Please keep in mind that although this is written from an "everyone" perspective, it was originally from Katie's journal so the meals were vegetarian for 4 of us and carne for the other 5.
Pictionary at Jed's house was hysterical. As usual, there were wins that didn't seem possible and losses that torqued out the one drawing but overall it was a very fun way to start the trip.
To hotel, room for boys shared with HUGE Senior in High School (later known as Carl) with other group from New York. Girls in their group hover over him like white on rice. We worried that Tyne would be sharing a bed with said teen-giant but another roll- away bed was provided. When Kat saw the teen-hunk, her eyes popped open! - (cute) Upon checking on kids, found our boys all reading on or around their bed. Big teen was watching t.v.
On the road to see Poas Volcano. On the way, we stopped at a coffee
The coffee sample was excellent. We saw two Brahma Bulls pulling cart with an older guy walking beside them - took pictures.
Luigi's Hotel made it very clear that any missing towels would result in a $20.00 fee. The music in the restaurant was some of the worst 70's music ever. At first it was humorous but after a while it got to the point of irritating!
After dinner we drove quite a distance to see lava flowing out of Arenal Volcano. The frog sounds were constant and the fireflies were amazing. The stars showed themselves a bit. There was considerable cloud-cover on the volcano so we only saw a little bit of the lava, from the hotel the next day we could see more of the volcano with some steam rising from it. We didn't get any pictures of the lava flow because there just wasn't enough light at night.
Off to kayaking in Lake Arenal; a manmade lake for hydropower - 160 meters deep at deepest point. On the way to the lake, we saw raccoon-like coatimundi on the road; one tourist was out of his vehicle feeding one. They were cute, in their own way.
While hanging out on the other side of the lake, James and Tyne competed by standing in their kayak
while rocking it to make the other fall in.
Both went in numerous times. We all swam for a while
then paddled back across and came back to the hotel for swimming pool time, sunburn continuation, and
general horseplay by Ryan, Tyne, and James.
Most of the rest of us read by the pool and climbed in for a cool-down on occasion.
Back to hotel for shower and dress for cruising town on foot. James found a gift for his mom that we managed to barter on the price; Tyne and James were impressed because Katie acted like she couldn't find more cash in her purse. The woman said, "He can take it for what I already got from him."
Aloe for burns and bed for all. We were supposed to try to see the lava flow again but the clouds were still obscuring the view so Milton opted against it.
We all piled into the bus and Luigi's Hotel staff had Stephanie and Katie Smith discuss a missing towel from the N.Y. teen-girls' room. Stephanie paid the $20.00 fee to get us moving again.
Driving to Monteverde today; long drive. We stayed at a very cool hotel, "Villa Verde." When Stephanie and Katie checked into their room a dog like a Basset/rat-dog combo was gnawing on an undetermined beast carcass in the yard; after which, he came sauntering into their room for a drink from the floor of their shower. They determined that the dog's legs were too short to reach into the toilet, like a normal dog. LOL!
Villa Verde has a policy of charging $20.00 for any non-returned room keys. Off to the canopy zip-lines! Many of us were very grateful that we didn't 'soil' ourselves on the Tarzan swing or the 540-ft-off-the-ground zip line. Truly beautiful, completely terrifying. Awesome! Pura Vida (literal translation is Pure Life, slang version is "cool"). Katie almost chickened out of the Tarzan swing and is very glad that she plucked up the courage to try it. Now, she'd do it again! The guys who worked on the zip lines at the canopy tour were absolute cut-ups, scared the bejeezus out of us leaping out from behind a tree, hiding behind two humongous leaves.
James found his credit card hiding in his shoe! (You gotta watch out for those credit card eating shoes!)
The fireplace in the hotel restaurant allowed the smoke to billow into the building, we found it rather odd but figured that there weren't very many chimney sweeps available in the tropics.
Off to bed, we're all exhausted!
Everyone piled into the bus again and got just around the corner when it was discovered that there was a flat, front, left tire. The girls in our group found it amusing that 8 large men came out of the woodwork, leaping over bushes, rushing to lend a hand. It was as if a consensus was reached, "I hear tools!" The place that has the horses is the same organization that does the zip lines. Cool people. The groups were divided into two groups for the horseback, jungle tour; riders with experience and riders with none. Katie was given a very sweet horse named Omildo (translation: humble). The horses were in auto-drive for most of it, eating when we stopped and fought us to get moving again. The ride was fantastic, strangler figs everywhere, zip lines overhead, plenty of screams from the Tarzan swing. We went through streams, up hills, all around the jungle. Unfortunately, Ryan lost his sunglasses off the top of his head and they got crushed by the tramplings of many horses. Only the one item left behind.
