Costa Rica . . . 6 & 7

Day 6 

I was so sad it was our last day of adventure.... as I told our guide, "estoy triste...." but he reminded me how great it would be to see "mi hija" and I agreed! I was excited to see my little princess, for sure!

Anyway, we started out the day going to Rincon de la Vieja (translates= Corner of the Old Lady .... I forget why??) national park. It was about an hour and a half drive to get there and we hiked for about 2 hours on a loop through the forest. It wasn't a super highlight for me, as I was telling Collin as we hiked along--besides some of the tropical looking plants it seemed like we could have been hiking in any forest in Idaho. Which is nice that we have that luxury, really. It was a hard hike for the group from Indiana--but it was no problem for us Idahoans! 

Before we left, at our hotel Nacazcol....still in Guanacaste

One thing that was definitely NOT like Idaho was the wildlife though!! We didn't see tons but we did see 2 different kinds of monkeys! I hadn't seen monkeys on the trip yet so that was awesome for me! We first came across a couple of spider monkeys like 10 minutes into the hike. This was the best shot we got, my stupid camera would only focus on the leaves in front of the monkey. Oh well. Then on our way back around the loop we came across some howler monkeys! I hadn't ever heard them before.... they sound so creepy! Whoever named them "howlers" was mistaken! It is a creepy loud grunt/moan that echoes through the forest! I would have thought it was a giant gorilla somewhere out there if I hadn't been told what they were! It was so cool to see them though. No pictures of them.

Not sure why how this picture got in here.... it's from later that day on our way to the beach but honestly at this point I'm too lazy to move it to the correct spot!


The next few pictures are from our guide who does wildlife photography on the side. They are pretty awesome. We saw monkeys and lizards like this so it was nice of him to get these to us. I don't know if they're from our particular trip or not.

aaaand the best looking wildlife of all.

Here we are with our beloved guide, Jose. What a great guy to make the trip so fun.

The park was close to a big "steam" volcano which meant there were some natural boiling pools and mud and stuff. Can you tell that I really loved the rotten egg smell?

More of the houses along the side of the road...these were nicer ones.

And the climax of the day was this:

Just kidding. But really Sunday (that last day) I all of a sudden hit a big wall. After the hike I was exhausted! It was super taxing, I think just all the business of the week and less sleep than usual caught up to me! I was reeeally dragging by lunch! So what better to perk me up than a legit Mexicano Coca Cola, right! They serve all their soft drinks in a glass bottle down there which was so legit. I wish they did that here. Anyway, it's funny because due to Collin ordering me one of these and the fact that (like usual) we ended up sitting with Jose (guide) again, it sparked the conversation about us being LDS (he had deduced....:) and drinking caffeine. So Collin had a missionary moment to share some things about the word of wisdom with him, which was fun. I wish I understood any of it since they were talking a million miles a second in Espanol, but oh well. All I could say to Collin later was you're welcome since it all came about due to my Coke. ha ha.

After wishy-washing back and forth about which beach we were going to go to and how to get there, we finally decided to just go back to Playa Panama for the afternoon. Everyone was pretty exhuasted at the point--so maybe the hike tired us all out more than we thought. I was glad we did because all I wanted to do was take a nap, which I did.... on the beach... in my swimsuit. It was great! I felt so much better when I woke up. And I like to think I got a little sun anyway! It was the only day of my life I've been at the beach when it was actually sunny and warm!


So.... I had woken up and was laying on my towel next to a couple of the girls and they said, "Tonya, your husband made some friends." So I looked out in the water and Collin was chillin with this group of Ticos! Like I should be surprised. I wish the picture better showed him, Whitey McWhite next to all the natives . . . he's the one waving. It was a group of guys about his age and he ended up showing them some wrestling moves... no joke! Super-friendly Collin comes out in Costa Rica, I guess! :)

That night we basically just packed up and went to bed, knowing the awful hour in the morning we had to get up!

Day 7 (going home)

Much worse day of traveling than the way down! (of course!) does anyone LIKE the day you have to travel home? I doubt it. Luckily Costa Rica is in our time zone so in the end we didn't have to deal with any jet lag, which was nice. But did I mention what time we had to leave for the airport? 3:00am. Which means I got up at 2:30. How can a day when you get up at that time ever turn out to be good?!?! ha ha.

