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!