So, my big news is that I'm going home for a very short weekend tomorrow to attend my old college roommie's wedding. I'd been going back and forth for months as to whether I'd be able to make it (whether plane tickets would be too much, or whether I'd be able to find flight times without missing class). It wasn't looking too good, so I held off. But then when I arrived here, I realized the atmosphere of the school is quite a bit more relaxed than I expected, and missing a day wasn't going to kill me. (To prove this point, I told my discussion leader today that I would not be in class tomorrow, and he said "I expect and hope that you will get wasted this weekend, but don't forget you have a paper due Wednesday." haha.) And, believe it or not, ticket prices stayed relatively low even a week before the departure date (I just booked the tickets earlier this week).
So, I am really excited to be home, even if it's very brief, and I'll be spending most of my time in Central Illinois, where the wedding is. It will be great to see a bunch of my old college friends, too. I think I would have regretted it if I didn't go. And it gives me the chance to bring back some stuff with me (like my printer! yeah!).
Not much else is new around here, so I'll leave you with one final thought that I found surprising: We may complain about rising gas prices in the States, but apparently we have it good. I always heard London had the highest prices, and they paid around $5 or more a gallon. But I assumed that was extreme, and most other countries paid less than we did in the States. It seems like that's not true. I talked to some people from Brazil, and they said they pay at least $5 a gallon. Even in Costa Rica, which in some ways is quite a bit cheaper than the States, their gas is something like $4 or $4.50 a gallon. Everyone I've talked to pays more for gas than we do in the States. And when I told them we are outraged at the gas prices in the U.S., they just laughed. Who knew.
Be back in a few days when I return from the States...
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Classes begin
We've now finished our first two days of classes. The actual class time is pretty short. We have lecture from 9:00 to 10:15, and then we meet in smaller discussion groups from 10:45 to noon. And then we're done for the day. This first class we're taking is a Foundation in Peace and Conflict Studies course, so the entire school (about 150 people) takes it. It lasts three weeks, and then we start our respective masters' classes after this class is over. We have readings to do every day, and we have to submit a short summary of the readings every single day to our discussion group leader. And we already have our first assignment, due next week. But so far, it's not too bad, and I actually welcome the work after quite a bit of downtime here.
As far as the other students go, everyone is incredibly nice and sociable. I'd say most people are in they're later 20s (very few are right out of college, and a few are quite older), so it's not at all like high school or even undergrad, where it's harder to make friends. Here you're welcome to just walk up to any group of students and join their conversation or each lunch with them. I've made a few friends who I tend to spend more time with, which is nice.
Sorry I don't have more interesting stories to tell! I'll work on that for future postings. :)
As far as the other students go, everyone is incredibly nice and sociable. I'd say most people are in they're later 20s (very few are right out of college, and a few are quite older), so it's not at all like high school or even undergrad, where it's harder to make friends. Here you're welcome to just walk up to any group of students and join their conversation or each lunch with them. I've made a few friends who I tend to spend more time with, which is nice.
Sorry I don't have more interesting stories to tell! I'll work on that for future postings. :)
Sunday, August 26, 2007
The last days of freedom
Sorry I've been a little absent the last couple days. We had our last day of orientation Friday -- mostly procedural stuff like the library and Web access that I won't bore you with. But then we had our official welcome party Friday night, and that was a lot of fun. They had a handful of alumni there, so it was good to talk to them and ask them questions. We went to a local bar, and it was funny to see the professors and staff let loose and dance with the students. At one point this carnivale-type performance swept into the bar, led by a handful of guys playing the drums, and followed by some men and women dressed in Vegas-style feathered getups. It was really cool. Apparently these same people perform in the local parades.
A few students decided to organize a beach trip for Saturday and arranged a 14-person van to take us a few hours to the beach. Unfortunately, the beach day turned into a rain day. It was cloudy when we set off, but we were hopeful. We stopped along the way at this one place known for its abundance of crocodiles, and it did not disappoint. We walked onto this bridge and saw one massive crocodile sunning himself on a little muddy island, and then on the other side of the bridge, we counted 18 crocodiles in the water and on the land! It was really kind of freaky, and they were just lying there with their mouths open.
When we got to the beach, it was pouring rain, so we went and ate lunch. It was still pouring when we finished, so a few of us found a cozy lounge bar with a view of the ocean and sat on some couches and read for a couple hours (I brought Harry Potter with me to re-read, and I found another of the students is a huge HP fan! yeah!). Most of the group decided to go in the water anyway, despite the rain. It's a pretty big surf beach (most of them are in Costa Rica), and the waves were bigger than I'd ever seen (then again, the closest body of water I grew up next to was Lake Michigan). Some of the students rented some boards and attempted surfing. Being the "landlubber" that I am, I stayed far, far away from such activities.