Actually, our tour guide was just following what the Liberia airport suggested, which was get to the airport 3 hours before your flight leaves. Well, we got there at 3:30 and the airport was just OPENING. We sat there for 20 minutes and watched the security guards roll out all the little dividers to make the maze you have to walk through to get to the ticket desk... and then they seriously made us each walk all the way through it! And we were the only 7 people in the entire airport. There were actually some complications with our boarding passes so in the end it wasn't horrible that we were there so early, but really the day seemed sooooo long.

Total considering when we got up and left it was a day of 20 hours of traveling. I didn't get much sleep on the flights and I really did all that I could to keep myself amused--reading (Matched... see my goodreads review), watching movies (Journey 2--uck, ick and eye roll), watching TV (The Event.... eh), and listening to music..... but you can only do that for soo long! Finally the last flight from San Fran to Boise I completely zonked out. The first time in my life I have slept an entire flight. I was out the minute we took off and woke up about 10 minutes before we landed. It was like a time warp! Thankfully when we got home everything was fine and we were able to pick Lucy up that night, thanks again to our good buds Mary and Jon for taking such good care of her! Ashlyn came home the following night which that is a different story for another post! Peace out, Costa Rica! And thanks to my best friend, Collin, for working it out for me to come and being the best person I could ever go on a trip with! Love you!

Costa Rica . . . 4 & 5

Day 4

Today was the day we were originally scheduled to go on a boat ride in Cano Negro, which was basically to see a lot of wildlife. But it was going to be a 2-hour drive both there and back, so we opted to change our plans! The boat ride was optional anyways. We were so glad we did!

We ended up catching a ride into La Fortuna to visit an Elementary School! It was so amazing. Collin just happened to get lucky in setting it up last minute the day before, through a guy who worked at the hotel. It was one of the most memorable experiences on our trip, I think for everyone!

It was really amazing to see the circumstances of the school there. It was in a more poverty-ridden area so I think it was a little lower than the usual standard of regular towns, but I don't think by too much. We ran into this cute little kindergarten class heading to lunch and they stopped to say hi to us so of course we couldn't resist getting a picture! 

This was an "English Immersion" elementary school, so they were always learning English from kindergarten-on. We teamed up with their main English teacher-Rafael- and he took us to two 3rd grade classes and one 6th grade class. He encouraged us to circulate through the classes and talk with the kids in English for them to practice. The first 2 classes were about my level of Spanish--not very good! they were probably better than me but a lot of them were shy. It was so fun though. They were SOO cute, seriously. And they acted like were some sort of celebrities since we were from "America!" so funny! I tried to practice a little Spanish with them so overall we laughed a lot. By the time we got to the 6th grade class they were so much better. They understood all my questions and could converse with me pretty well. Collin just went all out talking with them in Spanish teasing the boys about their girlfriends.... it was so cute. He made friends with 3 little guys that just thought he was so funny. It was really awesome.

When our ride (which was a dumpy old van in case you were wondering...common transportation down there! :) arrived and we headed out to leave, recess was just starting. Guess what they do at recess?? Soccer of course! Futbol I guess. Anyway, so cute. No playground equipment, of course. 

After that we had a private lunch at the hotel restaurant since all the rest of our group were on other outings that day. Then we took our kids down the road (we hitched another awesome van ride) to do some horseback riding. Collin and I decided not to go, but the kids seemed to have a blast. 

While they were gone we had some time to do whatever we wanted, which was kind of a weird feeling! We stayed at that hotel down the road (where the horseback riding was)--which was a little nicer than ours but still not "America nice" for sure. We hung out in their restaurant and I got a fabulous diet coke (COCA COLA LIGHT!) and we played pool! We finally headed back to our hotel and were able to relax for the rest of the afternoon. 

Of course the horseback riding guide was major hitting on one of our girls during the whole trip.  We had to laugh.

This is the best shot of the Arenal hotel I got.. super crappy but oh well. It was this dark by 6:00 there when we would eat dinner.

