Last night in Alajuela.

After bungee jumping, I walked back into my house to find one of the weirdest parties ever going on. Besides the fact that Brooke (our course coordinator) was there, Pedro was there and brought his friend. Pedro worked in the cafeteria and gave us our breakfast every day. And he was drinking beer in our house.

It was our last night in our house, and we did it big.

This is only maybe 3/4 of us. But once we got almost everyone over, Janelle, Elise and I presented the paper plate awards that we had designed the night before. Elise had said it’d be a good ending to the trip, and they weren’t hard to make at all because we had gotten to know all 30 people on the trip enough so that we could make funny awards about all of them. They ended up being a huge hit, everyone was laughing and cheering and it was really a great way to end the three weeks. I thought maybe a few people would think they were lame or childish or something, but everyone seemed to really like it.

My personal favorites were Alex’s award, “Most likely to take it in the ass while wearing tropical trunks” (due to the massive hole in his suit…and his comment about the jet while we were sitting in the pool in Manuel Antonio), Jeff’s (“Most likely to participate in girls night out”) and Brittney’s (“Most likely to have a wedgie in the front and back, but still look good”).

The three of ours were all great, too. Janelle and Elise gave me “Most likely to remember the trip” because of my 2-liter water bottles and the fact I didn’t drink on the weekends because I was sick both weekends…and because of this blog. So basically I’m a total nerd. Janelle got “Most likely to be a soccer mom in nine months” and Elise was “Most likely to be the featured entertainer during boys night out,” which was pretty hilarious when we announced it. The awards just turned out to be a great idea on Elise’s part.

We finally went out to the baby bar for the last time. We were originally supposed to go to Escazu, but when the bungee jumpers came back, apparently the zoo’ers decided it was too much effort to book a bus and drive 45 minutes, so they just ordered pizza in instead of going out. I’ve learned to love the baby bar, though, so it wasn’t really a big deal that we only went there instead.

Who would have known the baby bar had cocktails? I got a pina colada, which was good because all I wanted to do there was get a fruity drink, and it was a little frothy but decent.

We ordered our french fries for the last time - I swear, I hate french fries, I really do, but these are somehow amazing. They're crisp and salty and right out of the oven and I've never had so many french fries as I have these three weeks in Costa Rica, just because of the baby bar. So of course, we had to get a picture with our french fries.

The best part about the baby bar that night was karaoke - I guess it's only on Fridays, or maybe Fridays and Saturdays, but we're never in Alajuela on the weekends.

We just hung out for awhile and then we decided to do a few songs. There were a few hardcore karaoke’ers there, and then as usual, we were just a group of obnoxious Americans that kind of ended up taking it over. There was a page’s worth of English songs, so we picked “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys first. Anita and Andrea were screaming all the words so loudly into the microphone that you couldn’t tell what the song was. I swear, whenever I hear that song now, all I’m going to hear is their frantic screaming of all the lyrics. Ray and Ahmed did “My Heart Will Go On,” which was just as hilarious as it sounds. Janelle refused to do karaoke with us, so the truly cool girls (aka me, Elise and Kristen) did “Every Breath You Take”. I love doing karaoke, even though there’s something so trashy about singing at a bar, so it was a pretty good time.

We all left a little after 2, I think. Then, Elise realized that her passport was in Lisa’s safe. Lisa was with Adam the MBA student, and Elise had to leave for the airport at 4 a.m., as in, in two hours. So we went on a hunt for Lisa and Adam. We stopped at the hard bar first and all the MBAs said the two of them had already left, so we asked a few more MBAs and they were being kind of shady as to where Adam’s house was. So we finally found Adam’s house – after passing his roommate on the street, who was acting super suspicious and somewhat refused to tell us if he knew where Adam was or not – and the house was dark. Two of Adam’s other roommates answered the door of his house and said Adam wasn’t there, but we heard talking inside his bedroom…and Lisa and Adam were in there, but neither of them would come to the door. Lisa shouted the combination to her safe through the door, and Elise and I went back to get her passport. It was quite the adventure and definitely summed up the Lisa/Adam saga that we’ve all been enjoying these past few weeks.

