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.

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.

We´re in store for a Volcano

Shai and I left Coralia yesterday and took a 6 hour bus ride to La Fortuna, which is in the northern region of the country and located near the base of the Arenal volcano. This volcano erupted in 1968 after a 400-year dormancy and has been spewing lava ever since. La Fortuna is super touristy, but almost everyone speaks English, which is helpful for Shai. It starts to pour rain here by like 1pm, so I´m not quite sure how the tour is going to go down. I also only packed a pair of sandals, so hopefully nothing gross appears out of the dirt and attacks my feet.



Before taking a tour at 3pm today to check out the lava, we´re going to walk over to a watering hole because it is super hot and humid here! It´s the type of hot where you sweat when you stand still.

Tomorrow we leave La Fortuna at 8:30 am for Monteverde, via a strange route popularly known as ¨jeep-boat-jeep.¨ You take a van to Lake Arenal, where a boat meets you and takes you across the lake. Once you cross the lake, a van meets you at the other end and takes you to Monteverde, which is one of the most popular nature reserves in Costa Rica. I´m curious to see it, mainly since I had read academic articles about the tourism there when I was studying tourism in Costa Rica with my class on sustainable development.

I´ll probably update after Monteverde. I feel like I really haven´t had all that much to update about yet, but hopefully this will soon change, and won´t include stories about getting our stuff stolen at the local watering hole or being abandoned on a boat in Lake Arenal. Only time will tell!