Aventuras!

We are now in La Fortuna, a small town next to a gently active volcano. Internet service is nearly impossible and I am on a Spanish speaking keyboard, so apologies upfront for typos, mostly in punctuation.

Our first full day in Santa Elena was nearly a disaster as it was too windy to do the ziplines - like crazy hurricane gusts! - so after we rode the shuttle for 30 minutes to the place, we waited around for another hour and were shuttled right back to our hotel. There´s not a lot to do in Santa Elena - it´s a tiny, tiny town that is mostly touristas exploring the cloudofrests and national parks nearby. Lots of restaurants and tourity souvenir shops, up in the hills and surrounded by towering exotc trees, it´s gorgoues but all we found to do was eat and walk around. I think we´re gaining weight.

Instead of ziplining, we explored a couple of exhibits, including a pretty cool frog exhibit, went to dinner, and were in bed watching videos on Beth´s computer by 9. Pretty lame. The hotel was right in town and was simple and clean, and supposedly had hot water although for some reason it only worked for Beth. (I had my first hot shower since I´ve been here this morning and that was an entertaining one as well... More on that later.) Also, we called it a suicide shower, as electrical cords were hooked directly to the showerhead. Yes, we have photos and they will be posted when we get back.

The roads were crazy - no sidewalks and crazy drivers who honk to let you know they´re about to zoom past you, quite close! We´re getting better at not getting run over and knowing where to look. Also, Costa Rica is on a very slow schedule - no one is in a hurry, and no one seems stressed out, so of course that´s hard for me... Or hard for Beth! Even getting into Santa Elena was an adventure - dirt roads for hours! And not fire roads, not nicely groomed dirt roads, but rocky, pitholey, no guardrail, shouldn´t be driving on these roads kind of dirt roads just to get to town! Town was paved, and between Santa Elena and Monteverde was sometimes paved sometimes not, and out of town is all crazy dirt roads. Bone jarring, cars have no shocks left kind of dirt roads. Very entertaining.

Yesterday it was windy and of course I was worried we weren´t ghoing ziplining again, but in fact they let us go! It was spectacular - I chose this one because they have the longest and fastest lines, and you don´t have to brake, the guides brake for you. It was SO MUCH FUN! Great photos and videos, but essentially you take a tram to the top, climb a staircase and hook into a cable. You are wearing a harness that goes around your waist and your legs (flattering), and you hang by your waist. To go faster you tuck into a ball (I did that a lot). The guide hooks you up and then sends you on your way - and you´re soaring above the canopy of the rainforst! It was insane - we were going so fast that you forget to look around you, but the view was increadible. We zipped from tower to tower, sometimes alone and sometimes in tanden, where the back person hookes their legs around the front person´s waist and you go screaming down the line even faster because you´re heavier...

I only got stuck once, when Beth pawned me off on a tiny woman who needed more weight to make it across. If you don´´t make it you have to turn around and pull yourself hand-over-hand to get back. Not fun. We got stuck, and I was displeased. Beth was my partner after that.

We have fabulous photos and some really funny videos that will certainly get posted once we return.

After the ziplining, we had to catch a 2PM transfer to La Fortuna. Because La Fortuna and Santa Elena are separated by either a really, really long drive around Arenal Lake, or you can take a Jeep-Boat-Jeep, where you hop into what we thought would be a jeep but was really a Toyota minivan (Mom, driving your Camry to the top of Saddleback was NOTHING compared to the abuse this van took!) and ride on a single lane dirt road (in some places so potholed that we had to slow to a crawl and make sure the back wheels went were they were supposed to... Exciting to say the least) through some gorgeous country. You could see how CR has been deforested and is now mostly pastureland, at least in the parts we were going through, but the pastures were all bordered by a string of remaining rainforest so you could get a sense for how the steeply rolling hills looked back in the day. I think there are a lot of happy cows and horses out here though.

Once we reached the lake, we boarded a flat boat with a bunch of other people and rode for about 45 minutes to the other side, right near the Arenal Volcano. (Yes, photos to follow!) There, we were picked up by another van, who shuttled us to our hotel.

Well, what we thought would be our hotel.

