Taxi Scamski

Day 15 11-7-12 Wednesday We were up way too late last night. Boy, oh, boy did that alarm come fast today. We got up at 6, and got our stuff together so that we could take the 7:30 am bus to San Jose. Despite Tom´s passes to try to get me to extend my vacation, I knew it was time for me to go. Besides, I have very little interest in going to Panama at this time, which is where he was headed next. We got our tickets and boarded the bus with relatively zero problemas. Once we were on the bus, I was able to stay awake for maybe 30 minutes, then I was fast asleep. I slept til San Jose. San Jose, is such a mess. Once we get off the bus, there are literally taxi drivers in your face trying to get you to go with them. So, we end up with this one guy, who is grabbing our bags for us, and leading us through the crowds, over to his car. I had asked if he had a meter, and he said yes. When I got in the car, I saw no meter, only to find him later pull the meter out from under the passenger seat and plug it in. Hmmmm....We then tell him we need to get to Alajuela Backpacker´s Hostel. And, we´re off. The drive here doesn´t seem to take that long. Jason thought he was keeping a pretty good eye on the meter, but when the car stopped and the driver jumped out, grabbing our luggage, and shouting at us it would be 60,000 colones, which is like thirty dollars. Jason is sure the last time he looked at the meter it read less than that. So, he basically told the taxi driver that was garbage and that he´d pay him X amount and that was it. The taxi driver started to explain something about coming from the airport, and it´s this much from the airport, and that much from this other place, and Jason´s like we didn´t even come from the airport so you can´t charge us for that. It was all very confusing, but we´re sure it was some sort of scam. Of course there is no way of knowing because once the driver opened his door the meter went off and there was no way of seeing what the actual amount was. So ridiculous. That reminds me, I owe Jason $15. We plan to sort of just veg out the rest of the evening. I´m certainly not leaving this hostel after dark. No way. No how. Tomorrow, we will be up early again, and on our flight back to the states. I´m already getting a bit emotional thinking of my goodbyes to this country, but I´m excited to see my family this weekend and share with them all the wonderful stories, pictures and videos from my trip. It seems so odd that two weeks can really go by so fast! Until mañana, Judy

Monkeys, Sloths, and Parties, Oh My!

Day 14 10-7-12 Tuesday Quote of the Day: ¨Did someone seriously send us down this road?¨-David, from Missouri Last night, I think I experienced divine intervention. Jason and I went out to dinner at Flip Flop down the street from our hostel. We had heard good things from the people we had met Sunday night. I was still feeling blah and was really trying to keep my personality agreeable and in check, so as not to be so miserable around Jason. Just as we sat down to eat, our friends, Pamela and David, came in. How great! They came over and sat at a table next to ours and we chatted about our days, and what we had planned coming up. As we were talking, the most horrendous, disgusting smell washed over us, and we all ended up moving across the restaurant to a four person table. We had a very nice meal with them, and I was so grateful for their company. I´m sure Jason was, too. After dinner, we walked around a bit, and they had mentioned that they were planning to go to the Jaguar Rescue Center the next day. I was praying, praying, praying that they might ask us to joint them, because I could not tolerate another bout of public transportation where I don´t really know where I´m going, and I can´t really communicate with the people that do know where I´m going. It´s all a big mess. Well, lo and behold, they did ask us to go with them. They were getting a rental car and were very kind to ask us to spend the day with them! I was elated. I could hardly wait to go to sleep so tomorrow would come. The next morning, they came to pick us up around 9. I had already been awake for hours, so excited. I was eager to get the day started. They picked us up in a compact Peugot. It should be noted that David is a very big dude, and all of us in this tiny car must have looked hysterical. Think, clown car. We made it to the 9:30 tour at the Jaguar Rescue Center. Unfortunately, we had to be in a group of about 20 people which was way too many, and there were all these horrible children running around. Literally, running around, not listening or paying attention to a thing. I don´t think the families spoke very good English, or at least the children didn´t, so it did make for a very trying tour. I love children, but seriously, get your kids under control! This is probably a cultural thing, but my patience was dwindling. The tour guide had to stop several time to ask parents to please keep their children with them, and to stop allowing them to chase and run after the animals. I had some very bad thoughts during this tour. Inside thoughts, that shall remain that way! But, the tour was very educational, and we learned several things about animals like sloths, snakes, frogs, margays, ocelots, hawks, and monkeys! The sanctuary did have three baby sloths, which was fantastic! And, we got to go inside the monkey cage. This was by far my favorite part! The monkeys literally come up to you and sit on you, climb on you, or in my case, try to eat your pants. We couldn´t wear in any jewelry or take in any cameras because they have become quite adept at grabbing things off of people. In the cases of jewelry, they tried to eat it, and in the case of cameras they would throw them on the ground. Naughty monkeys! So Jason stayed out first while I went in and got some great videos. Then, we traded places. Jason witnessed a woman get bit by a monkey because she was trying to grab it. I say, she deserved to get bit. No grabbing monkeys. Monkey hands are very soft, especially the baby monkeys. I was completely enthralled with this place. I could have probably stayed there for an hour or two and been completely entertained! After the tour, you´re free to wander, so I wandered to the baby sloth area and convinced the volunteer to let me pet the baby sloth. I was really hoping to hold one, but petting it was good enough too! They´re pretty soft, actually. After the tour, we struck out for BriBri. I think this place is largely an indigenous population and a very small place. Just getting there was an adventure! The proprietor at the place where David and Pamela were staying had drawn them a map and informed them to go down Margarita Rd because of it´s beautiful scenery. Naturally, we took this road, and it was beautiful allright, but rocky, and we were sometimes a bit unsure of whether the little Peugeot was going to make it up the hills or not! Then, we came to a river crossing. Uhhhhh....seriously? Now what? We´re in the middle of nowhere. We send Jason to investigate the depth. He crosses quite easily and says it´s fine we can make it. David steps on it, and we go splashing through the water. I. Was. Loving. It. We finally reached Bri Bri and stopped to eat some lunch at a local soda there. We poked around their grocery store a bit and met a man from Puerto Viejo, Carlos, who gave us some tips and tricks on how to get to the waterfall that we were headed to. He wasn´t exactly sure, but invited us to dinner later that night and told us about some local fruits and things. He seemed pretty cool. Turns out, he lives with the fire dancers we saw on Sunday night. Small world. After lunch, we got back in the little car and struck out for the waterfall. We did pretty well until we got back into this area that was sparsely populated and we weren´t really sure where the trail was that we were supposed to go on to get to the waterfall. We assumed there would be some hiking involved, but where do we go!? We drove down to the end of the street that came to a fork. Just as we were deciding which direction to go, a woman and child pulled up next to us on the back of a motorcycle. She asked us if we were going to the waterfall which we said, yes, and tried to ask her for directions. She hopped off the motorcycle and said she´d take us there. So, while we´re trying to figure out if we park or not, next thing I know she´s hopping in the backseat with her daughter next to Jason. Okay! Here we go! So, she takes us to a ¨parking lot¨on some people´s property and then leads our hike right down to the waterfall. Then, she stayed there and watched all of our things for us while we went swimming, and lead us back. It wasn´t until we were nearing the end of this trek that we realized this was a money making venture for her. Ahhhhh, suckers! It´s okay though, because without her we definitely woulnd´t have found it. So, thank God! We had a blast swimming around with the fish at the waterfall. We spent a bit of time there and then decided it was time to head back. After we got back into town, David and Pamela dropped us off and we thanked them gratuitously for taking us along. It was the perfect way to spend our last day. So, on Tuesdays in Puerto Viejo the big deal is to go to Tasty Waves. ¨All I need are some tasty waves...a cool buzz...and I´m fine...¨ name that movie! Hence, where the bar gets it´s name. We had told people on Sunday night to meet us there, but were unsure of who exactly would show up. When Jason and I arrived, there was absolutely no one there. No one. There were maybe 10 people in this small, mostly outdoor place. Great, we´re thinking. But, we got some drinks and stuck it out. Soon, our friends Brian and Tom showed up. Things were looking up! No one else really ended up showing up, but it was okay because we were playing pool, having drinks, and having a good time! Jason learned to play a new, Costa Rican version of pool, which hopefully he´ll spread around here in the states. I´ll do my best to, as well. I had originally wanted to be home by 1 because I knew we had to get up early. But, free shots happened at 12:30 which extended our night a little. We really did it up right, Puerto Viejo style. Well, as much of the PV style as I was going to embrace, anyway. It was the besy way to end our time in Puerto Viejo. Absolutely perfect. Trying to get a cab in this town, however, has been quite an ordeal. When we were trying to leave, Jason had asked the bartender about a taxi, and he was told to take the red cab across the street. When we got there, there was no red cab. Then, some stranger came up to us ranting and raving about how he needs at least 3 people to take a cab, and we need a cab, so we must go to the bar so he can prove he has three people for a cab. We don´t know what´s going on, so back to the bar we go. Then, we get ushered out again with the owner of the bar, who is yelling for Victor, and flipping other taxis off and we are competely confused about what´s going on. All the taxis look bootleg to me, but finally, a guy pulls up and says he´ll take us for free, some deal with the bar, I guess. Then, the stranger, who takes the front seat, turns to Jason, and says, ¨I see you when I come to the bar tonight...and I see you...and I think...you are Israeli.¨ This was unexpected. Jason dies laughing, and explains that no, he´s, in fact, Italian. The man, Sammy, as we soon find out, seems skeptical about this, but laughs along anyway. We got home late, late, late, but I wouldn´t have had it any other way for our very last go round. Buenas noches, Judy