The true excitement (fear) of the day came on the drive home. The van wouldn't start when we were ready to leave, so a handful of students pushed it until the driver could kick it into gear. (The driver was actually one of the university admission officials who also handles all the transportation stuff.) So, that got us started, but then about an hour and a half into the drive, it started getting dark, and we playfully reminded Eddy (the driver) that he should turn his headlights on. He replied, sorry, but the lights actually aren't working, and we're trying to get to Puriscal, where another van will meet us. We started getting a little nervous. (Mom, this is the part where you don't read.) We were driving through mountainous terrain, which is typically a little dangerous even in daylight. The little bit of twilight we had quickly turned into pitch blackness. There were absolutely no street lights, and we were on winding roads through the mountains with absolutely no lights. The hazards weren't working, the taillights weren't working, the defrost wasn't working, and the windshield wipers weren't working -- and it was raining. Eddy was of course driving very slowly and carefully, but our biggest fear was other traffic whipping around the curves and not being able to see us. Finally, a truck came up behind us, and Eddy signaled him around and asked him to lead us into the nearest town. The truck driver was very nice, and he turned on his hazards and drove in front of us. Then about 15 minutes later, for no apparent reason, everything in the van started working again. The headlights came on, and the windshield wipers and defrost started working. We met the other van in Puriscal, but by then we were only about 30 minutes from home, so we just followed the other van, in case the lights went out again, but they were fine the rest of the way.
But now I'm back in my apartment, safe and sound. We already have our first readings for class on Monday, so I better crack open a book and dust off those cobwebs! Here's hoping going back to school is like riding a bike.
A few students decided to organize a beach trip for Saturday and arranged a 14-person van to take us a few hours to the beach. Unfortunately, the beach day turned into a rain day. It was cloudy when we set off, but we were hopeful. We stopped along the way at this one place known for its abundance of crocodiles, and it did not disappoint. We walked onto this bridge and saw one massive crocodile sunning himself on a little muddy island, and then on the other side of the bridge, we counted 18 crocodiles in the water and on the land! It was really kind of freaky, and they were just lying there with their mouths open.
When we got to the beach, it was pouring rain, so we went and ate lunch. It was still pouring when we finished, so a few of us found a cozy lounge bar with a view of the ocean and sat on some couches and read for a couple hours (I brought Harry Potter with me to re-read, and I found another of the students is a huge HP fan! yeah!). Most of the group decided to go in the water anyway, despite the rain. It's a pretty big surf beach (most of them are in Costa Rica), and the waves were bigger than I'd ever seen (then again, the closest body of water I grew up next to was Lake Michigan). Some of the students rented some boards and attempted surfing. Being the "landlubber" that I am, I stayed far, far away from such activities.
The true excitement (fear) of the day came on the drive home. The van wouldn't start when we were ready to leave, so a handful of students pushed it until the driver could kick it into gear. (The driver was actually one of the university admission officials who also handles all the transportation stuff.) So, that got us started, but then about an hour and a half into the drive, it started getting dark, and we playfully reminded Eddy (the driver) that he should turn his headlights on. He replied, sorry, but the lights actually aren't working, and we're trying to get to Puriscal, where another van will meet us. We started getting a little nervous. (Mom, this is the part where you don't read.) We were driving through mountainous terrain, which is typically a little dangerous even in daylight. The little bit of twilight we had quickly turned into pitch blackness. There were absolutely no street lights, and we were on winding roads through the mountains with absolutely no lights. The hazards weren't working, the taillights weren't working, the defrost wasn't working, and the windshield wipers weren't working -- and it was raining. Eddy was of course driving very slowly and carefully, but our biggest fear was other traffic whipping around the curves and not being able to see us. Finally, a truck came up behind us, and Eddy signaled him around and asked him to lead us into the nearest town. The truck driver was very nice, and he turned on his hazards and drove in front of us. Then about 15 minutes later, for no apparent reason, everything in the van started working again. The headlights came on, and the windshield wipers and defrost started working. We met the other van in Puriscal, but by then we were only about 30 minutes from home, so we just followed the other van, in case the lights went out again, but they were fine the rest of the way.
But now I'm back in my apartment, safe and sound. We already have our first readings for class on Monday, so I better crack open a book and dust off those cobwebs! Here's hoping going back to school is like riding a bike.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Sinkhole still sunk
Day two of orientation inside the Ciudad Colon gym. Apparently this sinkhole is going to take awhile to fix. We're supposed to start classes Monday, and I guess we're borrowing an auditorium from another university for next week. Supposedly the road will be fixed sometimes next week. I hope so, because I really want to see the school where I'll be studying this next year!
I also had a bit of a snag with my documents I needed for my student visa. Apparently they're not exactly "valid" or "authentic." The Costa Rican officials came in, and they fingerprinted all of us, and took all our information -- it was all rather intimidating. When I told the guy I was 5'6", he made me stand up to proof it. Seriously. Anyway, my certified copy of my birth certificate and my certified criminal record check (which I had to pay Massachusetts $25 for, and which I had to have notarized) is apparently not official enough. I was apparently supposed to get the secretary of state's office to certify each of these, and then go to the Costa Rican consulate in the States and have them certify them, too. What?! There are a handful of us in the same boat, and we're told to sit tight and they'd give us further instructions. Anyway, most of us were thinking we should just leave the country every 90 days, and that should solve things. Because U.S. citizens are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days, so we figure we can just hop over the border to Nicaragua or to Panama for a weekend, and come back to Costa Rica, and restart the 90 days. So we might do that.
Anyway, I promised photos of my apartment, so here they are!