In a new phase of travel for me, we arrived sans booking. How brave of me! I never travel like that! It was great fun until the hotel we wanted was - gasp! - booked solid. It IS the new year and all (how could we miss that?!). The lovely woman at the counter took pity on our sweaty greasy souls and made a few phone calls and found us a room at her friends hotel for a mere $40 a night. Now, $40 a night is not much, and I have to admit I had a little panic attack. But the proprietress picked us up in her SUV, elderly mother in tow, and drove us back to her place. Her name is Daisy, she speaks very little English, and is our new best friend. The place is cheap because it´s 400 meters out of town and they are building new units, so there´s construction during the day. The units are stunning - there is a main walkway that separates little cabinas, each with its own private porch, and the walkway has a direct view of the volcano. Private bathroom and hot water and air conditioning - all for $40 a night?! Okay, it is a dirt driveway, and the construction is actually right outside of our bathroom, but who cares?! Daisy explained that on a clear night you can see the lava. We haven´t had a clear night yet but we´re hoping...

Anyway, we arrive around 6, and she immediately helps us book a canyoneering expedition for tomorrow (hiking through rivers! Rapelling down waterfalls! I want to live here!), and helped Beth book an immediate massage as her neck had kinked and she was in tons of pain and could hardly move.

Then, Daisyt threw us back in the car and took us to her massage lady, whoc beat Beth´s neck into submission and gave me a list of muscle relaxers to get at the Farmacia, so that was exciting for me. I bought ten and came back rather proud of my use of Spanish to procure the goods, and the massage lady laughed really hard while trying to explain that I really onlt needed to buy uno each. Apparently you don´t have to buy the WHOLE pack of pills, you can buy them indiviudually. Who knew?

So we went to a lovely dinner and retired to our cabina, where there is a lovely gato that is Beth´s new best friend (we saved it from the perrito that was chasing it around) that she has named Danger Paws Shithead (Shithead pronounced as in Freakonomics - SHI-thead). Made us laugh.

This morning I had my first hot shower since we´ve been here, but the windows in the bathroom own onto the construction site behind us. Granted, they are high up, like way taller than me, and they have angled wooden slats, so if you stand in the right place you can´t see in or out, but they don´t close, so I could see and hear the two guys who were working on the bungalows behind us this morning quite well. I figured out that if I stayed up against the wall in one of the corners I could stay out of sight (mostly they weren´t there, but just in case), but the water would reach that corner. However, there was a very low bathtub spout, even though this was clearly a shower. The spout was about knee height, so I finally broke down and showered kind of like a seal using the bathtub spout. Not ideal, but an excellent shower none-the-less. And hot!

We walked into town and Beth is on massage number two while I update the world. Then, we are off to lunch, and then a volcano-heated natural hot springs hot springs for their therapeutic powers, then maybe some lava viewing to ring in the new year, perhaps with some Californian ladies we met while ziplining (Sophie and Lisa, engineers from San Jose of all places!). Tomorrow is canyoneering (SO excited!), then who knows what, then on the 2nd we fly to Tambor for our Pacific beach adventures. We don´t have reservations for a hotel yet, but guess what we´re doing over lunch today?

Miss you all! We of course have no phone or internet in our hotel so I´m trying to work with internet cafes and pay phones at the moment. Be patient.

Houston, We Have Monkeys

Beth can go home happy.

What. A. Day. Actually what a two-days.

Flights all on time, at the airport in LA three hours early (I see why they recommend that after dealing with TBIT), first flight great except the service was so wonderful they kept waking us up to give us things (like food, which is good, and was free, as was the alcohol), layover was fine, second flight uneventful, arrived to find a nice man with a sign waiting for me and we hopped into a shuttle for a four-hour ride to Santa Elena - part of which was a crazy dirt road that left our teeth chattering. But on the ride we saw a... herd? What do you call a group of monekys? Mom, help me out here. Anyway, we saw a pack of monkeys hanging out in a tree above the road and got a few good pics.

So we can come home now happy.

Ha ha.

Just a quick note to say we've arrived and are drinking Long Island Iced Teas so we can get the free internet service that comes with it. Excited! More later!

Waiting is the hardest part...

