Zip, Zip, Hurrah!

Just because I haven't been quiiiiite relaxed enough during my time in Costa Rica, I decided that I just HAD to have a massage while here at Papagayo. I even got up early to get it (ironic that I get up earlier while on vacation than when at home). It was SO nice and felt SO good, it was all I could do to pry myself off the table when it was done. But somehow I fortified myself for the grueling walk from there back to the pool. I'm telling ya', vacation isn't as easy as it appears!

We spent the morning at the beach/pool, then had to check out by noon so we raced back up to the room around, oh, 11:45 or so to throw all of our things in our bags and make it out on time. And then the real fun began....

.... we went zip lining! In the course of my travels around Costa Rica, the one thing that almost everyone told me we just HAD to do was to go zip lining over the rainforest. They were right. I'm glad it worked out as happening on our last day as it was quite a way to go out! Should there be concern over an activity that requires you to sign a waiver agreeing to possible maiming and/or death? Possibly. But life is short so what's a little maiming here or there. It was SO worth it!

There were 6 of us in our group and, with the guide trying to explain the directions in broken English, we all just looked at each other and said "Huh? What are we supposed to do?". So the first person to go was really and truly a guinea pig... and it was Niki. She figured the directions weren't going to get any clearer, she wasn't going to understand any more so why the heck not. Go, Niki!

For a person afraid of heights, I was surprised at my own complete lack of nervousness as I got strapped up and basically shoved off of a platform to be suspended by a wire cable hundreds of feet in the air over the rain forest. What a view, floating over the trees and being able to look out and see the ocean right next to it. Too cool. I guess by the third line, they figured we were as good as professionals so had us go... upside down! There was a moment of hesitation on my part at the moment where I actually had to flip myself upside down but it was oddly freeing to be hanging that way, not holding on to anything, arms hanging free.
All was going well, having a great time in getting confident in my zipping abilities when they took us across a swinging bridge which ended in another platform... but this one didn't hold another zip line, rather a "monkey walk" where you basically had to WALK across a cable while holding on and balancing yourself with some ropes. I went last and, even after watching everyone else make it, when I went to step down onto the thin little cable, I almost couldn't do it. Just could not make my foot leave the safety of the platform to balance on a tiny little wire. Seriously. But I sucked it up and did it. And then, as if my fear of heights didn't make it scary enough, one of the guides, as well as my own COUSIN on the other end, started shaking the cable I was precariously balanced on. Or should I say my EX-cousin.

FYI, I'm pretty sure Niki is the only person in the history of the world to go zip lining in a cute little dress. Can you spell c-h-a-f-i-n-g?

Pura Vida!

We survived the hotel room from hell. Albeit barely. After spending the night trying to sleep without actually making bodily contact with the bedding (I spread a towel over mine), we booked it out of there first thing in the morning. The one nice thing about the hotel was that it was directly across the street from Tamarindo Beach. It was like salty bath water. Aaaaaah. We spent the morning/afternoon beach hopping, as there were a number of them within a few kilometers of each other. We ate lunch at a homey, authentic little place that was set right on the oceawhere they brought a bowl filled with ice water and flower petals for us to wash our hands in. On our way out, some little boys were playing with something and called me over ("Oye, gringa", they said) to come see. It was a couple of crabs they'd found that were fighting and they thought it was the coolest thing ever and wanted to show me; we talked about it at length. I LOVE little moments like that.

Then we headed about an hour more north along the coast and ended up at our ultimate destination; the Papagayo Allegro Resort. When we had been back at the swanky hotel by the volcano, we met up with a couple from Atlanta who was at the tail end of the their trip and happy to share advice/recommendations for us. Among other things, they told us about the Papagayo hotel and even gave us a lead on a special price they were running, which included everything from the room to meals to booze. We decided to live it up and booked it for our last two nights in Costa Rica. After an “interesting” time finding it in the pouring rain (I TOLD you I’m probably the only person that could actually get lost even with a GPS), we pulled up to a beautiful resort tucked into the side of a mountain overlooking the ocean. There were black sand beaches, white sand beaches, a fabulous pool and free food and drinks. Not a bad way to cap things off, I must admit. If you just picture us sitting by the beach/pool, book in one hand, fruity drink in the other (Dirty Monkey is my new favorite), that pretty much sums up our whole time there.