Funkytown

Day 13 9-7-12 Monday Quote of the Day: ¨Yeah P.V. is just kind of a weird place...¨-Brian, from California and/or Texas Back in Jaco, we had briefly met a woman named Jeanie that had lived in Puerto Viejo for 5 months. She gave us some recommendations of places to check out and things to do while in P.V. She said that Sunday nights were really happeneing at this bar called Lazy Mon. Clearly, that´s where we headed. When we arrived, we found out that there is an open jam starting at 9:30. We were quite early but settled on an appetizer and some drinks. By the way, their guacamole was to die for. Yum! As 9:30 got closer, more and more people began to arrive. Things were really looking up! A group of people came and sat next to use, and before you knew it, we were pushing tables together and joining the group. It´s really weird how this happens in Costa Rica, possibly in all foreign countries, I don´t know. It´s much harder to do this impromptu meeting in the states - though I do hope that this is one thing I can take back to the states with me. Why should we all be pushing our tables together and getting to know strangers better? In general, it sounds like a great idea. So, at our table was Brian, from California, Tom from Florida, Pamela and David from Missouri, and Yvette and Giovanni from Southern California. We ended up swapping stories of travel and of course having many a laugh. Once the open jam started, our conversation died down but there was still plenty to make note of. It will be far too difficult for me to put the night into words. Though, there was one guy I saw, wearing a plain white t-shirt that read, in simple block letters, DEBACLE. Yes, indeed! How fitting for this place! Jason compares the scene to a night out in Eugene, but I´ve never seen anything quite so entertaining while I was out in Eugene. I wish! I will say that it´s like Eugene in that everyone is kind of doing their own thing. For instance, one woman sang highly inappropriate songs, but everyone was totally respecting her creative lyricisms, one woman, probably around age 50 was rocking a long blue wig, with matching blue tights, and just dancing to her little hearts content, right out there in front of everyone! You go girl! She was in incredible shape, btw. I presume from all the dancing. Everyone just accepts others, and tolerates them well. It probably helps that a large percentage of the population is high the majority of the time. Weed is a popular thing here, again, much like Eugene. Later, I met a red head named Damon from Ireland. It turns out the Irish accent is incredibly difficult to understand. I´d like to inform you of what we talked about but I couldn´t understand a single thing that guy said! I loved getting to know all of these stories but it was after one in the morning, so we finally called it quits! With such a late night, we slept in until 10. Well, I did. I guess Jason was up earlier due to the roosters crowing. They start cock a doodle doing quite early here. I don´t live around roosters, so I don´t know if this is normal, but to start crowing at 2 or 3 in the morning, seems a bit too early, don´t you think? I heard them, this morning, also, but that´s when I got up and put my ear plugs in. I do not sacrifice sleep much. I wanted to make it to the Sloth Sanctuary today but the tours there were around 54 dollars. This seemed a bit ridiculous, and I was sure we could master the transportation on our own. Well....this was easier thought, than done. We obtained our bus tickets, but had no idea where to get off the bus. So, we finally just chose a place, I thought was close, but it actually wasn´t close at all. We were trekking along the side of the road for what felt like days, and there wasn´t a sloth sanctuary in sight, when a bus pulled over and asked us where we were going. When we told them, they shook their heads and told us to get in. Ay, stupid Americanas! They got us to the sanctuary right at 3, just in time for us to see their sign that says,¨Last tour at 2¨ I was devastated. Thoroughly heart broken over it. The woman that helped us when we came in, Ursula, felt so bad for us that she asked if we´d mind paying a small donation and she´d introduce us to Buttercup, the sanctuary´s oldest sloth, and Mobly another sloth currently at the sanctuary. This sounded like a good deal to us, so we acquiesced and it actually ended up to be quite informational. Ursula, our informal tour guide, turned out to be the best one. I don´t think she regularly gives tours, but her parents are the ones that started the sanctuary and she now works there. She was very knowledgable and taught us so many things. The story of the sanctuary goes... Three little Tico girls were walking to school one day when they found a baby sloth in the road. They knew the baby had likely been abandoned and, as kids do, naturally, tried to take the baby sloth home to keep as a pet. One of the girls´ mother´s said, ¨oh no! we are not keeping that!¨ Naturally, as parents do. But, the mother of one of the girls, Theresa, knew of a white lady in the neighborhood that kept dogs as pets! Can you believe? So she suggested they take the baby sloth to the crazy gringa to see if she knew what to do. Well, Ursula´s mother, Judy, had no idea what to do, really, because she had no training in veterinary medicine, or biology, or anything! But she did know that if she didn´t intervene this baby sloth would surely die. She remembered from her childhood in Alaska, that her mother would feed stray animals with goats milk, so that´s what she started to do. She started to feed Buttercup with goats milk and leaves, and in good fortune, Buttercup began to grow, get healthier and stronger. Later, it was learned that feeding any other type of milk to sloths, whether it´s human milk, cow´s milk, or formula, it will surely kill it. So, Judy did a good thing in going with goat´s milk! This incident happened in 1992 and by 1997 their residence was recognized as a sanctuary for sloths, as more and more people brought sloths to them to be helped. It is now the most famous sloth sanctuary in the world, as it is the only one. Since then, the place has grown like crazy. The´ve added 75 cages, which house 1 to 4 sloths at a time, just in the last 8 years. Ursula explained the problems with this, in that many rescued sloths are babies (0-6) months that have been abandoned by their mothers, or their mothers have died for some reason. Other female sloths, will not take on the baby of another female. Mainly because they know if they spend time raising someone else´s baby, they won´t have time to raise their own. And, their whole purpose is to spread their species, so they have no time for that. However, once babies have been taken in, they can never be released back to the wild. This is due to the lengthy training process a baby sloth would go through with it´s mother in nature. Many leaves in the forest, are toxic to sloths, but to teach the baby sloth this, the mother travels from groups of trees, toxic and non toxic, and eats from them all, to teach the baby, which are okay and which are not okay. This process takes at least a year. It´s confusing, but consider if there are 90 types of trees in a given area, sloths may only be able to digest 6-8 types out of those 90. But, to know, which types are okay to eat from, they must go through this toxic/non toxic process with their mothers to learn. Other adult sloths that get rescued, are usually able to be released to the wild because they already have this training. Most sloths that are rescued, are rescued out of people´s homes. When it´s very rainy, sloth may seek refuge under any type of shelter, maybe even your front porch! For some reason, people don´t like this, and often they will prod the sloth with broom handles and other sharp objects to try to get it to move. Then, the sloth gets injured, and then has to be rescued by the sanctuary to be rehabilitated. The sanctuary currently holds 147 sloths and each sloth has a lifespan of about 40 years. So, you can see why if they are taking in many babies why this is a problem! There isn´t a lot of documentation about the successful release of sloths, but Judy estimates that she has released at least 100 back to the wild. Sloths, in general, are super interesting. Ask me somtimes, I´ll tell you ALL about them! I was only a little bummed out we didn´t get to see any babies. First we met Buttercup, like I said, she´s the oldest sloth in the sanctuary, and is 20 years old. She resides in a little hanging chair up on the balcony and Urusla quite talks to her like she´s human. When we visited, Buttercup was in heat, but because she´s so old and will be in captivity for the rest of her life, no male sloth suitors give her much time. Therefore, when she sees males of any species she gets a little riled up. I think this made Jason a little nervous, but she put on quite a show for us. Ursula told us it is possible that she might try to reach out for Jason, but she didn´t. Although, I would have died and gone to heaven if that had happened! I think my extroverted self was the one in heaven last night. Getting to meet so many people and hear so many stories and lives, etc really had me pumped up. And, today with no activities planned my introverted self has sort of taken over. I don´t do so well with downtime when I´m traveling. It´s like I know I´m supposed to be ¨relaxing¨ but I am not relaxed because I´m thinking of all the things I could be doing! So, today, was kind of a down day. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring more activities for me. It should be noted, however, that even in my gloomy state today, and as much as I worry about being swindled, or getting things stolen. There really are good people everywhere. Like the bus that stopped and picked us up today. Who knows how long it would have taken us to get to the sanctuary on foot? We probably wouldn´t have gotten there until 5! Or, Ursula, who took the time out of her afternoon, to talk to us and educate us about these adorable animals. Like Jason, who tolerates my illogical rants and raves, and is patient enough to just sit back and let them happen. I´m very lucky to be traveling with him. And, I´m so very grateful that such good people do exist. Goodnight to you, my good people, Judy

Day 12
8-7-12
Sunday

Good news!  Not only did we see one turtle, but two!  Costa Rica has very strict rules about viewing the turtles because they are trying to protect them.  We saw the beginning of the Green turtle nesting season, however.  We left La Casona with our guide at 9:30.  We had to wear dark clothing because turtles can't see very well and they follow the light, which would mess up their whole process.  For this same reason, you can have no flashlights, cell phones, or cameras on the beach either.  Once we left our hotel, we walked through what they call the forest, perhaps we'd call it a beach trail, until we got to this waiting area.  Here our guide told us more information about the area and the turtles.  He said there are 7 species of turtles in the world, and five of these species nest in Costa Rica, four of those 5 nest in Tortuguerro.  The beach here is 18 miles long, but tours/people are only allowed onto 5 miles of beach to see the turtles.  They estimate between 300-5-- people per night to on tours to see the turtles.  I find it hard to believe Tortugerro can sustain that many tourists, so I'm not sure how accurate their numbers are!  Additionally, they only allow 10 people per tour group, in two different shifts in the night.  The turtles' process of nesting occurs in four basic stages.  1.  She comes ashore and finds a place to clean and dig a big hole.  2.  She lays her eggs.  3.  She camouflages her eggs.  4.  She returns to the water.  To my understanding, tour groups have the opportunity to see each of these phases one time.  We saw 3 out of the 4 phases on this night.  We saw her lay her eggs, and camouflage them. And, we saw another turtle returning to the see.  My goodness, they move slow.  And, they leave these tracks in their wake that look like tire tracks in the dark.  I loved the laying eggs part, I think Jason thought it was kind of gross, but I thought it was awesome!  This species of turtle lays anywhere from 80-120 eggs in a matter of about 15-20 minutes.  Then, she rests (obviously!) .  Even though she only rests briefly because now she has to cover her eggs before predators get to her, or them. This was pretty interesting to watch, as well.  She has to use her back flippers to fling sand over her eggs.  Now, the eggs themselves are pretty cool too!  They are the size of ping pong balls and are soft and rubbery looking.  They don't have hard shells because the turtle embryos or whatever have to breathe through the egg and the sand. The eggs will incubate for about 45 days.  The turtle we saw nesting, had a tagged flipper, which means she has nested at least once before.  Turtles only nest once every two or three years.  Then, once her eggs are camouflaged she can make the long journey back to the sea.  Our turtle had a bit of a problem camouflaging because there were so many branches and stuff in her way.  It all looked quite laborious for her!

It was such an interesting process and I'm glad we saw it.  So glad!  But, still we couldn't wait until 5:30 am to get the hell out of here.  And, man, oh, man did 5 am come quickly!  We had a very long day of travel ahead, starting with the oh so fun ride up the river to Pavano, then bus to Cariari, then Cariari to Guapiles, then Guapiles to Limon, then Limon to Puerto Viejo.  We felt like pretty accomplished travelers today because we pulled this off without a hitch.  It really couldn't have gone any easier.  Such a different experience than in San Jose/Tracopa.  We made it to Puerto Viejo and found a ncie hotel called Cabinas La Guarana.  The proprietor even pronounced our last name correctly!  And, again asked about our relation to Sergio Tacchini.  I wonder if we were related, if it would come with any discount!  They all seem to be quite taken with ol' Sergio.  Then we had lunch at a cute placed called Bread and Chocolate.  How could you go wrong with a name like that?  So, far Puerto Viejo is proving to be delightful.  It's a very bohemian beach town.  Tonight we will go to Lazy Mon for an "open mic" night.  For that, I must now go get ready!

