July 19th: Day two Santa Teresa!

Determined to avenge our surfing failure, we got up early for a warmup run on the beach. We picked a route that went both on gravel and beach but neither were any cooler. It was hot. So very hot. And sweaty. Eye of the tiger played in the background as we ran. Serious. It did. :p

We came back and got some more delicious crepes (nutella and banana). Then we packed our giant surfboards in the back of Jimmy and hit the road for Playa Hermosa. 

Jen had to sit in the back through the Costa Rican massage road and hold the surfboards in place. We have built a fascination with trying to sing on the roads in Costa Rica. They make for a very original vibrato!! But all singing aside we got there and ran into our Swiss friends yet again. We decided that they were on the same time schedule as we were. After we set up camp next to our friends we hit the surf. Both of us. Again we were pummeled by waves. Jen would insist that I include that she was most definitely ahead of me on the first trip out. I eventually got tired of trying to get to the tasty looking wave always just out of my reach and rode a little one backwards. Jen did the same on her tummy. So frustrating!! Discouraged, but not nearly as hurt as the day before we sat on the beach tanning for a while. We ended up talking and comparing travel stories with our swiss buddy. Even learned a bit about how the Swiss military system works. Such a cool and nice guy. Then we ventured out for a surf lesson. Jen took her board and I took my vaaaaaast knowledge of surfing........:/ haha I helped her get passed the first wave of angry waves and then basically did nothing else. We talked a little bit about where to be in the wave and when to stand up. At first I pushed her into the wave to build momentum. She popped right up and surfed!!! Then the next few I noticed she needed less and less of me. She is exceptionally strong from swimming so she didnt really need the push. Girl can paddle for days!! By the third one she didnt need me at all and I just stayed out there to watch and “consult”. I watched proudly as she road wave after wave. She couldnt see me but I was jumping up and down in the water every time she stood up. She did so good!! I didnt get to ride much that day but it was such a victory to watch her do it. :) Eventually we rolled back to the beach and hung out smiling. Success!!......For Jen anyway.....:( I ended up a little disappointed with Santa Teresa surfing wise. I talked to a couple surf gurus the last couple days. Both of them said about how I felt trying to get to the bigger waves further out. “I thought I knew how to surf........and then I came here”. That’s EXACTLY how I felt. But. It felt good to hear that from some surf veterans. One even said if I had 2 or 3 years, this place would teach me a lot about surfing. So I am humbled. But there are point breaks (the kind I understand) in Tamarindo. Hopefully I can get in a few good rides there.

We were happy that we finally got some sun!

The beach day came to an end and we went to get some pasta at a place called pasta basta. We split a chicken schnitzel and called it a night. We both noticed that we felt a bit “stingy” (like the bee not the scrooge). Turns out the sun is pretty nasty here even behind a vail of clouds. To sleep. Ready for a looooooooooong drive tomorrow.

July 18th: First Day in Santa Teresa

First day in Santa Teresa! Woke up to find CREPES on the breakfast menu at our hotel! We couldn’t have been more pleased. Silvia (one of the owners) is super nice. She chatted with us at breakfast. Being that Santa Teresa is the ultimate little surf town, we set out just next door to pick up some surfboards. There was no question about what we were going to do today. It was a beach day. Surfboards in hand, we walked down to the beach to scope it out. So maybe the waves were a little different than we had expected, and maybe it was alot harder to get out than we thought. But it wasn’t for lack of trying (and that goes for Nick... I got sick of getting pummeled by waves pretty quick. Salt water is not my favorite thing to inhale). Basically, we picked a pretty crappy time of day to surf, on a day that the locals even said was a pretty bad day in general. And it wasn’t just us. We made friends with the 4 Swiss guys that were sitting near us, who were having just as much trouble. The waves weren’t consistent and were coming from 3 different directions. Despite our not so successful surfing attempt, we hungout on the beach (in the not so sunny weather) and people watched. 

A little frustrated, we headed back to the hotel to change for dinner. Jimmy sticks out a bit here. Everyone drives ATV’s and dirt bikes on the road, cars are not as common. We went to a little burger place that was recommended to us. Tiny little restaurant suited to serve about 15 people. Not really sure what to do or where to go after dinner (it’s not a very big place), we opted to just go back home and get some sleep so we could get up early the next day. 

So for those of you that happened to read my temporary comment on the previous post about the most terrifying thing that happened to me... well, here it is. 

