Costa Rica Part 3: HOW MUCH WAS THAT GPS ANYWAY?!?!?!?!?

Day 5 – Thursday 12/11/2008

We woke up early, finished packing and had breakfast nearby....beans & rice with our eggs, of course. I was sad to leave Manuel Antonio and all the monkeys...it had been the best part of our vacation so far. Our time in Manuel Antonio had been filled with sunshine and fun. Oh well, onto the next chapter of the adVENture...

A few minutes west of Manuel Antonio is the bustling town of Quepos. We went downtown to do a little shopping and to stop into a pharmacia. We browsed through some of the touristy (read overpriced) shops and finally found a store with good prices on some nice wood pieces. We spent too much money there and decided we should hit the road after that.

We headed west and started looking for lunch options. After about an hour on the road we stopped in a charming beachside town called Jaco. We hit the shops on main street to buy a few postcards and ask around about a good place to eat. One shop owner told us to go to Clarita’s by the beach for some of the best food and freshest fish around. This bar & grill had a fun beachy spirit that we appreciated. There were funny (and somewhat inappropriate) signs all over that we laughed about as we enjoyed our tasty food. Bobby quickly realized there was Wi-Fi available so he synced up his laptop during lunch.

After our leisurely lunch, we were back on the road again heading north towards our final destination. After passing through a major intersection with a fork in the road we realized we had both just missed a group of signs with town names and arrows for the fork in the road. Understandably, we were both completely paranoid about missing any signs, so Bobby quickly turned around to go back for the signs. During the hurried turnaround at the busy intersection, Bobby went off the road a bit and into a grassy ditch. We quickly discovered that that “grassy” ditch was nothing but pure mud under that dead grass. Shit. Stuck. Bad Stuck. Can’t see the tire stuck. Sloppy, wet, boggy, suck you into oblivion stuck. Marianna trench deep stuck. You get the idea…

Bobby got out of the car and I crawled into the driver seat. He asked me if I knew how to “rock” a car. “Uh, No.” So he started giving me instructions on gunning the gas for a second and then letting off quickly in several intervals while he pushed. Well we did it, but that just dug us deeper into our mud hole. Bobby waved over some locals who were sitting across the busy street at a bus stop (laughing I’m sure). They sauntered over and helped push as I gunned it. A few more guys in a work truck stopped to try and help. One of the guys told me (in espanol) slower on the gas and slower off (opposite of what Bobby had instructed me) but that didn’t help either. We were really deep in this mud hole with both passenger side tires. Spinning the wheels was just digging the mud hole deeper and deeper. Great.

Luckily, the gang of guys around the car brought the attention of a passing dump truck driver who came to our aid. He backed up to the back of our car (on this really narrow corner of a super-busy highway near an insane intersection) and hooked some chains to our car. He pulled us about 20 feet to a concrete driveway so that all of our tires were completely out of the mud hole. I, of course, took pictures of this insanity.

We gave money to the dump truck driver and some of the locals that were still nearby to say thank you and to make up for their totally mud-splattered clothing. Bobby got in the car, smiled at me and asked, “How is that for an adVENture?”

I was still freaking out a little, but so relieved to be out of the mud and back on the road.

We followed what signs were available, and were doing great (mud-hole not included) until we got to the city of Alajuela. We quickly found ourselves downtown in this crazy Americanized cuidad during rush hour. There were no signs with street names anywhere, or signs for the next towns. We ended up getting completely turned around. If it hadn’t been for the full moon, we would not have known which way was up. We pulled out a tiny little compass (that was originally part of an emergency kit) that we thought we might need in the rainforest park. We were able to at least get our N,S,W,E bearings back.

(Ha!Ha! We did much better with directions inside the heart of the rainforest than we did on the major highways!)

So there we were going in circles in major downtown, rush-hour traffic. I was getting frustrated with the terrible maps that I was trying to decipher. Bobby was beyond frustrated with the crazy drivers and the non-existent signs. He wanted me to help him look for signs, while I was trying to show him possible routes on the three completely different maps. In the middle of all the confusion and frustration, we had to laugh at ourselves and finally ask the unspoken, million-dollar question:

SO HOW MUCH WAS THAT GPS ANYWAY?!?!?!?!?