Oh! And there were monkeys swinging from trees, both the white-faced and the howler varieties. Not like in cages or there for the tourists benefit but like we'd just be walking down to the beach and there they would be, playing in the trees or taking naps. It was so funny to see them sleeping up there, their long legs and tails hanging down from the limbs they were precariously balanced on and swinging back and forth. I got some great video of it..... but erased it by mistake. Doh! For some reason I'm totally fascinated by them and could just sit and watch them for hours (just ask Niki, who is still deeply wounded by the fact that she almost floated out to sea in a kayak, never to be seen again, while I was obliviously watching the monkeys). One of the most amazing things I saw them do involved a mother and her baby. They were swinging around, doing their thing (ever seen a baby monkey hang by its tail and try to reach a leaf to eat? Sooo funny. That was almost worth letting Niki float away to Nicaragua!) when the mama jumped over a pretty big space from one tree to another. The baby wanted to follow but there was no way he could make it so he just stopped and sat on his branch, looking forlornly at his mom in the other tree. When she turned around and saw his plight, she amazingly somehow held on to her current tree with her back legs then reached waaaaaaay over to the other tree where the baby was; she was able to get a hold of the very tip of the branch and slowly started pulling it towards her, inch by inch, until it made a bridge the baby could walk across to get to her. He immediately jumped on her back and off they went. That sort of instinct is SO amazing to witness.

I have to say that I had always been very opposed to the idea of an “all-inclusive” resort. When I travel, I want to see what the country is REALLY like and to get to be in and among the local people. Honestly, if I want to hang out with a bunch of loud, pale Americans, I’ll just stay in America (it would be a lot cheaper, too). And the truth is that if this is all we had done on our trip, I for sure would have felt like I hadn't gotten any real sense of the country, that I could have done the very same thing in the US. But because I/we did so many other things, saw so many other places, met so many other people and drove over, under, and through so many different parts of the country, I was happy to spend these last two days here, simply relaxing (as if the rest of our trip was SO stressful in comparison).

Tomorrow is our last full day and we have big plans. I'm so excited! Once again I end with saying that I shall write more later, presuming we survive the experience... (how's that for a cliffhanger?)

What a Difference a Day Makes

We had big plans yesterday. We didn’t get to almost any of them. Which is the beauty of vacation. We could hardly bear the thought of leaving our mountaintop paradise overlooking the volcano so we had planned to stay there until our noon checkout, tear ourselves away only when they dragged us kicking and screaming, then go zip lining over the rainforest, spend a few hours in the hot springs at the bottom of the volcano, then make the four-hour drive to the beach. Well, one out of four ain’t bad.

We started off well, getting up early to be at breakfast by 8:30. It all went pretty much downhill from there. The plan started to take a serious nosedive when we asked for and were granted a late checkout. After that, in a nutshell, we floated around in the pool for the next several hours. Somewhere in that time, we decided not to “overexert” ourselves by trying to do so many things in one day so agreed that we would save the zip lining for another day and just go spend a few hours in the hot springs before leaving for the beach town.

Which also quickly changed. We got to the spa to inquire about spending a few hours at the hot springs and they offered to give us a free tour of the facilities before we made a decision. By the end of the tour, we had decided to spend the night. More floating. But this time in really, really hot water. There were approximately 8-10 different pools of varying temperatures and layouts, all set at the foot of Arenal volcano amongst the rain forest and beautifully manicured grounds. Let it be said, I am not a person who notices flowers so if I’M noticing the vegetation, it must be preeeetty impressive.

