July 16th: Rafting Day!

We woke up again to the crash of rain on the roof. Again too early. Again too loud. We packed up and got picked up around 9 to go on our white water rafting tour on la balsa river. These rapids were class 3 and 4 which didn't really worry us. What did kinda worry us was who we were grouped with on a raft. Rafting is a team sport really. And To be honest, some of the characters on our shuttle to the river looked a little bit like rapid food. See what I did there? The double father young teenage daughter combo sitting right in front of us looked like whoever rolled with then would most definitely float a lot if the river with out the boat. The family behind us looked capable.....but their 12 and 13 year old sons could only "forward!!" So hard. But there we were. After a short hike and some boat group guide shuffling we ended up with a timid 12 year old and her father. Just the 4 of us and a guide. Yikes. Swim trunks. Check. Our guides name was Stanley. A Costa Rican. Named Stanley. Yep. But he smiled constantly and seemed very confident. Stanley went over our commands. Forward. Backward. Left. Right. Lean in. Get down-(Which we later switched to ,"oh my gawd"!!) off we went. Although the beginning proved that a timid 12 year old maybe isn't the most useful in a heavy raft crashing down a violent river we managed to stay in the raft the entire trip (other boats weren't so lucky) and we had an awesome time. Loved our guide. Loved rafting. We even went down the biggest class 4 rapid backwards!! Such an adventure and such a harsh full body workout. I would definitely recommend descentes rafting company for future Costa Rica adventurers. 

Before.

After.

Oh yeah! One of the guides found a jungle frog when we stopped for a snack!

When we finished rafting we had a delicious meal at an all organic farm. We also got a tour of the farm and learned some intriguing Ecofarming info. Jen decided that she liked to chew on sugar cane and I asked, " why don't we use poop to make into biofuel like cr does?"

:)

 When we got back, we switched hotels. We now reside in our own little bungalow at the fancy Manoa resort. It's about 200 yards from our Volcano Lodge.

(or I guess 800 meters... The building on the right was the entrance to Volcano Lodge. Told you we were moving right next door)

 But this one has a hot springs and a wet bar. Yeah buddy. :) we sat at the bar in the natural hot springs under a volcano in Costa Rica and watched the US just barely sneak by the Costa Rican soccer team. A gecko watched the game with us from the tv screen. He also ate all the bugs that were watching the game. We are sitting in our room writing right now and there is a very strange gargling sound coming from the bathroom. Every few minutes there will be a gecko chirp.......Jen decided maybe one of the geckos was stuck in the sink......and he was probably in there snorkling......in the sink drain.......yeah that's prob what it is. :) And that was our night. Tomorrow- malpais!!