Pura vida,
Judy

What is Going On?

Day 11
7-7-12
Saturday

Quote of the Day: What is going on? - Said by Judy and Jason at various times throughout the day

Sometimes there is so much that we experience, that there is no way to adequately put into words what happened to save for all of posterity.  Today, for example, was supposed to be a simple day of travel and ended up...well...an adventure. We were to load our shuttle at 7:30 to head for Tortuguerro.  After last night, we were both plenty tired this morning.  Natural Consequences!  I figured I'd just sleep on the 3.5 hour shuttle ride to Pavona, the launch point for our boat ride into Tortuguerro.  Oh, but we were the last to be picked up so I was sitting in a makeshift seat with no head rest.  This has not happened the entire time in Costa Rica, in all the shuttles, buses, vans and boats we have traversed!  What is happening?  Okay, so sleep is out of the question.  At least until we dropped some people off...somewhere.  Then I had the whole backseat to myself and all was well again.  Then, we got to Pavona and our driver unloaded ll of our stuff and left us standing there, which, naturally begged the question...What is happening?  He (our driver, Nano) soon introduces us to Antonio, whom we presume to be our bus driver.  We sat for some snacks since apparently the boat wouldn't be leaving until one.  It was now about 11.  We had some honey crackers with Nutella and some bread with Nutella.  This has been our main source of snack items since deciding to eat out only once per day.  Around 12:30 there seemed to be a lot of commotion when a one-armed man approached our table saying, "Boat, boat."  Antonio, who'd been sitting with us for an hour trying to converse with us in Spanish, jumped up and headed off for the boat.  We followed him.  Though, it turns out, he was not the boat driver, just another random passenger.  You should have seen this boat, packed to the gills.  I felt like we were going to either sink, or tip, at any second.  It made for interesting times going around corners, that's for sure.  The people here aren't so concerned about weight distribution, although they did ask one girl to switch to the other side.  That was sort of awkward because the girl was kind of a bigger girl and they singled her out across the whole boat.  Not nice.

While on the ride, some insect landed on my foot, and the man sitting across from me took off his hat and killed it.  When I tried to ask him what it was, I believe he said some sort of skin biting insect.  I couldn't really follow what he was saying very well, but it was a big insect and he was pretty concerned about it.  You don't see Costa Ricans really get concerned, so that made me definitely concerned.  What is going on?

It was all fun and games, rocking out to Bob Marley on the boat until we got detained by the Guardacostas right before our docking point.  The Coast Guard boat pulled right up to ours and and held the boat to their boat.  The Coast Guard officials all looked very serious, and had intimidating machine gun weaponry strapped to their backs.  They wanted to review our boat paperwork and were counting things like people and life jackets on the boat.  It couldn't have helped that our boat driver was a 13 year old boy.  We couldn't really understand what was going on.  The people on the boat were shouting things at the Coast Guard officials, and laughing.  No one seemed too interested in giving us any information.  So, I asked if this was normal, and was assured it was.  I do not think this was true.  Many people looked ill at ease and/or inconvenienced by all of this.  What is going on!?

During this boat-stop, we did see a howler monkey in the trees!  Oh, silver linings...

Finally, we are free to go and we arrive in Tortuguerro village.  Village is right!  This place is very small and there's a real feel of sketchiness about it.  When we got off the boat, there were people trying to sell stuff, tours, rooms, etc, right away.  Everyone shouting at us, and we're just trying to figure out where to go.  We get ushered over to "Tourist Info Center"  which was more like a Tour Vendor, and they tried to sell us more tours.  Finally, we got a woman who spoke English and she had Ricardo, take us to Hotel La Casona.  Ricardo is a friend of Antonio's evidently and seemed very nice.  What I like about La Casona, is that it's cheap.  $25.00 per night per room!  We have 2 twin beds, a private bath, towels, and hot water, allegedly.  I haven't tried that out quite yet.  The beach is really nice and from where I sit I can hear the waves.  I anticipate sleeping well, though we have already made the decision to get up at 5 am to catch the first boat out of here back to Pavona.  I'd like to get out of here as soon as possible.

Hoping for more friendliness and good cheer in Puerto Viejo manana.  Tonight, we will go try to see turtles but from what I hear it's possible to see only one on this night.  Mostly, I think our tour guide is a little shifty.  I wish I were more trusting of these people.  There's just a weird vibe here.  And, there's an excess of children and dogs.

p.s. Jason's sleep sack ran away with my eyeliner...to get some beauty sleep.  Seriously, of all things to lose on this trip...what a random pair!

Sleep can't come soon enough,
Judy

What Happens in La Fortuna, Stays in La Fortuna

Day 10 6-7-12 Friday First and foremost, Jason's heel is totally fine. A very minimal bruise if anything. Secondly, a bunch of people cleared out of our room today. I'm especially glad the guy on the bunk below me checked out. He was an odd character. For example, we watched him spend about 10 minutes trying to capture the perfect photo of his Imperial beer can on his iPhone last night. I fully place all blame on him for clogging up out toilet and then doing nothing to resolve the situation. I don't really care if you plug up the toilet but at least have the decency to get the situation taken care of. You know? Seems like common sense to me. Next, I may be allergic to Costa Rica. The arm rash got exceptionally bad today. The only difference I can think of is that I put on Cutter Bug Repellent before we left for our tour. My arms started rashing up hardcore by the time we were on our horses (more on that later). Jason thinks he may have used the Cutter on the day he was starting to get rashy on his arms. This is bad news seeing as how we are heading into Malaria territory tomorrow. Today, we went on the most bootleg tour yet. As we continually laugh about the jeep-boat-jeep, Jason likened this tour to horse-hike-wade. The idea when we booked the tour, was to horseback ride to the La Fortuna waterfall. It turns out that is basically impossible. The horse can get you so far, but after that you have to hike down to the pools where the waterfall flows. That's when you get to wade around in ice cold water. Though the water was very cold, it felt pretty good on our shins and feet by the time we got there. The real trip was the two people on our tour. We had the infinite pleasure of being with a 55 year old man and his 18 year old daughter. From the minute we got into the shuttle, I could tell this guy was a character. When we got in the shuttle, neither he, nor his daughter said a word to us. This is fairly unusual. Most people seem eager to meet others in their tour group, via the shuttle. We silently rode to the stables, whereupon we exited the shuttle, got our wristbands and walked up a slight hill to the stables. At this point, we can smell the strong smell of horse poop and hear someone yelling at the horses. I'm thinking this is not good. Just then El Groucho (the 55 year old man), comes up behind us and says, "Ugh, I've probably ridden more horses than these guys have." Great. Arrogant man. There's nothing I like more (insert heavy dose of sarcasm here). So, the tour guide introduces himself, though I have no recollection of his name now. (I do recall it was his 30th birthday however.) And, he suits us up with our horses. Mr. Know-It-All Groucho gets on his horse and jerks back on the reins which startles the horse and it starts rearing backwards. THe guide starts shouting, "No no no, don't do that!" To which, El Groucho responds, "Well, this horse isn't ready! If it can't handle me pulling the reins, it's not ready." Basically, he tries to argue with the caballero leading us. The guide calmly explainst it's a good horse, you just have to follow the correct commands. Groucho didn't like this answer and requested another horse. He didnt get his wish. Haha! Costa Rican Guide 1, Groucho 0. On that note, we headed up the hill toward the waterfall. Horseback riding is a romantic notion, isn't it? To me, it always looks so fun to see people riding off into the sunset, or having a nice walk through the ocean surf on their horse. But, there we were, in the mountains, in God awful ugly helmets on horses that looked beat down. I'm fairly sure my horse was going to die on several occasions. While everyone else's horses are taking the hill climbs in stride, my horse is snorting and shaking spit all over the place. The horses didn't seem to like clamboring over the rocks and kept searching out the side of the road, where it was less rocky and more muddy. We silently rode our horses to the drop off point, then walk up the hill to the viewpoint. From there, we hiked down approximately 300 uneven steps and cross a suspension bridge that by no means would pass any sort of Engineer inspection. The bridge consisted of splitting wooden planks and was held up by rusting cables. Don't worry though because the sides were encased in torn green meshing. When we finally got to the pools, we were quite taken with the clear water and the power of the waterfall. It truly is an incredible place! You can't really swim near the waterfall because it's so powerful, the force will push you back into the rocks. Muy peligroso. Though some people do try. The water in the swimming area was so clear you could see schools of fish. We talked to our guide about what kind of fish they were. Though, I can't remember now what kinds he said. While our guide gave us directions for how to get closer to the waterfall, Groucho says, "(Grunt) Well I'm not into swimming, we're going to hike up to the viewpoint. His poor daughter. So, off they went on their hike, Jason and I kind of shaking our heads as we got water ready. The guide must have seen us chuckling and asked if we were with them, to which we adamantly replied that we were not. The guide responded, "That is good because...that guy...well...he is a little bit feisty!" I do believe that is a very nice way of putting it. After we spent an adequate amount of time swimming/wading around, we headed back down to where our horses were stationed. Oh yes, on our way back up Groucho attempted a conversation with me, which turned into, surprise, surprise, talking about himself. He also got in a couple of jabs at his daughter about her being the most out of shape 18 year old he had ever seen, and had they selected his activity of choice (riding atv's) they wouldn't even have to be walking up all these stairs back to the top of the hill. I was about to go insano banano on his ass so I had to pick up the pace to get out of earshot of him. Later, in the mariposario and la ranaria (butterfly and frog gardens) he took photos with his incredibly nice camera, and then, lucky us, came to show us his beautiful photography. It seemed to me he didn't understand the connection between great photos and using a great camera. I refuse to believe he actually has any photographic skill. Fishing for compliments just never sits real well with me. On the ride home I decided to just put my shirt on over my swimming suit top, not realizing how much time we would be spending trotting downhill. I vastly underestimated how much this would hurt my body, without proper undergarments, if you know what I'm saying. I'm not sure who endured more pain, me, or my dying horse? I was happy for that joy ride to be over and to head back to the hostel for a relaxing afternoon. After napping by the pool, after an absolute downpour, I awoke and read awhile. I tried to be social and strike up conversation with these 2 guys staying in our room. James and Casey. They were from San Antonio, TX, apparently stationed there for the military. We idly chit-chatted until any foreign girls entered the vicinity and then their attention couldn't be held by anything I could say or do. It was becoming clear what they wanted to get out of their trip to Costa Rica. The best part of this conversation, actually had nothing to do with them at all. But, as I was standing there talking to them, poolside, I caught a glimpse of three guys walking up the road toward our hostel. I pointed, and shouted, "Mina, Mina and Manu!" Our friends from Monteverde! Jason was like, no way! And ran to the sidewalk to verify what I'd seen. He called out to them, and chatted with them, until I could break away from James and Casey. I ditched those two military duds to go see my British friends. I was so happy! We ended up having a delicious dinner with them and then going to El Establo for drinks. El Establo is a typical Tico bar and we are clearly gringos. But, the service was good and the people were friendly for the most part. We had decided to leave around 10:30 because I knew the hot water would get turned off at 11 and I desperately needed to shower before bed! As we were getting ready to go, a couple other guys from our jeep-boat-jeep tour walked in. We met them, Mark and Lawrence, and chatted them up awhile before heading back. They are from Southern California where Mark works for UCLA and Lawrence works at Matel. Allegedly. The thing about these types of trips are you can make up any kind of cool story you want, and no one would ever know... Little did we know that there would be a huge party going down at our hostel when we got back. We had French-Candadian girls making out in the corner, the Holland-aise girls in animal print parachute pants, and one, possibly two gay brothers from Richmond, Virginia. Of course, I thought the gay man (men?) were fabulous. Drew and Sean. They were completely drunk and completely entertaining. At one point, I learned of Sean's love for "vintage smut" literature, and how he and his heterosexual, female friend dream of starting a drag show where he plays Dolly Parton, and she plays Kenny Rogers. They would have an epic show, he assured me, with a miniature horse and everything. Then, he began serenading me with Dolly Parton tunes. This was my night. What more could anyone want from a trip to La Fortuna? And Iiiiiiiiiieeeeiiiiiiieeeeiiiiii will always love youuuuuuuuuuuu, Judy

Do You Believe in Magic?