There were also some waterslides thrown in there. They looked all innocuous but when I got to the top and was about to sit down, I should have known something was up when the guy that worked there just sort of smirked to himself. I can explain it no other way than to used the phrase “bat out of hell”. Or, for those of you familiar with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation movie, picture the scene where Chevy Chase first launches down the mountain on his greased-up sled. Yeah, it was pretty much like that. I hardly had a second to process what was happening to me before shooting out the bottom with a raging headache. It’s pretty much all a blur but I do seem to recall a fraction of a second while I was in the slide and remembering that there was HUGE cement fountain in the middle of the pool where you come out and wondering how long I would have to be in a full body cast after slamming into it. We stayed in the pools/springs until they closed at 10 pm, went to sleep in our beautiful room with its cushy bed, then got up and did it all over again today.

We finally dragged our wrinkly butts out of there around 2 and decided it was time to head to the beach. What would have probably been about a 3-hour trip in the US took us 5, due to the roads here (and here I use the term “road“ loosely. Very loosely). Good times. Finally made it to Tamarindo Beach and it was…. pouring. Not raining, but POURING, like torrential rainforest rain pouring. And, as if that wasn’t insult enough, we basically went from a four-star resort to a dirty college dorm within the span of a few hours. A dirty college dorm with no hot water, I might add. Or door on the bathroom. Or clean pillows (ew!). Or internet (the guy chuckled when I asked). It actually allows for a whole new level of cousinly bonding (as if not having a bathroom door didn’t take us to a whole new level in and of itself), as we have literally nothing to do here but sit in our shared 8x10 square of a white-walled room and sit on our cots and look at each other. Prompts a lot of conversation, I must say.

We’ve decided that we’ve been living faaaar beyond what either of us had imagined we would be doing before coming down here so tonight is our one night of penance and “roughing it” before we go to the place we have booked for tomorrow. Details to follow, provided we survive the night. It's looking iffy.

So what are the chances of outrunning lava?

Oh. My. Gosh. Every day just keeps getting better and better. At some point it's going to become impossible to surpass the day before so I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead and head home now. Yeah, not very likely...

My newly revised plan from yesterday could not have gone more smoothly. I woke up bright and early at 6 am, had one last fabulous breakfast in Quepos overlooking the ocean and hopped in my teenie tiny little car for the nearly 3-hour drive to the airport to pick up Niki. This time I totally enjoyed the drive (even the Bridge of Death amused me this time around); I'm not sure if it's because I was excited about meeting up with Niki or just that I've now totally assimiliated and am just enjoying the simple things like the scenery and people I see along the way but, either way, the time seemed to fly.

As did I, apparently. About two hours in, I got to get up close and personal with one of Costa Rica's finest. Doh! Apparently I was doing 88 kmh in a 60 zone. Oops. Let's just say that I have enough experience with getting tickets in foreign countries to know that it is a MAJOR hassle to get taken care of and, well, let's just also say that I got out of it. The hows and whys present a moral grey area for me which I am still mulling over. (okay, not really, I'm just still feeling guilty about it!)

So, after having slowed my speed considerably, I continued on to the airport. Having left Quepos at 7:30 and not really knowing an exact timeframe I'm surprised at how perfectly it all worked out: Niki's flight arrived at 9:53, I got to the airport at 10:17 and she came out of customs at 10:30. Come on, I totally rock! She had taken the red-eye and arrived to me, well, red-eyed so she slept most of the 3 hours we spent driving from the airport to our first destination: Volcan Arenal (Arenal Volcano). I used the time to take in more of the country and to marvel at their road system. Especially at the parts where it just ends. Seriously, ends. Let me now avow that I will never again complain about PA roads and let me also say to all of my fellow Pennsylvanians: you should leave your homes right now, this very minute, find Governor Rendell and give him a big, fat, sloppy kiss on the lips for what beautiful and smooth roads we have. Turns out it really is all relative.