That night there weren't any official plans for the tour group, and Collin and I didn't really feel like just sitting around at the hotel since we had done that for a while that afternoon already. So we headed down the road again to that other hotel we had been at earlier --Montana de Fuego-- to their restaurant Acuarelas, which was swanky compared to our hotel! We got some suuuuper yummy desserts--some sort of Strawberry Flan and some Dulce de Leche. It was great to get out on our own. It was during the Soccer World Cup preliminaries in which Costa Rica was playing. They had it on everywhere of course and even though we weren't following it very close it was easy to figure how it was going by the cheers or moans of others!

 We originally planned to swim after that but someone got sleepy . . .

Just kidding, he really didn't get too sleepy, but somehow I caught this picture perfectly when he was blinking and rubbing his eye.... he hates it and it is so hilarious to me I refused to delete it.

Anyway, we really did head back and go to bed in our un-private room anyway. It was a great day!

Day 5

We had to load the bus by 6:45 that morning I believe. . . . (look how mid-day it looks at that time in the morning!) 

Of course first thing that morning guess what finally showed itself! Arenal! I missed it because I was just rolling out of bed, but Collin ran out and got a picture! It was so neat. By the time I got out of our room it was cloudy around it again. 

This was one of our hotel pools. I wish the pictures show how beautiful it was, although this one comes close!

Parts of that day were probably my least favorite if I had to pick ..... although nothing really sucked the whole trip for sure!
We had a 3-hour bus drive from Arenal over to the Guanacaste area. It was mostly through farmland, which had a lot of pineapple, rice, coffee. and banana farms which were fun to see. It was also fun to see the small towns. This is a picture of one of the nicer farmhouses we saw. A lot of those little villages did not look very well-off. And one thing that was definitely different was that there were always people walking along the roads, no matter where. Like, long distances. I guess if they came here they would probably think it was really weird that we drive everywhere.

The bad thing about the bus ride was that about an hour in, we realized the AC on one half of the bus wasn't working. Boo! What is that with me? It happened on our trek in Wyoming too! And it freaking sucked! It wasn't unbearable until about the last 40 minutes. Another experience I would like to forget but can't resist putting down is that I had to pee on the bus. Oh my heck. The little bathroom in the back was like 200 degrees, with no t.p., as we were bumping along a backcountry road. Woot woot. As I was in there I thought, wow I have reached a new low. That was the first and only time I did that, fo sho!!!!!!!!

We made it to Liberia and were so happy to get off the bus.... only to find out it was just as sweltering outside! We had a little free time in a little shopping center before lunch at LIB--a restaurant across the street from Burger King. :) Since I was SO HOT I thought a good idea was to head over to the Jumbo Supermarket to cool off in there. (I get a little cranky when I've been hot for a long time in case you're wondering) Bad idea! It was JUST AS HOT in there! Yeah, a non-favorite thing I forgot to mention before: No stores (supermarkets anyway) I went in had A/C. It kinda made me wonder about how safe the food was.... but well, whatev. I didn't buy anything perishable! We did load up on snacks but headed out as quick as we could. Lunch was great--no A/C again but at least they had lots of fans.

Collin with our rockstar bus driver, Jarol. These guys were pretty buddy-buddy. One night on our way home Jarol turned on the "Macarena" full blast and flipped the bus lights like a strobe. It was so dorky but everyone totally got into it. Fun times.

So anyway, luckily after lunch it was just a 20-minute ride in the sweltering bus to our hotel. Although.... since our previously scheduled afternoon trip was cancelled due to the bus's lack of A/C, we were hours too early to the hotel. So guess what we did? Sat out in the sun! oh yeah. At this point I was just managing keeping my cool before having some sort of heat-claustrophobia attack. I like to think I kept it pretty cool. I pretty much ran out of the bus and over to the pool and dunked my feet right in....warm water of course but it helped a little. We hung out around the pool for about an hour and finally got at least some of our room keys. Let me tell you that blast of cold air when we came into our room was heaven! We quickly changed into our swim suits then let our kids use our room too since they didn't have keys yet.... then headed to the beach! When we got there again I pretty much ran to the water! ahhhhh!

Playa Panama.... it was cloudy but so warm and nice and perfect.