I wasn’t quite tired enough to go to bed yet, so instead, I decided to sit out on our teeny tiny balcony and blog for you. I was happily typing away while waiting for the lightning storm video to upload, when I just so happened to glance down at the floor. Keep in mind that the chair that I was sitting on was like a small lawn chair, so I was sitting about 6 inches above the floor. I looked down and about a foot away from my right foot (walking towards it) was THE BIGGEST most TERRIFYING spider I have ever seen in my life!! Before you laugh and say I am exaggerating about any detail, I kid you not, this thing was the size of my hand, if not bigger! It looked like a small animal. I instantly lifted my feet up onto the chair opposite me and therefore left myself completely trapped with no way to escape! Trapped on a teeny tiny balcony with a monster spider blocking my only path to safety! Envisioning this thing running at me and leaping onto my face, I was too scared to move. So I called for Nick, who was just on the other side of the screen door, sleeping. I called. And I called. Every time I spoke, the spider stopped and moved closer to me. Getting frantic, I called louder. NICHOLAS JAMES!! Still no help. Alone to face my fears, I held back the borderline traumatic tears, leaped over the spider, grabbed the screen door to find that the actual door was closed too. I scrambled to get the door open and get inside before shutting the door and looking to find the spider already at the door trying to get in! It ran after me!! Heart pounding and physically shaking, I probably stood at the door giving the peaceful sleeping Nick the most deathly of all stares. I woke him up in a panic trying to explain what had just happened, and he sleepily rolled out of bed with a “yes, I will go kill the little spider” look on his face... I kept trying to tell him that this was NOT a killable spider.... So just take a look at what happened next (ps. I apologize for the tone of my voice haha). 

One of my many reactions....

SO gross!!!... ugh.

You can’t see something like that and not know what it is, so let me introduce you to the Brazilian wandering spider!! The most venomous spider in the WORLD. If you would like to know more, you can definitely look up some pretty disturbing photos and information. But just some highlights, they do in fact JUMP, their leg span averages about 13-15 inches and they are an aggressive member of the tarantula family. 

Needless to say, it was a little difficult to fall asleep. The gecko in our room has been eating all the bugs... but I think even he would appreciate us not letting that thing inside.

July 17th: Drive to Santa Teresa

To be honest, I didn't think there would be a whole lot to talk about today since it was just a moving day. But today may have been the craziest car trip ever! To start off the day, we had breakfast at our hotel, which I would say was secondary in comparison to Volcano Lodge. We wandered the property a little bit, which again, was beautiful, before we packed up our things and headed into town. We went off in search of a place to do laundry, mostly because the smell of river water on your clothes is not ideal. For the same smelly reason, and because Nick's shoes very literally fell apart, we went off in a hunt for flip flops that were less than $18. Once we found some knockoff Nike's and Nick was no longer wandering the streets barefoot, we picked up our laundry and headed to lunch. Good job on our part for picking a random place that just happened to be delicious. With our early start to the day now made much later, we finally hit the road towards Malpais/Santa Teresa! Back through the very up and down windy roads (at least we knew half of the trip because we were just backtracking). We found our way to the pan-american highway and figured it would be fairly easy from there to get to Puntarenas. To give you a little idea just how difficult it is to drive here, the map (a really good map, one of 4 that we have) only lists about 10 highway numbers for the entire country. The road signs (if and when there are any) have no numbers. So the names of the highways are completely and utterly useless. The people here don't even know the numbers. The few signs that you do ever see (which are often homemade, half falling apart signs) will say one or two city names with an arrow.... city names that have about a 20% chance of being a city that is marked on the map. Roads will often split with no sort of indication where either one goes, and once you pick a direction, you can drive for 20 miles without ever seeing a sign, streetlight, or other road to turn around on. Just keep all of this in mind while I describe our adventure to Otro Lado :)

With about 3 hours of traveling behind us, the sun already setting, we continued along the highway in pursuit of Puntarenas. We continued straight at about 40kph following a sign that said to do so for another 19km. During this stretch, we got caught in a HUGE rainstorm. I started videotaping the storm just because it was so crazy, with lightning flashes going off in the distance. Little did I know it would get SO much better! It didn't take long until we caught up with the storm and were stuck right in the middle of it. THE COOLEST STORM EVER! I have NEVER seen so much lightning in my life. And so close!! It was touching down all around us!

