Home sweet home??
Sorry, I've been home for a few days, but have not had a chance to get online much. I finally uploaded a bunch of pics, tried to weed through the 500-plus that I have (I took a picture of every single bird and flower, seriously) This link should work: KodakGallery
So here's a quick synopsis of our trip.
Day 1: arrive in SanJose, very sleepy but excited to get our "adventures" started. We stayed just north of the city in the little town, San Rafel, in a little "Villa" it was so cute and comfortable, not at all what I was expecting. While Ay's dad (note: I never call Ayesha "Ay" it's just easier to type.) was trying to work with the manager to figure out our internet situation (who files their income taxes the day before they go on a 20 day vacation??) her mom, her and I went exploring. We found a cute little church and lots of shops. After making lots of comotion at the local grocery store (they said they took dollars, but then didn't know what to do with them) we headed back to the villa and met Jim at the cuban resturant/bar on the corrner (Note: Ayesha's parents eat a lot, our whole trip seemed to revolve arround the next meal, and the next time Jim could smoke his pipe - somehow I actually lost weight on the trip) Ay and I ate something or other while the 'rents drank, I watched the bar tender make the weirdest drink, tomatoe juice and vodka (I think) and a raw egg yolk, disgusting - no one in our party had one. After Ay and I were finished we headed back into town so The 'Rents coud got some dinner (still not sure why they didn't eat at the Cuban place?) I was exhausted by this point and just wanted to sleep, we returnt o the villa, Ay and I are relaxing, getting ready for bed and Olivia (mom) come rushing out of her room, "where's my purse, has anyone seen my purse? It has all the passports in it" (well not mine, I don't turn over all my rights) So we tore the house apart with no luck, the evening rains have come and are pounding down, but Ay and I slip on our flip flops and jog down to the resturant (#2) hoping it is still open and they foudn it. What luck, when our sweet waiter (note: CostaRica's hospitality industry is great, everyone is polite and good looking, and so nice, I was very impressed, and Ay fell in love with all of them.) saw us he went right back into the back and produced the lost item.
Day 2: (don't worry, I'm going to make these shorter) drive all day, reach our next destination, the rainforest/jungle of LaFortuna by mid afternoon, it is so green, birds flying arround, singing everywhere, our "bungalow" is on the river and the lodge is on the other side, you have to walk along a little dirt path, lined with bright orange, red and yellow flowers to a suspension bridge taking you to the other side. It seems we are the only people at the ranch, we try to arrange a horeback ride with the receptionist, but Ithink we arranged an 8 hour tour of something, instead of a horseback rade at 8am. Hmm. Ay and I entertain ourselves by playing ping-pong and comment how lucky we are there are no other guests to be hit by our haphazared shots.
Day3: SPen the morning shooting birds and flowers and very patiently trying to get pictures of hummingbirds and butterflies, then we meet our cowboy for our horseback ride, he's a quite sullen fellow who doesn't speak english, so we just follow along, we go through feilds, cross rivers, (one was so high I was wet to my ankles!) and slowly make our way through the jungle, filled with bannana plants, and huge bright blue butterflies ( no pictuers of those, virtually impossible when on the back of a bumpy horse) I hear the howler monkeys for the first time, they are really errie sounding, can't really descibe howe they sound, except that you feel like you are in a horro movie (Or Lost) After our horseback ride we went on a tour of arenal volocano, the most active volcano in the world, while we were hiking arround it it "rumbled" at least 5 times, and you can see the boulders tumbling down the side. (check out the pics) we got to the closest safe place (the lava flow line of 1992) and had great views of the volcano and the lake below, it was jsut getting to be dusk and very pretty, afterwards our whole group went to a hot spring to relax and get dinner.