I also had a bit of a snag with my documents I needed for my student visa. Apparently they're not exactly "valid" or "authentic." The Costa Rican officials came in, and they fingerprinted all of us, and took all our information -- it was all rather intimidating. When I told the guy I was 5'6", he made me stand up to proof it. Seriously. Anyway, my certified copy of my birth certificate and my certified criminal record check (which I had to pay Massachusetts $25 for, and which I had to have notarized) is apparently not official enough. I was apparently supposed to get the secretary of state's office to certify each of these, and then go to the Costa Rican consulate in the States and have them certify them, too. What?! There are a handful of us in the same boat, and we're told to sit tight and they'd give us further instructions. Anyway, most of us were thinking we should just leave the country every 90 days, and that should solve things. Because U.S. citizens are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days, so we figure we can just hop over the border to Nicaragua or to Panama for a weekend, and come back to Costa Rica, and restart the 90 days. So we might do that.
Anyway, I promised photos of my apartment, so here they are!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
First day of orientation
My school orientation didn't go quite as it was planned. Apparently a storm last night created some sort of sink hole in the road that goes up to the school. So our buses had to turn around and go back to Ciudad Colon. They improvised and held the first day of orientation inside a gymnasium in Ciudad Colon, instead. And they apparently plan to hold the next two days of orientation inside the gym, too. So I still haven't been able to see my school yet, which stinks. But it's been cool to meet everyone. Here's a photo of everyone in the gym.
I met people from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Cameroon, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Japan, Norway, Brazil, Italy, The Philippines ... and that's all I can remember for now.
At the end of the day, they had this group of local kids come and do this really cool dance for us:
I'm going to head out now to meet some of the people from the program, so I'll write more later!
I met people from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Cameroon, Uganda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Japan, Norway, Brazil, Italy, The Philippines ... and that's all I can remember for now.
At the end of the day, they had this group of local kids come and do this really cool dance for us:
I'm going to head out now to meet some of the people from the program, so I'll write more later!
Monday, August 20, 2007
An open letter to the person who translates Costa Rican dairy products into English
Dear Señor or Señora,
I'm not exactly sure what "leche agria" is, but you shouldn't translate it "skimmed milk." An American (for example, me) might interpret that as skim milk, and she might be very excited to find it considering she has found nothing but 2% milk since arriving in this country, and she is accustomed to drinking skim milk.
You can imagine her disappointment, then, when she had her bowl of Cookie Crisp all poured and waiting for milk when she opened the carton of this supposed "skimmed milk" and smelled something akin to bad sour cream. And then she took the tiniest taste and nearly wretched in the sink.
Perhaps this is my punishment for not learning the language before entering the country. But I'm trying. I swear! And I'm already onto you about the sour cream. I was thrown at first, I admit. But I did some Google research and found that Costa Rica seems to be the only Spanish-speaking country that calls it "natilla." You didn't even bother putting the translation on that one.
I'm off to buy some 2%.
I'm not exactly sure what "leche agria" is, but you shouldn't translate it "skimmed milk." An American (for example, me) might interpret that as skim milk, and she might be very excited to find it considering she has found nothing but 2% milk since arriving in this country, and she is accustomed to drinking skim milk.
You can imagine her disappointment, then, when she had her bowl of Cookie Crisp all poured and waiting for milk when she opened the carton of this supposed "skimmed milk" and smelled something akin to bad sour cream. And then she took the tiniest taste and nearly wretched in the sink.
Perhaps this is my punishment for not learning the language before entering the country. But I'm trying. I swear! And I'm already onto you about the sour cream. I was thrown at first, I admit. But I did some Google research and found that Costa Rica seems to be the only Spanish-speaking country that calls it "natilla." You didn't even bother putting the translation on that one.
I'm off to buy some 2%.
San Jose, lights out, and Project Runway
Not much new today. I'm pretty much just killing time till school starts. I still hadn't seen most of San Jose, so I hopped on a bus today and went into the city. It's pretty shabby. It's not your average skyscraper-type of city; in fact, I don't think I saw a building higher than six stories. There are a couple of nice churches and some decent shopping areas. I hear there are some museums and things, too. But so far, I'm not too impressed with San Jose.
So here are some other observations for you. My power keeps going out from time to time. It's only for about a minute, tops, and I'm apparently the only one who thinks this is weird. It happened a couple times when it was raining, so I thought it must be the storm. I stepped outside one of the times, and the whole neighborhood was black, yet I was the only one popping my head out the door, so I went back inside, and the lights came back on. Then, a day later, I was in the grocery store in Ciudad Colon, and all the lights went out. It was daylight out (and not raining), so I could vaguely see the other people in the store, and no one seemed fazed by this. The lights went back on a minute later. Apparently this is just something I need to get used to.
And here's a point of irony: The last two years when I lived by myself in Boston, I didn't spring for cable. I particularly remember thinking "oh man, I can't watch the finale of Project Runway" because that was on when I switched to no cable. So, I move to Costa Rica, and guess what's on TV? Project Runway. As I was typing this, I was watching an episode of Lost, and last night I watched Grey's Anatomy (two of my favorite shows). I've also seen Friends, Seinfeld, That '70s Show, and a handful of old but good movies. These have all been in English with Spanish subtitles, although they're not all that way. I was excited last night because I saw that Six Feet Under was on, but it turned out to be dubbed in Spanish. Overall, though, the English-speaking channels have been a godsend.