It was so ridiculous that we had to pull over multiple times to try and take photos of it (ones that do no justice to just how incredible it really was)! One of the places we pulled over I was so excited I hopped out of the car and ran over under a tree to try and get pictures without power lines in them, but that didn't last long because Nick came running after me pointing out a sign that said "private property. we have guns" haha.

 Ooing and Awing at the lightning, we continued down our road... sitting in traffic because of a tree that fell in the middle of the road, and then driving another 20min thereafter before I finally saw the name on the side of a restaurant that I recognized from the map. We had gone too far. We apparently missed a non-existant turn off about 30min back. Turning around, and backtracking we got back on the right path towards Puntarenas. Now in complete darkness (at about 6pm) we followed all the way to the bitter end of the road in search of the ferry.

The ferry trip was a whole other adventure in itself. Still pouring rain, in a very sketchy part of town, we went from person to person trying to figure out how the ferry system worked. We were inquired for rides to Santa Teresa, which always feels creepier when people come up and knock on your car window in the middle of a rain/thunder storm late at night. The next ferry wasn't leaving until 8pm... so we had 1.5hours to kill... we also discouragingly found out that our ferry ride would be about 1.5-2hours.... A little concerned about the fact that the worst roads/part of our trip was still on the other end, we called ahead to our hotel to inform them that we would be checking in late. We were told we would arrive at 11:30pm to be exact. The receptionist at the hotel has played this game before.

After what seemed to be a very long ferry ride, some coffee and a cup of hot milk that was supposedly tea, we docked at Paquera and headed out into the darkness with Jimmy. Bumpy dirt roads, very large potholes, very little light or signs of life. Fortunately, there weren't too many roads to choose from on the way to Malpais, but once we got to Santa Teresa, we still had to find our hotel. To give you another idea of what driving/directions are like here, our address for our hotel was "300meters north of soccer field"... as in, literally if you wanted to send us mail here, you would mail it to "300mt N. of soccer field, Santa Teresa, CR" no street names or numbers. But in the dark, we managed to find the sign for our hotel amongst the rest of the signs in the densely hotel populated street (no soccer field in sight by the way). 11:30pm on the dot. We got our key from the night security guard and went straight to bed.

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!!

July 15th: What to do...

We woke up briiiiight and early this morning! Not intentionally, the rain here can be really loud! Sat out on the rocking chair staring at the clouds where there is supposedly a huge volcano. Found a little armadillo that didn’t seem to mind the weather. As the rain continued on and off, we got increasingly more concerned about our plans to go hike up the volcano. We went to breakfast and pondered whether or not the clouds would burn off like the forecast had said. We waited around for awhile and considered doing other activities like canyoning, but the rain seemed to put a damper on any idea we came up with. I took advantage of our wait time to go walk around the hotel property and take some pictures of the flowers! Please just let me bombard you with pointless flower pictures from that walk just to make me feel like I didn't waste my time :)

Back in the room, I found a little friend! Who really seemed to take a liking to Nick... and unknowingly fulfilled Nick’s lifelong dream when he decided to give him a little visit! :)

Finally we decided we would just make today an exploring/shopping day (shopping... Nick’s idea, not mine... but really.) We got in the car and headed off to find the lake. It took me awhile to realize that there really isn’t anywhere to go on the lake. Why would you NOT have a little town on the lake?... so we drove about halfway around and went to Toad Hall (basically the only thing around). Their marketing manager did their job well, they had so many signs along the side of the road, some of them were just plain ridiculous. We took a little walk around their property and their shop and headed back home. 

A really cool ORANGE river we found on our drive around the lake! We were using our shirts to compare the color of the water

During the drive home, it got sunny out and we were kicking ourselves a little bit for not feeling like we took advantage of the morning. So on a whim, we decided we were going to go canyoning. Nick claimed to have seen the office for the company we were looking for, the previous day, so we went off in hunt of the office in hopes of catching their last tour of the day (which was about 30min away). Nick’s memory wasn’t right, but a funny thing happened. (a little background first: the entire trip Nick kept mentioning that we could go wakeboarding while we were in Arenal, that he was facebook friends with a guy that owned a wakeboarding company here. Nick had no idea how they became friends.... but we were seriously considering finding this guy and going wakeboarding)... So as we passed by the building that Nick thought was the Desafio Canyoning tour office, he looks at the guy sitting on the front porch and goes “I think that is Jonathan...” Jonathan as in the the guy that Nick has no idea if he actually knows him or not. To make this already long story a bit shorter, we decided to stop and introduce (or reintroduce) ourselves to Jonathan and his wife. Really awesome people. We spent a good amount of time just hanging out and talking with them. He told us that Desafio (the company we were looking for) was the big bad corporation that everyone in Costa Rica hated, and told us about better local tour companies. We took Jonathan’s advice and went ahead and booked a rafting tour for tomorrow.... and then threw on a combo tour for the second part of today.... 7min before the tour started to be exact.

