Where’s Becky? ….No, really, where is she?!

Okay, so this post is meant for the 27th, but due to traveling, lack of internet and sleep, it’s late again. So sue me.

So, on the morning of the 27th we woke up at oh-dark-fifteen since we had to be at the airport by 5:30. A few of us realized after we’d gotten there that we’d forgotten to say goodbye to Esterling (I have NO idea if I spelled his name right, but he was awesome!) our driver and coffee-tour translator. :’( But, we were sadly leaving Costa Rica, and some of us are already making plans to come back for spring break next year! Our first flight didn’t really give us much problem (Carlos/Eduardo didn’t even get bomb checked!). It was at Miami where we ran into issues. For some reason our group has had a thing where every time when we have to make sure we have everyone, we say “Where’s Becky?” Only this time, she really wasn’t there! We’re looking around trying to spot her in the Miami customs crowd (by the way, about impossible to spot ANYone in that mass of people unless they’re 7 feet tall wearing neon colors and riding a unicycle!) and having no luck. We decide to continue upstairs to see if she went on without us, but she isn’t to be seen. Rachel and Elia head back to the customs section to try and hunt her down. Meanwhile the rest of us are wondering what they heck happened to her, and saying that we’ve been jinxing her the whole trip. But, a few minutes later the pair come back with her, and she explains that in her customs paper for where she was headed, she’d simply put “Boston,” and apparently that wasn’t specific enough. So she had to call her friend to get the address of where she was going to be staying. Finally, though, everything got straightened out and she was able to catch back up with the rest of us, and except for everyone wanting to go back to Jinetes, the rest of the trip went on fairly smoothly. Right up until after Boston when the last of us were heading back for Unity. We were trying to decide where to eat for supper, and decided on Subway (we did NOT want McDonalds!!). But, Emma didn’t want to stop in town, despite all of us saying that there wouldn’t be any afterwards.  We were right, and ended up just stopping at a service station.

Definitely gonna miss Costa Rica, and everyone there. !Pura Vida!

Leaving Eden via Heaven

05/27/2011

As I looked out of the window of the 757 at the fluffy white cumulus clouds making weird shapes in the heavens I starting reflecting on our trip.

We arrived at the airport at about 5:30am for our departing flight (we all woke up at around 4:30am) and gloomily filed into the crowded check-in area. The cloud of grumpiness that had surrounded the group for the past few days hung particularly low as we walked onto the plane and bid our final farewell to Costa Rica.

It had been a great trip and the other students kept saying: “I don’t what to go home!” “I want to stay here!”  This was very annoying because I had been hearing the same two lines for the past few days.  Yes, Costa Rica was a beautiful place with color, life, and adventure that I do want to go back to someday, but I don’t think that I will miss it to the same degree as my fellow students so outwardly proclaimed.

 I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to stay there forever, because if I or anyone else had stayed, all the things that we thought to be so fascinating would become commonplace, normal, or even boring. When I posed this statement to some of the other students they said “No way, I would never get sick of this place!” This was just a flat out lie. Everyone gets sick of where they live every now and then, even if you really love where you live, hence why people travel. To see something new and to live some were else for a while makes that new place so much more exciting. And boy did we live.

Memories of tampon stealing monkeys, diving Cano island, zip-lining through the jungle, finding poison frogs, playing queen of the log, capturing spiders in your underpants, dancing with the locals, losing
Becky, the flashlight walk, boxers or briefs, making tortillas with the villagers, spotting crocodiles, coco the dog, walking through the jungle in the rain, touring the coffee processing facility, giving sea anemones cough drops, three course dinner at the Pura Vida hotel, first (and only) drink (I only finished half), sandwiches at Cocolitas beach, Suicidal crabs and Drake bay beach, hunting blue/yellow spotted limpets at Jinetes beach, waking up to the sound of scarlet macaws and going to sleep to the sound of the ocean.

These and many more memories were made when we were in Costa Rica and if we are lucky, we will be able to create more memories when we return to the rich coast.

May 26, 2011 – Coffee Tour: Blind version

So today we went on a tour to see how coffee was made with Esterling as our tour guide (Esterling, if you read this and I totally spelled your name wrong, I am so sorry). I believe Rachel also wrote about this tour, but I am going to tell you a different point of view because Ashley was blind for the entire tour.