Finally, I leave you with a couple pictures of my 'hood. (I'll send more of my apartment once I take some pics.) Here's the little mini-mart a few minutes from my apartment. I go here for milk and bread or little stuff. Plus they have the most adorable little albino kitty who lives there:
And here are some random bikers on the road between my apartment and Ciudad Colon. I've noticed several people biking on this road. I think they like to train here because of the hills and the curves:
Another episode of Lost is coming on now! Sweet!
So here are some other observations for you. My power keeps going out from time to time. It's only for about a minute, tops, and I'm apparently the only one who thinks this is weird. It happened a couple times when it was raining, so I thought it must be the storm. I stepped outside one of the times, and the whole neighborhood was black, yet I was the only one popping my head out the door, so I went back inside, and the lights came back on. Then, a day later, I was in the grocery store in Ciudad Colon, and all the lights went out. It was daylight out (and not raining), so I could vaguely see the other people in the store, and no one seemed fazed by this. The lights went back on a minute later. Apparently this is just something I need to get used to.
And here's a point of irony: The last two years when I lived by myself in Boston, I didn't spring for cable. I particularly remember thinking "oh man, I can't watch the finale of Project Runway" because that was on when I switched to no cable. So, I move to Costa Rica, and guess what's on TV? Project Runway. As I was typing this, I was watching an episode of Lost, and last night I watched Grey's Anatomy (two of my favorite shows). I've also seen Friends, Seinfeld, That '70s Show, and a handful of old but good movies. These have all been in English with Spanish subtitles, although they're not all that way. I was excited last night because I saw that Six Feet Under was on, but it turned out to be dubbed in Spanish. Overall, though, the English-speaking channels have been a godsend.
Finally, I leave you with a couple pictures of my 'hood. (I'll send more of my apartment once I take some pics.) Here's the little mini-mart a few minutes from my apartment. I go here for milk and bread or little stuff. Plus they have the most adorable little albino kitty who lives there:
And here are some random bikers on the road between my apartment and Ciudad Colon. I've noticed several people biking on this road. I think they like to train here because of the hills and the curves:
Another episode of Lost is coming on now! Sweet!
Sunday, August 19, 2007
The results
Turns out I'm pretty good at estimating. The walk from my apartment to the Ciudad Colon football field takes about a half hour.
I actually had some company on the walk down. Just about a half hour after I put up that last post my next-door neighbor (the Canadian with the bus schedule) called and asked if I wanted her to show me around. I said I was about to go take a walk down the hill, and she said she'd come with. And then she also invited the neighbor on the other side of me. Turns out on the other side is a couple about my age from Oregon with a 3-year-old son. They're on an "extended vacation" and have been here for about three months so far and plan to stay another three or so.
So, Jasmine (the Canadian), Victoria, and I took the 3-year-old for a stroll down the hill. They showed me their favorite bakery, the post office, the gym they go to, and all the bus stops. Then when they headed back I went to the supermarket and took a cab home. I was really excited because I found these ready-made pizza things, and then I came home and realized I didn't have an oven. sigh.
Oh, and I found a cockroach in my apartment. I was folding up my wet umbrella, and it fell out of the umbrella onto me, and then fell onto the floor. I chased it around for a while before I could smoosh it. ugh. i hate big bugs. So then I bought a ton of roach traps and set them all over. Here's hoping that was a one-time sighting.
I actually had some company on the walk down. Just about a half hour after I put up that last post my next-door neighbor (the Canadian with the bus schedule) called and asked if I wanted her to show me around. I said I was about to go take a walk down the hill, and she said she'd come with. And then she also invited the neighbor on the other side of me. Turns out on the other side is a couple about my age from Oregon with a 3-year-old son. They're on an "extended vacation" and have been here for about three months so far and plan to stay another three or so.
So, Jasmine (the Canadian), Victoria, and I took the 3-year-old for a stroll down the hill. They showed me their favorite bakery, the post office, the gym they go to, and all the bus stops. Then when they headed back I went to the supermarket and took a cab home. I was really excited because I found these ready-made pizza things, and then I came home and realized I didn't have an oven. sigh.
Oh, and I found a cockroach in my apartment. I was folding up my wet umbrella, and it fell out of the umbrella onto me, and then fell onto the floor. I chased it around for a while before I could smoosh it. ugh. i hate big bugs. So then I bought a ton of roach traps and set them all over. Here's hoping that was a one-time sighting.
An experiment
Today I go on an expedition. Down my hill. It may sound simple, but I'm hoping it will clear up a lot of things.
You see, I'm starting orientation at my school on Wednesday, and I'm still not sure how to get there. I know that a bus leaves Ciudad Colon at the football field at 8 a.m. That part is easy. I'm just not sure the best way to get to the football field before 8 a.m. There is a bus that can take me there and it goes very close by my apartment, but I still haven't figured out how the schedule works (or if it works). And since the buses only go by every hour or so, I don't want to take my chances being late on my first day.