Day 9 5/7/12 Thursday Quote of the Day: "So, what about you and your family, like who's more hyperactive, your dad or your mom?" ~Annoyingly loud girl at the table within earshot of us. Seriously, what kind of question is that? Be with me. Well, if we awakened anyone after out "late" night last night, they certainly got their paybacks this morning. Loudly shutting the doors, talking, and rummaging through luggage. Alright, alright, I'll get up already... It's raining hard here this morning, so hopefully it'll burn off here soon, or at least just stop raining so we can enjoy our day at the hot springs. For now, we'll take care of some housekeeping business and head there this afternoon. We'll give La Fortuna a few more hours to prove itself... After another delicious meal *lunch* at Soda Viquez, we ched out something around the town. Important things like the chocolate shop and the ice cream shop. The chocolate shop actually was important because I thought there'd be a lot of Chocolate in Costa Rica, but it's like they're having a shortage or something. It's definitely a big delicacy here. We also looked at the church in the town square. It was a beautiful building and very big. I like how the churches are always open here. You can often find people inside praying. I think that's what happens when the doors are quite literally always open. People feel welcome to walk through the doors. After making our way back to the hostel, we had "Alan" at reception call us a taxi. Alan was responsible for the great American music last night, but today he is feeling the Rasta vibe. A lot of Rasta has been played today. Regardless, our taxi was here in minutes, and swept us off to the hot springs. I was slightly disillusioned by the fact that the hot springs exist at two main resorts here. I was thinking that they'd be more like in nature, not part of man made structures. I mean, that's how we roll in Oregon...Cougar Hot Springs anyone? But, when we arrived to Baldi Hot Springs Hotel and Resort, I knew it'd be a good day of leisurely fun. This massive compound consists of 25 swimming pools, 3 waterfalls, a giant jacuzzi, and an all natural sauna. In addition, there are restaurants and wet bars to enjoy, as well. It was quite impressive and all I could think of was, "Well, I found the place where Jeanine and I can come, next time I come to Costa Rica." This place is right up her alley. All of the water in the pools and waterfalls, is heated by the Arenal volcano. Oh and how could I forget there are 3 waterslides, as well? The slides are super fun but also super dangerous. Tow of the tree slides are completely enclosed, so we opted for the one that was not enclosed to get us started. Thinking, this would probably be the mildest one. We couldn't have been more wrong. The open air slide was the shortest, and super fast. You are literally catching air as you go off the bumps. It was easily the fastest waterslide I have ever been on. Well, that is until I went down the second slide. Jason took video down the first water slide, which is absolutely hilarious because the camera is going everywhere. He also got video footage of me coming down, screaming my head off. Unfortunately, he didn't get all the people laughing and watching me. That would have been entertainment! So, after debriefing the first slide, we head off for the next one. We decided to go down the second slide, because the third slide was the longest, and therefore, we equated that with possibly the scariest. I got a little nervous when the sign next to the slide said, "Caution: You may reach up to 45 Km per hour." Knowing nothing about this mode of measurement, I asked Jason, "Wait, what does that translate to?" Jason thought about that briefly then said, "I have no idea." We laughed, it's probably best we don't know. But, I was thinking, hmmmm, when we drive down the road, I see speed limit signs that say 40 Km/hr and I know that we are going at least that speed, if not more, in our taxi. This shall be interesting. Jason was going to go first, obviously. So, off he goes, when shortly after he leaves I hear a loud "THUNK!" on the slide. The staff person working at the top makes this horrendous face, and says, "UH OH!" I'm going, "Wait, what happened? Is he okay? What's going on?" and I'm trying to see down the side of the slide to where it enters the pool. I can see nothing. Next thing I know, the staff guy is saying, "Es ok. Go, Go." Um, I have very little faith that this is going to be very safe and I really, really don't know what I'm getting myself into, and I have no idea what happened to Jason. All I know is, I have to get down this slide. YOLO. So, off I go! This slide is probably twice as fast as the last one that I thought was fast...and before I know it, I'm spit out of the slide and greeted with a horrendous wedgie. Ow! Jason is awaiting me, laughing his head off. He says, "Dude, I totally whacked my heel on that thing!" I know. I heard it. I'm glad it wasn't his head, or he'd have been concussed for sure. At any rate, I'm sure his heel will bruise. The last slide was the tamest, in fact, there were moments where I didn't even have enough speed going and I thought I was going to get stuck in the slide. After that adventure, we walked through the tropical gardens. They were beautiful, of course, but I would have enjoyed them much more had I had some shoes on. The rocks were torture to my feet. At one point, Jason and I split up in the gardens because we were looking for a Mayan Pyramid. We saw all these signs advertising said pyramid, but we couldn't find it. I ended up just going round and round in the gardens. I began to feel like Katniss Everdeen in Catching Fire. Am I stuck in a circular arena? What are the dangers that exist here? We explored the 3 waterfalls, which were scalding hot. I mean, we were almost in pain passing through the water runoff. In the midst of these waterfalls, imagine a very petite Asian woman, wearing shorts, a straw hat, and a yellow rain slicker embroidered with a Tellatubbie. Now imagine this same woman, laying on the rocks under the waterfall, and letting the scalding water pour over her entire body. She looked like she was trying to take a nap! Now, even I could not sleep like that. Perhaps, she was meditating. Her pain tolerance is much higher than mine, that is all I know. We hung out at the pools all afternoon, and when it started thundering and lightning we decided it would be a good time for a drink. The drinks were at resort price but at least we were under a little cover at the swim up bar. Then, we went back to our lounge chairs and had a rest after such a taxing day. Ha ha. By this time, it was getting dark and pouring down rain. Nice and humid. Near perfect sleeping conditions. We got back to the hostel sleepy and ready for bed, except that it was only about 7 oclock. But the magic never ceases at a hostel, you see, because, I was thinking perhaps tonight I would get a chance to start reading my book that I bought specifically for this trip, but the Spanish rasta music is very distracting. I'd like to shower but someone in our room clogged the toilet. Do not ask me how this happens, when you are in a country that doesn't flush toilet paper. But it happened, nonetheless. I don't really want to think about it, actually. Simply, part of the magic of sharing a room with 6 strangers. This reminds me of the Real World television show, "What happens when you put 6 strangers in a house, and people stop being polite, and start getting real..." Yes, that could happen...soon... Tomorrow we will ride horses to La Fortuna waterfall. Keeping fingers crossed for good weather. Goodnight, goodnight wherever you are! Judy p.s. Jason is ridiculously good at impersonations!