This picture is a reminder of a bad experience I had! Collin and I headed over to a little guy with a cart selling snowcones to get one.... Collin was trying to instruct me on how to make the order when he and Jose had the grand idea that I should practice my Spanish on my own! boooooo! I had no idea what to say! He hadn't even told me the word for flavor! (It's Sabor--which will now be forever in my memory!) So I stood there in a panic and in a stupor not saying anything . . . luckily the guy just made me some random flavor and I paid him, hopefully the right amount. If not it was Collin's fault anyway. Also, I was standing in a swarm of bees because they were swarming around the syrup flavors. It was awesome.

 The snowcone was yummy.... he made it with powdered milk in the bottom, then the crushed ice, then the flavoring (SABOR!) and then topped with sweetened condensed milk.

That night we had some fun doing some Latin dancing! woot! I said to Collin, "this is just Zumba" which sparked the heated debate of whether Zumba is based on Latin dancing or whether they are different or the same .  . . . blah blah, I don't want to get into it but we still don't agree! ha ha. It was fun anyway, although I got so sweaty I had to take my 3rd shower of the day! After that we eventually did some more soaking in the pool before relaxing in our fabulously freezing air conditioned room!!

I know... I got moves.

Costa Rica... 1, 2 and 3

I warn you now.... I am posting a lot of stuff about Costa Rica! I wasn't going to but I realized that I'm never actually going to take the time to journal about it elsewhere, so this is where it goes!

Costa Rica was A.MAZE.ING. Of course. It was the trip of a lifetime for me. It was my first time out of the country (besides Tijuana Spring Break 2003... holla USU buddies!), first time I needed a passport! Collin was a different story.... he studied abroad there while at BSU, and this was his 2nd time taking a group of students there. Not to mention he's traveled abroad several more times on top of those. But a lot of the stuff we did was new to him, since we went to a few areas he hadn't previously been to. So that was cool. 

I LOVED getting to be so immersed in another culture for a week. It was really cool to me. I went in with not a lot of expectations of anything being "American" and it really wasn't... so that was fun! Everything everywhere was in Espanol, which made me wish I had brushed up on my crappy Spanish skills more than I did. But it was amazing to me how much my Spanish improved just over the 6 days we were there. I can see how living somewhere with a different language really forces you to pick it up quick! BUUUT, I can also tell you a lot of awesome stories about awkward moments in which we were in a 3-way conversation and I just nodded along so as not to look rude, which worked fine until they would ask me a question and then I would have to admit NO HABLO ESPANOL! ha ha ha. 

Day 1 (arrival day)

We arrived in San Jose about 8:30pm. It was a great traveling day with no flights over 3 hours. We had a fabulous group of 5 kids from CHS with us, they were really the best. One funny thing was that somehow on 2 of our 3 flights that day all 5 kids got seats in FIRST CLASS while Collin and I were always back in coach. So after the flights we would get to hear about how they had prime rib and steak on real china while all we got was a small cup of diet coke or orange juice. Oh the irony. We had to just laugh.

The worst flight for me was from Denver to San Jose. It was only about 3 hours but the weather was kind of rough and of course about half way through I had to pee so bad. I was having a freak out because they kept saying we couldn't get out of our seats and I had to GO! So I finally just headed over anyway, prepared to tell them whatever to let me go! No one bugged me so it was fine. But in addition to that situation, the guy in front of my seat was super loud and obnoxious, and his seat recliner was broken so he could recline SO far back! His seat was literally less than a foot in front of my face while I was sitting down! When I put my tray down it was touching my stomach! So annoying. And then the best part . . . when the drink cart was right by me (I was in the aisle seat), a rather *large* lady came hurrying down the aisle saying she needed to get to the restroom. She couldn't get past the drink cart lady very easily, and somehow in the weird scramble of her trying to get by, she tried to wedge herself into our row of seats so the cart could go by.... and she freaking sat in my lap! Like, full out, sitting on me. She hadn't even looked at me to warn me or apologized or anything. I looked at Collin and I'm sure my face was like, "Are you kidding me?!?!?" And he had the same look...she did quickly apologize as she got up and left and once she did I looked at the flight attendant with the cart and she was laughing as much as we were. All I could think was WOW. So then getting off the flight to hear how the kids got warm towels and had free direct tv and dined on steak and shrimp....  ha ha ha!