Day4: Dr ive to the beach, long, long drive, the roads in Costa Rica are the worst, incredible pot holed, and the streets have no names (where the streets have no names...) The 'Rents had directions form someone that went something like this; drive south until you get to the church, turn left, turn right at the large soccer field, go three blocks... ok, there's the church, does that look like a "large" soccer feild? does that alleyway make it a block? You can see how is goes. Eventually we made it to Coco Beach, Ay and I practiaclly ran from the car to the room, to the beach. it was sunday afternoon so the beach was quite busy with local Ticos enjoying their weekend, and bothering us, after about 5 meters we were ready to go back to our room and not come out. But we wlaked all the way to the other end where my guide book told us "if you are adventureous enough to walk arround the rocky crag you will find a quiet, secluded, white sandy beach..." Coco Beach is the color of it's name. Ay is skeptical about trying to venture over the rocks, while the tide is comming in, basically we are waking along the bottom of a bluff, with surff crashing onto us every few minuites, my sturdy Chacos hold up fine, but Ay's flip flops are not made for these sorts of "adventures" (on day 6 Ay states, I'm not brining flip-flops on a vacation with you again.) We pass a good number of people returning from the "secluded" beach and finally round the corrner to find a yes, very small, normal colored sandy beach, littered with all the weekends trash and debris, with teenage Tico boys jumping off the bluff above us. We instanly turn arround mand make our way, slowly back. After dinner (at the fancy spa/resort - not worth it for Cocco beach) Ay and I head into town for some entertainment (we saw some surfers comming in during the afternoon and are hoping to find them) We pass the Lizard Lounge, which seems to be full of lizardy guy types and keep going to a small bar, El Bohio by the beach, it's a dive of all dives, with a spinldy little waitress and wobbly stools, we are soon joined by a smooth private tour guide who trys to get us to hire him, luckily while he is off doing something else, another gentleman asks us if he and his friend can buy us a drink, I think his friend is pretty cute (Ay was trying to figure out if they were gay or 'just European' earlier) they are very nice, after alot of half-assed answers, and my proding we figure out that they are crew mates aborad a private yacht (which we noticed in the bay earlier, whole scrambling over slipery rocks, who I stated we needed to meet.), let me clarify, a very large, (200 ft) very expensive ($50 million) private yacht, owned by "Mr.X" an american whose identity they can't reveal. Mr. X is not on board, but has sent Helios;the yacht, check out this link - Helios; on a round the world tour, they are 5 months out, with a total of 26 months. Mr. X and his guests will fly to the ports they want to visit, (coco beach not being one of them) So we spend the night trying to figure out who Mr X is and asking lots of questiosn about their lives on the boat. Oh sorry, Erik is the old Sweede, and Grant is the cutie Aulstralian, they are the enginerees of the boat. Grant is on watch the next night, but Erik tells us he'll come back ashore to hang out with us.
Day5: We rent snorkeling gear and head to another beach, Ocatal, to play, we have a good time in the morning, neither of us are very good at it, and somehow, once, again end up trapsing across slippery rocks (this time in flippers) in seach of the guidebooks recommended snorkeling spot, only to rtealize when we get there, there is no real way to get in the water, other than hurling yourself in, and once in, we can't get out unless we swim arround the rock we just climbed over, back to shore, since neither of us are good swimmers we decide the best is just to wade in from the shore. In the afternoon we try goign again, but the surf is rough and we get knoced arround, and I get knocked into a JellyFish or two, so we call it quits. After another exciting dinner, we head back to El Bohio, our sailors are not there, but some entertaining Ticos and two tourist grous are, all doing Karoke. I don't know what got into me, but we sang, twice, and they loved us, it was halarious, we had a great time, met two ther local resturant/bar owners and some dive instructors as well as the drunk tourists.
Day6: We are both beat form all the hiking, swimming and partying we have been doing, so we are lazy, hanging out byt he pool, just walking on the beach, exploring the other end, trying to find the ever elusive Howler monkeys we hear and every local has told us "I see them at the mango tree by the post office, or Ed resturant, or the little bridge every day at 8am, 2pm, 4pm etc" We have our best and only notable dinner this night, at some Peruvian resturant, it was excellent, yum. Even though we are exhausted, we go out, we promised the divers to sing wiht them again, and want some pictures with some of the locals we like, (although we didn't get any) We do run into our sailors, and the rest of their crew, all foreign, all good looking, the girls were all very nice, and they guys all very flirty, and in an hour we are on their little dingy headed out to Helios, oh it was so pretty, granted they had everything covered up, all the outside furniture strored away, but we toured Mr. X's private quarters, his bath tub is the size of a small swimming pool! and felt like celebrities ourselves, they heated up the jacuzzi on the sun deck, the plasma screen came down, the sky was sull of stars, and at 6am, it was really hard to get back on the dingy and go back to reality. But, the captin Dave (my favorite, although he didn't stay up with us, understandable - he has to drive the boat) invited us back any time (when Mr X and his guests are not aboard), so Ayesha and I may just become Yacht groupies! Next stop Fiji! We also promised Erik we will visit his house in Spain next summer.
Day 7: after no sleep at all we packed up and left the beach for antoher long day in the car. Luckily at lunchtime we stopped in a biological preserve and finally found some monkeys! They were white-faced monkeys, not the howlers, but they sure were cute! then drive, drive drive back to San Jose, to sleep for the night. then it was home.
Sigh. It was definatley one of my favorite vacations, very laid back, but still full of adventure, can't wait to leave again. And I now have a back up job for whenever nursing gets to be too much, or I turn 30 and hate my life, off to a private yacht for me!
