Costa Rica: Entry 1

Umm, well, I have started my CR blog entry. In fact I'm nearly finished. But it's like super super long. And Warren told me he wouldn't read it if I put it all in one giant giant entry and hence I'm forced to break it. I'm going to start at the beginning...a very good place to start...(SOM?). Actually I went hog wild on Day 1 and they get much shorter on subsequent days. That said: my ten day trip to CR...in my own words... (am I in fourth grade? am I writing "what i did on my spring break?" I kind of am).

Day One. What Costa Rica Means to Me: Rice and Beans, Walking! Palms, and “Natural” Swim-Up Bars

At an early 8am we arrive in San Jose which is apparently something of a giant shit hole, hence why immediately upon landing we meet our driver and get the truck out to destination number one: the Arenal region (town of La Fortuna) which is in the northern are of the Costa Rican Lowlands. La Fortuna is most well known for its giant active volcano. The volcano is pretty much ever present. It’s the first thing you see when you drive in and no matter where you go…it’s always there looming over you. It’s also continuously covered by thick, dark clouds at its peak for reasons unknown to me. Feel free to research independently and get back to me… Anyway, we have this 5 hour van ride to get here right, and we kind of fade in and out of sleep and it’s our start at getting really good at these really long van rides that take you over seriously awesome roads that are sometimes paved, sometimes not, but always guaranteed to be riddled with road construction, pot-holes, and scary-ass bridges that seem as if they’ll disintegrate before your very eyes.

We stop for breakfast at some point where we eat a “typical” Costa Rican breakfast. It involves fried plantains, some egg, some meat…and rice and beans. Actually, breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all pretty much some meat, some rice, some beans. Now to me, I think this is the most thoroughly unoriginal “typical” food ever. It’s like, “yeah, our typical food is white bread and butter.” Or “iceberg lettuce and carrots.” Whatever. Mark falls in love it and I think if he could he would coat his body in rice and beans in homage to his new favorite food. Anyhoo, our group (me, Meliss, Az, Ritu, Mark, Doempke, Jaime, Kim, Tracy, Dorna) continues on to our hotel(s).

I’m at Volcano Lodge which is pretty adorable, gets the job done for sure, and after some exploration we head into town to figure out our activities.

This is my introduction to what it’s like making decisions copasetic with 10-15 people. I adored my travel group hands down loved them, but wow, tiresome, that is the word. We split into two groups (zip liners and rafters) and try to figure out our plans for the next day as well as the present evening. We are debating, for the night: volcano hike (unguided or guided), hot springs (Tabacon or Baldi) and the various combos you can make with those options. I’d say we squabbled over prices and options for over an hour before heading back with zero plans to our hotels, where we settle on a guided hike and trip to Baldi for a price twice as much as we’d found in town. C’est la vie. It was a good night and a good way to adjust to our discovery that no matter what people tell you, Costa Rica is “NOT” (Mark that was for you, an old school “not” ref) cheap. While we didn’t see any lava, or any toucans, or any howler monkeys (although we heard the latter two), we learned all about walking palms, trees that eat up other trees (at least that is my interpretation) and leaf cutter ants. Our guide, who was very, very hot (Marcos) liked to quiz us. It was like being back in 6^th grade and doing a nature walk to study up on tree rings and shit where your teacher would point at something and be like: explain. Except, guys, I really don’t know anything about rain forest wild life. I was the dumb kid. In fact we all were.

We end the night at Baldi hot springs which are apparently second rate to Tabacon but you could’ve fooled me. It was a dream come tree.

Hot tub after hot tub after tub in any temp you desired (all natural) surrounded by flowers and plants and swim up bars of course. B/c that is quite natural. When we were walking through initially, I got so excited that I turned around to tell everyone, whereupon I ran into a trash can. No joke. I have a totally bad ass scar where I scraped 2 inches of skin off my right shoulder now. I’m awesome.