First Real Costa Rican Weekend
Today we as a group visited Volcán Arenal, a volcano about 3 hours from our hotel here in San Pedro. It was a little expensive just because we had to all take a coach bus to and from the hotel, and we got lunch, dinner, breakfast buffet style at the hotel, and we booked it through a tour company because we were going to all be going. But I personally think it was definitely worth it for the first big trip to take. Because it was so easy, we just had to get to the bus at 6am (which kinda sucked) and meet at the front desk at the right times for our events, which I did kind of skimp on because I was so excited to take a relaxing weekend (and I’m cheap) and I am so glad that I did.
In the morning I signed up for the hanging bridges tour (pics to come), which was so much fun. There were 8 of us, but we kind of split up into 2 groups of 4, which was really nice because the 4 of us in our group were all fine with the pace we were going. We took a bunch of pictures of the bridges, the wildlife and the views; we took our time and just had a relaxing walk, until we came to the waterfalls. We stopped at the first waterfall for like 15-20 minutes and again took a bunch of cool pictures and enjoyed the view, and then spent like 20-30 minutes at the second waterfall because we decided to take our shoes off and wade in the water, at least us girls did. And it was so much fun. And it was really refreshing because it was a very hot and humid day and the cold water was so nice. We almost waded under the waterfall, but the rain looked like it was about to hit us and the sun was being covered, and we didn’t want to freeze for the second half of our walk. Soon thereafter we realized that we were half way through in distance, and we only had 30 minutes left to get back to catch our ride back to the hotel (and it had taken us 2:15 to get to that point). So we started running, there is a nice video of that, if it ever surfaces, because I wasn’t the one who took the photo. And we had to run for like 4 minutes straight uphill. That’s when we took our first break :P. Then we walked to the more or less top of that particular hill, and started running from there again, and surprisingly, none of us fell, even though we were running up and down mini dips and hills, and through mini streams (like as in the trail was the stream, not like it crossed the path). We got back like 10 minutes after we were supposed to get back, but it didn’t really matter because the ziplining group still hadn’t gotten back and the bus goes on their schedule, and not ours because we didn’t have an official tour guide, we guided ourselves (hence why it took so long for us to hike…) Moral of the story, we ran like 1.5 miles up and down a mountain for no reason, if we just hadn’t taken any more photos (which we didn’t anyways because we were running, well maybe like 1 or 4), we would have made it to the end no problem, we even had enough time to take a leisurely stroll through the butterfly garden and cool down a little before entering the hot as balls bus-thing back to the hotel. And we got out of there at the perfect time, because like right in the middle of the drive back to the hotel it started raining (like it does pretty much every day at like 1 or 2).
Also hadn’t eaten since like 8am, and we had just hiked in the Costa Rican humidity, I was so tired and hungry, and so happy for the delicious buffet they had for us. And right after lunch, it was time for an epic hike, that I was so not prepared for. We went off on our hike thinking it would just be a short little trail around the hotel, oh were we wrong.
So the trail started pretty smoothly, pretty straight and flat, with these weird like cement things that were supposed to provide traction, which I am sure they did when they were new, but they were like all mossy n shit, and well kind of slippery. And so dangerous, especially because we were like at the edge of the cliff… then we got to this really sketchy slim part, and we had to take it slowly, but no one fell, I might have twisted my ankle a tince, but it was no big deal. Finally, the downed tree, and this takes a lot of explanation, and you might not get it but, bear with me. So the path kind of zigzagged down this steep cliff thing. So we got over the tree once up near the base where it was mainly only trunk and a few vines, jumped off of it onto a super skinny branch and it cracked and scared the crap out of my and I scraped my ankle, but all and all not bad. Then Cori made it over, then Mariel got on it and I decided that maybe I should be smart and check the rest of the trail to see if we could get down it farther before we made her climb over it, and it looked like we couldn’t because the tree crossed the tree two more times (here is where the zigzag thing comes in, so we crossed once, did a little U-turn thing, but still decline, and then we got blocked again by the tree, and beyond the tree the path U-turned again and was cut off by the tree again). So, we could see the trail, down a very steep mudslide type-thingy, and were contemplating going back, but then we kind of were just like screw it, there are enough trees to hold onto, because our footing was going to suck because it was soft mud that gave way real easily and we would have slipped down had we not had hand holds. This is when I almost killed Cori because I was slipping and tried to grab a rock that I thought was much deeper in the group, turned out it was just lying on the surface, and I set it lose and it fell like right in front of her as she was moving out of the way so that she wouldn’t get hit by a rock we might dredge up… but it missed, so all is good. So we all had to like buttslide down this thing and grab our trees with care, and then kind of like hope for the best at the end and just slide to the solid ground and hope to land without rolling farther :P (it’s cool because I’m alive to write this :P). So that was the hardest part, but at the same time we didn’t really know how to get to this waterfall we could hear, or how to get back to the hotel, because we clearly couldn’t make it back up that path. So we just started following the waterfall and finally made it, by the time we got there we were so sweaty, tired and dirty that finding the water and the waterfall was like the greatest thing ever! And naturally we had hiked in our bathing suits so we went swimming and took some pictures at the waterfall, it was so much more beautiful and satisfying because it was such a journey just to get there :). But then my camera died, so I got one pick of me and that was it, but it’s cool because you can’t exactly take a picture of the emotions that come with a landscape, and that really was the best part. We felt like we had finally found the “real” Costa Rica, the “oh, we just went for a hike and found a waterfall” Costa Rica. So we swam around for a bit, enjoyed the views, enjoyed the water and the falls and the rapids. It was awesome
Anyways, we had found a trail back up on the way down, it was the horse trail from the hotel to the river, so it was an easy, though still tiring because it was steep, hike back up to the hotel. At that point it was like 5pm and I was sooo tired I like almost passed out when I got back to my hotel. We went to the hotel bar and played so pool for an hour or so, and dinner wasn’t until like 8:30 so we just sat around trying to stay awake until dinner. Basically as soon as dinner was over I went back to my room and passed out.
This morning I opted out of doing an activity and got my tan on! It was awesome! Now imma be so tan when I get back to the States! :P But the bus ride sucked because now my back hurts like nobody’s business and I am in so much pain! So tomorrow to the gym to try to exercise my back out of pain… the ride back was so scary as well because we were in this big ass bus, and going around these sharp turns that ended in cliffs, and I happened to be awake the whole time watching out the window… yay!
Happy to be back, but not happy about the fact that my back is entirely erupting in pain, hopefully it feels better soon :/
Missing everyone!
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