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.