With little time to spare, we headed just down the street to go on our zip-lining, hiking, rappelling, Maleku tribe learning, horseback riding tour. We got to do 11 ziplines, the longest of which was 980 meters (approximately 60kph), 4 of those were in complete pouring rain.... raindrops pelting your face and eyes at that speed is about as ridiculous, entertaining and painful as it sounds. Being the last tour of the day and with only one other girl on the tour with us, our guides were pretty relaxed and joked around alot with us. They were alot of fun. The highlight of the tour was without a doubt, the rappel. Only one rappel, but that one 80meter rappel (which looks reaalllly high in person) was right down the side of a huge waterfall. The start of the rappel was right when the rainstorm came in, so add that to the mist of the falls and it made for a pretty dramatic event. Feeding our own rope, we were in control of how fast we wanted to come down (don’t worry, there was a backup belayer at the bottom just in case). To coincide with the rappel, my only complaint about the trip (please mind my snobbiness on this topic) was the photographer. He didn’t seem to care much at all about photography, and he bailed altogether when the rain came in, so much of our adventure wasn’t photographed, and the parts that were, were not that great. It still makes me sad to think about because during the rappel, our photographer stayed at the top and shot looking down on us... so there is no evidence of the amazing waterfall.... or any real perspective to show you just how high we were, and how teeny tiny we looked in comparison to the valley we rappelled down into. But photography rant done, the experience was incredible! We heard a little presentation from the Maleku tribe, and learned a little bit about what the masks and animals mean. We looked around at their art and then headed back. I will still hold that the most terrifying part of the whole trip was riding the horse down at the end. My horse was very territorial. He didn’t like anyone being in front of him. Especially Nick’s horse. I was perfectly content going very slowly, but every now and then the guide would make my horse go faster.... for anyone that understands this, just think of the movie It Takes Two, the horse riding scene, that about sums up how I felt when we would go faster. If that reference means nothing to you, don’t worry, it’s not important. 

 Right before the rappel and the downpour!

Nick going down! You can't see it very well, but the little yellow dots in the mud down below are people.

Zip-lining in the rain!

 When we got back, we went to the little restaurant on site and got a free meal that was part of our package. Shout out to Nick, he went a good 4-5hours without a meal! (positive reinforcement ;)

July 14th: Waterfall and Hot Springs!

Just in case this wasn’t emphasized enough, I would like to reiterate that our hotel is AWESOME! This place is so much nicer than we had thought when we booked it. I was happy enough with the location and our friend at the front desk, but the room is nicer than most American hotels I have been in. Our huge window overlooks our private patio with decorative rocking chairs that look out onto the beautifully landscaped property and a direct view of the volcano! (although we haven’t seen the volcano yet because it has been cloudy). We had a delicious buffet breakfast over which we discussed just how much we loved this place, and decided that we were going to try and rearrange so we could stay one more night. So Mom’s, rest assured, we have secured lodging for our unknown night. We will be staying here one more night and pushing back our stay at Manoa (which, funny story, we knew Manoa was close to this hotel, but they are very literally next door neighbors). 

Today may very well be one of my favorite days so far! This morning after breakfast, we packed our backpacks and headed out to find La Fortuna waterfall. It was only about a 15-20min hike down to the waterfall, but that covered a very steep amount of ground. 

The waterfall was HUGE! and beautiful! There was a log lodged between the rocks so of course we joined right in and jumped off of it! Nick went first.... and then lied about it being cold. But it was fun!! You could swim towards the waterfall and not get anywhere because it kept pushing you out. 

I think an insignificant highlight of this trip was asking the security guard to take a photo, and him taking multiple pictures on his own and the photos actually turning out really well! haha. Sorry, pet peeve when strangers take horrible photos haha. 

A little ways away from where the waterfall spits out, there was a more calm swimming area, which honestly looked like a tropical paradise! (funny that a Costa Rican waterfall would have that effect huh?) But the colors were so bright! And there were fish swimming around in the water. The water just looked so clear!