After lunch we left for the Monteverde Cloud Forest - Santa Elena Reserve. We saw a tarantula right off the trail, a bush squirrel or two, birds and lots of jungle. The hike was an easy 1.4 Kilometers.
The next stop was a frog and toad exhibit that was limitedly interesting but we were too tired to get much out of it. Katie, our tour guide, was sweet and really liked frogs! James found a bag of coffee for sale in the gift shop that had the name, address, phone number, and email address on the back for our very own "Montana Coffee Traders" which we found rather amazing.
Milton took us to a local school where we planted trees for a conservation organization. We really expected to dig the holes ourselves but it was pre-done. We thought it was strange and we had been prepared to deal with the digging.
One of the favorite stops of our whole tour was a quaint chocolate shop that was really amazing. The owner was very knowledgeable and filled us in on many details about his chocolate. The cocoa beans were grown on the northeast side of Costa Rica, on the Caribbean side of the country. We bought many chocolate varieties with high hopes of them getting home in solid form.
The sun was setting; it was gigantic and brilliant orange, red, pink. Kat was the only one who brought her camera to the chocolate store so we had her take some pictures.
Back at the hotel we cleaned off our grime and sunscreen in preparation for dinner.
The discussion after dinner was animated. The discoveries that were made were that Tyne has a lipstick fear but hasn't ruled out wearing a skirt in private (huge joke, certainly not for real). Elle has a fear of beanbags and cotton balls. Mostly it's the sound and feeling of pulling cotton balls apart that bugs her. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard, to her.
Stephanie shared her tale of a student in Las Vegas that came into her classroom looking green, stating that he wasn't feeling very good. She spun him around in time for him to create a rainbow shape on the floor with his "technicolor yawn."
Kat and Katie decided that the solitaire game should be named so they picked, "Next Time", because that's what you say every time you lose. Katie also interjected S.F.G. (stupid freaking game!)
Off to bed for journaling and sleeeeep!
We made sure we had everything from our rooms, Katie found her spare sunglasses tucked behind the coffee maker in her room. Everyone turned in their keys so we weren't charged extra. Katie went back to her room to see if she could find her water bottle but it was nowhere to be seen.
Off to Puntarenas. The drive was long but the trip was broken by monkey sightings in the trees right next to the road. HALT BUS! We all got lots of pictures of the Howler Monkeys. Back on the road.
In Puntarenas we dropped off our luggage and went for a stroll on the beach for some "glam" pictures of everyone. Everyone, even those with some reluctance, participated. We saw an eel head, a dead catfish, and jelly fish on the beach.
After lunch we paid $2.00 each for 2 hours of lawn chair time and swam and played in the waves. Afterward, the kids all went into the hotel pool for some boisterous fun. This area of Costa Rica is the warmest, yet. It's muggy and hot. We are thankful to the powers-that-be for the air conditioning in our hotel rooms!
We showered; an experience in itself, here: psychotic water system that would scald you and then shut off for no apparent reason. Weeee!
Puntarenas is something of a shanty, fishing town. Tourism keeps it going but their local industry is fishing. They provide a pretty sizable tuna canning export.
Driving to Manuel Antonio National Park; which Stephanie and Katie dubbed it Manuel Antonio Bandaras National Park just to be silly. On the way there, Milton had us get off the bus to walk across a bridge to meet back up with the bus on the other side. Part of the way across we realized why he would have us do such a thing. In the river below and on the riverbank were some of the biggest crocodiles ever! Milton giggled after throwing rocks at them to make them move a little bit. (He's still a kid at heart).
Back on the bus to go to the park. On the way, there was construction going on that Milton announced would be finished sometime around 2020, jokingly. Under one of the truckes, in the shade was a crewmember in a hammock strung below the truck. He was "chillin' in siestaville!" We arrived at the park and when we got off the air conditioned bus, the heat just about knocked us over; even Milton. We hiked about a mile to see capucine monkeys, deer, racoon, iguanas, lizards, crabs, hermit crabs, and a 3 toed sloth. The ocean here is completely paradise. It's a turquoise blue, 82 degree, divine utopia that was the most amazing water any of us had ever been in. We could have spent days and days there. The water was clean, the beaches were clean, the shade provided by the jungle was delightful. It was a relief to see even the locals dodging the sun and laying around like they were melting; we weren't being complete wimps.