Beth and I have packed our suitcases, I have opened mine to jettison heavier items (my brush, for example, because Beth packed one that I can use) a number of times and Beth finally asked me to please just zip it up, we are having a vodka cocktail because I am starting to twitch and look for things to do, Beth is assigning me tasks (take out the recycling, which I didn't do because I was pouring said cocktails)...

Can't we just go to the stupid airport already? Midnight flights are hard. More later, certainly.

And We're Off!

So it's Costa Rica tonight! Well, Mexico City for a five hour layover then Costa Rica. The schedule isn't great, but tickets were cheap so what can you do? The parts of our itinerary we've finalized are at the bottom, but we skip town tonight at midnight, fly for three hours into Mexico City, where we have a five hour layover (5:30 local time to 10:30 local time), then a three-and-a-half hour flight into Costa Rica. We arrive at 12:35PM CR time (they are two hours ahead I think, but I should check on that). I've booked us a private shuttle - a bit of a splurge but I figure with the weird travel times and Beth having Ambein and me having Atavan (sleeping pill lightwieght that I am they gave me an anti-anxiety pill that still kicks my butt) we're going to be too stupid to figure out how to find the bus - so there will be a driver with a sign who will throw us into a van and drive us the 3.5 hours to Santa Elena. Here's what we've booked so far:

Mexicana Airlines Flight MX111
LAX - Mexico City
12:05 AM (Dec 28) - 5:35 AM
Mexican Airlines Flight MX379
Mexico City - San Jose, CR
9:15AM - 12:15PM

December 28, 1:00PM pickup
Desafio Shuttle to Santa Elena, CR

December 28 - December 30
Hotel El Sueno
Santa Elenta, Costa Rica
Direct Phone: 2-645-5021
(Booked through Anywhere Costa Rica: 011-506-2479-8811)

We then go to La Fortuna, but don't have our transfer booked yet (we plan to do a jeep-boat-jeep across a lake and book a room while in Santa Elena). We'll be in La Fortuna from the 30th - January 2nd.

January 2nd
Nature Air Flight 5C-14351 (I think, there are a lot of numbers on this thing)
La Fortuna - Tambor
1:20PM - 2:25 PM

Then we'll be in either Montezuma or Mal Pais, both supposedly surf/beach towns. Again, we don't have hotels booked but plan on asking people where a good place to stay would be (we require hot water and a private bathroom!).

We fly to Drake Bay on the 7th, but we had to book two flights as there are no direct flights to Drake Bay, so we go back through San Jose and then on to our destination:

January 7th
Nature Air Flight 5C-3140
Tambor - San Jose
8:30AM - 8:55AM

Nature Air Flight 5C-1430
San Jose - Drake Bay
11:30AM - 12:10PM

January 7 - 11
Jinetes de Osa
1-866-553-7073 from the US
506-2-231-5806 in Costa Rica
or reservations@jinetesdeosa.com

Here, we have a night tour of the jungle on the 7th, scuba on the 8th and 9th, a national park tour on the 10th, and we fly back to San Jose on the 11th:

January 11
Nature Air Flight 5C-1440
12:20PM - 1:00PM

We don't have a hotel in San Jose for our last night yet, again we'll figure that out on the fly.

January 12
Mexicana Airlines Flight MX386
San Jose, CR - Mexico City
7:30AM - 10:35AM
Mexicana Airlines Flight MX902
Mexico City - LAX
3:05PM - 5:25PM

Excited! Beth is still sleeping and I am starting to stress out a bit, but mostly beacuse they won't let us check in online and I hate that. We have separate tickets for the flights tonight and I hope we can get seats close to one another, or that I'm in first class and Beth is back by the bathroom or something (just kidding). I wonder if the rumor is true that alcohol is free on international flights? I'm sure Beth will let me know as soon as we're on the plane.

This will be a very different trip than Peru I think - Peru was culture-heavy, lots of history and museums and reading ahead to be prepared for the sights. Costa Rica seems like more of an enjoy-nature kind of a thing, with as many activities packed in as we can get. There's going to be a ridiculous amount of interesting flora and fauna, very excited about that - Beth mostly excited about the monkeys and I have a request from Tiffani to find a sloth...

I will keep you posted! Sounds like most hotels have internet access and we're bringing one computer and I'm certain there will be lots of down time for updating!