But, I digress. We arrived in the town where the infamous volcano is (it is still very active, most recently killing 2 people in the year 2000, but is most famous for its 1968 eruption that killed 87 people and left 3 towns completely buried under what is now a huge lake) and, as usual, had no gameplan. We asked around and, long story short, ended up in, I am NOT exaggerating, the most stunning hotel I have ever stayed in. Not even because of the hotel itself so much but due primarily to the view. It sits atop a mountain of its own and is made up of charming little cottage-like buildings that all connect with pathways and from our hotel balcony we overlook a huge valley as well as both the lake AND the volcano. We spent hours in the gorgeous swimming pool, staring out over the scene and watching the sun set and then had dinner in the open-air restaurant, watching lava flow while dining on a-ma-zing food ("pollo tropical" with mango, pineapple, papaya and orange, mmmm) and wine. As I write this, I am sitting on my bed which faces the huge plate glass window that takes up a whole wall and can see red hot lava flowing down the mountain. We decided we didn't even want to do anything else or go anywhere else tonight as we literally wanted to enjoy every single moment of being here. We're also planning on staying until the last possible minute tomorrow. In all the hotels in all the places I have been, this one is hands down the most amazing. It's simply breathtaking.

I told Niki we shouldn't have done this on her first night because it'll all be pretty much downhill from here. Either way, we have lots of other fun things planned for tomorrow and no doubt we're going to have a great time, no matter how crappy any future hotels will seem in comparison. Presuming we survive tomorrow's activities (literally), I shall post more then!

(Also, Niki brought down her cable to get pictures from the camera onto the computer (yes, of course I forgot mine) so hopefully tomorrow can start putting up my own pictures... yay!)

Howler Monkeys and Surfing Dogs

Simply put, days like today are the whole reason I came to Costa Rica. After shaking off the big city yesterday and immersing myself in more of the "real" life of the country, I decided that today was beach day.

I got up relatively early (okay, early for me), packed up my stuff and had a liesurely breakfast at the hotel in their open-aired restaurant that overlooks the ocean. Starting my day off with that view alone could almost have made the day a complete success. I could have gone home happy right then and there. But I perservered. Perhaps I shouldn't have. Let's just suffice it to say there was me, my car, a huge downhill slant, an oddly tall concret curb and a loud slamming noise.

But I perservered again. I drove the approximately 8 kilometers to the park which, taking into account the insanely winding mountain roads (I'm sensing a theme here), took about a half an hour. The views from the top of the mountain looking out over the rainforest and the ocean were breathtaking. Literally. Based on the recommendation of an ESL student of mine who has been in Costa Rica, I coughed up the dough (12,500 colones, or roughly $25USD) for the guided tour of the forest. I usually avoid at all costs the idea of "playing tourist" but this time it was SO worth it. I would never have spotted any of the things he was able to show us and teach us about: 3-toed sloths, howler monkeys, Jesus Christ lizards (I'm not making the name up; it comes from their ability to walk on water), bats, 7-colored grasshoppers, huge lizards, 2-toed sloths, white faced monkeys, a variety of birds and all sorts of other exotic creatures. The tour lasted over 2 hours and wound through the forest and onto several magnificent beaches that were hidden away deep in the reserve. A. Ma. Zing.

One of the nice things about traveling alone is that you're very rarely alone. There were four other people on my tour, all Americans. By the time it was over, it was like we were long lost bosom buddies. And then, after the tour I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon at one of the magnificent beaches and met two other ladies who kindly agreed to watch my bag while I went for a swim. Which, I might add, was divine. The water was clear and oh-so-warm and every time a big wave crashed over me I felt actual surges of pure joy at simply being right there, at that moment, in that magnificent place.

Random side note: in comparing notes with both groups of others who had also driven down from San Jose, all I had to do was mention "the bridge" and I was met with shrieks of horror, people doing the sign of the cross and terms like "Bridge of Death". Yeah, I'm really looking forward to going back over it tomorrow...

