our room by 11 pm. It was probably best though since we had an early morning.

 

(notice the Diet Coke - that's me!)

Saturday morning, we woke up at 5:20 am to go on a tour of the park on a bus that left at 5:45 am. I don't know the last time I had been up at that hour and we all struggled getting out of bed. We were all pretty dead.

It was definitely hard to get up, but the tour was TOTALLY worth it! The tour guide was noted as one of the best tour guides on the island and I can tell you that he didn't disappoint. We hadn't been in the boat for more than 5 minutes, when Katie reached out to put this in Chris's hair:

She thought it was some sort of goo that she was going to use to play a chiste (joke) on Chris. Anyway...this frog is actually rarely seen in the wild because it is so good a camouflage and is indangered. However...it is seen on all the Costa Rica tourist crap since it's so bright and colorful. It was a great way to start of the tour. We had a feeling we would not go away disappointed now.

Here are some of the amazing animals that we saw while on our 3 hour boat ride through the Tortuguero National Park:

 

The great egrit (spelling?)

  

 Not sure what this is called - but it's cool

 

Monkeys!!!

(this is a white faced monkey - we also saw spider monkeys and howler monkeys - the 3 species of monkeys in Costa Rica)

  

A blue herin drying it's feathers

We also saw toucans, a sloth, parrots, other cool looking birds, and a jaguar. Hahaha! JK about the jaguar. We did see all the other stuff though. Our guide had seen jaguars there before - and crocodiles. But we weren't fortunate enough to stumble across either.

We did get caught in a major down pour though. February is supposed to be the dry month at Tortuguero, but yet it rained every day we were there. It rained sparatically (side note - that word always reminds me of Clueless) throughout the boat tour, but the last few minutes were the worst. Luckily we had these amazing rain ponchos.

 

  

After our wonderful tour, we went back to our hotel and crashed! I didn't sleep for too long, but it felt wonderful to just lay on my bed and read while everyone else slept. We all needed that nap/rest. When we all woke up, we went walking through the jungle of Tortuguero National Park. In order to go into the park, you have to wear rubber boots. They were HOT! It was amazing that 5 white girls sweaty & gross wearing rubber boots walking down the road still got whistled at. 

 

Last Day at Buen Samaritano

Today was my last day at the soup kitchen that I've been working at. It's not my last week in Costa Rica, but I wanted to check out the other projects my last week and also travel (as if I haven't been doing that already). It was really sad saying goodbye to all the kids I've grown to love over the past 5 weeks - especially my daughters. They were all pretty sad it was my last day as well, which made me feel good.

me with a bunch of the kids

I was lucky that a lot of the kids decided to stay after lunch today, especially since yesterday we only had about 5. There were a few regulars who didn't come today and I'm sad that I wasn't able to say bye to them. But I can only do so much ya know?

there was a big game of tug and war going on

working hard

they LOVE bunny ears

As an extra little treat, the kids took us down to where they live, again (they took us there last week as well). I'm not sure I've explained where the kids live or what the conditions are like. Let me do that now. The soup kitchen is located on a dirt road and is surrounded by houses. I thought these living conditions were pretty rough until I saw where the majority of the kids lived. At both ends of the dirt road, there is a little path that leads behind the soup kitchen and to all the kids' houses. I didn't really take pictures while we were down there (1) because I didn't think whipping out a camera in that area was very smart, and (2) I didn't want them to feel like they were zoo animals I came to take pictures of. So I appologize for not being able to show you what life is like for the kids.

view of their houses from the dirt road
(this is where they had a fire last week)

The kids took us into their homes today and had us meet their moms. Their houses consist of one large room with a couch, tv, and stereo; a kitchen & bathroom; and then one or two bedrooms. I was glad to see inside their homes since I had wondered what they were like, but I felt a little awkward walking in on their moms cleaning, cooking, or sleeping. But the kids were very excited to introduce us. On the street were A LOT of dogs (including some really tiny puppies - see picture below), a duck tied to a rock with a rope, rooters, and chickens. The kids also took us off the main walk-way to show us a couple of their houses, and I was very glad that we were with the kids and that they were holding our hands calling us "profe" the whole time. If not...I would have been kind of frightened. It´s definitely not the area a well to do white girl from America should be alone.

Johanna and her perrito (her house in the background)

While we were down there, music was coming from one of the houses. I started dancing (because that's just what I do) and that turned into a dance competition between me, Adam and Daniel (we had 2 other volunteers with us just for the day). I of course won the competition :). And it was very entertaining watching the boys compete for the number 2 spot (see the video below). The kids LOVED it! Then we just had a big dance party for a while before heading back up to the soup kitchen to color.

our view on our walk back to the soup kitchen
(¡aye que lindo!)

coloring (¡quiero pintar!)

It really was such a great way to end an amazing 5 weeks at Buen Samaritano. I truly love those little kids and I'm going to miss them so much! Sadly this is just the first of many goodbyes that I'll have in the next week. Es muy muy triste :'(.

how I'll miss her hugs!

and I'll mis his great smile and laugh!

I love my daughter Melony

same goes for my other daughter Johanna

I sure do love these kids and I´ll remember them forever!

A Day of Rebellion

On Monday, DeAnna, Beth and I had a day of rebellion. We started off early by skipping our traditional breakfast with our host families and went to get bagels at the ONLY bagel shop we've seen in the entire country of Costa Rica. (It makes you grately appreciate the finer things of living in America when you go without them for a while - bagels, doughnuts, steak, mashed potatoes, turkey sandwiches, hamburgers without ham or cucumbers, etc.). The cream cheese wasn't quite what it's like at Einstein's or any deli in NYC, but this breakfast was still enough to give us our fix.