Thrillseekers Unlimited

Day 8 Wednesday 4/7/12 Feliz dia de la independencia! It was quite strange being in another country over a holiday. Especilly for me, because I'm loca about holidays. I love the fourth of July. Barbecues, beer and fireworks. It's the perfect combination for a wonderful celebration! So, we missed the barbecues and fireworks, but we still had the beer! We found a market that sells Budweiser here, in La Fortuna. Nothing says American Pride quite like a can of Bud. The real celebrations of the day, however, were the thrills we had planned for the morning. After breakfast at our hostel, with our Egyptian/British/Sudanese amigos, in Monteverde, we found ourselves on the shuttle heading for Selvatura Park for a morning of ziplining in the canopy and a walk over suspension bridges. I was a little iffy on the whole zipline thing. It was more like I knew I wanted to do it, and I knew I could do it, but was still afraid to do it. However, my travel partner informed me several times I would regret it forever if I didn't. This time, I knew he was right. And, I was a little bit excited, but not knowing what to expect is something that always sends me into a little state of frenzy. The day was nice, not too hot, not too cold. I was perfectly comfortable in long pants and long sleeves all morning. We arrived at the first platform, and I admit there were several mariposas in my stomach. There was a little boy in front of us, who was absolutely losing it. Poor kid. He was terrified, crying, and saying, "Nooo, I am scared!" The good news is, all the kids got to go with a staff person. Me? No, I had to do it solo. I could completely empathize with this kiddo. But, once you're down that first zipline it's nothing but an absolute thrill the rest of the time. It's incredible! You're literally on top of the trees, and looking down on this vast scenery of green. The park we were at had 16 cables and one Tarzan swing. I was not planning to do the Tarzan swing, but Jason, again, pointed out that I would regret it, therefore, it was not optional for me. For everyone else, yes, they can decide, but for me, no. I had to do it. We got some pretty good footage of us both on the Tarzan swing. My legs were shaking so badly when the stopped the swing that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to stand up. I guess that is what one would call an ADRENALINE RUSH! After the Tarzan swing, came the final cable, which is 1 KM long. It was windy out the day we went, so Jason and I actually got to do this cable together, which was pretty fun. It allowed us to take a pretty sweet video going over the canopy. After the ziplines, we took a walk through the canopy going over 8 suspension bridges. This, to me, was far scarier than the ziplines! Me, and my irrational fear, of bridges did not care for this walk, and it's safe to say I could easily go the rest of my life without having to do this again. We took about 1000 photos of the flora and fauna. Then, we headed back to the hostel to gather up our belongings and get ready for our pick up via the Jeep/Boat/Jeep. This seems to be a popular mode of travel that is advertised in Costa Rica. It seems to be a cheaper and more direct mode of travel. I'm not sure why it's as inexpensive as it is, but it was the most cost effective option we could find, for the time we have anyway. The trip is advertised to take 2.5 hours, which actually ended up taking about 3. We got a little slowed up by a herd of cattle that were walking towards our Jeep up in the mountains. The Jeep it turns out is like a tour shuttle, and we took this on the backroads up through the mountains on a dirt road to the lake at the base of Volcan Arenal. We saw a few small communities up in the mountains, here. I slept for about an hour of this part of the trip, but did wake long enough to see a family of Quakers, which was interesting because, we had learned on our coffee tour, that Quakers were the first to settle the area of Monteverde. Apparently, they are still around. Then, we took a boat across the lake, which allowed us some great photo opportunities of the Volcan. Once we crossed the lake, we took another "Jeep" to La Fortuna. We got dropped off in the center of the town, as we had been referred to a hotel 300 metros, past the park and the Catholic church. The directions crack me up. Of course, once we got here, none of that made any sense and ended up having to ask for more clarification from a man on the street. His name was Mario, and I couldn't listen to a single thing he had to say, because I was completely in awe of the fact that he was wearing an OSU Beavers hat. Now, I don't like the Beavs as much as the next guy, but that's still pretty cool to see a local guy in Costa Rica reppin' Oregon State. Jason for sure got a picture of that. We checked out the recommended hotel, but then I saw a sign that caught my eye for a 5 star hostel located next door. We decided to go check that out. We were able to get a pretty fair rate of $15 dollars a night, which is pricey for hostels but this place is the Club Med of hostels. There is a sweet lounge area by the reception desk, where there is Top Ten American hits music playing nearly all the time. There's also a pool, with a swim up bar, though I don't think the bar is in operation. We took a dip in the pool and brought our Budweiser with us, so for our intents and purposes it was indeed an operating swim up bar. There's air conditioning, tour deals, restaurant and bar on site, lockers, tv in the lounge area that primarily plays ESPN and actual hot water. Not, luke warm, but legitimately hot water. It's probably the first time I've felt clean since leaving Manuel Antonio on the first night. I might, MIGHT, even wash my hair again before we leave here. We are staying in a dorm style room with five other guys and one girl. Of the five guys, four of them are from texas, but only two of them know each other. The other guy is from Bozeman, Montana, and the girl is from Washington state. They all seem cool enough, though not nearly as interesting as our British amigos. We haven't spent much time hanging out with them, however. They all like to go to bed early, apparently. Everyone in our room was in bed, light's out, by 11. Since when are Jason and I the last one's up? Very weird. By the time we went to bed, everyone sound asleep, or trying to, and the bunk beds are super loud. It's impossible not to wake everyone trying to get situated on these things. I felt horrible, the people in our room probably hate us! We are planning to go to the Baldi hot springs tomorrow. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate with us for that. Goodnight Amuuuuurrrrr'ca... Judy

The Windy City - Costa Rican Style

Tuesday Day 7 3-7-12 Quote of the Day: (While riding a cart pulled by oxen..) ¨It´s amazing this thing goes so well with no horse power.¨-Stacy, from Tennessee Wow, the wind is impressive here. Our hostel room is in a back corner on the bottom floor, which makes it a prime location for wind gusts. Several times through the night I awoke to blasts of wind sweeping past our room. It´s like it gets trapped right outside our room, making our locale very similar to a wind tunnel. We had breakfast at the hostel, which included the biggest pancake I´ve ever seen, with a plate of fruit. Then, we geared up for our Don Juan Coffee tour. This tour was very ineresting and I learned so many things. Our tour guide informed us that 99 percent of people that drink coffee have no idea what they´re drinking. They only listen/pay attention to how coffee is marketed. The other 1 percent are those that learn about the properties and how coffee is made. After the tour, we earned entry into this one percent. So, hey, at least I´m in the one percent somewhere! We pretty much had the best tour group ever. We met 3 Egyptian guys, who were born in Sudan but were raised in the UK. I was completely enamored with their accents. We met a couple from Pennsylvania and a couple from Tennessee. The tour was very enlightening and I learned a lot. Seeing as how I don´t drink coffee it was all a bit confusing at first, but I am excited to check out our coffee selection in the supermarket and put my knowledge to the test. Our guide gave us three tips for finding good coffee: 1. 100% Arabic 2. Grown in the high lands and 3. Sun dried beans. After the tour, we learned that the Brits are staying at the same place we are, so we got to visit with them more extensively. Talking to them was like a history course, for me. I learned so much from talking with them. They were very interesting guys. Later, we all decided to go meet up with the couple from Tennessee at The Tree House bar and restaurant. We all shared some cocktails, stories and many laughs. We learned not only about other parts of the globe, but other parts of our own country, as well. Out of the five people we have met here, 3 are currently medical students. Naturally, never shy about my medical inquiries, I asked the female from TN about the rash on my arms. She said she was almos 100% sure it was heat rash. YES! I love being verified and validated. The rash did look beter today, but after my warm shower tonight, I´m not so sure. Feels a little itchy. I took a Benadryl, which I´m very glad about at this juncture becasue when I pulled my covers back this evening, there was a huge insect hanging out in there. He got killed right away. Hopefully, the Benadryl will put me right to sleep. Jason´s brother, my cousin, Josh, texted him this mornign to remind him to document smells becasue that the first memory to go. So, we´ve been racking our brains tonight/today trying to remember. I recall a few... 1. The public bus from San Jose to Manuel Antonio. (Stinky feet, sweat, and body odor. I was literally gagging when we stepped on.) 2. Manuel Antonio (park) - Ocean air, salty 3. Quepos - there´s no better way to put this, ¨Who farted?¨ Oh, Quepos did. That´s what it smells like. Giant fart. 4. Jaco - the smell right before it rains 5. Montezuma - pockets of pungent fermenting fruit 6. Monteverde - Pure, fresh air! However, the smells in our travel bags and sleep sacks is anything but pleasant. We are grossed out on the daily. I counted 7 bug/mosquito bites tonight. They have all occurred on my left leg. Isn´t that interesting?? Tomorrow we go ziplining in the cloud forest. I´m so nervous I can´t really write about it, because then I´d have to think about it. If I live to tell the tale, I´ll write more tomorrow... YOLO, (This saying is all the rage in the states these days: You Only Live Once) Judy

Ticket to Ride

Monday Day 6 2-7-12 Quote of the day: ¨There are those weird cows. I don´t know what your beef with them is.¨-Jason Convo of the day: ME: I don´t know how you stay awake in these vehicles... Jason: Are you kidding me? ME: No! It´s a complete mystery to me Jason: Well, it´s kind of hard for me to sleep when I know my life is in peril! So, we made it through the night with all the little critters. Here´s the deal though, what is it that people always say about creepy critters? They´re more afraid of you than you are of them. No, some of these creatures have poison, or I don´t even know if they have poison, and this uncertainty is quite terrifying. I think I´m definitely more afraid of them than they are of me. I would wager to say they don´t care a thing about me actually. You should have heard those geckos last night. My goodness they make a racket. I´ll tell you what, nothing quite gets your blood pumping like an ice cold shower (think hose water) and dry brushing your teeth first thing in the morning. Woohoo! I´m pumped. Let´s do this. Also, I´ve acquired at least 3 new insect-mosquito bites in the night. I´m rapidly catching up to Jason. I also forgot to mention that we did see 3 Howler monkeys yesterday. And, we saw more white face monkeys jumping through the trees on the main road. They are really quite adorable, mischievous looking creatures! Disneyland ain´t got nothing on the taxis, buses, and shuttles in Costa Rica. We booked a shuttle to Monteverde. This was a pricier option but the convenience was too good. It´s incredibly taxing dealing with the public bus system and on top of that it´s not really even that efficient. At least for us, anyway. Had we taken a public form of transportation we´d have had to navigate ourselves via bus/taxi to the ferry. From the ferry, we´d have had to find the correct public bus and then it would have taken another 6 hours (at least I´m sure) to get to Monteverde. Remember on Tico Time 6 hours could be anywhere from an actual 6 hours to 8 or more. The shuttle service got us here in just over 5. The ferry ride was nice, Jason got caught up on some reading and surprise, surprise, I fell asleep. I slept for about an hour. It was scorching hot on the ferry however and when I woke up there were pools of sweat where my head and arms had been. Gross! After the ferry, we found our shuttle and were pleased to find out it was equipped with A/C. That, in and of itself, made the cost totally worth it. Being from Oregon, I´m in no way acclimated to heat or humidity and it truly does a number on me. Just about the only thing I do like about it is how it makes my hair so curly. Once on the shuttle we met a nice young couple from Fort Worth, Texas. Turns out they are medical students, had gotten married in January and were on their honeymoon. We picked up, what I presume to be the shuttle driver´s son on the side of the road and pushed on to Monteverde. Nothing of note seemed to be happening except the typical craziness of passing cars with oncoming traffic, honking horns and high speeds so I decided on a little cat nap. Something into my nap the paved road turned into a dirt road. This didn´t necessarily disrupt my nap but when I finally did awaken I looked over at Jason and saw his face turned ashen, his eyes as big as saucers, and shaking his head as he had apparently lost speech. I looked out my window and noticed the very steep drop off of trees and jungle green in every directions. Jason finally speaks up to say, ¨Yeah, we almost died about 12 times.¨ Luckily, by the time I woke up we were basically already to Santa Elena. Whew! As we disembarked our death trap, Jason began regaling me with stories of how he thought, on several occassions, we were going to flip right over the edge to our deaths. He is so funny and I´m pretty glad I missed all of that. Sleeping is way less stressful. I promise. Once in Monteverde, it was our first order of business to find our room for the next couple nights. We were referred to a couple places and ended up choosing Hostel Cabinas El Pueblo. The proprietor here is also named Freddy and he´s equally as accommodating as the other Freddy we met in Manuel Antonio. We walked around the town center in the afternoon and took time to relax. Later, I was working on my blogs when Jason came to report there was a HUGE mariposa (butterfly) in our room. I immediately tried to restrain panic because I simply could not bear the thought of another night with insects and creatures, flying ones especially. We decided to deal with it after dinner and walked down to a soda that was recommended to us called La Amistad. by this pint in our trip, we have eaten at several restaurants/sodas so I´m confident in saying this was by far the best food we´ve had. It´s run by a grandma looking lady, possibly her husband her friend. She was very friendly and helped us out a bit with our spanish. I´m eager to go back to La Amistad. There is also a jewelry maker up the street from the hostel. He makes these beautiful pieces out of coffee beans, watermelon seeds, and coconut. It´s all handmade by the shop owner. I wish I had more space to buy things now! After dinner, we decided to head back, enjoy the agua caliente (hot water) as advertised, and hit the hay. The rooms here are okay. They seem cleaner than where we have been and the water is luke warm. This is a good thing because the nights in Monteverde are chilly. Jason and I debate this point, but I was cold here tonight. He says it was just windy. I say it was windy and cold. A matter of perspective I think. I am certainly not complaining about the cooler temperatures. I´m very happy to be in long pants and long sleeves. this is much more my style. After we got off our shuttle, I immediately put sleeves on and my arms began itching like crazy. I think I got a bit of a heat rash. Or at least that´s what I´m hoping. I have read since acquiring the rash that it may be due to parasites. I´m not sure how I´d tell if I had a serious illness here, especially one with accompanying fever. I´ve been so hot down here, I´m not sure how I´d tell if I had a fever! Of course, Jason believes it´s from something on the mattresses because I´ve not been using a sleep sack. I don´t think that´s true. But, I´m certqain that planting ideas like that in my head is the least helpful thing possible. Back to the room we went, anyway, and I stopped by the reception to ask for towels. As I walked back to the room, I tried to brace myself for the butterfly extraction mission. As I entered the room, Jason was standing near the door, hands on his hips. ¨We´ve got another problem,¨ he says and points to the wall/ceiling area above the bunk beds. There is a GIANT spider. Quite easily the size of a half dollar. Okay, so now we have two missions. We formulate a game plan about how to kill the spider, after we took photos of course! Don´t worry we caught this whole situation on video. I will try to learn how to embed videos on here again. The spider killing was easy but the butterfly extraction was probably the funniest thing, with both of us running around, dodging the butterfly. Luckily, Jason´s phone was still on in his pocket, so the audio of that chaos is also on video. After we got the butterfly out, a spider came crawling out from under the bed right towards Jason´s feet. Again, shouts and jumping ensued. When Jason realized his pohone had continued to record, we had to play it back. Oh my gosh, we were laughing so hard we were crying. We sound ridiculous! After that whole ordeal, it was definitely time for sleep. Tomorrow we plan to go to the Don Juan Coffee and Chocolate tour. I´m very much looking forward to that. We´re hoping all is well in the states... Goodnight, from the misty, windy city of Monteverde, Judy p.s. today marked the first hair washing since our first night in Manuel Antonio!