So we chilled for awhile – it was already maybe 3:30 by this point – then there was just no point in going to bed because the bus to the airport was at 5 a.m. Yesterday was just a mess of airplanes and layovers and dead tiredness. I think I was asleep for maybe 6 of the 7 hours of flight time, and the other hour, I was trying to go to bed. We had an obnoxiously long lunch at Chili’s in Dallas, the same place we ate on the way down, and got there just in time to watch the last minute of the Dallas/Detroit game. I was pumped because I thought we’d get to watch the game in Dallas, with Dallas fans, but our plane was just a little too late. I got home at 11 or so, I think, and…that was it.

I still have one, maybe two, things I’m going to put on here, even though I’m home now, so watch for those.

Bungee jumping.

Today was the best last afternoon/night that it could have probably been. What a way to finish the trip.

So I decided to go bungee jumping. There were a few major cons working against the zoo. The first one was that I hate zoos, that was a pretty big one. Bungee jumping was expensive – 65 dollars – but I know I’ll earn that back probably in my first week of work, so I didn’t want the money to factor into my decision. Basically, I just decided to go but I wasn’t too sure about it, I didn’t know if I’d want to do it. It wasn’t even the safety issue or the scared shitless issue, but more of just the fact that it didn’t sound super thrilling to me.

I said I would go at about 12:30. We were supposed to leave at 1:45, the zoo’ers left at about 12:40, but we walked to the pavilion to wait for the bus and we finally got word that it was over an hour behind schedule. I went to the pool to lay out for awhile. I knew that’d be my last time in the sun for who knows how long, since I’ll be working full time starting Monday and I’ve heard it’s not at all warm in Michigan.

Ahmed and Marc started playing Ahmed’s electric guitar in the corner of the pool area, and I recognized a few RHCP songs and walked over to sit on the cement near them. Both of them were pretty good, a lot of RHCP and some John Mayer and some Beatles. We formed a semicircle and just listened to them trade songs. It was really calming, sitting on the concrete under the hot sun listening to music – one of the little things that I’m really going to miss.

The bus finally came about 3, I think. We were told the site was about a half hour away, but for the first time, something in Costa Rica was actually close to INCAE – we got there in maybe 15. We went into a little office and signed waivers.

The whole thing looked a little shady, like, the office was more like a shack, but as soon as I signed that waiver I knew I was going to do it no matter what. I wasn’t scared or anything, we were all just really excited.

We got back on the bus and drove another 400 meters or so up a hill to the bridge. It’s supposed to be one of the five most beautiful places in the world to bungee jump – the bridge is 80 meters (240 feet) above the ground, which is a pretty significant distance to bungee jump. I saw the bridge from the bus and was still pretty neutral about it. We got off the bus at the beginning of the bridge, noted with amusement that there was a bar right there, and looked over the edge.

That’s when I was terrified.

The image of looking down off that bridge is still burned into my memory.

It was just trees, rocks and water, but it was so, so far down. I’m not scared of heights, but I get a little edgy when I have to go near a railing on a really tall building sometimes. But this bridge freaked me the hell out.

All of us kind of acted like we were punched in the gut. The boys were all walking around, saying some variation of, Oh my God. A few were just leaning over the ledge and staring down, trying to get used to the fact that we were going to jump off that bridge. I did that for awhile, too, and the drop didn’t seem so bad after I had been staring down there for a few minutes straight.

They didn’t really give us much of a safety talk, just told us that we’d have a harness around the waist and harnesses around our ankles, which was where the bungee was supposed to be attached.

We’d jump off the platform, bounce a few times, and then they’d send down another rope that we’d have to attach to our waist harness so they could pull us back up to the platform. We had to jump in the “swan” position, which basically meant our arms were out to our sides, kind of like Superman or something. We couldn’t grab onto the rope, we just had to act like we were flying. Right.