Some signs with arrows for the Mall Internacional caught my eye. (Who would’ve guessed?) I thought we could possibly find an English-speaker there, and hell, it was an excuse to check out a mall!!! ;-) I was in need of a shopping fix. We finally made it through the traffic and pulled into the Mall parking lot. We noted that there was a banco, which most likely exchanged currency, so we headed that way. We passed all the shop owners calling us in their stores….just as if we were in a touristy Mexican marketplace or something. Very odd to see a worker at Foot Locker trying to coerce people into the store (in Spanish of course). We made it to the bank and I asked all around,

“¿Hablas inglés?”

Finally, one of the customer service women told me she spoke a little bit of English. Good Enough. I showed her my maps and pointed to the town we were trying to get reach. About an hour later, we walked out of the bank with a hand-drawn map feeling very confident that we would be able to find our way to the Peace Lodge.

We had to pass back by the same stores on our way to our car and sure enough, those same store workers were still trying to persuade us to go into their stores…..but this time in English. Of course.

Clearly, every tourist should just know that you are supposed to find the stadium and follow that road through a long winding residential area to get out of Alajuela and head to the town of Vara Blanca. Who needs signs?!?! People in Costa Rica just know how to get where they want to go.

We made it to the Peace Lodge just as it was getting dark. We checked into our magnificent room, showered, and dressed for dinner. We were starving so we ignored our reservation time, and headed to the dining room. They seated us quickly and we finally started to relax. We feasted on delicious wine and tasty fish. After dinner, we decided to go back to our room and fill up the outside jacuzzi. It was a clear, beautiful night…a little chilly, but nothing to worry about once inside a nice big hot tub.

Day 6 – Friday 12/12/2008

We woke up late and enjoyed room service…breakfast in bed. Now this is the life!

We noticed that the sky was clear so we dressed to go hiking at the nearby Poas Volcano. We drove about 20 minutes on a twisty winding mountain road to almost the top of the volcano.

By the time we got to the park entrance, it was completely foggy and misting rain. We layered up and ventured to the top of the volcano. It was a nice long walk…a bit chilly for my bones, but tolerable. We chatted and laughed the whole way.

We made it to the top of our cloud-covered volcano and looked out at the viewing point…..at clouds. We couldn’t see any part of the volcano that must have been just in front of us. All we could see was white.

We took another long upward path to the “natural lagoon” part of the volcano. Yet another viewing point with more clouds. We laughed at our mala suerte (bad luck) and took a few pictures of the clouds and our hidden volcano lagoon.

We trekked back down the mountain and eagerly found the café serving hot cocoa. I felt chilled, so it was the best tasting hot chocolate ever!

We went back to our hotel for lunch, and to enjoy the wildlife at our resort. We spent the afternoon admiring monkeys, butterflies, jungle cats, and exotic birds, and we hand fed the hummingbirds. All Very Cool!

It misted and rained all day. By dinnertime the rain was really coming down, so we opted for room service. We decided we wanted to have dinner in our warm room next to the blazing fireplace. We were just done being wet and cold for the day.

We did get back out of the room later that night to check out the big hot tub. We had it all to ourselves, and enjoyed relaxing and listening to the rain.

The rain came down hard all night.

Day 7 – Saturday 12/13/2008

We got up and went to the dining room for the breakfast buffet….beans & rice with my eggs…of course! YUM!

We spent the rest of the day inside our cozy room. We watched and listened to the pouring rain outside, read books, watched TV, and packed our bags.

We rented two movies from the front desk, one Sci-Fi for Bobby…I of course fell asleep. And the other one I picked - Moulin Rouge. I didn’t have to twist Bobby’s arm too much since the selection was not great, and he had not seen it but had heard lots about it. He could not believe how crazy the movie effects were, I think the movie kind of gave him a headache. Not me….I fell asleep again.

We got out in the rain one more time to run up to the dining room for dinner.