So, I'm going to attempt to walk the bus route instead. Sarah and I did take this elusive bus once (we waited a full hour before it showed up), and we drove the route in a cab a few times, and it looks like a pretty short distance. And the good news is that, leaving from my apartment, it's downhill.
So, I'm going to put on some walking shoes, charge up my iPod, and see how long it takes me to walk to the football field. If I'm optimistic, I'm thinking it could take me 20 minutes, which wouldn't be a bad walk every morning. My glass-is-half-empty guess is somewhere around 45 minutes. Any other bets?
The one thing I do know is that, regardless of how long it takes me to get down the hill, I'm taking a cab back up it.
You see, I'm starting orientation at my school on Wednesday, and I'm still not sure how to get there. I know that a bus leaves Ciudad Colon at the football field at 8 a.m. That part is easy. I'm just not sure the best way to get to the football field before 8 a.m. There is a bus that can take me there and it goes very close by my apartment, but I still haven't figured out how the schedule works (or if it works). And since the buses only go by every hour or so, I don't want to take my chances being late on my first day.
So, I'm going to attempt to walk the bus route instead. Sarah and I did take this elusive bus once (we waited a full hour before it showed up), and we drove the route in a cab a few times, and it looks like a pretty short distance. And the good news is that, leaving from my apartment, it's downhill.
So, I'm going to put on some walking shoes, charge up my iPod, and see how long it takes me to walk to the football field. If I'm optimistic, I'm thinking it could take me 20 minutes, which wouldn't be a bad walk every morning. My glass-is-half-empty guess is somewhere around 45 minutes. Any other bets?
The one thing I do know is that, regardless of how long it takes me to get down the hill, I'm taking a cab back up it.
Friday, August 17, 2007
My first week in Costa Rica
Welcome to my blog! This first posting is a little overdue, but I've been busy in my first week! My friend Sarah flew down with me (and just left today), and we trekked all over Costa Rica. Sooo, here's what I've been up to so far ...
Aug. 9
Arrived in Costa Rica! Our cab got a little lost getting to my apartment, probably because addresses don't really exist in Costa Rica. I don't even know if the street I live on has a name. Instead, I tell the taxi the general neighborhood and then say "cien metros sur de la gruta," which means, "100 meters south of the grotto," which is a statue of the Mother Mary randomly in someone's yard. Pretty much all directions are like this, although most tell you where they are in relation to the town's church or supermarket. Although downtown San Jose does have street names (translated to Street 1, Street 2, Avenue 1, Avenue 2, etc.).
Sarah and I took it easy our first day. We ate dinner at a nearby hotel that has a restaurant in it, and the food was excellent. I had my first taste of Imperial Light -- Imperial is the beer of Costa Rica. To be honest, it's not that great, but I'm used to drinking Bud Light, so it's a pretty fair trade.
Aug. 10
Woken by roosters. Seriously. At 4:30 a.m. I live up on a hill, which is great for the view and the cool breeze, but the roosters are no picnic, and I nearly go into cardiac arrest every time I walk up the hill from the bus stop. There's also about a billion stray dogs and cats in Costa Rica, and they apparently like to howl loudly in the middle of the night.
Anyway, Sarah and I caught a bus at 6:30 a.m. (!) to Monteverde, which is a cloud forest. A cloud forest is more or less a rain forest, but there are really low-level clouds that sweep in and out of it. It's only about 100 miles from San Jose to Monteverde, but the bus ride took us about five hours. Granted, we made a lot of quick stops on the way and one 15-minute rest stop, but the bulk of the time was lost to rocky, dirt roads. Someone needs to introduce Costa Rica to pavement.
We arrived in Santa Elena (a small town outside the forest preserve) and hopped on a yellow school bus to take us to the reserve. Overall, it wasn't supremely impressive. It looked a little like most forests I've been in, except there was more moss and greenery over EVERYTHING, and at one point it started pouring rain, and then we really felt like we were in a rain forest. :)
We stayed in a hostel for $10 a night per person, where a 12-year-old boy (with surprisingly good English) took our reservation and showed us to our room. It wasn't a bad room -- we had our own bathroom and, better yet, hot water, which is hard to come by in Costa Rican hostels.
Aug. 11 -- "Coolest day ever"
Today was the day we did the zip line canopy tour, and it was SOOOOOOO awesome. The same 12-year-old boy who checked us into our room advised us on which canopy tour to do. He suggested Extremo -- which happens to be the highest and longest zip lines of any tour company. After looking at the brochure, which boasts 14 zip lines, some as long as 2,000 feet and as high as 490 feet, we started to wonder whether we shouldn't have put our trust in someone who wasn't so ... well .... 12.