When we arrived in San Jose, after going through customs we headed outside to meet our tour guide, Jose. He was so great. He was about my dad's age and I think he's what the Costa Rican version of my dad would be! ha ha. He had a really sarcastic sense of humor but knew so much and was nice to be patient with my Spanish. He was bilingual and mostly explained stuff to me in English, which was nice!

We rode a shuttle to our hotel which was near downtown San Jose. I wish we had gotten to see more of San Jose, but we headed out early the next morning.

 This was our hotel room that first night. I had set for myself really low expectations for hotels and I was nicely surprised that they were better than I had expected! They were definitely different from American hotels though. The room's floor was all tile. There were no clocks and just one light in the ceiling, so it was pretty dim. This particular room didn't have air conditioning, though thankfully it had a ceiling fan or we would have died, not used to sleeping in that humid heat! The bathroom was pretty normal, although the shower wasn't in a tub, just a little separate tiled section in the corner. And there was no counter around the sink, just a small glass rim about 5 inches wide. When I plugged in my hair straightener I had to set it on the toilet while it heated up. Small things...

Our meals were mostly provided by the hotels we stayed at, unless we were en route to a new location then we stopped at restaurants. I REALLY liked being on a "tour" because everything like that was taken care of for us. I didn't take any pictures of our food which makes me mad... but oh well. We had rice & black beans or gallo pinto (if you know what that is--basically a fancier version of rice and beans) with almost every meal. There was also usually fruit and some sort of eggs and toast for breakfast, then fish or chicken or other meat with lunch and dinner.

Day 2 

 This is the only shot I took in San Jose.... let me just say that driving through downtown was insane! We had a huge travel bus (there were 48 people total in our group) and a very experienced bus driver. I should have taken some video to fully get the effect. They seem to have generally the same traffic laws we do . .  but very minimal enforcement. And the motorcycles... oh the motorcycles. They were everywhere. And they didn't follow the traffic rules at all. Driving on the wrong side of the road, riding like 8 across in a lane, cutting off left and right . . . I'm amazed we didn't run any of them over. I was beyond in awe of our driver's skills! He drove like he owned the road---probably wasn't following many traffic laws himself! Anyway, I took the picture of McDonald's because there were a lot of them there. You know how I love that place. (sarcasm) But it's a good picture of the ugly power lines that were everywhere also. Everything was in Spanish which was fun to try to figure out.

 Our first stop that day was in ENBio Parque, a zoo/wildlife reserve/education center on the outskirts of San Jose. It was fun because we got to see a lot of the wildlife and plants that are found throughout Costa Rica.

 This boa constrictor was behind glass! creepy though!

 A for-real beehive. Supposedly the bees don't sting and their honey is even sweeter. I didn't stick around long enough to find out!

  Caymans (Caimanes in Espanol) - they are like mini alligators. They look fake but they aren't!

 These pictures are for Tara, the Harry Potter addict.... look at the maze! I was a little nervous that the bushes were going to eat me up any moment.

 These turtles were having some fun, if you know what I mean!

I was surprised to see Iguanas up in the trees... I guess they climb up there to get warm during the day so they will stay warm at night.

 We saw sloths! This is the best picture we got, bummer it's so blurry. In Espanol they are called perisosos--lazies.

 We had a good amount of driving the rest of the day. We stopped at a local restaurant on our way to Poas and had some delicious strawberry smoothies. I got brave and asked for a water in Spanish...all by myself! I cannot describe the sheer terror I felt any time I tried to engage in conversation in Espanol with a local.... It never really went bad but I was always so scared that they would say something I wouldn't understand at all!

 This is the only food picture I took. We had some yummy desserts that were usually some sort of flan. It was better flan than I had ever had in the US though. Coconut or banana or some other flavors.. yummy!