After dinner we shed our clothes and got comfy on the massage tables for our two-hour in room couples massages. WOW! Those two hours were amazing…I might be totally ruined now for a normal 60 minute massage.

Side Note: the masseurs in Costa Rica are way less worried about a person’s modesty than they are in the U.S. I could never fully relax because I was always wondering where Arturo’s hands were going next…. He never crossed the line, but he often came right up to the edge of it. Bobby even had to “adjust” one time when Sonia got a little too close for comfort.

Even so….Totally worth it!

Day 8 – Sunday 12/14/2008

We woke up early the next morning to a bright, clear day. We hurried to the dining room for breakfast. One more time: beans & rice with my eggs! All through breakfast we debated our options. Should we take an hour and go see the resort waterfalls? That was the main tourist highlight of the Peace Lodge and due to the rain, we had not made it to see the waterfalls during our three days there. OR, should we save that extra hour for our drive to the airport? That was the option we were leaning towards since we knew how our luck had gone on the Costa Rican highways the entire trip.

Nope, we threw caution to the wind and made a run for the waterfalls. We cruised through the waterfall area quickly and took lots of pictures as we flew past. The time I had spent drying my hair that morning was completely pointless. We were drenched from both the overspray of the waterfalls, and the sweat from running through the humid, damp waterfall park.

We showered and got ready quickly. When Bobby checked us out of room, he got specific directions for the quickest route to the airport. We made it to the airport in plenty of time, and felt good that we had managed to fit in a run/hike through the waterfalls that morning.

Home Sweet Home – we got home at 9:00pm that night. We were so tired, but not too exhausted to not give our furry kids we missed so much lots of kisses and hugs before we fell into bed.

AHHHHH, so nice to be back in our own bed!