While in the water, a green, "Jesus lizard" (Basiliscus) tried to hitch a ride on Ryan's back. Ryan got out of his way and he continued on swimming to the shore where James tried to help him get to the sand but the waves kept having their way with the lizard. He finally made it to the shore, out of the waves, stood up on his rear legs and ran up the beach like a tiny green man with a long tail. Quite comical! We also saw very small, skinny fish swimming in the ocean with us.
Hiking out was beautiful. There were gigantic vines growing everywhere. The trek back to the bus took us past some street vendors with coconuts for drinking and small vases for sale. We also came across a pair of deer wandering onto the beach.
Carlos had kept the bus very cool and we thanked him wholeheartedly. We all discovered that we had sunburns and were grateful for the reprieve of cool air. KAT WON "Next Time"!!!
We had a long drive back to the hotel that was interrupted part of the way so that we could pile out of the bus to take pictures of an incredible sunset on the ocean. The pictures just don't do it justice but you get the idea.
Time for a psychotic shower experience compounded by a sunburn! ;-) Aloe is a good thing! Gad, those burns hurt! Aloe is not something the locals need to use very often so it seems to be only available for the tourists which is representative in the price of $9.00 per 12 oz. bottle. Yikes!
With all the noisy vehicles outside, and the glass slats for windows that wouldn't close completely, Katie found herself desperately lacking in Spanish expletives!
Stephanie and Katie had a discussion at breakfast that Ryan and Elle were privy to: How do you know when a pineapple is ripe? Stephanie admitted to sniffing their "behinds" for a pineapply scent, while Katie contended that a less embarrassing method is to tug on the innermost leaves and if they're loose or come out, it's ripe: Elle had heard of that method. Katie and Stephanie came to the conclusion that the pineapples that we don't choose cry themselves to sleep at night.
We loaded our bags onto the bus and we're on our way to Sarchi for a shopping day. Our sunburns were glowing in the dark. We drove for around 3 hours. We walked around to find shops and wandered past the "Largest Cart" in the world, according to Guinness Book of World Records.
Milton had us load back into the bus to go to a wood-working shop built in 1923 that runs primarily on water power. All the wood used in the shop originated in Costa Rica and was quite beautiful. The man we spoke with (with Milton's translation help) was the great-great grandson of the man who originally built the shop. The tables and trinkets were expertly put together.
On to San Jose to drop our luggage at Colaye Hotel and walked to get coffee to bring home and snacks for the plane. Kat was ill, terribly swollen tonsils, sore throat and her skin was gray. We made her stay in the hotel to rest. We were worried about her.
This was our last meal with Carlos, our driver. He earned his tip, keeping us safe for our whole trip.
We played a game of "telephone" at the dinner table of which one started, "If you follow where the huskies go, don't you eat the yellow snow." This came back to the last person as, "My booty's too big for just one man." GAD! On the way back to the hotel, the girls from N.Y. decided to seranade us.
Evenings for Stephanie and Katie were a barrel of laughs through the whole trip and they were amazed that they managed to get to sleep at all. One night, Katie laughed so hard she nearly wet the bed! Back at the hotel we showered because the 4 a.m. wake up would come mighty early.
The "fruit and cheese tray" on the plane left much to be desired but it helped fill the void for the 5 1/2 hour flight.
Upon arriving in Phoenix, some of us attempted to go through a revolving door and somehow we stopped the darned thing. We were stuck until they could figure out how to release the door and as soon as we were sure we were going to have to squeeze through the narrow gap, the door started moving and we had to turn around. We felt pretty silly in our fish bowl.
We all made phone calls to family, found Borders bookstore, bought some reading material and parked for a while to do some people watching and reading. We went smoothly through security and parked in a new place to read. Later on in the 8 hour layover, Stephanie, Katie, and Jodi found a brewery right across from where the kids were reading to enjoy a beer.
Walking down the skywalk, there was a major blast of air that Ryan didn't notice hitting Katie. Katie turned around and said, "Watch out." Ryan replied, "What?" just as he walked into it and it took him completely by surprise. Blink blink blink! Our plane was hotter than an oven. One of the stewardesses looked exactly like the Muppet Band's Janice!