So here's a quick synopsis of our trip.
Day 1: arrive in SanJose, very sleepy but excited to get our "adventures" started. We stayed just north of the city in the little town, San Rafel, in a little "Villa" it was so cute and comfortable, not at all what I was expecting. While Ay's dad (note: I never call Ayesha "Ay" it's just easier to type.) was trying to work with the manager to figure out our internet situation (who files their income taxes the day before they go on a 20 day vacation??) her mom, her and I went exploring. We found a cute little church and lots of shops. After making lots of comotion at the local grocery store (they said they took dollars, but then didn't know what to do with them) we headed back to the villa and met Jim at the cuban resturant/bar on the corrner (Note: Ayesha's parents eat a lot, our whole trip seemed to revolve arround the next meal, and the next time Jim could smoke his pipe - somehow I actually lost weight on the trip) Ay and I ate something or other while the 'rents drank, I watched the bar tender make the weirdest drink, tomatoe juice and vodka (I think) and a raw egg yolk, disgusting - no one in our party had one. After Ay and I were finished we headed back into town so The 'Rents coud got some dinner (still not sure why they didn't eat at the Cuban place?) I was exhausted by this point and just wanted to sleep, we returnt o the villa, Ay and I are relaxing, getting ready for bed and Olivia (mom) come rushing out of her room, "where's my purse, has anyone seen my purse? It has all the passports in it" (well not mine, I don't turn over all my rights) So we tore the house apart with no luck, the evening rains have come and are pounding down, but Ay and I slip on our flip flops and jog down to the resturant (#2) hoping it is still open and they foudn it. What luck, when our sweet waiter (note: CostaRica's hospitality industry is great, everyone is polite and good looking, and so nice, I was very impressed, and Ay fell in love with all of them.) saw us he went right back into the back and produced the lost item.
Day 2: (don't worry, I'm going to make these shorter) drive all day, reach our next destination, the rainforest/jungle of LaFortuna by mid afternoon, it is so green, birds flying arround, singing everywhere, our "bungalow" is on the river and the lodge is on the other side, you have to walk along a little dirt path, lined with bright orange, red and yellow flowers to a suspension bridge taking you to the other side. It seems we are the only people at the ranch, we try to arrange a horeback ride with the receptionist, but Ithink we arranged an 8 hour tour of something, instead of a horseback rade at 8am. Hmm. Ay and I entertain ourselves by playing ping-pong and comment how lucky we are there are no other guests to be hit by our haphazared shots.
Day3: SPen the morning shooting birds and flowers and very patiently trying to get pictures of hummingbirds and butterflies, then we meet our cowboy for our horseback ride, he's a quite sullen fellow who doesn't speak english, so we just follow along, we go through feilds, cross rivers, (one was so high I was wet to my ankles!) and slowly make our way through the jungle, filled with bannana plants, and huge bright blue butterflies ( no pictuers of those, virtually impossible when on the back of a bumpy horse) I hear the howler monkeys for the first time, they are really errie sounding, can't really descibe howe they sound, except that you feel like you are in a horro movie (Or Lost) After our horseback ride we went on a tour of arenal volocano, the most active volcano in the world, while we were hiking arround it it "rumbled" at least 5 times, and you can see the boulders tumbling down the side. (check out the pics) we got to the closest safe place (the lava flow line of 1992) and had great views of the volcano and the lake below, it was jsut getting to be dusk and very pretty, afterwards our whole group went to a hot spring to relax and get dinner.