Montezuma: Where you get crabs!

Sunday 1-7-12 Day 5 FELIZ CUMPLEANOS a mi hermana, se llama, Aleasha! I´m sorry I couldn´t be there for your birthday, but, hey, at least you got a shout out in my blog. :o) Last night wa by far the worst sleep yet. Sarah, if you´re out there, I may have to purchase you a new sleep sack when this is all over with. The slight opening endured some rippin´and tearin´last night. Sleep sacks were not designed for people that flip flop around all night. I.E. me. We were leery of sleeping last night considering the conditions and the fact that the bedroom door not only lacked a lock on the door, but lacked a door handle entirely. I´m not sure if Kangaroo just opened or what, but it was weird, every time we returned after having left for some time, furniture would be moved, or rearranged, or somehow different from the state we left it in. Very odd. It was also approximately 85 degree Celsius (which I´m guessing is somewhere around 200 degree Fahrenheit)in our room. At first, I laid quite comfortably but after about five minutes my legs were on fire and a nice sheen of sweat was forming on my face. I decided to listen to some music to soothe me to sleep. The problem is I had such problems loading music onto my iPod last week, I didn´t really know what was on my iPod. I found out, it´s an ecclectic mix for sure ranging from the Beatles, to Sarah MacLachlan, to Nickel Creek, to Madonna, to Keith Urban to Sugar Ray to Smashing Pumpkins. Ay yay yay! I found a few soothing songs and just as I was about to drift off...finally...the door burst open and a guy stormed through heading into our bathroom. Apparently, to brush his teeth. This was confusing to me because we were told we had a private bathroom. From that point on, Jason said every time he heard a sound his eyes shot open in search of what was going on. Needless to say, he didn´t have a great sleep either. After consulting with Jason about the night´s activities, we were both planning to catch up on some shut eye on the shuttle to Montezuma. Unfortunately, that didn´t happen. First of all, the actual shuttle part is only about 20 minutes and I spent most of that time talking to my new friends, Karen and Gar. Karen, it turns out is from the UK and Gar is from Norway, but now lives in Gibraltar. He was clear about saying that he lives in Gibraltar. I didn´t know what that was supposed to mean so I just kept saying cool a lot. Karen, though, poked fun at him and said, ¨Quit telling people that, no one ëven knows where that is.¨I do know where it is, I´m just still unclear of it´s significance. Anyway, Karen is a younger, maybe early 30´s, petite blonde with a friendly laugh. She works in IT security. Gar, on the other hand, looks like a character straight out of the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo Series. He also works in the IT business. They were very nice and we had a great little chat with them. After the very brief shuttle ride, I stayed awake the whole time I´ll have you know, we got to a beach where the water taxi was to pick us up. We had a short wait where a man selling hats approached our group selling them for two dollars each...a special deal. Minutes later, he approached us again, this time, saying he was selling the hats for twenty dollars a piece! Wow, that was a special deal! I mean, we´re tourists but we´re not dumb. We didn´t buy any hats. Finally, the boat arrives, mind you there are no docks, and so we sort of have to wait for the waves to wash the boat ashore. We are all sitting there with our hug backpacks thinking well this is going to be interesting. Somehow we all managed to get to the boat without losing or damaging anything. The began the 70 minute ride across the gulf to Montezuma. Anyone who knows me, knows my sea legs are a little shaky these days, so as we were waiting for everyone to board, I began getting a little nervous. There was no cabin and I kept my eyes trained on the horizon. I never got seasick. Success! On our way, we saw spotted dolphins and about a million brown pelicans. Those dudes were everywhere. It´s kind of fun to watch them fish though. They are awesome divers. Montezuma is a really quaint little village. The people seem friendly and helpful, but not pushy or overbearing. The beach is okay but the tide was very aggressive, the waves big, and the sand kind of rocky. Some parts, coincidentally, down where we are staying in the beautiful Hostel El Parque. Apparently, El Parque has a bit of a higher crime rate. I´m so glad my family, mom especially, won´t be reading this until I´ve survived the night in this place. You know, it´s funny, with every hostel, I think, ¨It couldn´t get worse.¨ And, yet, somehow it does. The good thing about the place is, they provide pillows, there are safety lockers, and all doors appear to be locked. The bad parts are that although a pillow has been provided, it feels more like balled up socks stuffed in a pillow case. The doors may be locked but the windows are covered in high-tech, state of the art lattice. I´m thrilled that the girl staying in here with us has her bed against the lattice work. The other bad part, specifically for me, is that it is teeming with wildlife and it isn´t that clean. The bedding is clean (allegedly) but the walls are disgusting. The bathroom shower head does not exist. It literally is a PVC pipe, and yet, somehow still, the water pressure is better than at Jeanine´s. (Hmm, will that motivate Andy to get that pipe laid before I return? haha) The floors are clean, and perhaps that is why there is so much life crawling around. There are spiders, ¨ants¨which I´m pretty sure are termites, possibly tics, crabs, and geckos climbing the walls. Ay yay yay! How do people seriously get sleep in these conditions? Today while we were waiting for our water taxi a hermit crab strolled across my foot - little did I know this would be a recurring theme in my day. The entire village of Montezuma is supported by tourism. But, by the time we got settled into our posh accommodations we didn´t have much time for anything besides the beach. We had planned on going to the candlelight yoga at 6 pm. Had we more time, I would have liked to do a beach tour by horseback, next time...next time...We had lunch at The Bakery Cafe, which was pretty good. The highlight there was the little kid that was running around saying stuff in Spanish to all the Americans. We thought he was pretty entertaining. We also heard tons of howler monkeys, and eventually saw three up in a tree, fairly close to our hostel. We also saw more white face running around in the trees, and on top of restaurants. Definitely a few moments of, ¨i´m in costa rica!¨ I´m not sure I´ll ever get over it. The highlight of our Montezuma stay was definitely the candlelight yoga. The studio sits high enough so that you can see and hear the ocean as well as all the jungle wildlife that surrounds it. It was a pretty intense class, though. Bikram ain´t got nothin on yoga in Costa Rica. Within the first half hour, Jason and I were sweating our weight in water. Jason later said, ¨If that were to have kept up, I´m pretty sure I would have died because of all the water leaving my body.¨ Truly, I´ve never sweated like that in any exercise class ever. The class was wonderful though. The teacher, Dagma, pronounced Dogma, did a great job. I felt so wonderful after the class, I wanted to hold onto that feeling forever! As of today, I have sustained my first sunburn and the even the tops of my hands burned. I´ve never heard, or seen, that happen, so I´m hoping it really is a sunburn and not a rash from poisonous bites on the top of my hand incurred at Hotel Kangaroo. I also noticed I acquired three mosquito bites today. My 3 to Jason´s 18. The condition of this hostel make me think I´m not cut out for traveling abroad. But, perhaps, I just need more money with which to travel. I haven´t seen a creature in quite some time, so I guess I shall try to sleep. I hope my head hits the ¨pillow¨and morning comes quickly. Monteverde manaña.... Buenas Noches, Crabs!

Hay Perros en el Medio de la Calle! Ay yay yay!