But we didn't plunge to our deaths, so it all worked out. You start out on some smaller and shorter zip lines, and then we got to the third zip line, and you literally could not see the end of it. We were standing at the top of one hill in the mountains, and the end of the line was attached to the top of another hill, and you had to zip line over a valley, hundreds of feet below. And to top it off, a cloud had just rolled through (remember this is a cloud forest), so when Sarah went on the zip line, she literally disappeared into the cloud. I just about peed my pants. We went back and forth over this valley four times, and we also repelled 90 feet and did a this "tarzan swing" thing, which is incredibly scary. Going over the valleys I switched between thinking "this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" and "Oh my God, I'm going to die." Here's a pic of me coming through a cloud after crossing a valley (left) and a picture of the valley, where you can barely see the zip line at the top (right) :
After our three-hour tour zipping through the cloud forest, we went back to town and booked a jeep-boat-jeep ride to go to La Fortuna, which is a nearby town that is home to one of Costa Rica's most active volcanos (Volcan Arenal). A large lake lies between the Monteverde and La Fortuna, and if you took a bus around the lake, it takes about nine hours. We opted, instead, for the jeep-boat-jeep route, which is about 2.5 hours total. We took a minivan through the rockiest road you could possibly imagine -- I NEVER get motion sickness, but I started feeling really queasy after about a half hour. Then we hopped onto a boat (see below -- notice volcano in background):
We went to a Chinese restaurant with some backpackers we met in Monteverde. And we stayed in another $10 hostel with a private bathroom and hot water, and this one also had a kitchenette and fan. It was pretty nice, and we had a view of the volcano from our window.
Aug. 12
This was our day of rest. Sarah and I headed to the hot springs in La Fortuna, which have 16 different pools ranging in temperatures from 98 to something like 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I only stuck my toe in the hottest spring, and I'm pretty sure it would give you third-degree burns if you stayed in it for more than a minute. But the "cooler" pools were wonderful, and you had a great view of the volcano the whole time. Plus there are three different swim-up bars in the pools. Sarah and I got there when they opened at 10 a.m., and we stayed till around 7:00 p.m. I'd show you the photo of our pruney feet and hands that we took, except it's really gross, so I'll spare you. We were told you can usually see hot lava running down the side of the volcano at night, but all we saw was a steady stream of smoke coming out the top of it.
Aug. 13
We caught a noon bus back to San Jose the next day, and that took up most of the day. We somehow managed to find the bus we needed to take back to Ciudad Colon that night (the town near where I live) and then took a $2 cab from there. Another early night to bed and early wakeup the next morning...
Aug. 14
We had to get up for another 6 a.m. bus. Those who know me know this is quite an accomplishment for me to actually wake up for this. This time we heade
d south to Manuel Antonio park on the Southern Pacific Coast. This is a rain forest that borders white sand beaches. And the best part -- we saw monkeys in the trees! We also saw about a dozen lizards like the one on the right here (I think they were iguanas). We hiked around for a little while, and went in the water for a bit, but then it started raining (of course, being the rainy season, it's rained every day we've been here. But it's also been sunny every day, too). So we headed back to the nearby town Quepos and checked into a nice little hostel with the cutest old man owner. He didn't speak a word of English, yet he still managed to give us a 10-minute lecture on how we should get copies of our passports and be careful not to get our bags stolen and tell us which restaurants are good. He was really good at communicating with hand gestures and things. We hung out in Quepos that night, which has a lot of fun bars, and we even managed to find nachos and potato skins. mmm.
Aug. 15
We spent the day on the beach right outside Manuel Antonio Park, and we learned a very important lesson: when you're 10 degrees from the Equator, a bottle of SPF 30 doesn't do a whole lot. We both got burned, even though we used up most of the bottle. Some more pics of the park and the beach:
We took the bus back to San Jose the same day.
Aug. 16
This day shall be known as the day the bus won. We'd been singing our praises the whole trip about how we'd been great about catching all our buses and finding the bus stops (which is not easy). So of course we had to have one day where we got it wrong.
We had heard the local buses were a bit tricky, to say the least. The girl in the apartment next to me is a Canadian teaching English down here, and she hung up a supposed bus schedule. The schedule makes no sense to me, and seems to make no sense to the Canadian girl, either. The schedule lists "Brasil" and "Trinidad" and she told me never to take the "Brasil" bus, but there were only one set of times, so I asked how you know when the bus is coming that's going in the right direction, and she didn't really have an answer for that. So, Sarah and I figured we'd take our chances. We did manage to get on the right bus that goes by my apartment, and we got off in Ciudad Colon. And we meant to hop on a bus that would take us to San Jose, but we got on it going the wrong direction. We thought it was a little odd when it started climbing higher into the mountainside, instead of descending to San Jose, which is in a valley. But we stayed optimistic. Perhaps it just goes in a circle, we thought, and it would descend down the other side of the mountain and go into San Jose. Turns out, not so much. We stayed on the bus for a full hour as we passed tiny little villages on the hillside, until finally everyone got off the bus, and it did a U-turn in what was evidentially it's finally destination.
I went to the bus driver and asked "San Jose?" and he laughed and shook his head. Then he said a whole lot of things that I didn't understand and pointed, and I was very confused, so I said "otro autobus?" (meaning other bus?) and he said "no, aqui." So I said OK and went back to my seat. The bus driver went back the way we came, and, lo and behold, in another hour we were back where we started in Ciudad Colon, but this time we were one block over, which is where we were supposed to pick up the bus. Sure enough, we stayed on the bus, and it went to San Jose.
Now I know.