I am now thinking that The Amazing Race might not be for us....

~~~

Costa Rica Part 2: ! PURA VIDA !

HA! I totally forgot to mention that before our trip I had packed a few snack foods in our luggage: Twizzlers, peppered beef jerky, and my favorite kind of trail mix (the kind with the peanuts and M&Ms).So those items were our dinner our first night in Costa Rica…during our 9 hours of travel. We didn’t stop anywhere because we kept thinking we’d get to our hotel in time for dinner. By the time we realized that was just not going to happen, everything was either closed or too scary to go inside. Besides, my stomach was excessively queasy from the twisty, bumpy roads to even think about eating much of anything. Crazy thing is, I typically have a very strong stomach…but I had to take Dramamine for the first time in my life on this trip.

Day 3 – Tuesday 12/9/2008 (…continued)

After about an hour on the road to Manuel Antonio, we decided to look for a place to grab some lunch. This proved to be more difficult than you would think. The road we were on was not a highly traveled road between popular touristy destinations. I had some trail mix to tie me over until we found a place to eat, and I offered Bobby some. He informed me that he was “over” the trail mix and beef jerky, he wanted real food.
We happened upon a place that looked decent, clean, and there were several cars parked in front…all very good signs in CR. It was called Café Macadamia. We walked into the smells of coffee and sweets baking. The first thing I noticed were all the pies, cookies, and cakes cooling on a ledge between the kitchen and the dining room. YUM! We sat at a small table with a window view over beautiful Lake Arenal with a windmill farm in the background. Bobby immediately noticed the man at the table next to us was wearing a Texas Longhorn shirt. Bobby struck up a conversation with this extremely wealthy couple from Houston, and I went off to find el bano.

I have to tell the story about this crazy “unisex” bathroom….

I walked around the corner into an open-air hallway and noticed the separate sink first. Then I noticed the outside wall of the restaurant was lined with outhouse-looking stalls. The latch to get into a stall was a sliding mechanism that could be locked on the outside. I went to the middle of the line of stalls and slid a few of the latches in and out to try to find an open one. I finally did find an available one and went inside this tiny stall. You know…the kind that is so tiny you barely have any room between your knees and the stall door. I had not been in there a minute when I hear someone sliding the latch on my stall door. I said aloud, “just a minute” and the chick on the other side said, “oh, sorry”.

I immediately thought it was odd that she also went to the middle of the line of stalls and picked the one I occupied, but whatever. When I tried to leave I couldn’t get out. Shit. She freaking locked me in that tiny-ass stall. I didn’t hear anyone around and I wondered how long it would take Bobby to come looking for me. I started weighing my options…If I screamed how long would it take for anyone to hear? I was basically outside of the restaurant. There was no way I could crawl out…the door was almost all the way to the floor, and there was no turning radius between the door and the toilet anyway.

Feeling a tinge of claustrophobia coming on, I yelled out “HELLO….I think I’ve been locked in the bathroom!” The stupid girl was still there waiting on the stall I was in. She laughed and said “oh sorry” and unlocked my door. I glared at her when I opened the door and walked out….then I let out a huge sigh of relief. I found it peculiar that she waited on the one stall I was in with an entire line of empty ones. Whatever….at least she was still there to let me out after she freaking locked me in.

I got back to the table feeling pretty pissy. I told Bobby about being locked in and asked him how long it would have taken him to come looking for me. He said he was about to do just that, because he was already starting to wonder where I was. But somehow I kinda doubted he was about to start looking for me…he was way too engrossed in his conversation with the Houston guy, he probably didn’t even realize how long it had been. Anyway,……I digress.

For lunch I had a yummy veggie sandwich and about the time I finished my lunch, Bobby finally got his mahi mahi. Funny how it works…if you ask the server if the dish is quick to prepare, that is always when it takes the longest.

We knew we were in for another long drive, and still paranoid from the events of our first night….so we rushed through lunch and the owner noticed. He came over and asked us where we were going. He told us he had a short-cut that would knock off 30 minutes from our drive. 30 mins? Hellz Yeah – I’m in. He drew us a map and listed directions for the turns in perfect English. Nice.

We followed his directions that took us on a long, hilly, BUMPY dirt road through ranches and the earlier mentioned windmill farm. We were nearing the end of the dirt road, where it met the highway we wanted to be on. As we topped the last hill, we almost plowed right over two “birders” and their telescopes…all hanging out in the middle of this narrow dirt road. Stupid Birders.


We drove for about 4 more hours to our destination of Manuel Antonio. Along the way we drove along the Pacific coastline, through traffic heavy construction zones, and across one-way bridges. Yes, the lines of cars had to take turns crossing these old rickety one-way bridges. Sometimes we had to wait in these lines for 20-30 minutes.

We FINALLY made it to our hotel: Costa Verde. Thankfully, we got there well before the office closed and with plenty of time to clean up before dinner.

We had a room with a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean….but it was too dark to enjoy the view by the time we checked-in. Oh well, something to look forward to in the morning.

We cleaned up and headed to dinner at El Avion…referred to us by some friends who had been to CR the year before. Technically, they didn’t refer us to eat there, but just to go check it out and enjoy the bar inside of Oliver North’s airplane during the Iran-Contra Affair.

They were right, this place was pretty cool. The entire restaurant was built around the airplane with the bar inside the fuselage. Dinner was a bust. Bobby & I got into our only argument of the entire trip. We survived some serious testing of our relationship through finding our way in an unknown country with non-existent signs, and no GPS, but we had had a spat about cigars at our nice dinner out. Go figure.

We moved past our argument in time for the main course….
Would you like to have a little pasta with that hair? There is nothing that will turn my stomach from starving to not hungry faster than finding a foreign hair in the food in front of me. Perfect.

We got through the terrible dinner and decided that it would be best to call it a day. Back at our huge hotel room, we washed some stanky clothes in the sink and then settled in on the balcony to do some reading while we listened to the waves crashing below.


Day 4 – Wednesday 12/10/2008

We woke up early to a gorgeous sunny morning. The view from our balcony was magnificent. The sun’s rays reflected on the ocean and made it glisten in the morning light. We rushed through breakfast at our hotel (beans & rice of course), and loaded up on the tour bus that picked us and our small group up at our hotel. We road about 10 minutes to the Manuel Antonio National Park.

For some strange reason, our tour guide was an expert on trees. So we got the full run-down on all the different types of trees and what they are good for in our 3+ hour tour. I didn’t pay attention to the stupid tree talk at all. I was way too interested in the wildlife. We saw birds, butterflies, snakes, iguanas, lizards, bats, anteaters, raccoons, sloths, and some awesome howler monkeys.


We admired the amazing picturesque beaches that are part of the national park, and decided that we would come back for some beach time after lunch.

The tour concluded and dropped us off at our hotel. We got our beach gear together and headed back to the same area we had just left. We had seen a variety of open-air restaurants promising the freshest mahi and tuna, and we were craving some good seafood.

We parked near the beach area. As we paid the guy to watch our car, he asked if I liked Monkeys and pointed to a tree area where a whole group of white-face monkeys were frolicking, chasing each other, and swinging from tree to tree….just feet away from me. I took TONS of pictures and video and just stood there watching them in utter amazement for about 20 minutes.

The hunger finally got the best of Bobby and he forced me to leave the monkeys, so we could search for the freshest seafood. We found it…at The Marlin Restaurant. Yummy Maihi and Shrimp! This place was a really cool, laid-back place that really embraced the Costa Rica “Pura-Vida” way of life.

!Pura Vida! = Pure Life OR Everything’s great!

We made friends with a stray dog who looked at us with those puppy dog eyes like only a hungry stray dog knows how to do. Only, this one didn’t seem to have missed many meals. Apparently, touristy open-air restaurants in Costa Rica are a good place for stray dogs to live. He was a sweetheart and followed us down the street when we left the restaurant. I think was finally sidetracked by another cutie female dog.

We headed straight for the beach after lunch. I was so excited to get some sand between my toes ~~ that is one of my favorite feelings in the world! We soaked up some tropical rays…the best kind, and took the opportunity to relax. Bobby went out to play in the waves; I stayed on the beach to watch the funny monkeys. They were devising sneaky plans to steal stuff from the people who were playing in the ocean, and not paying attention to their stuff as it got lost in the trees above.

After a few hours we decided to take a break from the sun for a bit and head back to our hotel. We saw some people we had met earlier in the day at hotel pool and decided to join them for while and have a few drinks.

We had a really nice dinner at a Costa Rican/Asian Fusion place called Kapi Kapi. As soon as we sat down we had a dinner guest join us. A cute kitty jumped up on the chair next to me and started playing with the tablecloth. That kitty was too cute!

After dinner, we retired once again on our balcony to reflect on the days fun events and listen to the waves crash nearby.