Day 4 30-6-12 Saturday Quote of the Day: Man, I don´t even know what I was on last night. -Jaco Kevin It has been a day. As I sat down to write this, I actually had to ask Jason, Where did the day begin? I remember waking up in Manuel Antonio. The bed definitely was not all that I had expected it to be. When you sat on it, it felt like it had some element of memory foam, but after sleeping a solid 9 hours on it, I´m pretty sure it was just bedrock. No matter. We got up fairly early to catch the bus into Quepos. There are always such interesting folk at the bus stops. Today, we attempted to talk to a lady that either worked or lived at the hostel in which we stayed. We were never really able to patch her connection to the hostel together. Anyway, she talked to us for a while and was very concerned about the dogs in the middle of the road. (She was my inspiration for the title) She went on and on about how a dog was running around in the middle of the road, and it almost got hit by a bus. She was quite disgruntled about the whole thing, but this saying has become a catch phrase for Jason and I because there are always dogs in the middle of the road and the drivers don´t care. They don´t slow down. It´s a miracle you don´t see more dog road kill down here. Anyway, from Quepos, we bussed into Jaco to meet Jason´s friend of a friend Jaco Kevin. We like to call him Jaco Kevin because a.) it sounds nice and b.) it helps us distinguish him from all the other Kevins we know in Costa Rica. The bus ride from Quepos to Jaco was about 90 minutes, but because I have a mild form of narcolepsy I slept for most of the bus ride. I´m not kidding. I cannot keep my eyes open in a moving vehicle (unless I´m driving, of course). It was a bad sleep too, ecause it was one of those sleeps where your mouth keeps falling open which inevitably wakes you up. There´s no sleeping through that. So, when I woke up we were in Jaco. After a minor snafu with our bus driver in trying to figure out where to get off this God forsaken bus, we ended up in downtown Jaco. Jason had sent one Facebook message to Jaco Kevin and talked to him once by telephone. The directions from Jaco Kevin were to go to Big Ron´s Pizza Shack. Turns our, this actually was pretty easy to find. We had a slice of pizza but there was no Jaco Kevin. Naturally, we asked his coworkers where he was. They not only gave us his work schedule for the day, but gave us directions to his house. All I know is, I´m really glad about two things. 1. I´m glad strangers don´t show up at my work looking for me. 2. I´m glad that even if that did happen my coworkers would not give them my home address to come find me. Yikes. Jason and I decided to rek the mile and a half in the sweltering heat to meet the illusive, well sought after, Jaco Kevin. The walk was killer. I was sweating my face off and all I could think was that I was so thankful for going to so many Barre 3 classes and working on my rhomboid muscles. It was really paying off now. My back was screaming, regardless, when we finally arrived at Jaco Kevin´s place of residence. Jason knocks and some guy, (not Jaco Kevin) answers the door. Jason asks if Kevin is around, to which the guy replies no, he´s not. Jason then goes on to explain to this guy who we are and why we are looking for Jaco Kevin and then the guy says, Hold on, I´ll get him for you. Uhhhh...what? After a few moments, awkwardly waiting on these people´s porch, we finally glimpse Jaco Kevin coming down the stairs of his loft in all of his Jaco Kevin glory. Standing at about five foot two, in low rise brown, plaid board shorts, long blond hair ties back in a messy ponytail, no shirt, sleep in his eyes, stumbling down the stairs. I can see he clearly operates on the ¨no shirt, no shoes, we still get service¨ Sexy and I know it principle. ¨what´s up man?¨he says, which segues into handshakes and introductions. I´m pretty sure Jaco Kevin is still drunk or high, at this point, but he refers us to a hostel down the street and offers to walk us there. We arrive at Hotel Kangaroo, which is a very cute name, but the cleanliness is subpar at best. And, hot. Very hot, with a single fan which cannot be left on unless we are in the room. It will be a great night for my sleep sack if that is any indication for you. Jaco Kevin knows people that work here, though, so I think we felt like we should stay here, and they hooked us up with our next transportation out of here tomorrow so es todo bien (all good). At least, I didn´t have to walk much further with that 50 lb backpack. Once we got settled in, we said adios to Jaco Kevin which entailed a hug and a kiss on the cheek for me. Jason assures me this is customary but it hasn´t happened before or since. Jason explained to me further, no, it´s customary for Costa Ricans to do that between friends. Are Jaco Kevin and I friends? To recap, he´s a friend of a friend of my cousin. The relation seems very loose. At this point, I don´t much care, I just feel bad he felt he needed to touch my wet, salty face. Dis-gusting! Lo siento, Jaco Kevin! I needed the ocean like I needed my next breath. So, we changed and grabbed Jaco Kevin´s surfboard that he was letting Jason borrow to practice on. The board was way too short for Jason, but he got a little taste of the surf skills. I thought he was doing well getting the basics down but I believe he concluded that there was no chance of him standing up on a surfboard. Meanwhile; I romped in the ocean, until I was cooled down enough to go lay on the beach. Yes, of coures, I forgot my book again! I decided to just lay and relax. Every so often, like this afternoon, or sometimes just walking down the street, it will all of a sudden hit me, ¨I´m walking/laying/eating in Costa Rica!!¨ This was one of those moments. Mid way through my relaxation, I heard the loudest noise coming from overhead. Just this wild screeching sound, so I finally got curious enough to glance up and there was the most magical sight! 30 (yes I counted) red macaws in flight! I wasn´t sure anything today would top the magic of Jaco Kevin but the Macaws certainly did. Increible. Super noisy, but incredible, nonetheless. After the surf and turf, we decided to clean up and head back to downtown Jaco for dinner. We thought we´d borrow the bikes at the hostel because, well, let´s face it, we´d just look so cute tooling around Costa Rica on bikes. More like we were just deathly tired of walking everywhere. These old rust buckets were anything but cute, but they got the job done of getting us back to downtown Jaco. Although, this was a slightly harrowing experience. Remember the drivers in CR, and the narrow roads, yes, well now we were sharing a road with them with no sort of safety gear whatsoever. We got to town with full intentions of eating dinner at a soda, but once we got there we couldn´t find one! All day when we are driving we pass by them, but now, when we are looking for one, we could not find one. We ended up at Jaco Taco, which had pretty good food and one dollar well drinks. At dinner, the thought occured to us that by the time we rode home, it would be dark...on narrow streets...with Costa Rican drivers...with no reflective gear...or lights...or safety gear...AND the thunder and lightning show was beginning so it was only a matter of time before the rain started to fall. We considered all of these things and still decided to stop at Big Ron´s to say our final goodbyes to Jaco Kevin, as we remembered he was scheduled to work at 5. Being that it was now almost 7, we were sure we´d catch him. Of course, when we got there, the guy that answered the door at Jaco Kevin´s house (Joe) informed us he´d be there at 7. So we sat around talked to Joe and waited until well after 7 but no Jaco Kevin! No one except us seemed to care much, which was pretty funny. Joe said he tried calling him but got no answer. But, when we rode past his house on the way back to Hotel Kangaroo the light in the downstairs was on and the front door was open. Now, I´m not saying Jaco Kevin was home, or wasn´t home, simply that the light was on and the door was open. Draw your own conclusion. So, in the beach towns there are always a Casino. On our way home tonight we decided to stop into one, play a few dollars and see how we did. First of all the casino was dead. I played a couple of slots, and lost. Jason played some video poker. He actually won a hand, but then a message flashed on the screen saying, something about the power just went out and so the machine was unable to process how much he won. HAHA! We lost our twenty dollars and decided Costa Rican casinos are just as big a rip off as Casinos in the states. We were having such a good time riding around on our bikes, the wind actually cooling us off for once, that we decided to ride down to the beach to watch the lightning storm. We had a good time just enjoying the magnificent show of sheet and bolt lightning. We returned to Kangaroo, to find our proprietor, Francesca acquired a dog in our absence. Well, for one thing we think she was the proprietor although we cannot be sure because every time we left and came back there was someone new at the house, and we could not figure out everyone´s connection. Anyway, suddenly there was a dog roaming the hostel. The dogs here run around wild, until today I hadn´t seen a dog on a leash, so I´m not sure if the other dogs are strays or belong to someone. Either way, Francesca had most certainly picked up a stray. She had named this dog Charlie and he continually got scolded for sleeping in the chair. She was so excited in telling us about Charlie, ¨We found him, an he´s mad at me for giving him a bath today, you know, to be sure he doesn´t have fleas and such.¨ (To really get the full effect of Francesca read that quotation with your best French accent) The minute she left the room, Jason says to me, ¨That dog absolutely has fleas.¨ Jason continues to accrue mosquito bites at a rapid pace. I´m excited to get on to Montezuma, as I know I have some candlelight yoga waiting for me there.... Paz, Judy

Ants in my Pants

Day 3 29-6-12 Friday Tico Time Quote of the Day: I don´t know how to hail a waiter. -Jason Wow, the noise of the jungle is super impresivo! This morning around, what we are guessing was 4 or 5, began the loudest animal noise racket that I have ever heard. No question. It woke me up and I wasn´t sure if Jason was awake until I heard, What the hell is that!? I remember laughing to myself when he said this, knowing I was not alone in listening to this cacophony, and then saying, SHHHHHH...animales...shhhhhhh. Jason then confirmed by saying, I´m not getting up to investigate. With atht, it was settled, and I driffted back to sleep. The day began with a nie little breakfast with Freddy. I´m sort of regretting not getting a photo with that man because he is by far my favorite Costa Rican so far. Favorites deserve photos. We were served with scrambled eggs, toast, and a plate of fruit. Basically, what´d I´d like to have for breakfast every morning but know I´ll never take the time to make all of that. Oh, I hadn´t planned on documenting food consumption at all, until Jason mentioned that he was. I will not be outdone by his food rating system. After breakfast, we walked up to the bust stop (about 1/4 of a mile) and were met at the bus stop by an old man who spoke pretty good English. I´m not sure if he wa American. But, I think he was because he was especially keen on how much Subway sandwiches cost. He was heading into Quepos because on Friday´s the Quepos Subway has a deal. One BLT footlong sandwich costs only 4 dollars on this day! He exclaims, It´s cheaper than in the states! He had a big day lined up in Quepos, he told us. He was going to go to a coffee shop, then on to Subway where he planned to buy, not one, but two foot long subs. He was going to eat half and save the others for later. He also informed us that the thunderstorm from the night before had brought on a tornado in Parrita (a neighboring town). We had no way of confirming or denying this but, one thing is for sure, we never heard anything else about said tornado. It must not have been very destructive. Once we arrived in Manuel Antonio, just about 5 minutes on the bus, we ventured for the bank. This was to be our first banking experience and we were greeted with an armed guard that stood atop the balcony ready to fire. That seemed kind of intimidating. At the bank, we also met a couple of Americans that gave us some tips. They informed us there was no real need to exchange our money for colones, because pretty much everywhere accepts the US dollar. Great news for me because currency exchange throws me for a loop! I don´t like dealing in any sort of money. It makes me very uncomfortable so trying to figure things out in US dollars and colones es muy complicado. Another guy gave us some tips on hostels and told us about his life. He was a teacher in Nebraska, then retired to Florida, and now works a bit in Florida but built a house on top of his buddy´s business so he comes down a few times a year now. He was the second teacher we have met on this trip. Hmmmm....teachers flee to Costa Rica? There seems to be a theme developing. Then, we started walking around looking for our room for the night. We stopped at a place called Flor Tica, a backpackers hostel. Their private rooms looked very nice, but we are on a budget (kind of) so we downgraded to the dorm style room. This will be our first dorm experience. The good news is that we are the only ones staying here tonight. We will no doubt miss the a/c of the private rooms, but we do have a couple of ceiling fans. Literally, I mean, a typical table fan that has been mounted to the ceiling. And, there are also windows, though it is undecided whether or not it will be safe to sleep with them open or not. The space is clean, save for all of the ants. I´m not kidding. Millions of little tiny ants scampering the floors. Here´s the deal, I hate ants. They were everywhere this afternoon, but when we came back after dinner they seem to have all retreated to the doorway for now. That´s fine. As long as they stay over there, we´ll be cool. After we booked our stay at Flor Tica, we walked down the road for a bite of lunch. Now, this place, Salsipuedes, was muy interesante. The ceiling and wall decor consisted of several Bob Marley-Rasta posters and one BoSox tapestry. The view from the patio, where we sat, was great, though, as it overlooked the water. They served us this incredibly tasty brown salsa with chips. I could have had that for my whole meal and been perfectly content. I didn´t though, I had a chicken quesadilla and a Tuanis, to drink. I don´t eat a lot of quesadillas but this was the most filling quesadilla ever. The Tuanis (some rum drink) probably helped. After lunch, we grabbed a taxi and heading for Manuel Antonio. We were adamant about viewing the park ourselves and not buying spaec with a guide. However, these guides really know how to sell it. I´m also a pretty easy target, which is not a great quality, in a foreign country. The minute we pulled up they had a spotting scope set up so we could see a sloth climbing. Well, sloths are my absolute weak spot. So, they got me hook...line...sinker. So easy. We ended up going through the park with a guide, which I think was a great decision in the end. I am a total sucker for learning new information, so I was totally in love with the information the guide was sharing with us about all the different plants and animals. I hope I can remember it all! More than that though, I wouldnt have seen a thing if we hadn´t gone with a guide. You needed a scope to see most things and therefore our photos are really good! We saw salamanders, iguana, tucans, land crabs which were really cool looking, black body lizards, Jesus Christ lizards, three toed AND two toed sloths, deer, raccoons, butterflies, hermit crabs, bats and Capuchin (white face) monkeys. We heard the howler monkeys but we never saw any. The money paid was well worth what we got! After the tour we got into our suits and hit the beach inside Manuel Antonio. It was so hot today and I couldn´t wait to get in the water. The water was the perfect temperature. We swam for about an hour or so. But, one thing we learned on the tour is that snakes start to come out around 4 in the park because nightfall is only a couple hours after that. The snakes, being nocturnal, of course come out at night. In fact, our guide told us that park personnel start clearning the park out around 3:45. Neither Jason, or myself, were up for any snake sightings so we were heading out of that place at 3:30. On our way out of the park, there were many vendors selling coconuts, you know where they slice the tops off, and put in a couple of straws. We embraced our American tourist and bought one. It was quite refreshing! We shared our coconut drink on the steps overlooking the ocean. Later, we walked through some shops, looked at some things down by the park before our trip back to the hostel. It felt so good to be out walking around and not sitting in a bus or a plane! After we cleaned up at the hostel, we went out to dinner. We walked down the road a ways and came upon Barba Roja´s (Red Beards). We stopped in for some dinner and live music, if you can call it that. I believe Jason likened the music to some drunk guy playing a guitar with another dude on bass and another on a bongo. It was essentially a jam session. This whole scene was super interesting because somehow we had found a completely Americanized establishment. Literally, every patron was American. We even saw one kid with a University of Oregon shirt. For some reason, however, our server really did not like us. He was very short with us, and we noticed him paying ample amount of time on his other tables and neglecting to come check in with us. We felt very awkward having to flag him down for everything. Hence, the quote of the day. Thunderstorms again tonight. The lightning and thunder here puts on a great show. It´s so warm in our room, I´ve decided to go without my sleep sack. Jason is very dubious but I think I´ll get better sleep without it. Then again, Jason is also keeping a very strict inventory on his bug bites. I don´t think I´ve even gotten one bite yet! Crossing my fingers for my buena suerte con insectos! Pura Vida, Judy

