Come Peru, Ica

I´m sorry; I´ve been super bad about updating the blog since we´ve gotten to Peru! We were in Lima and I might explain that more later, but we had a really great time. Definitely the most beautiful city I´ve seen in Latin America so far.

We met up with Angie, a classmate from Grinnell who´s from Lima, and she showed us around her side of Lima. It was so great to see her and she gave us such a great tour. She took us to this outdoor mall built into ocean cliff, which was something that seemed like it belonged in Orange County but there´s probably no way in hell any company could afford to buy the property to build it. I´d never seen anything like it. I also finally tried lomo saltado, a typical Peruvian dish consisting of meat, tomatoes, potatoes and onions. We saw super cute botiques, the private school she attended, beautiful churches, her house. She also told us our (or at least my) most profound discovery on this trip: you can buy clothes in parts of Lima made by big clothing companies (Gap, Michael Corrs, Abercrombie & Fitch, etc.) for ridiculously cheap because the clothes are made in local factories. If any piece has some type of mistake, the clothing gets taken to one of these stores for locals to buy at super cheap prices. It´s like shopping at a thrift store, with boxes of clothes to sort through to find the gem in the sand dune (I hope that´s the phrase). So if you go to Lima and like to shop, you should find one of these stores!

We then took a 5 hour doubledecker Cruz del Sur bus from Lima to Ica , where we are now. (We´re following a path loosely called the "Gringo Trail," where travelers make a loop from Lima to Cuzco. This path breaks up the 24 hour bus ride between the two cities and enables us to explore more of Peru.) So thisbus was crazy, in a good way. They gave us a blanket, a pillow, dinner, and even provided a screened movie (Lady of the Lake), and a bus-wide game of bingo, which Shai and I did not win. They also offer bathroom assistance, particularly when one gets locked in their restrooms, which Shai discovered. The entire back of the bus heard Shai scream, "I´m locked in!" when she couldn´t figure out how to let herself out of the bus´s small bathroom. The attendant had to yell directions lound enough for Shai to hear her, which caught the attention of anyone who didn´t hear Shai´s initial pleas for help. It was hilarious. I crying from laughing so hard by the time Shai got back. Describing it, this situation really doesn´t seem that funny but trust me, it was great.

We just took a tour of a local bodega, or winery, and had some very sweet and very tasty wine. They produce pisco here, which is a type of hard alcohol used to make pisco sour, a Peruvian specialty. We´ll wander around Ica for an hour or two and then head to Huacachina to go sandboarding. At 8:30 pm we board another bus to get to Arequipa, a trip that will last 12 hours.

Back in Heredia

Shai and I are back in Heredia, staying with my friend Coralia, who I met in San Ramón and stayed with me and my family for a week last winter break.

We had a monumental bus trip yesterday, one of many. We left Ometepe at 7am on a ferry to San Jorge, then took a cab to the Ticabus station. The woman selling tickets for Ticabus was ridiculously rude so we protested by leaving and decided to take a cab all the way to the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border and cross by foot, which was incredibly stressful the last time we did it. The system is ridiculous - there are no signs telling you which way to go and people try to charge you for the government customs documents that you can get inside for free. We survived it, though, and managed to get a bus to San José at 10:30 am. We got in to San José by 4:00 and met up with Coralia after having gotten a little lost in Heredia.

Now we´re just chilling out, eating oatmeal, and probably will go into Heredia today. I leave tomorrow at 4am for my cousin´s wedding in Wisconsin and then go home on Monday (my birthday) for my brother´s graduation from high school. Hopefully I´ll be able to see some of you guys when I get home! I´ll leave the following Sunday (21st) for Peru.

isla de ometepe!!

So I made a quick dash to San Ramon at the last minute - I decided Friday morning to head there from Granada. It ended up being about a 6 hour bus ride and I got in at like 7pm. Nobody (minus Emma and Max, who I´ll get to in a sec) knew I was coming, so it was kind of fun just showing up. Emma and Max, both from Grinnell, were doing internships there so I popped by and visited them. The three of us left at 11am to get to la Isla de Ometepe, which itself was an epic journey that lasted about 7 hours and involved a horrific movie and some freaky driving.

We coincidentally met up with Shai on the boat just as I was freaking out about how she and I were going to get back in touch. Now we´re all hanging out at this really sweet hostel where we´re paying $2.50 a night for a private room. We went kayaking today around this really pretty area. I might expand on this later, depending on internet access. Tomorrow Emma and Max have to leave, which is too bad, but Shai and I will head to another part of the island to see some really cool ancient petroglyphs. We´ll probably be staying here until Tuesday, after which I´ll head back to San Jose, C.R. to fly to Wisconsin for my cousin´s wedding.

What's red and white with stripes all over?

A zebra with a sunburn!