 A funny thing we saw was while we were waiting for the kids to finish shopping in that little village the restaurant was in-- rainstorms would come out of nowhere there and pour super hard (like in LOST!) for like 10-15 minutes, then it would stop and often get sunny quick. So one of those downpours happened while we were there and watching these workers up on a super high satellite tower. It was pouring, like sheets of rain. Once it kept up for a few minutes they started shimmying down... they weren't tethered on with any safety gear at all, they were just holding on tight and trying to climb down as quick as they could. It was kind of scary to watch but it looked like they had done it before. It took them a good 10 minutes to get all the way down, and by then the worst of the rain was over. It was just something I don't think you'd see often around here!

After that stop we continued on our way to Volcan Poas, a Lagoon-Crater sort of volcano. It was about a 1-mile hike up to the view point (on a nice, paved path by the way), and about 5 minutes into the walk another super downpour began. I had an umbrella but I still got totally drenched! And sadly right after the rain the clouds moved in so quick there was absolutely no view into the crater basin, so we didn't get to see it at all. We hung out up there for about 20-30 minutes waiting to see if it would clear up, but it didn't at all. Bummer.

 This was seriously the view. Supposedly it is a huge boiling blue lake in the bottom of a crater.... but I may never know!

 These were a funny joke... "poor man's umbrella." Definitely no leaves this size in Idaho!

 If you look close enough at the picture they're in front of you can see what the volcano supposedly looks like under all those clouds! (note--when Collin was here 2 years ago they were lucky and it was clear enough to see it, so I know it's legit! ha ha)


After that disappointing (but still fun) stop we headed along on our way again, this time stopping in a little town of Sarchi for about an hour to do some shopping. It is where the world's largest ox cart is. I guess it really is in the Guinness Book and everything. We just drove by and I didn't get a picture, but we were nearby it. Behind the souvenir shop we were at was this beautiful little courtyard and also a big carpentry shop and artistic workshop. I wish the pictures showed how beautiful the landscaping and painting were. Collin really enjoyed chatting with the artists. I guess some of them helped in painting the giant ox cart a few years ago.

 

We also walked the streets in a small neighborhood for a few minutes until rain once again drove us back indoors. But it was so interesting to see typical Costa Rican neighborhoods. SOO different. Of course. Everywhere has bars over the windows and usually high metal fences around their house in addition to that. It makes me grateful for the security we have here. Also, the houses were crammed together so much, like either connected or with a foot in between them. And it was a nicer, pretty safe neighborhood we were in too. I really enjoyed checking it all out. Collin was having fun taking pictures of the traffic signs, I guess he wants to use them for his classes in the future.

We also drove by this cool park with all the trees cut into animals and funny faces. It's a little blurry because of the rain on the bus window. Also, check out the legit pay phones!

After a cold, wet bus ride through a lot of little villages and some scary roads we made it to our next hotel, which was just outside the town of La Fortuna, in what is called the Arenal Region. Our hotel was at the base of the active volcano Arenal. I guess it had been super active (you could see the sparks flying nightly) over the past 20 years, but the past 18 months or so it has been more quiet. So I was bummed not to see the lava, but it was still a cool view.

This is our hotel room there. I loved the beautiful view from our room. The only bad thing was, well, see the curtains? That was all we had for privacy. And they were not opaque enough to really give privacy at night! So we had to always change in the bathroom and it was a little weird to know people could see us from outside our window. It was mostly students around the hotel so it wasn't like, creepy people spying, but still I didn't really like that. But what can I complain about, we were in Costa Rica!!

 One thing that was definitely weird to me was that it gets dark there by 5:30pm! Like, pitch dark. And then it's light by 4:00am. It was mostly weird at night because by 7:00 it felt like 10:00. It was nice because it somewhat encouraged us to go to bed earlier than we would back home.... and we really crashed into bed each night exhausted. Thankfully without a kid it was possible to sleep all night! And we were up by 6:30 every morning, sometimes earlier. I was surprised at how little I minded that--being the non-morning person I am! But I was in Costa Rica--I didn't want to waste any time sleeping I didn't have to! :)

Day 3

The next day was my favorite day. We started out ziplining through the jungle. The zipline company we used was literally down the road from our hotel so it was nice not to have to drive hardly at all. With our huge group of almost 50 people everything took a while. It took like an hour to get everyone suited up in harnesses and helmets, so we had fun taking some pictures.