And then I saw it. I didn't believe it at first, but it was undeniable. I saw a dog... surfing! I actually watched as the guy and his dog ran along the beach, the surfboard under the guy's arm and the dog running alongside and barking eagerly. The guy set the board down and, I kid you not, the dog jumped right on and off they went out into the ocean. I watched them for about a half hour, along with most of the rest of the beach. I couldn't believe some of the waves the dog made it over. On the ones that knocked him off, the guy just picked him out of the water and put him back on the board and they waited for the next one. And, yes, I have video to prove it.

At some point I had to come back to claim the suitcase the hotel was kindly holding for me; I was thinking that Niki's flight comes in at 7 am tomorrow so I was planning to make the drive back to San Jose tonight and find a hotel there. I had a gut feeling that it wasn't my most brilliant idea of all time to make the treacherous drive back through the mountains in the dark, but I wasn't about to leave the beach early. But then I checked her flight info. one more time and realized she doesn't actully get here til 10 am... so I decided to stay here another night and head up early in the morning instead. It's great as now I can avoid the city altogether and just head straight to the airport. Woo-hoo! This also gave me time to have one last great dinner at the open-air restaurant here and to go for a swim in the pool. Would it have been easier if I had just checked her flight information earlier so I wouldn't have bothered packing up this morning and checking out and having to recheck in and unpack again? Yes, it would have. But that would have been FAR too easy.

Day Two in Costa Rica was far more productive than Day One, that's for sure. After breakfast, I left my cushy hotel (cushy being a relative term... here I am using Costa Rican standards) and decided to go check out San Jose on foot to really get a feel for it, thinking that maybe I would be more impressed with it if not just seeing it from inside my car. Yeah, turns out it's just as unimpressive while walking. I have to say, I have been to a lot of cities in a lot of countries and I am pretty sure this is the one I have liked the least. It's hard to pinpoint but the bottom line is that it's just so remarkably unremarkable. In addition to being dirty and crowded (neither of which would bother me if it was an otherwise cool city), there is just nothing to do. That being said, everyone I talked to was extremely kind, friendly and helpful.

Since my super cool Panama plan was quashed, I decided maybe I would just find another hotel in San Jose while waiting for Niki to get here Wednesday and take some day trips. I had decided that if I was going to really experience the country, I had to get out of the nice place I was staying and go to a 'real' Costa Rican hotel... no chain names, no coffee makers in the room, no American style breakfast, no hotel staff that all speaks English. I think when I arrived yesterday I was just SO tired, I was unable to search long and took the first place that looked familiar and clean. So this morning I found a place that looked reasonable and quaint (read cheap and small). It took me nearly 45 minutes to fight the San Jose traffic to move the approximately half mile to the new hotel. By the time I FINALLY got there, I was so annoyed that when I pulled up, instead of feeling immense relief at having finally found it, I instead thought to myself 'I cannot stay in this city one more minute'. So I got back in my car, opened the guidebook and picked a town by the beach to head to.

What should have taken about 2 1/2 hours took over 4. And that was WITH a GPS. If I hadn't had one, no doubt, I would still be circling the block in San Jose. For those of you familiar with my navigational skills, you will understand why this trip could NOT have taken place without a GPS. You will also not be surprised to know that I STILL got lost with it... several times. But, in my defense, I don't think it was all my fault! At one point, as I was sitting at a 'T' intersection where I could only turn right or left, it was telling me to continue to go straight for 2 more kilometers. We compromised: I turned left, it recalculated, and I eventually ended up where I was headed. Of course, not without 45 minutes sitting in city traffic, an hour long traffic jam in another area, nauseau inducing winding roads through mountains and a life threatening bridge to cross near the end (no joke, if I hadn't seen the other cars crossing it with my own eyes, I would have NEVER even dreamed of trying to take a car over it. Just think tinny, flapping metal slats covering the holes in the bridge). But about an hour before arriving, just when I was getting cranky and tired of being in the car (oh, the car is a whole other post all its own), I saw the ocean. The beautiful, expansive ocean, as far out as I could see. At that point, I turned off the AC and rolled down the windows, turned off the English music station and cranked the Spanish tunes. And for the first time instead of just counting down the minutes til reaching my destination, I really started enjoying the scenery, the sounds and the smells of it all, the people I was passing along the way... and then I realized as I was driving that I was smiling. Just smiling.