Then we had to divide up into two groups, people who were over and under 150 pounds. The “over” group went first, since the groups had to use different harnesses because of the weight difference and the guides didn’t want to have to switch between harnesses. These girls who had traveled over 3 hours to get to the site went first. The first girl was strapped in and she was helped to the platform. It was a little yellow platform, made of the metal that has mesh-like holes in it, maybe a foot and a half wide. If people still walked the plank, that’s what the plank would look like. The girl stepped up on the platform, the guide counted down from 5, and she didn’t move. She stood there for what felt like 20 minutes but was probably only about 5, just staring there, frozen, and ended up not jumping. Obviously, that freaked all of us out. The second person who went up was a redheaded guy who said he had rappelled before, and he ran and jumped before the guide could even start counting down. Seeing someone fly off that platform with arms outstretched was equally the coolest and most scary thing I’ve ever seen. We just watched him rocket toward the trees and water, then watched him bounce around for awhile and finally finish the jump. That was a lot easier, once we saw someone actually do it without fear.

8 or 9 other people (who we didn’t know) jumped before we started. Aaron was the first one of us to jump.

He was flipping out before the jump, saying he was too scared, and we just all told him not to puss out. He kept saying, I can’t do this, I can’t do this. But he finally jumped with little prodding. He came back up with his eyes a little red and just glowing, talking nonstop about how great it was. That definitely helped. Marc went next. He was also scared beforehand, even before we had gotten to the bridge, but he said it was awesome, too.

It was my turn after him. Honestly, I’m getting a little shaky even writing about it. The guide harnessed me in, I told him to make my ankle harnesses as tight as he could because there was no way I wanted those loose. We jumped with bare feet, and as soon as I took my shoes and socks off (right before Marc jumped), I started getting really nervous. When I was sitting on the ledge of the bridge getting my harnesses on, I don’t even remember thinking coherently, I was that scared. The guide told me to stand up and step onto the yellow platform, and that’s when I froze. I stood up, barefoot, with huge, heavy harnesses attached to my ankles, and I was so terrified that I clutched onto the yellow beams that held the beginning of the platform to the bridge. Everyone was yelling at me, telling me I could do it, I’m guessing because I looked a ton more scared than Aaron or Marc. I took a baby step forward, still holding onto the beam. It was really far down. The guys were still yelling, a little more desperate now. I thought, There is no way I’m going to be like that first girl. I took another step and couldn’t hold onto the beams anymore. I was just standing on the platform with 240 feet of water and trees and rocks below me and safe ground so far away, because even one baby step felt like a mile up there. The guide urged me again to get my toes to the edge of the platform so I could jump and let go of my bungees. I took another step and I was at the edge, looking straight down, and I dropped the cords so they were hanging in front of the platform. I panicked a little since the clip caught on the edge as I dropped them, but he said that was normal, that was fine.

And there I was. That split second before I jumped was the most petrifying moment of my entire life.

I don’t know how to explain it. When you’re that frightened, there’s no way to. It was just this hot, searing rush of pure terror.

Aaron had told me before I jumped that all you had to do was just say, Fuck it, and jump. And that’s what I did. I just turned off my brain. I felt like I was seeing myself from the eyes of someone else, someone who wasn’t afraid and who was just watching someone jump, no big deal.

And I was hurtling toward the river and rocks and trees faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. I remember holding onto the rope briefly when I first jumped and then I spread both my arms out, freefalling into this gorgeous nothingness. I screamed until I couldn’t breathe. I felt the rope pull on my ankles a little and I was going back up, then back down, then up and down and up and down and then I started spinning and everything was just going around in these terrible, awesome circles. I had my first recognizable thought in about five minutes. This feels like the merry-go-round thing at Parkview, I thought, where I was twirling around and around until I got off and I was so dizzy I couldn’t stand up, I was just this woozy fourth grader who was watching the playground as it spiraled around me. And then I thought, this is worse than bed spins. I feel drunk.

I just kept spinning around faster than I’ve ever spun, and I couldn’t even see the river because the trees were whirling around so quickly that they just all melded into one mess of green. I was hanging upside down, trying to convince myself the spinning wasn’t making me nauseous, when I saw the lift cord dangling next to me. I somehow grabbed it – I’m not sure how, it feels impossible to grab anything when you’re suspended in the air upside down – and attached it to my harness. It took awhile to get back up to the platform, since they were cranking the cord up, and I grabbed onto the cord with both hands and pulled myself into a sitting position. For the first time, I could look around and appreciate the gorge. It was breathtaking. I looked up at the bridge, where everyone was leaning over – I could only see their heads – and I waved to let them know I was okay. They were laughing and cheering a little, and that’s when I finally started smiling.