Twas a Very Long Day

I´m not sure what´s happening with this keyboard, so I´m typing this in HTML format. We´ll see what happens. Day 2 Thursday: 28-6-12 No specific time, I´ve had to write this over several opportunities. I´m honestly not sure where to begin. I feel like starting where I am and working backwards but I really hate when people tell stories like that. Movies that are done in this way, drive me bonkers. So, I´ll back it up to the very beginning and start where I left off last night. I definitely called it quits way too early last night. Here´s what happened... We were supposed to leave Portland at 11:52 pm. We boarded on time and the cap`n continually gave us updates alluding to the fact that we were right on time. Around the time of departure there was an announcement about the lavatories, as I had mentioned. So, this apparently held us up quite a bit, because around 12:30 we begin taxi-ing the runway. YES! Only to get another announcement that the buggage was loaded incorrectly. Turns out, we are loaded illegally so we´re returning to the gate to re-pack the plane. Oh, joy of joys! TO keep the masses calm during this time we were offered a live taping of an Adele concert. BONUS! I was certainly tuned in to channel 2 for that one. Finally, at 1:30 we departed for Houston. We arrive in Houston around 7:30 or 8 in the morning. I have no clue of what time is, or means, anymore. I´m headed for Costa Rica. Watches? No. That´s all Jason. The airplane delay actually worked out better for us, I think, because we didn´t have to sit around the airport all morning with nothing to do. Now, the race was on to get some cash and grab some breakfast. We decided on Einstein´s Bagels, which turned out to be a hilariously ironic name. Our thoughts were that bagels are quick, and we can eat them on the go. As it turns out, my plain bagel with plain cream cheese, literally takes 10 minutes to get. Or, perhaps it coule be that the Einstein worker, had incorrectly written my name when she asked for it. I said, Judy, she wrote, Duby. She got fifty percent of the letter sounds in the correct places! So, who knows how long they may have been calling my name. I mean, i respond to a lot of things, but Duby! Duby! definitely isn´t one of them. Shortly, thereafter, we boarded and were off. The excitement was really building! Although, we had no idea what lay ahead... As we touch down in San Jose, we are exhausted. I mean, exhausted. We have been awake for way too many hours (again, I´m not really keeping track) but I know I´m running on sheer adrenaline. And, even that is dwindling. The United flight staff announces that the SJO airport has not sent them any paperwork for customs, or entering the country, so we´ll have to ask someone when we get on the ground and get off of the plane. I´m already stressing that because I can barely speak in English, let alone navigate anything in Spanish. Luckily, as we got off the plane there was an official handing out the paperwork we needed. Great, save for we haven´t been confronted with this before so it takes us awhile to locate the pertinent information on our passports...as the form is largely in Spanish. Then, we decide now would be a good time to stop and ask the information guy about taxis and transportation to Manuel Antonio. We then head to the security check point that allows one to enter Costa Rica. At first, we are moving through the line at a reasonable pace and then after about 20 minutes we notice we have not moved an inch. Time lapse...an hour passes us by. I feel nauseous and faint and I have no idea why, but I´m guessing its because I haven´t slept well in the past however many hours, 30 maybe? All we know at this point is, that the bus we are supposed to catch leaves from San Jose at 2:30 and it´s fast approaching 2, and we´re not moving in this line that is full of people! After some asking around and eavesdropping, we learn that the system the country uses is down. No one knows how long it will take to fix. Awesome. Well, there´s nothing we can do, so we try to distract ourselves with conversation and people watching. This does not make the time pass any faster. Luckily, the system was fixed before it hit 2 oclock. We got moving along quite nicely. We are able to get through without any problems, pick up our checked bag, and head toward the customs luggage scanner, whereupon we find ourselves in another line but we notice the people in front of us are handing the customs official some type of form. Some type of form that we don´t have. When we get to the front of the line, the official explains that we should have gotten this on our flight, but we tell him we weren´t- given anything so he points us to the table where we can acquire the form. So we head back to the table, fill out the form to the best of our knowledge, and get back in line. The couple in front of us gets to the front of the line and, again, they explain that they weren´t given the form on their flight to the very same offical. Well, what do you think that official did? If you guessed, he sent them back to the table to get the correct form and to return with it filled out, you are wrong. Dead wrong. Nope, he just waved them through. It´s okay, he says. What!? I look back at Jason, and I´m pretty sure his jaw hit the floor. Whatever, we make it through their scanners, knife and all, and make our way to the exit. At the exit stands about 50 people with signs with names on it, and people shouting, asking if you want to rent a car, or need a taxi. It is very overwhelming. Yes, we need a taxi! Right away, someone ushers us off with an older gentleman. Everything about his taxi looks legit. He has the symbol and picture ID posted inside. And, he has a meter! This is important. We manage to piece together that we are going to Tracopa station to get a bus to Manuel Antonio. He does not think this is correct, but radios into someone else who tells him that this is actually fine. I´m just thinking we aren´t even going to make it to Tracopa with the way this guy is driving. My sister, nephews, and sister in law may recall our taxi ride to the airport in LA last summer. It was worse than that. We were passing cars and squeezing in between cars with mere inches, centimeters to spare. He was racing down the road, motorcycles passing us by and of course there are no working seatbelts. That´d just be silly. Well, I think Jason´s worked. We were driving like it was the Daytona 500. We did make it to Tracopa, and thinking back on that ride, I laugh, because I thought that was dicey and it was absolutely nothing compared to what the bus ride was like. We were able to secure seats to Quepos via Tracopa station at 3 pm. This is later than we had planned but it´s okay. We can easily take a bus from Quepos to our hostel. Our bus is not a direct route, however, meaning that we can stop at any and all bus stations between here and Quepos, which is 150 or so km. This little trip takes us four hours. This little trip takes place on a 2 lane, windy, steep road. Somewhat like Green Springs, but sharper turns and much, much steeper...also a much longer duration. The buses are crazy, they are passing each other, there is oncoming traffic, and no one even bats an eye. I am boggled, boggled, about why there aren´t more auto fatalities here. At one point, we careened around a corner and all that could be seen was the steep drop off down into the jungle. My sister, brother, and nephews may remember the simulated ride of King Kong 3D at Universal. The view from the bus triggered my memory of that ride, except that it was really happening, and we could very well end up over the side of the jungle walls. It was at that point that I decided now would be a great time to try to get some sleep. So my sleeping patter of 20 or 30 minutes here and there continues. We get off the bus in Quepos and grab a taxi that takes us directly to our hostel. I´m still so conufsed about the currency exchange. But, I don´t really care, I just want to be checked in and start relaxing, because this first leg of the trip has been anything but restful. The hostel is quite cozy, shall we say. But they have a pool, and a restaurant, so once we´ve dropped off our stuff in the private room. We meet our server, Freddie, who converses with us in Spanish that finally I can understand. He was very kind and hospitable and helpful! We had a great time trying to talk with him during dinner. We also saw one lizard, a frog and a house cat that apparently roams the premises. Jason and I regaled our efforst at dinner and thought about how our trip could have been much worse. After dinner, we decided we must head to bed because we would have more logistics to figure out in the morning. Only to find, back in our room, that our liquids bags have exploded. Ay yay yay. So, we stay up to clean that up. We are deliriously tired, which is great news for sleeping in a sleep sack! It´s time to turn in, now. Who knows what tomorrow holds, but may the odds be forever in our favor... Buenas noches, Judy