Last night we got into Alajuela and everyone was pretty exhausted so we pretty much passed out as soon as we got to our rooms at the Pura Vida hotel. Well brilliant me forgot to take out my contacts before actually going to bed and I honestly didn’t even think twice about it….until the next morning. Well morning comes and my eye is a little itchy so I just put in some eye drops and call it good. We get into the van/bus thing driven by our dear friend Esterling and we drive to this little town that I am completely blanking on the name of right now. As the day progresses, my eye feels worse and worse. So bad that I can’t really keep it open for long periods of time because it kept watering and itching and basically just driving me nuts!  So by the end of the tour at the little coffee factory, I decide I just can’t stand it anymore because this contact is making it worse, so I took out the contact and went blind. It felt way better but with that, I really couldn’t see a whole heck of a lot. Everyone was great about helping me around because we all know from previous blog posts that I am not the most graceful of the bunch, just imagine that times about 100 when I don’t have eyes! Everyone helped, even Esterling! It was funny because we were going up some slippery rocks and he said “Give me your five” and he held my hand and guided me around a few times, it was pretty cute. I got left behind a couple of times, but no worries Esterling had my back so did everyone else. Thanks guys! Needless to say, I learned my lesson. DON’T FALL ASLEEP WITH YOUR CONTACTS IN! I guess Geovanny warned me about that one too…oops! Guess I should listen to good advice =)

I can’t believe our time in Costa Rica is almost over =( I am really looking into making plans to come back again, but until then I am going to look back and smile at the sillyness and enjoy the fun that we had. Thank you to all of the wonderful people that we met on the way. You’re amazing and I’m DEFINITELY going to miss you all very very much. Hope to see you soon!

Pura Vida!

Spoon. Momentum. => 200m.

..what does it mean? Well, I wish I could tell you some really funny story to explain it, but, the truth is, I have no idea! And, neither did our guide, Esterling. It was just some random road sign that made NO sense to anyone, and provided us all with much amusement on our van-ride back to the Pura Vida Hotel after a day full of fun tourism-type activities. We started the day off with a long ride through every kind of town, from the low-end, to the malls, and finally the ”country” of Costa Rica. Our first stop was at a coffee factory where we received an awesome tour. Next we headed off to our lunch, which was part of a Rural Tourism program. This program takes you into one of the small towns in Costa Rica. Every town that participates in this type of tourism has  received a grant for protecting some part of land, in this case springs, and then tourists come in and support the program with their business. It’s an ingenious idea, and I feel like it allowed to really experience every-day life in a Costa Rica town. After walking around the reserve (?), we headed to a coffee farm, where we got to make tortillas and have FRESH coffee. It was amazing. Once our tour was over, we all piled-back in to our van. It was a really fun trip back to the hotel, with a few souvenir stops, lots of stories, and even some singing and dancing. At one point, I asked Elia to help me get my ”Kike earrings” in. Future note to the world: It is extremely difficult to put earrings in someone else’s ear in a moving van, going down a mountain in Costa Rica. However, it is also extremely entertaining, and can be successful if you’ve got the right friends ;P After a few hours, we finally arrived back at the Pura Vida hotel, where our final banquet was awaiting us. We hurriedly ran back to our rooms, dressed-up in all our fancy clothes, and then had a phenomenal ”Last Supper.” Now we are all in the process of packing to get-up at 4am and head back to the states. (No one wants to leave!)

All in all, this has been one of the most amazing experiences of my entire life. The people, the stories, the adventures, the food, everything, is going to be engrained into all of us for the rest of our lives.  Today: Costa Rica. Tomorrow: Home…. Spring Break 2012? Costa Rica: Round Two.

PURA VIDA MAE!!!

~Rachel

the good the great and the amazing….

alright so today we spent in a little town in the mountains and it was great…. after having a lesson in how to make tortillas and buying some coffee we made one final stop at a place where the villagers sold the stuff that they had made… they mostly had jewelry but what made it amazing is that it was all made out of Watermelon seeds.. they had bracelets, earrings, all kinds of stuff. there where other materials there to but i was really impressed with the work, after that we made a second stop at the gift shop so some people could get hammocks than off to a Three course meal back at the hotel. it started with a goat cheese and tomato pastry thing with some salad. this made most of us pretty much drool on the table… but once that was finished the cook out did that dish with a sage and lemon Pork tenderloin that i almost would have killed for… i loved it so much i finished other peoples plates off to. the tenderloin was served with WOK fried string beans and some sort of native white sweet potato that i cant pronounce the name to… never mind spell it… finally after that when we were all about to burst, the dessert came out… it was an orange chocolate croissant dish with homemade whipped cream on the side, this dish was delicious and fun. in fact they asked us to name it.. we did, in typical fashion for this trip it was a silly name that happened to work… “Dude… O.C.D”… which stands for Orange Chocolate Dessert… which it was and many pushed through their stomachs “stop button” to eat most of it if not all of it… today was the perfect day to end the trip and this meal was the cherry on top.. Pura Vida, not only a saying in Costa Rica but also a wonderful hotel with great staff and wonderful food..