That was the most baller thing I’ve ever done, I kept saying. It was the only way to describe it.

My head hurt a little from the rushes of blood to the head, but everyone was complaining about that. Even now, hours later, it still hurts if I tilt my head down. It’s just a headache-y, full feeling. But other than that, I felt damn good. I went to the bar and got an Imperial. It was one of the best things I’ve tasted this trip. I don’t even like Imperial. We watched everyone else go, drinking our Imperials, and we headed back just as it was getting dark.

And we still had the whole night ahead of us. I’ll write about it later tonight, since I’ll be in the airport all day today, but it was the perfect ending. It was so perfect that it’s 4 a.m. right now, I have to catch my bus to the airport at 5 a.m., and I have yet to go to bed because after going out so late, there was no point in sleeping.

Exam aftermath.

We just got out of our exam. It’s cloudy outside and all I want to do is lay out for one last day, but we’re sitting in the cafeteria right now until lunchtime and then I’ll go back and pack. Elise and I just went to the tiendita and celebrated by getting Dos Pinos ice cream (mine is vainilla, fresa y limon) and platanos, so I’ll probably feel pretty sick in like an hour or so, but oh well, it’s good food.

The exam was pretty hard. Just the multiple choice, anyway. I’m so bad at multiple choice exams. That’s why I suck in the bschool. And our exam was switched to half multiple choice at the last second…which means I blew it. I rocked the essays, though. One of my questions from my question set was used as an essay question, which was awesome – an automatic 20 points. I just can’t stand multiple choice, though – it’s so subjective.

We have a pretty good afternoon planned. I guess we’re going to Escazu for a nice dinner and then we’ll hit all the bars. We haven’t been there yet, so it’ll be a great last night here. We might also go to the zoo down the street for the afternoon. I’m not so much an animal person – and it’s not like we need to really go to the zoo anyway, there are enough animals in the wild here – but the walk will probably be nice. Some people are going bungee jumping, but I really might just want to spend my afternoon around here since it’s our last day. Honestly, I really want to go bungee jumping. I just wish they would have gone earlier in the week instead of today. So we’ve divided up into two groups: the tame group (the zoo) and the daring group (bungee jumping).

Okay, so as I’m writing this, people from both camps are coming up to persuade us to do one thing or the other. I really don’t know what to do. Oh, choices. I guess I’ll figure it out and write about it later.

Last night at the baby bar and a chill Thursday.

We went to the baby bar last night for maybe the last time – we might go Friday afternoon after the exam, too, I guess, but it was really our last night there. Everyone came to our house first. We've become the party house lately. We originally made it a girls night out, since Aaron and Corey were talking about how they were doing a boys night, but they ended up joining us like usual.

Just for clarification, the baby bar is the walking distance bar, but Alex dubbed it the baby bar at the beginning of our trip since most of the bartenders are pregnant. I guess the nickname has finally stuck. It’s always empty when we’re there, and they must think we’re obnoxious, but they seem to like us.

As always, we played pool and foosball. It’s just so chill there and we make the party. Jeff and I dominated Aaron and Alex after we were down 5 balls to 1. That's who I'm thumbs-downing...Aaron thought he was such a badass. And I had pretty much the sweetest pool shot of my life when I bet Jeff a beer that I could make a ball, and somehow, the cue ball skipped over one of the striped balls and knocked the solid one right in. I pretty much flipped out with excitement. And I got my Imperial, so it was a great night. We were winning the next game against Corey and Eric 4 or 5 balls to 1 and we lost, so that sucked, but at least we pulled the first one out.

I had to include this picture of Janelle and Steph chugging water after we got back last night. It was definitely one of the funniest moments of last night, and the picture just says it all.