We hopped off a little before San Jose to check out the Multiplaza, which is a shopping mall that looks a lot like it does in the States (a huge change from the mountainsides and dirt roads I was used to). I was ecstatic to find a Papa Johns, Subway, Quiznos, and Taco Bell in the food court. I know where I'll be going when I'm feeling home sick. :) There's also a huge supermarket that carries a lot of the same groceries I could find in the States.
There's also a movie theater there, and Sarah and I discovered that several of the American-made movies are shown in English with Spanish subtitles at the bottom, so we ended up seeing No Reservations (the new Catherine Zeta-Jones movie). Move tickets = $4. Medium popcorn and soda = $3. Awesome.
Aug. 17
This brings us to today. Sarah left this morning, and this is the first chance I've had to blog and upload photos. My other plans for the day involve doing laundry and setting up my apartment. Very exciting stuff, naturally.
I promise my next blogs won't be so long! I'll probably be writing on here pretty frequently, so check back anytime if you're curious what I'm up to! :) My landlord said he'll drive me around tomorrow so I can get a feel for where everything is. I'll let you know how that goes!
Aug. 9
Arrived in Costa Rica! Our cab got a little lost getting to my apartment, probably because addresses don't really exist in Costa Rica. I don't even know if the street I live on has a name. Instead, I tell the taxi the general neighborhood and then say "cien metros sur de la gruta," which means, "100 meters south of the grotto," which is a statue of the Mother Mary randomly in someone's yard. Pretty much all directions are like this, although most tell you where they are in relation to the town's church or supermarket. Although downtown San Jose does have street names (translated to Street 1, Street 2, Avenue 1, Avenue 2, etc.).
Sarah and I took it easy our first day. We ate dinner at a nearby hotel that has a restaurant in it, and the food was excellent. I had my first taste of Imperial Light -- Imperial is the beer of Costa Rica. To be honest, it's not that great, but I'm used to drinking Bud Light, so it's a pretty fair trade.
Aug. 10
Woken by roosters. Seriously. At 4:30 a.m. I live up on a hill, which is great for the view and the cool breeze, but the roosters are no picnic, and I nearly go into cardiac arrest every time I walk up the hill from the bus stop. There's also about a billion stray dogs and cats in Costa Rica, and they apparently like to howl loudly in the middle of the night.
Anyway, Sarah and I caught a bus at 6:30 a.m. (!) to Monteverde, which is a cloud forest. A cloud forest is more or less a rain forest, but there are really low-level clouds that sweep in and out of it. It's only about 100 miles from San Jose to Monteverde, but the bus ride took us about five hours. Granted, we made a lot of quick stops on the way and one 15-minute rest stop, but the bulk of the time was lost to rocky, dirt roads. Someone needs to introduce Costa Rica to pavement.
We arrived in Santa Elena (a small town outside the forest preserve) and hopped on a yellow school bus to take us to the reserve. Overall, it wasn't supremely impressive. It looked a little like most forests I've been in, except there was more moss and greenery over EVERYTHING, and at one point it started pouring rain, and then we really felt like we were in a rain forest. :)We stayed in a hostel for $10 a night per person, where a 12-year-old boy (with surprisingly good English) took our reservation and showed us to our room. It wasn't a bad room -- we had our own bathroom and, better yet, hot water, which is hard to come by in Costa Rican hostels.
Aug. 11 -- "Coolest day ever"
Today was the day we did the zip line canopy tour, and it was SOOOOOOO awesome. The same 12-year-old boy who checked us into our room advised us on which canopy tour to do. He suggested Extremo -- which happens to be the highest and longest zip lines of any tour company. After looking at the brochure, which boasts 14 zip lines, some as long as 2,000 feet and as high as 490 feet, we started to wonder whether we shouldn't have put our trust in someone who wasn't so ... well .... 12.
But we didn't plunge to our deaths, so it all worked out. You start out on some smaller and shorter zip lines, and then we got to the third zip line, and you literally could not see the end of it. We were standing at the top of one hill in the mountains, and the end of the line was attached to the top of another hill, and you had to zip line over a valley, hundreds of feet below. And to top it off, a cloud had just rolled through (remember this is a cloud forest), so when Sarah went on the zip line, she literally disappeared into the cloud. I just about peed my pants. We went back and forth over this valley four times, and we also repelled 90 feet and did a this "tarzan swing" thing, which is incredibly scary. Going over the valleys I switched between thinking "this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" and "Oh my God, I'm going to die." Here's a pic of me coming through a cloud after crossing a valley (left) and a picture of the valley, where you can barely see the zip line at the top (right) :
After our three-hour tour zipping through the cloud forest, we went back to town and booked a jeep-boat-jeep ride to go to La Fortuna, which is a nearby town that is home to one of Costa Rica's most active volcanos (Volcan Arenal). A large lake lies between the Monteverde and La Fortuna, and if you took a bus around the lake, it takes about nine hours. We opted, instead, for the jeep-boat-jeep route, which is about 2.5 hours total. We took a minivan through the rockiest road you could possibly imagine -- I NEVER get motion sickness, but I started feeling really queasy after about a half hour. Then we hopped onto a boat (see below -- notice volcano in background):
We went to a Chinese restaurant with some backpackers we met in Monteverde. And we stayed in another $10 hostel with a private bathroom and hot water, and this one also had a kitchenette and fan. It was pretty nice, and we had a view of the volcano from our window.