After a great morning out and about, we happily came back to our room to make a lunch  and enjoy it out on our patio. With the weather still being decent, we called our hotel reception for a shuttle to take us to Paradise hot springs. Drawn to Paradise because of the suggestion that it was less crowded, we may have made a judgement call mistake by choosing Paradise over Baldi hot springs, simply by comparing ourselves to the average age of those accompanying us at Paradise. We were talking up our pina coladas before we got there, but decided once we got there to hold off until happy hour back at our own hotel. But the hot springs were the same and it was a very relaxing atmosphere. We hopped around to all the different pools until the rainstorm came in. We sat in the middle of the hot springs in a complete downpour until the thunder started, and then we figured we should call for our shuttle. As we waited for our shuttle, we engaged in another thrilling round of “rhyme with TOY”. Winner TBD. There were definitely some sketchy words played. 

Yet another reason to love our hotel, this is what we came home to :) even the towel underneath was folded into a heart.

As promised, I told Nick I would get him a pina colada, so we headed down to our hotel bar. Sadly, they were not part of the happy hour specials, and we went for something cheaper. We sipped our drinks under cover, away from the rain that was so loud that we had to yell at each other in order to hear one another. 

Instead of heading into town in the pouring rain, we opted to order room service. Get this, fajitas are on the room service menu, but not offered on the restaurant menu. And even weirder than that, it’s cheaper. Just for the heck of it, let me just share that on the walk back to the room in which we had decided to order fajitas, we somehow managed to stop at our front door and occupy ourselves for 10mins competing back and forth who could say fajitas the fastest. Not talking, whispering. Who knows why, but it was really entertaining. And don’t lie, you know you are going to try it now ;)

Cheapest meal yet, delivered to our door. Dinner and a movie in bed :)

And I just now received the definition of viceroy..... game winning information? Loss due to extreme game delay?...

The weather is supposed to be clear tomorrow, so we are hoping to go see the volcano and possibly go to the lake!

July 13th: Drive to Arenal

After deciding that we didn’t want to get fat on our trip we elected to wake up semi early and go for a run. We didn’t think that at 8 in the morning it would already feel 90 degrees out. But it did! So we ran hot and bothered around the hills of Manuel Antonio trying to earn our breakfast. It felt great to exercise after a couple days of beach lounging. Afterwards we showered and headed to breakfast. I ran into the owner of the hotel and let him know that we were very pleased with our stay at La Mandarina. We packed up our stuff that was decorating the floors, walls, bathroom, etc. and checked out. We asked for directions.....But we soon discovered that there are many “rutas” to Arenal. 

First you go towards Palameras.......But we learned that it is labeled on only one of the signs towards it. So originally we thought we were going towards it. But, we later had to guess which way continued the right way as the rest of the turns were labeled as towns that didn’t exist on all three of our maps. We eventually calculatedly guessed and brain-powered our way in the right direction; only to find this would be the story for the next three towns we were looking for! haha. It was patience testing, but we have played this game before......and we won (we always do). We drove through some of the steepest, unmarked, windy (wieeeendy-like squiggly lines. I don’t know how to spell that and I don’t want you to think I meant windy-like sailing. You’re welcome.) scenic, seemingly uninhabitable, sketchy bridged, hilly roads of all central americadum today. Successfully. And in good time. BOOM. (Jen said for those of you familiar with Hawaii, the drive was like the Road to Hana... x4) Side note- Once you get to one of the towns it’s easier to just ask directions. Otherwise you have to try every main road in town until you see a sign that says the right way. There are no next town signs on the way in. It was an adventurous drive today. We stayed cool and calm. I think we handled the challenge really well. We are getting really good at traveling.

We arrived at our hotel........DIRECTLY below the volcano. Serious. Like oh snap, (pointing up) there it is. Great location and very friendly staff. Our orientation was like a Spanish lesson by a really nice Tico-dude who was really helpful. I think he thought it was somewhat amusing to direct random questions at Jen, knowing that she was listening and understanding the conversation, even though she kept answering back in English. We ate a decently priced meal at the restaurant 28 steps outside our door and went to soak in the hot tub about 15 steps further. I lost again in a game of rhymes. How did I lose when I rhymed “bite” with “kryptonite”? I cant decide whether it’s good or bad that she beats me. All losing aside, this place is way more baller than I thought. We did good. I am for sure looking forward to just sitting outside with Jen on the two rocking chairs in the morning, drinking coffee and staring up at the volcano.