 Here we are with our "kids!" These guys were really the best we could ask for to go on a trip with! They all loved each other's company, were excited about all the activities, and weren't into getting into trouble! They made it so fun and easy! Plus they really cracked me up!

 After my first zip! I made it! We zipped 9 different lines total. I loved the zipping and it was really fun. What I didn't like was some of the platforms we had to stand around waiting on before we could go down the next line. That is where my intense fear of heights kicked in! They weren't all bad, but one of them was awful. It was this rickety, old rusted metal staircase with nothing but chainlink for you to stand on, suspended with wire from a big tree, 50 feet or more above the forest floor. I had to just distract myself with practicing my Spanish with Collin, the kids and the zip guides and practically anything else to keep from looking down or freaking out!!

 Quite often some of the lighter kids (not me! ha ha) would go too slow and get stuck before they made it to the end of the line. So one of the guides would have to zip out and pull them back in. Jeeze. Some of them got a good workout. I was glad I never had to have that weird moment with them! I didn't get stuck until the last one--and I was close enough to just pull myself in!

 Collin got stuck too!

 ugh--I look like such a gomer!

 Stuck!

Ok, so the funniest part of that whole morning was once we got to the end of the ziplines, got un-harnessed and had to head back up to where our bus was parked. The tour guides (these jolly Costa Rican twenty-somethings who were always just about crossing the line in checking out las chicas....) loaded all 50 of us into an old, beat-up school bus that said maximum occupancy 35... so we were sitting 3 or 4 to a 2-person seat, and the guides all crammed into the front... it was like 100 degrees on the bus and we seriously off-road bushwhacked it up this super steep hill on the bumpiest road I have ever been on... I was laughing my head off because to me it really seemed the epitome of a Centro-American experience! ha ha!

After lunch we stopped in La Fortuna for a little while to look around and shop. There was big pretty church there we checked out.

 Culture note: It was so interesting learning how some small and some bigger things are so different in a country like Costa Rice compared to the U.S... One of the things that was very interesting was that there was no such thing as a cross-walk. Which meant there was no such thing as jaywalking either! People would just run into the street and across it whenever, wherever. It was definitely a different experience seeing that as we drove through the streets, but also actually crossing the streets ourselves! The cars don't stop! It's like, every man for himself!

Another thing was a bigger deal to me than probably to others. Going into the trip, I was worrying about being able to get enough water throughout the days. With my health history, I have to drink almost twice the amount of water "regular" people do so that was a big issue for me! I made it work, but we seriously spent a LOT of money on water while we were there. The reason? There are absolutely no drinking fountains, anywhere. In the U.S. there is a drinking fountain (and public restroom) in pretty much any business establishment, or at least at visitors centers, parks, or other public places. But not in Costa Rica! I don't know that I ever saw one. So even though I had a water bottle, after I filled it up once that morning in the hotel, pretty much anywhere else that day we had to buy water. Not my favorite thing to spend money on but oh well.


Our next stop that afternoon was La Fortuna Waterfall. We hiked down about 500 steep steps to get to the base, where we played in the water and took some pictures. It was seriously paradise. Warm water, beyond beautiful waterfall and scenery. It was a good workout climbing back up the steep steps afterward but it was actually nice to break a sweat for once. Right after we got back to the top the sky opened up and it poured again, so we were lucky that we missed that while we were swimming. (although it was so warm there, even when it rained it wasn't really cold.)

After La Fortuna Waterfall we headed straight to the most amazing natural hot tubbing resort I could ever have even imagined, called "Balti." It was ritzy. I don't have any pictures because we left everything on the bus. It had probably 30+ natural hot pools (fresh water, not the stinky kind) which had been man-made nestled in beautiful landscaping, jungle scenery, across a couple of acres. They were different sizes and hotness, it had a bunch of swim-up bars and some water slides also. It was so warm out of the water too, hopping from pool to pool and just walking all around in swimsuits was so fun. The only bad thing was that I got talked into going down the "fast slide" by a Tico and when it whipped me around I smacked the back of my head HARD right before I flew into the water! Not cool. I had the hugest goose-egg on my head for the next 3 days, and still today, over a week later, it is still tender to touch. But luckily it didn't give me a killer headache and I was still able to enjoy everything.