Day4: Dr ive to the beach, long, long drive, the roads in Costa Rica are the worst, incredible pot holed, and the streets have no names (where the streets have no names...) The 'Rents had directions form someone that went something like this; drive south until you get to the church, turn left, turn right at the large soccer field, go three blocks... ok, there's the church, does that look like a "large" soccer feild? does that alleyway make it a block? You can see how is goes. Eventually we made it to Coco Beach, Ay and I practiaclly ran from the car to the room, to the beach. it was sunday afternoon so the beach was quite busy with local Ticos enjoying their weekend, and bothering us, after about 5 meters we were ready to go back to our room and not come out. But we wlaked all the way to the other end where my guide book told us "if you are adventureous enough to walk arround the rocky crag you will find a quiet, secluded, white sandy beach..." Coco Beach is the color of it's name. Ay is skeptical about trying to venture over the rocks, while the tide is comming in, basically we are waking along the bottom of a bluff, with surff crashing onto us every few minuites, my sturdy Chacos hold up fine, but Ay's flip flops are not made for these sorts of "adventures" (on day 6 Ay states, I'm not brining flip-flops on a vacation with you again.) We pass a good number of people returning from the "secluded" beach and finally round the corrner to find a yes, very small, normal colored sandy beach, littered with all the weekends trash and debris, with teenage Tico boys jumping off the bluff above us. We instanly turn arround mand make our way, slowly back. After dinner (at the fancy spa/resort - not worth it for Cocco beach) Ay and I head into town for some entertainment (we saw some surfers comming in during the afternoon and are hoping to find them) We pass the Lizard Lounge, which seems to be full of lizardy guy types and keep going to a small bar, El Bohio by the beach, it's a dive of all dives, with a spinldy little waitress and wobbly stools, we are soon joined by a smooth private tour guide who trys to get us to hire him, luckily while he is off doing something else, another gentleman asks us if he and his friend can buy us a drink, I think his friend is pretty cute (Ay was trying to figure out if they were gay or 'just European' earlier) they are very nice, after alot of half-assed answers, and my proding we figure out that they are crew mates aborad a private yacht (which we noticed in the bay earlier, whole scrambling over slipery rocks, who I stated we needed to meet.), let me clarify, a very large, (200 ft) very expensive ($50 million) private yacht, owned by "Mr.X" an american whose identity they can't reveal. Mr. X is not on board, but has sent Helios;the yacht, check out this link - Helios; on a round the world tour, they are 5 months out, with a total of 26 months. Mr. X and his guests will fly to the ports they want to visit, (coco beach not being one of them) So we spend the night trying to figure out who Mr X is and asking lots of questiosn about their lives on the boat. Oh sorry, Erik is the old Sweede, and Grant is the cutie Aulstralian, they are the enginerees of the boat. Grant is on watch the next night, but Erik tells us he'll come back ashore to hang out with us.
Day5: We rent snorkeling gear and head to another beach, Ocatal, to play, we have a good time in the morning, neither of us are very good at it, and somehow, once, again end up trapsing across slippery rocks (this time in flippers) in seach of the guidebooks recommended snorkeling spot, only to rtealize when we get there, there is no real way to get in the water, other than hurling yourself in, and once in, we can't get out unless we swim arround the rock we just climbed over, back to shore, since neither of us are good swimmers we decide the best is just to wade in from the shore. In the afternoon we try goign again, but the surf is rough and we get knoced arround, and I get knocked into a JellyFish or two, so we call it quits. After another exciting dinner, we head back to El Bohio, our sailors are not there, but some entertaining Ticos and two tourist grous are, all doing Karoke. I don't know what got into me, but we sang, twice, and they loved us, it was halarious, we had a great time, met two ther local resturant/bar owners and some dive instructors as well as the drunk tourists.
Day6: We are both beat form all the hiking, swimming and partying we have been doing, so we are lazy, hanging out byt he pool, just walking on the beach, exploring the other end, trying to find the ever elusive Howler monkeys we hear and every local has told us "I see them at the mango tree by the post office, or Ed resturant, or the little bridge every day at 8am, 2pm, 4pm etc" We have our best and only notable dinner this night, at some Peruvian resturant, it was excellent, yum. Even though we are exhausted, we go out, we promised the divers to sing wiht them again, and want some pictures with some of the locals we like, (although we didn't get any) We do run into our sailors, and the rest of their crew, all foreign, all good looking, the girls were all very nice, and they guys all very flirty, and in an hour we are on their little dingy headed out to Helios, oh it was so pretty, granted they had everything covered up, all the outside furniture strored away, but we toured Mr. X's private quarters, his bath tub is the size of a small swimming pool! and felt like celebrities ourselves, they heated up the jacuzzi on the sun deck, the plasma screen came down, the sky was sull of stars, and at 6am, it was really hard to get back on the dingy and go back to reality. But, the captin Dave (my favorite, although he didn't stay up with us, understandable - he has to drive the boat) invited us back any time (when Mr X and his guests are not aboard), so Ayesha and I may just become Yacht groupies! Next stop Fiji! We also promised Erik we will visit his house in Spain next summer.
Day 7: after no sleep at all we packed up and left the beach for antoher long day in the car. Luckily at lunchtime we stopped in a biological preserve and finally found some monkeys! They were white-faced monkeys, not the howlers, but they sure were cute! then drive, drive drive back to San Jose, to sleep for the night. then it was home.
Sigh. It was definatley one of my favorite vacations, very laid back, but still full of adventure, can't wait to leave again. And I now have a back up job for whenever nursing gets to be too much, or I turn 30 and hate my life, off to a private yacht for me!
posted by kiki @ 10:20 PM
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