~~~

Costa Rica Part 1: It's an adVENture!

Day 1 - Sunday 12/7/2008

We arrived early at the airport for our flight out of Austin…plenty of time to grab some breakfast. We love us some Maudie's migas so the choice was obvious. OMG! Yuck – they were nothing like the yummy migas at the real Maudie's. It was like scrambled eggs cooked for an hour with some mushy canned peppers. It's really too bad since that may be the first Tex-Mex thing people new to Austin/Texas might try. If that was my first impression, I wouldn't be too excited about trying Tex-Mex again after that….

9:15a – 10:15a Short flight: Austin to Houston *First-Class* Nice! :-)

10:30a – 11:15a Hanging out in the Continental Airlines President's Club…..I was trying really hard to fit in with this smug crowd, but Bobby didn't seem phased one bit by it. He was just happy to get some internet access. (Boy is this going to be a long week…..)

11:22a – 3:00p 3.5 hour flight: Houston to San Jose, Costa Rica *First Class*

WOW! Do those first class people know how to travel or what!?!? Hot wash cloths for face and hands – a nice touch. The food was amazing and the wine was free-flowing. They even provide tiny salt-n-pepper shakers with every meal. Cute. I even made Bobby take a picture of me sitting in First Class. :-)

3:00p – 3:30p Immigration & Customs lines….and of course Bobby making friends with the people in line with us.