PURA VIDA everyone and I’ll see some of you when i get back to the states…

THE MEN ACTUALLY CAN DANCE!!!!!! *SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE*

5-24-11

Okay, so this blog post is technically meant for not last night but the night before, but due to lack of sleep and internet, it didn’t happen when it was supposed to have. But, our last night in Jinetes de Osa was a fantastic one that happened to concide with a tico’s birthday, so our last night was basically one EPIC DANCE PARTY! We headed out to the Jungle bar and found about the entire town there (just about all of which were Geovanny’s relatives… Yikes! Seriously, if Geo’s family relocated, there’s be maybe 3 people left.). At first, most of the people were just gathered around the dance floor’s edges, drinking and talking (some of the guys were a little creepy about it). But after everyone had had a few drinks (whole ‘nother ball o’ wax there, trying to figure out what we’d gotten!) and the music picked up, we started moving out to the floor. Emma was a non-stop shimmy machine! Even Kat danced! We were so proud of her!!!  Then some of the local guys asked us to dance, and apparently the locals were rating us on our dance abilities. As Geo put it, some of us passed, some of us…how you say? Failed miserably! XP It was all good fun, though. BUT THE GUYS ACTUALLY DANCED!!! And not the American way of just going out and doing the ‘white man shuffle.’ They were legit dancing: salsa, merengue, spinning and twirling us all over the place! It was pretty flippin’ awesome, though maybe a little dizzying after drinks! We all only had at the most two, though, of course… Victor kept saying he couldn’t dance, but he’s a liar… just about all the guys could dance! At least…all the LOCAL guys. Others… not so much. >_< Geovanny was a really good teacher, and Ivan liked dancing with Elia “because she’s tall!” Kike and Paige seemed to have a pretty good time, lol. The songs that they played lasted FOR-E-VER! They were good for the most part, though. Rachel and Kat left around 11:30 ish, and then Emma and Kelly checked out around 2. The rest of us ended up getting back around 3… What a night! All in all, a really awesome way to end our stay in Drake Bay. We really didn’t want to leave… We’ll miss you guys!!!!! :’(

*PURA VIDA*

Sometimes you just need more limes

Today we said goodbye to Drake Bay, and all the wonderful people who made our trip a blast. When we got to Sierpe, Randy, our tour guide met us at the boat. Randy is an interesting man, very nice but sometimes a bit odd. Emma had planned to go to the crocodile river bridge for lunch and souvenir shopping, but this wasn’t what Randy had in mind. He suggested we go to a “local” joint for lunch and he knew of the perfect shop for us.

The “local” joint we went to for lunch was the location that his tour group uses as home base. They are setting up a hotel and restaurant there! It was interesting to say the least. Before lunch arrived Randy wanted to show Emma the hotel, so that she would know she “has options” other than Bernie’s place. Emma asked Crash and I to come along on the tour because we’re students and our opinion matters. Honestly, I think she just felt a bit weird but that’s my take on it. Anyhow, we get to the bedrooms and there is a double bed and a set of bunks in each room. For a little added flare the double bed had diamond shaped mirrors in the headboard. Crash and I exchanged glances. Randy’s a bit odd.

Overall the people were nice but it wasn’t what we were looking for at all. Bernie’s hotel is an oasis in the middle of an urban jungle. It combines luxury with nature in a way unmatched by any hotel I’ve stayed in.  Why would we ever want to stay anywhere else? 

But I must say thanks to Randy and Gabrielle for taking us to that amazing beach on the way toward Sierpe. It was beautiful!

They are like Pokemon…you got to catch them all

So, we are sadly coming to the end of our adventure (nooooooooooooooooooooooo!), but not without a little more action.  So for our last full day in Drake Bay, Elia, Rachel, Courtney, Emma, and myself decided to take an extra day of diving.  Although it looked the clouds did not seem to want to go away, the dives we had could not have been more eventful!  We started our dive at “the Cave” where we saw all of the beautiful reef fishes, along with and octopus which Kike pointed out (our dive master for the day).  We also swam up close and personal with a school of barracuda!  Our second dive was at “El Diablo” which is my favorite dive site out of all the ones we visited.  Although there was a current, it didnt take long for us to follow Kike and just glide along with the current.  The huge rock cliffs are amazing as they house so many different types of creatures including parrot fish, white mouth moray eels, and schools of fish including types of tuna.  Along this dive we also saw puffer fish and triggerfish that were huge and not shy in the least.  As we were swimming Kike started to bang on his tank to get our attention and as I turned my head to the right, a huge manta ray swam by us.  We all hurried to get closer to it and see how big it actually was.  This manta ray was about 15 ft. in length and could have easily fit 10 of me on it.  I couldnt believe what I was actually seeing!  We swam around the next rock edge after the manta disappeared into the distance and we ran into the other group of divers who had come with us.  Kike excitedly flapped his wings like a bird to the other dive master (Ivan) to signal that we had seen the manta ray and it was entertaining because the other divers did not know what that meant so they flapped their arms back, later we talked with them to find out that they thought we were just trying to say hi by doing a weird dance lol.  Anyways, we continued our dive and was able to spot another manta ray circling the area.  At the end of our dive while we were at our safety dive, I was able to see a devil ray!  I got Kike’s attention right as it was passing behind him ,but we didnt have time to get everyone else’s attention so I was the lucky one who got to observe yet another massive creature in its natural habitat.  Both dives were amazing and I will never forget the experiences I have had here with all the places I have seen and all the people I have met.