Aug. 12
This was our day of rest. Sarah and I headed to the hot springs in La Fortuna, which have 16 different pools ranging in temperatures from 98 to something like 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I only stuck my toe in the hottest spring, and I'm pretty sure it would give you third-degree burns if you stayed in it for more than a minute. But the "cooler" pools were wonderful, and you had a great view of the volcano the whole time. Plus there are three different swim-up bars in the pools. Sarah and I got there when they opened at 10 a.m., and we stayed till around 7:00 p.m. I'd show you the photo of our pruney feet and hands that we took, except it's really gross, so I'll spare you. We were told you can usually see hot lava running down the side of the volcano at night, but all we saw was a steady stream of smoke coming out the top of it.
Aug. 13
We caught a noon bus back to San Jose the next day, and that took up most of the day. We somehow managed to find the bus we needed to take back to Ciudad Colon that night (the town near where I live) and then took a $2 cab from there. Another early night to bed and early wakeup the next morning...
Aug. 14
We had to get up for another 6 a.m. bus. Those who know me know this is quite an accomplishment for me to actually wake up for this. This time we heade
d south to Manuel Antonio park on the Southern Pacific Coast. This is a rain forest that borders white sand beaches. And the best part -- we saw monkeys in the trees! We also saw about a dozen lizards like the one on the right here (I think they were iguanas). We hiked around for a little while, and went in the water for a bit, but then it started raining (of course, being the rainy season, it's rained every day we've been here. But it's also been sunny every day, too). So we headed back to the nearby town Quepos and checked into a nice little hostel with the cutest old man owner. He didn't speak a word of English, yet he still managed to give us a 10-minute lecture on how we should get copies of our passports and be careful not to get our bags stolen and tell us which restaurants are good. He was really good at communicating with hand gestures and things. We hung out in Quepos that night, which has a lot of fun bars, and we even managed to find nachos and potato skins. mmm.Aug. 15
We spent the day on the beach right outside Manuel Antonio Park, and we learned a very important lesson: when you're 10 degrees from the Equator, a bottle of SPF 30 doesn't do a whole lot. We both got burned, even though we used up most of the bottle. Some more pics of the park and the beach:
We took the bus back to San Jose the same day.
Aug. 16
This day shall be known as the day the bus won. We'd been singing our praises the whole trip about how we'd been great about catching all our buses and finding the bus stops (which is not easy). So of course we had to have one day where we got it wrong.
We had heard the local buses were a bit tricky, to say the least. The girl in the apartment next to me is a Canadian teaching English down here, and she hung up a supposed bus schedule. The schedule makes no sense to me, and seems to make no sense to the Canadian girl, either. The schedule lists "Brasil" and "Trinidad" and she told me never to take the "Brasil" bus, but there were only one set of times, so I asked how you know when the bus is coming that's going in the right direction, and she didn't really have an answer for that. So, Sarah and I figured we'd take our chances. We did manage to get on the right bus that goes by my apartment, and we got off in Ciudad Colon. And we meant to hop on a bus that would take us to San Jose, but we got on it going the wrong direction. We thought it was a little odd when it started climbing higher into the mountainside, instead of descending to San Jose, which is in a valley. But we stayed optimistic. Perhaps it just goes in a circle, we thought, and it would descend down the other side of the mountain and go into San Jose. Turns out, not so much. We stayed on the bus for a full hour as we passed tiny little villages on the hillside, until finally everyone got off the bus, and it did a U-turn in what was evidentially it's finally destination.
I went to the bus driver and asked "San Jose?" and he laughed and shook his head. Then he said a whole lot of things that I didn't understand and pointed, and I was very confused, so I said "otro autobus?" (meaning other bus?) and he said "no, aqui." So I said OK and went back to my seat. The bus driver went back the way we came, and, lo and behold, in another hour we were back where we started in Ciudad Colon, but this time we were one block over, which is where we were supposed to pick up the bus. Sure enough, we stayed on the bus, and it went to San Jose.
Now I know.
We hopped off a little before San Jose to check out the Multiplaza, which is a shopping mall that looks a lot like it does in the States (a huge change from the mountainsides and dirt roads I was used to). I was ecstatic to find a Papa Johns, Subway, Quiznos, and Taco Bell in the food court. I know where I'll be going when I'm feeling home sick. :) There's also a huge supermarket that carries a lot of the same groceries I could find in the States.
There's also a movie theater there, and Sarah and I discovered that several of the American-made movies are shown in English with Spanish subtitles at the bottom, so we ended up seeing No Reservations (the new Catherine Zeta-Jones movie). Move tickets = $4. Medium popcorn and soda = $3. Awesome.
Aug. 17
This brings us to today. Sarah left this morning, and this is the first chance I've had to blog and upload photos. My other plans for the day involve doing laundry and setting up my apartment. Very exciting stuff, naturally.
I promise my next blogs won't be so long! I'll probably be writing on here pretty frequently, so check back anytime if you're curious what I'm up to! :) My landlord said he'll drive me around tomorrow so I can get a feel for where everything is. I'll let you know how that goes!
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