Sunset in Manuel Antonio.
Danielle and I at the wedding.
Waterfalls on the Savegre.
Puerto Viejo!
So my computer worked for a brief moment this morning, and then, nothing… apparently if no one else is on their computers, it works, but as soon as other people come in on the network, I’m screwed. Ah well…I have figured out a way that I can type things in word, put them on a memory stick, and then transfer them to a computer at an internet café or something…this way it doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg.
So it has been awhile since my last post, and quite a lot has happened.
We left Turrialba and went over to Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean side. This included 3 buses, and transfers in Siquerres (“Squirrels”) and Límon (“Lemon”). Puerto Viejo was beautiful. We stayed at Rockin’ J’s, where the bed choices were tents, hammocks, or cabinas…or a tree house. The ladies opted for a 3 bed cabina, and the boys slept in hammocks in these hammock dorms. Poor Zack apparently has trouble sleeping in hammocks, and subsequently bruised his heals rocking in his sleep.
In Puerto Viejo, we visited black sand beaches, white sand beaches, and saw the wave they call Salsa Brava. One day, we decided to rent bikes and bike out to a beach “not far” from where we were staying. Instead of renting through the hotel, we decided to support the local guy and rent bikes across the street…no bueno. My bike had a little niño seat on it that I kept bumping my knees on, Danielle’s chain fell off, Zack’s seat wouldn’t go up, so he was stuck squatting on his bike, and Scotty ended up with 2 flat tires, and had to take the bus home. It was 7.5 miles down to the other beach, and you had to follow the main road, which was full of potholes and speeding vehicles. Needless to say, it was quite the adventure. Half way down to the beach, when Scotty got his first flat, it just happened to be in front of the house of an ex-pat mechanic from New York, whose father and sister were allergic to bananas. Ahh, the ironies…this is what you get when traveling with Scotty.
After a few days in Puerto Viejo, we journeyed back to Turrialba just in time for the Turrialba Volcano to start erupting for the first time in 140 years. Scotty, of course, wanting to get a rise out of all of us, started saying that it was going to be terrible, like Pompeii, and that we were all going to die…and saying things like, “as long as we get across the Reventazón river, and we don’t get trampled by the 600,000 other people trying to leave that maybe we wouldn’t end up as gas bubbles in lava. Well, we got the hell out of dodge and headed over to Quepos and Manuel Antonio, which will be our base for the rest of our Costa Rican Adventures!
There have been several natural disasters since we got here, though we’ve had amazing luck at avoiding us. Just 2 days after we left Turrialba, one side of the volcano collapsed on itself, San Jose had an earthquake, and the whole Caribbean side flooded from a tropical storm. We’ve had a few clouds pass through, but not really any precipitation, and clouds can be a blessing here…they make the heat bearable.
The days here in the dirty Q have been pretty uneventful comparatively. We have been raftin’ it up on the country’s rivers. One of the best days was on the Savegre…
So I had been trying to arrange housing for all of us down here, and the day before our river trip, I had spent the entire day at the hostel, playing phone tag with a bunch of people. Therefore, Danielle kindly volunteered to stay behind and play more phone tag the next day. Christopher, Zack, Mary, Brad and I headed out, joined by 2 guests and 2 Tico guides, Oscar and Orlando…making the total of 7 guides for 2 guests…very safe. The Savegre is Class II-III+ during the dry season, making it accessible by raft or duckie. Zack, Orlando, and the 2 guests duckied, Oscar kayaked, and Brad, Mary, and I rafted. All in all a pretty chill day, minus a little car trouble. The car kept overheating, so we had to stop a bunch to add water. We were like a clown car, with a raft, four duckies, and a kayak strapped on top, three of us in the way back, the guests and Orlando in the middle, and then the other three crammed into the front seat…anyone watching us getting out of the car must have thought we were a traveling circus.
We stopped at Rafiki Lodge to hit up the “world’s fastest water slide,” and then we put in just below Rafiki Rapid, because our guests were an older, yet active, couple from Ft. Lauderdale, FL…we couldn’t have asked for a better crew. We saw a Toucan!! We stopped a few rapids down and had a snack of coconut cookies, pineapple, tea, and water. The first two waterfalls were beautiful and tall, and the third one was small enough to jump off of and swim around. After the waterfall hikes, we got back out on the water. The scenery was awesome for the entire trip. Christopher was driving shuttle for us, and the car broke down on him near an earlier take out than what we were going to do, so we had to take out early and fix the car. Boo. Once the car was back up and working again, we piled the boats back on top and the people back inside, and we headed to El Silencio where we had Casados at a Soda in town. The day’s specials were rice, beans, meat (chicken, fish, or beef…I had the chicken, and it was AMAZING), fried yucca, a small side salad, and fresh juice. This was the only thing we had to pay for the whole day (it was included for paying guests), and it was a whopping 4 buck for all of that food!!
When we got back from the river, we met Danielle, who had gone to see the house, finally, and we all headed down to the beach! Only in Quepos/Manuel Antonio can you go hiking, rafting, and the beach in one day (and with very little car/bus time).
While we were down at Playitas, we were just chillin and a lady came by in a car and started taking flowers and leaves out and placing them around on the ground. Then she brought out a couple of big containers with ice and drinks. It was a wedding!! We watched her set up, and then a bunch of people showed up, followed by the bridal party…it was really pretty. The service was quick, and then, as the sun set, everyone had cocktails before heading back to wherever for the reception. It was a nice ending to a pretty fun day!
On kind of a sad note, we all went down to the beach for a cookout and such on the beach around sunset, and we brought Brad’s dogs down with us. While we were down there, Bongo, one of his dogs, went missing, and we looked for a bit, but never found him. The next day, we walked up and down the beach, but still no Bongo. We told the people at the few hotels down on the beach to keep a lookout, but the next day, a girl we know was walking by the lagoon by Playitas, where the crocodile lives, and found Bongo’s head…que triste!!! Brad’s pretty torn up, understandably.
I met a new friend from Seattle, and he and I are going to fire up El Charro…an awesome section of the Naranjo River that few companies run (right now, it’s just H20, but Quepoa Expeditions is going to start running it commercially soon)!! He’s working at H20, and is a guide over in the Pacific Northwest.
Today, I am taking a “day off” from the sun…it is pretty hot out, and I have plenty of time to be at the beach. I may head down to Quepos to the fruit market that they have on Fridays and Saturdays. They moved it this year down to the sea wall, instead of being sweltering in the center of town. It feels hotter than last year.
Hopefully I can get the computer figured out, and then I’ll be able to post up more pictures and update more often. It would be such a pain to have carried all of my computer stuff with me and not be able to use it.
Pura Vida for now!
-MWC
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