I think Crash is blogging about dancing, but I am going to add a little side note.  So after our great day of diving we all decided to go to the bar with the locals we had met from both the hotel and diving.  They are such great people and always looking out for everyone like we were family.  Anyways, as more people started to show up, dancing began.  I was able to dance with the bartender Henry again who always gets a giggle out of my amazing so-called salsa skills.  I also got to dance with Kike who had been one of our 2 dive masters for the past 2 and a half weeks here.  I was pretty intimidated to dance with him at first as I watched him twirl another local girl around and around.  He asked me to dance and of course I never say no to an opportunity to dance so off we went.  I slowly got the hang of it and a couple of songs later Kike and I were still dancing.  I have decided that he going to be my new husband!  Who doesnt want a man who can take you diving whenever you want and can dance sexy salsa (and make it look like I can actually dance).  Plus if I marry Kike then that means I will have to move to Costa Rica…darn.

So things I am coming back to Maine….some cool picts and videos of the fun times and culture here…and a husband

….Back to the Pura Vida Hotel

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

We’re back in the first hotel we stayed in and enjoying some more great Costa Rican food!  All Costa Ricans must be born with the instinct to cook great food and dance amazingly!  So many things to miss here in Costa Rica.

The bus ride here was pretty uneventful, considering most of us got back super late last night from dancing at the bar so we were all sleep deprived.  The five hours seemed to fly by quickly between the brief naps we were able to take on the bus with only a brief interruption of some strange man trying to sell us banana chips from our window…..or we all could have been having the same dream, but I highly doubt it  

Once we arrived and settled into our rooms, we found a little gecko friend to greet us!  Isn’t he cute?

Not much had happened today since it was a travel day.  We arrived in one piece physically, but we all left our hearts back in Bahia Drake with friends and ocean critters until we come back for them……so……spring break next year anyone?

Bittersweet…..

Today, we left Drake Bay for Alajuela. It was an extremely bittersweet good-bye…I’m excited to head back home Friday and see my family. However, I’m going to miss all of the wonderful people I have met in Drake Bay. Geo was seriously one the best bartender/waiter/snorkeling guide/chilled out dudes I have ever met in my entire life. Victor, the night manager who was an amazing guy who can party with the best of them. Carlos, the day time manager/canopy tour guide who took care of us when we needed him and he’d chill with us and talk on the deck. He also helped save my butt from little platform incident. Other people we have met on the trips are Kike and Ivan who took us diving at Isla de Cano and talked to us after dinner. They are pretty kickass guys. I have a little brain fart one morning and Ivan said something like Buenos Dias which is good day in Spanish and I accidentally said Hasta Manana which is see you tomorrow. Ivan thought that was hysterical and kept bringing it up all the time. It was funny. Then theres Rolando, Macho, and the captains Carlos and Johan who got us to and from places. Thanks you guys for everything you did for us.

I’m going to miss the warm weather, the clear water, the good people, being able to drink at a bar legally, the scuba diving, the food, and the batidos! A little part of my heart will always be in Drake Bay, Costa Rica. This was my first time out of the country and I feel like I got the real Costa Rican experience with ziplining, diving, jungle tours, going into town, going to the bar and dancing with the locals. It was an amazing experience. Leaving Drake Bay today, I had a tear in my eye as the boat went away to take us to Sierpe. After a sketchy bus ride (Future blogger will tell that story), We are now in Alajuela at the Pura Vida Hotel and it’s thunderstorming right now. 2 more days left in our 2011 Costa Rica adventure! It has been an adventure! As what Costa Ricans say all the time, Pura Vida! I hope everyone gets to live their lives with purity and gusto as the Costa Ricans do. It was a wonderful experience! Pura Vida and Buenos Noches everyone!