3:30p – 4:30p Hertz Car Rental - We had reserved a Daihatsu Terios – a 4x4 compact SUV, but they were out and since we were Texans, put us in their biggest 4x4 – a Hyundai Terracan Turbo. The car reservation itself was $185 for the week, not so bad…but after you add all the fees and service charges, the total for the reservation was $580. OK fine, but now we had a bigger question: Should pay more $$ to rent a GPS? After the car reservation total jumped about $400 in a matter of minutes, and after a few minutes debate about the $15/day GPS rental, we decided not to rent the GPS. We validated our decision with the plan to make this trip our "Adventure"!

And yes, I kept annoyingly saying "It's an AdVENture!" (with stress on the 2nd syllable) for many miles down the road… That phrase would come back to bite me in the ass for the next few days.

4:30p – 1:30a Driving from San Jose to Arenal Volcano Observatory Lodge.

Yes, that comes to 9 hours driving after 4.5 hours of flying…not to mention the few hours in the airport and car rental place…

So this is the run down….

Obviously, we left the Juan Santamaria Airport feeling cocky without a GPS. We headed west on the Pan-American Highway 1. Due to no signs anywhere, we missed our exit by about 1.5 hours. When we finally realized that we were nowhere near where we needed to be, we stopped to ask some locals for directions….truly testing my espanol skills for the 1^st of many times to come.

They pointed us in the direction that we had just come from so we turned around to backtrack. After feeling that we had missed our exit yet again, we pulled over to ask a hitchhiker where we were. He spoke no English, so I had to use my Espanol penqueno and my Costa Rica map to figure out where we were and how we needed to get to our destination. He confirmed what we guessed…that we had missed our turn (again) by about 45 minutes, and he told us how to get to the correct road….I think. I know he kept saying “BIG SIGN” …ha! In return he asked to be dropped off about 10 minutes away…in the direction we were heading. What the hell do we have to lose at this point anyway???

So yes, we picked up a non-English-speaking-Costa-Rican hitch-hiker in the dark in a foreign country. Brilliant.

Luckily, he didn't pull out a knife and stick it to my throat, and demand all our money. He probably just felt sorry for us. I think he may have been more scared of the crazy-ass, stupid Americans than we were of him. He did help us find the road and the BIG SIGN we were looking for, and we were now on our way….only running about 2.5 hours later than planned at this point. Oh, and by the way, the BIG SIGN was the size of a street size, barley on the road, and with no light.

Now on the correct road and heading in the right direction we chalked the wasted 2.5 hours up to being part of the adVENture. No biggie….(that will come later)

Now let me explain something, Costa Rica is known for its terrible road conditions. What is not as well-known (for some crazy reason) is the complete lack of signage along their major roads…that would be the paved ones. The roads rarely connect. If you take the wrong road, you don’t just find a connecting road to get you over to the correct one……you turn around and go back to where you started when you took the wrong road.

So here we are heading north on the CORRECT road towards the popular tourist destination: Arenal Volcano next to the town of La Fortuna…at least I THINK it’s La Fortuna. I notice on the 3 different maps that I am navigating between that there is another town called Fortuna. However, on some maps it’s called La Fortuna, and the one we are heading to is also called both Fortuna and La Fortuna…depending on the map. Great! This makes the adVENture even more challenging. When we are actually blessed with a sign, it says Fortuna…..now if we only knew which freaking Fortuna it was referring to!?!?!?!?

There are two other signs that we were blessed with about two hours into the twisting, turning, foggy, rainy drive. These two signs are both in the middle of the road, written in Spanish of course. Using my pequeno Espanol skills, I determine the signs say “road closed”. Using the context of the signs being in the middle of the road of course doesn’t hurt. Nevertheless, we have a choice to make….keep going or turn around?

Side Note: Before the trip, my husband & I separately researched travel in Costa Rica. We both had read that roads are sometimes closed due to construction, high water, mud, or whatever else. But most of the time you can get through the road with a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Since we did have a big 4x4, we decided we would probably be ok on this “closed road.” Besides, wouldn’t the hotel we had reservations at warn us about the main road from the airport being closed???