So now I'm in Quepos, a quaint little town along the southern coast. Tomorrow I am going to what is supposedly a fabulous beach set in the middle of a reserve. Tonight I had dinner at a restaurant that overlooked the ocean. Aaaaah. The server was a cute young guy who was very eager to practice his extremely limited English. So much so that he got in trouble a couple of times for lingering too long at my table. This is the kind of town I like. Not the big city where everyone speaks English and you can live just like in the US if you go to the right places and spend enough money, but where my Spanish is NEEDED to get by, where the hotel offers free internet but it doesn't work, you share a cracked marble hotel balcony with two other hotel rooms, where they serve you rice and beans for breakfast and where practically the whole town comes out to sit on the shore and watch the sun go down over the ocean. Yep, I think I'm getting closer to discovering the real Costa Rica....

Viva Costa Rica!

Yikes, it's been over a year since I've written on this blog. Which means that it's been over a year since I've been out of the country. Which is waaaay too long but I'm planning on making up for it during my 10 days in Costa Rica. Wa-hoo!

But to back up for just a minute, last year's blog was considered "Part I" of my post-fulltime job life and at that time I truly had NO idea how it would all turn out, how I would support myself, find work, pay my mortgage... all I knew was that it was time for me to make a major life change, to ditch the office job and start living a life I was truly excited about. It was a leap of faith but what I've found since then was that if you do what you're supposed to do, it all works out one way or the other. Long story short, I have been amazed by how things have just fallen into place. While I have done everything over the past year from painting to leading groups of international students to working at market to selling flowers, the best part is that the certificate I received in Chile last year paid off and I have also found work teaching ESL as well as more recently finding work teaching Spanish, which I looove. So it's an interesting life and I still have months where I wonder how I'll pay my mortgage... but it always works out and I love the variety of it all (no two weeks are EVER the same) and, yes, even the unknown aspect of it. But mostly, I love the freedom it allows me. Hence, back to me being in Costa Rica...

My cousin who lives in LA recently passed her boards for work (yay, Niki!) and we decided there was really no better way to celebrate that fact other than to take a trip to Costa Rica. Why not, right? She arrives on Wednesday so I decided to come down a few days earlier (again, why not... another benefit to not having a full-time job!) to get the lay of the land and chill.

Those of you who know anything about me know that I travel with no plans, ever. To me it's another part of the adventure to just wing it and figure things out as I go. My only plan upon landing yesterday morning was to rent a car and drive to Panama and be back in time to pick Niki up at the airport on Wednesday morning. But when I got the car they told me I wasn't able to take it out of the country. Doh!

So instead I decided to just check out San Jose for the day and get a hotel room there to sleep since I had only slept 45 minutes the night before leaving (you're lucky I like you, Ali!). I drove around the city for about an hour to check it out and found that, really, there isn't much to check out. So I found a nice hotel, got to my room and... passed out. Guess I can't get that far on 45 minutes of sleep after all.

I was so disappointed in myself to have wasted my first afternoon here! So today I plan to start making up for it. I am moving hotels (time to start living the cheap Costa Rican life, as opposed to the nice hotel I'm in now) and plan to do some day trips this afternoon and tomorrow to start getting a real feel for the country.

I shall post more later... hopefully. There is a very real possibility that, with the types of hotels I'm imagining myself in from here on, internet will be only a fond memory of days gone by... we shall see!