 

  

After breakfast, we spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon shopping! You know how much I like to shop and luckily DaAnna loves shoes as much as I do. We both came away with 2 pairs of shoes! I also got a nice gift for my mom and another book to read (I've already been through 6 and needed more). 

  

Needless to say...we shopped so long that we missed going to our projects that day. Oops! (like I said...we were being rebellious). After coming back to Maximo Nevell and playing around on facebook for a bit, we did something even more rebellious...I got this:

Here I am signing my life away:

And here is the tattoo artist who tagged us:

After getting tagged, we decided we needed to celebrate by going to mine and DeAnna's favortie dessert place (called The Dessert Factory). We walked over there to get this:

But sadly they were closed. We decided to walk across the street and get our usual ice cream fix:

While a McFlurry isn't quite the same as a brownie sundae with delicious ice cream, strawberries and caramel, it was still delicious! (ps - we went back last night for the brownie sundae, so we did get our amazing dessert - just a day late)

I quite enjoyed this day of rebellion and the much needed shopping spree!

Adventures at Arenal

This weekend, a group of friends and I went to see Arenal Volcano and have a little adventurous weekend. Maddie, Cameron, Beth, Adam, DeAnna, and me left for Arenal Friday morning at 6:00 am! It was definitely hard to get out of bed that morning, but somehow we all did it and made it to the bus in plenty of time. After a 4 1/2 hour bus ride to Arenal, DeAnna and I were pretty tired and hot, so we decided to stay at the hotel and go swimming while the others explored the small town. It felt so great to be in that very cold pool! Our hostel that we stayed at was actually really nice. The grounds were beautiful and the rooms clean. I was quite impressed.

We didn't have much time to swim  and hang out at the hostel though since we were signed up for a canopy tour at 1:00. They came and picked us up and we headed toward the volcano. We had a great view of it and were very fortunate that the fog had lifted so we could actually see the top.

After reaching the "summit" we got all suited up and ready to set off on our first zip line. The group consisted of the 6 of us, 2 other girls here volunteering through another program and then 2 other people who only spoke Spanish so we didn't get to know them that well.

The canopy tour consisted of 11 zip lines and took us just over 2 hours to complete. We "zipped" over the tops of the trees in the rain forest and only got hit by overhanging foliage a few times. The first time down the zip line was quite an adrenaline rush, but once I decided that I wasn't going to die and that it was actually quite fun, I was able to enjoy the other 10 lines. Some were faster than others, and one I actually almost ran into the tree at the end of the line, but luckily the guide stopped me before. Sadly we didn't see any wildlife, but it was  alot of fun. It started raining a bit while we were on the tour - but what could we really expect - it's called a RAINforest afterall. The rain actually felt quite refreshing and it made us go faster on the different lines so we quite enjoyed it! The last leg of the canopy tour was a cliff we had to repel down. I was glad I had gone repelling before or I would have been more scared than I was. It was a LONG repel. I quite enjoyed it - but a few of my friends vowed to never do it again after. Haha!

After our ziplining was over, we rode horses back to the pick up point so we could be taken back to our hostel. All the horses wanted to be first, so when one horse would start running to get ahead of another horse, the rest would follow. By the end, however, we couldn't make the horses go fast if we had wanted to - they were all pretty worn out.

One funny story while horse back riding. Our guide had to stop to help someone's horse who's reins had come loose. He got off his own horse and was helping the person, when his own horse took off up the hill. I was in the front since my horse didn't want to stop. I heard all my friends yelling "stop the horse!" I did my best cowboy imitation and reached out to the run away horse as it passed me and I actually grabbed the reins!!! I was very impressed with myself! Haha!

After our canopy tour, we were all in need of a good swim, so that's exactly what we did. The sun had gone behind the clouds, however, so our swim didn't last too long because it was WAY too cold! So we all got cleaned up, went out to eat, then came back and played BS and Phase 10 at the bar since it was POURING rain which meant our lava tour was out of the question (you couldn't see the base of the volcano let alone the peak). Thanks to some fancy card work by yours truly, DeAnna and I tied for first place in our 2 hour game of Phase 10!

We were hoping for better weather the next morning, but sadly we woke to more rain and even more fog. I wouldn't have known there was a volcano nearby if I hadn't seen it the day before. We were quite bummed. But, instead of crying about it - we walked around the little town, visited the church, and went into all the little shops. Arenal is a very touristy place, but it was fun to just hang out there that morning.

We all opted to tak the earlier 12:45 bus back to San Jose since the weather was so bad. When we got to the bus station, we were approached by a bus driver saying that his bus would get us back to San Jose an hour quicker and all we had to do was switch buses in San Ramon. We fell for it and hopped on the bus. The bus wasn't in the best of shape and we started to worry if we had made the wrong decision.

We REALLY began to worry when we started going through the most random areas of Costa Rica and then proceeded to drive around the block of a residential area picking people up at their houses. We though forsure we were going to be sold into slavery or something. But, we decided to put these fears behind us, turn on our music, fall asleep, and hope to wake up in San Ramon. Well...long story short. We made it to San Ramon and consequently to San Jose - and indeed we were an hour earlier than we would have been had we taken the safer, less scenic route. It was a very interesting end to our adventurous weekend!