On we went….about another hour further on this twisting, turning, dark, foggy, rainy drive…that is until we found where/why the road was closed. The bridge had collapsed. There was no bridge or road at all. Shit. Now officially annoyed and completely avoiding the “adVENture” word, we turned around and backtracked…3 hours.

Back at the fork in the road where we started on the closed road, we are completely exhausted, drained, and paranoid about messing up any more. Did I forget to mention we have not had phone/internet service since we exited off the Pan-American Highway hours ago?!?!?

Before starting up the other road, we find a “roll your own” cigar shop, the only thing open anywhere around, and stopped in for directions. Again, no English spoken here. So here I go again with my pathetic Spanish. The kid working the cigar shop draws me a map and promises that the other road is not closed. Bobby asks about the price of a cigar to say thanks, but when he calculates the cigar is over 80 bucks, he changes his mind. Besides, we may need all our money to get to where we need to be….who knows!?!?!?

So here we go again….now taking the long road to get to the hotel that we should have been at hours ago. This road is just as twisty and bumpy and now it’s even darker and more rainy and foggy. Fun Stuff. We are exhausted and sleepy so we aren’t talking much at that point, we are just keeping our eyes peeled for signs and potholes and motorists who have decided to simply stop in the middle of the highway.

YES, for all sorts of reasons drivers just stop right on the highway – all over Costa Rica. We assumed they got cell phone service and stopped to make calls, or they were lost like us, but mostly we realized they were just sleeping. There were no shoulders on the roads, or rest areas, so people just stop wherever they are when they get tired….or bored.

Three hours later we FINALLY arrived at the town of La Fortuna…or just Fortuna….whatever. We know we are at the correct town, whatever the name….due to the volcano signs we are now able to follow. I have held my bladder for HOURS now and I can’t take it anymore. There are no places open after midnight in town…except for the places I have no business walking into this late. So just outside of town we both desperately get out in the rain and marked our territory in Costa Rica.

Our hotel is 10 minutes past town and 15 minutes up, up, up the volcano on the bumpiest road in the entire world! Thank goodness we peed before we started up that road….I would have surely lost it.

It’s about 1:30am when we get to what must be the entrance to the hotel…”What the hell?!?!?” There is a gate at the entrance that was dark and chained and locked. Neither of us was all that surprised really….with the way the rest of our day had gone. So we got some towels and clothes out of the suitcases to use as pillows and blankets, and got as comfortable as we could as we called it a night.

After driving 9 hours, Bobby was completely exhausted and went to sleep quickly but woke up many times through the night. I was tired, yet fidgety so I had a much harder time falling and staying asleep. It was truly the longest night ever.

(Yes, this was the painful part of the trip that I am just now ok talking about.)

Day 2 – Monday 12/8/2008

I woke to sounds of birds, looked at the clock to see that it was only 5:30 am, but the gate was open. So I woke Bobby and we drove through the gate and up to the front office of the hotel. It was still closed and no one was around, so we tried again for another snooze. About an hour later we woke to cars driving by so we stiffly made our way to the reservation area and found the Pure Trek Canyoning tour guides there waiting to whisk us away for four fun-filled hours of Waterfall Rappelling and Hiking through the rain forest. I explained to them that we drove in late, had not even been in our hotel room yet, and were in no shape for any activity…much less a highly active one such as rappelling. I didn’t even have to mention to them that we were in dire need of showers….I’m sure they could smell us. The guys were super nice and asked that I call the main office to see about changing our tour time. I called and the guy on the other end was very compassionate about our ordeal and said there was no problem to move us to the 12:30 tour time. Since we had already paid for this activity, this was the best news I had heard in a while.

We wolfed down some breakfast (yum, black beans & rice with eggs), then we headed straight to our room for showers and a nap…in a bed. Glorious.

We woke up four hours later feeling so much better and ready for some adVENture! So we headed to the Pure Trek Canyoning office for some lunch (more black beans & rice), then we jumped on a bus that took us to a 4x4 truck.

