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.