Ha ha ha ha ha. I just remembered that joke. Coincidentally, I am also red all over - ridiculously sunburnt. We're in Mal Pais right now, which is this great beach town, and are staying at a really relaxed (and appropriately named) hostel, the Tranquilo Backpackers Hostel. It's got hammocks everywhere, tons of mango trees, free pancake breakfasts, free internet, and is right across the street from the beach (although separated by a mini forest). I actually just picked a mango off the ground right now. I might regret this decision later, but someone told me they were fine to eat as long as they weren't already split open. So we'll see how it goes.

I spent a good majority of the morning trying to clean my cooking oil-stained pack. It exploded in the taxi yesterday from Montezuma to Mal Pais. Oh gosh, I just realized I have so much to update you all on. I left my passport in our really awful hostel in Montezuma (Pension Jenny - don't stay there! It's just as expensive as a hostel on the beach but is incredibly dirty and bad.) and didn't realize it until we drove the 45-min passage to Mal Pais, so I had to go back to Montezuma, retrieve my passport (luckily Pension Jenny is honest even if it's not clean), and wait two hours for the next transportation to Mal Pais to arrive.

Now that we're here though, it's great. We were thoroughly disappointed with Montezuma, which was disappointing in itself since a lot of other people really enjoyed it. Sorry to everyone out there who's been and who liked it - I think we were expecting a real beach town and were surprised to find it so developed and so focused on tourism. Montezuma is this hippie town with yoga classes, wheat grass shots and organic ice cream stores, and vendors sporting rasta dreads. All of this seems to be for tourists, though. The signs were all in English and almost everyone working in the tourist industry speaks the language, which is really interesting considering that the majority of Costa Ricans don't know English.

So we left Montezuma for Mal Pais and have been really happy with it. I rented a boogie board today and went to the beach with some friends here. They rented a surf board and let me try it, and it was actually really fun! So I think tomorrow I'm going to swap my boogie board for a surf board and try it for reals. It's strange coming from Southern California and having this be the first time I've ever tried to surf. But after today's adventure, I'm pretty badly sunburnt on my legs.

The tropics have not been too good to Shai or me. In addition to our burns, we're also getting eaten alive by the mosquitos. Shai just doused herself in DEET, this miracle potion that protects us from these awful bugs. Last night, in bed, as I was blindly grabbing into the air with the hopes of killing the mosquitos that buzzed in my ear, I considered that the people sharing our hostel dorm would think I was crazy. I hit my face a few times, slapped my ear, and eventually retreated under my bed covers. I'm sure the battle will wage on when we cross the border for Nicaragua in a few days. Until then, I think we'll have to figure out a way to make peace here in Mal Pais with both the mosquitos and the sun.

From Mountains to Ocean

Ziplining was awesome! Shai didn't want to go because she had already done it in Mexico, but Monteverde apparently is where ziplining was born. So it was great. The group I was in included 'Team Kickass,' which comprised three awesome guys in Costa Rica for a wedding, and people studying abroad from a community college in Philly. The experience was surprisingly not that scary - even though a hook is the only thing connecting you to a wire 450 ft above the ground, you feel pretty secure. So we all zipped around primary canopy forest in Costa Rica. I really didn't see anything at all except the treetops, which was still gorgeous. At one point, I thought I heard howler monkeys but that easily could have been someone being a jerk and mimicking their sound.

The most awesome and terrifying part of this whole ziplining experience, though, was the tarzan swing. The guy at our hostel talked to me for like five minutes about the different tarzan swings available. I felt like I was buying life insurance or something, he told me so much information. I must have zoned out because I was thoroughly surprised when we got to this point of the ziplining experience. The guide asked for a volunteer to go first and I naturally made sure I didn't even breathe loudly so he wouldn't pick me out of our 12-person group. Some girl in front of me raised her hand but no, he went straight for me. He probably thought I would shriek really loudly on the swing.

I walked up this giant platform (about three stories tall?) and was hooked onto this giant rope. The guy then tried to convince me to use both hands to hold on. In order to do that, I had to lean forward, off the edge of the platform, which I was not keen on doing since that meant I would most likely fall off this platform rather than control my 'jump.' Regardless, I'm pretty sure the guide pushed me off once both my hands were touching that rope. I didn't even think about screaming once I fell; the wind got knocked out of me so it wasn't an option. Once I almost hit the ground and the rope kicked in to yank me back up, I realized I was actually notgoing to die. So the swing turned out to be really fun!

That night, Shai and I met up for dinner with 'Team Kickass' at the Treehouse Cafe, a touristy but neat restaurant in Monteverde. The guys were all really cool. After dinner, we went to a bar to hang out and ended up sitting around this really nice bonfire for the majority of the night, and later were joined by a lot of other tourists (and locals who followed them) who were attracted to fire.

Yesterday (I cannot believe this was just yesterday), Shai and I woke up at 5am to catch a bus to get to the beach. I'm going to end this story here because I am tired, but hopefully it will be continued.