The group of five tourists and five tour guides transferred to the bed of the truck, which drove us about 20 minutes down a bumpy ranch road to their gear-up spot.

They loaded us down with rappelling equipment, and then we walked about five minutes to the first waterfall. At the top of the waterfall, we got our short course on how to rappel, and then it was our turn. We actually rappelled on the side of the first waterfall. Complete and Total Adrenaline Rush!

There were five rappels in all. Some were long and others were really long. Some were straight down with your face in the waterfall. On others we were able to jump to the outsides of the waterfall to at least keep our faces out of the waterfalls. (Can you tell I have an aversion to getting water in my eyes?)

When I was all drenched and cold, and walking to the next drenching I realized how glad I was that we had not done this at 7am that morning. The afternoon was much warmer, thus a much better experience.

After the five exhilarating waterfall rappels we hiked about 20 minutes up a mountain and back to the starting location where the truck was waiting to take us back to the bus. Overall, an amazing experience that I would absolutely do again. In fact, Bobby has a friend who does rappelling in the area, and we plan to join him as soon as the weather warms up in the spring.

After a rough days drive and an active afternoon of rappelling and hiking, we were already feeling that we deserved some relax time. So we headed to the hot springs at Tabacon resort. This place was amazing – so peaceful and relaxing, exactly what we needed. We started at (of course) the swim up bar where I had a few lava flows. YUM! Then when we decided to wander around and check out the rest of the hot springs. As we were closing our tab the bartender informed us that “Happy Hour” was about to start at the bar on the other end of the park. 2 for 1 -- Hellz Yeah!!!

Along the way to the other bar, we tested the warm temps of a few more hot springs and waited for HH to begin. After a few too many lava flows and too long in the hot pools I started feeling a little dizzy and, well….drunk. So we got out and cooled off and headed for the dinner buffet. Need Food. Los frijoles y el arroz más negros por favor.

After dinner we tried out the last three hot springs that we had not been in yet. After a little more of this relaxation, exhaustion of the two previous days events hit us again. We headed back to our hotel to pass out…in a real bed.

Day 3 – Tuesday 12/9/2008

After a full night’s deep sleep we woke up ready to truly turn this vacation into what it should be….a FUN adVENture.

As we packed up our suitcases, we noticed a funky smell in our clothes. Bobby recognized it as sulpher so we traced the funky smell back to the swimsuits we wore at the hot springs the night before. We packed those separate and tried to wash the sulpher stink out of those suits many times in the next several days…eventually we gave up and threw the stinky sulpher-saturated swimsuits away.

We headed down the volcano road to the zip line place. It was only supposed to be a 20 minute drive from our hotel. So why in the hell have we been driving 45 minutes?!?!?! I bring out my Espanol skills once again and ask a cute runner chick where the Sky Tram place is. She pointed back the way we came and told us dos bridges and then a BIG SIGN. Oh Hell…freakin’ big signs.

So backtracking we go….back to the BIG SIGN. Not sure how we both missed that. Whatev. So we get there just in time to miss our 7:30 zip line group. We had to wait around there and go with the 9:30 group. Ok, we can deal with this….at least we are not still in the car. Bobby is especially happy because he is getting crackberry service…something that he has not had for a couple of days. I noticed that the twitching subsided as soon as he heard the beeps for incoming emails.

The Sky Trek place was first-rate and the ziplines were a blast! The tour included 8 cross-sectional cables that together have a total length of 2.8 Km with a distance from 30 to 760 meters, and from 20 to 200 meters of height. The cables go above and through trees, where if the weather permits it, you might see the gorgeous Arenal Volcano. Due to clouds, we only saw the bottom half of the volcano.

We only got down the road about 5 minutes from the zip line place when we see a couple of cars stopped on the road and people taking pictures of something high in the trees. So of course, we got out to see. Howler Monkeys! So freakin’ cool! And, they were howling at each other!! I took tons of pictures and we watched them chase each other and swing from branch to branch.

Then we got back “on the road again” and headed down a different highway to our next destination: Manuel Antonio.

To Be Continued……

Coming up next…….more MONKEYS!!!

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