Today. We had our last class with the same professor as yesterday. We talked about landfills for three hours, and different ways to extract methane from the landfills to use as an energy source. As you can probably tell, it was thrilling. It was great to be done with class, though. Now all we have to worry about is the exam tomorrow morning. I can’t tell if it’ll be hard or not, since our course coordinator keeps giving us these mixed signals and she doesn’t really know what’s going on a lot of the time, anyway, so I don’t really know what to expect anymore.

And since we had the whole afternoon free until the review session/farewell dinner, we decided to finally play volleyball. Janelle played in high school and so did Andrea, and Brittney and Elise were respectable, so it was fun. We were really low-key, but Janelle was like insanely competitive. (And she just laughed when I read that sentence out loud.) It ended up being shirts vs. skins, with me, Janelle and Elise in our sports bras/bathing suits and Andrea, Brittney and Anita in like, long pants. It was boiling hot outside and we were playing on a concrete court, so I jumped in the pool halfway through our game because I was so overheated. It was so much fun.

I finally got to wear my awesome sundress, the one I’ve been wanting to wear for the past three weeks, for the farewell dinner.

We had a “review session” beforehand, which really wasn’t a review session at all but just closing remarks and evaluations. Our farewell dinner was decent, not very eventful.

Janelle, Elise and I came back to the house after dinner and we’ve been having a slumber party for the past few hours. We made paper plate awards for everyone…and they’re hilarious. I’ll share them probably tomorrow, but considering half of the people I’m on the trip with read this, that would suck to spoil the surprise tomorrow. Okay, I know it’s dorky but they were so fun to think of and make. So we just did that all evening (instead of studying for our exam) and…so we’re going into the exam tomorrow without really studying. I feel pretty good about it, though, since it’s open note and I took a ton of notes. This afternoon/night was just so chill, it was a great time.

I’m starting to get really sad about leaving here. I can’t believe we have one day left, it’s unreal. This has seriously become home, in a sort of tropical paradise kind of way. I can’t believe I have to start my internship Monday and that I’ll be flying home in two days…it’s just too depressing to think about that right now.

Shopping in San Jose.

We have a little bit of time right now before our farewell dinner, so I figured I should probably blog. I feel really behind lately because I haven’t been able to blog during class, since I’m supposed to be paying attention or something since we have an exam tomorrow morning.

The exam is part multiple choice, part essay. It’s all open note and open binder. I took a ton of notes, so I’ll probably be fine. The thing is that the exam, like everything else here, was changed at the last minute. We were supposed to have an exam that integrated our question sets, but the course coordinator changed that today, apparently, to include multiple choice. I hate multiple choice. It’s the reason why I suck at bschool classes, because I can definitely do well on essay tests but if you ask me to choose one of four possible answers, I overthink it and then I’m crashing and burning.

Yesterday. We only had one class in the morning with the intense professor, so I had to listen. It was about global trade for local benefit, and it wasn’t hard to follow, but it just proved that I really don’t care about economics and I feel really out of place in the bschool, like usual. Some of the stuff we’ve learned these past few weeks has been interesting – most of it, in fact – but the fact is, it’s still a bschool class and I really don’t care much about the nitty-gritty, mathematical-type concepts they talk about. I like the culture aspect a lot, and even the foreign direct investment stuff is a little interesting, and I really like learning about ecotourism. I know Michigan has a sustainable development division in the bschool, and I think it’d be cool to take a class there about it, maybe. I guess that’s what I’ve gotten out of this the most, I’ve realized there might be something in the bschool that I like and that isn’t totally based around number crunching.

We were finished with class at 11:45 a.m. because we had a CEO lunch. We ate with the CEO of Café Britt, where we went for our first company tour two weeks ago, and a CEO from an agriculture-type company in Costa Rica. The Café Britt CEO was definitely an ex-hippie. He was a Michigan alum (go figure) and escaped Ann Arbor during the Vietnam War to go study coffee in Costa Rica. He had pretty interesting stories, especially about how he got to where he was. The other CEO had to break away from his family business, so he had a lot of stories about how to balance family with work. The lunch was better than usual and the talks were interesting, but it’s just so hard to focus in Costa Rica – all I want to do is go play in the sun.

The lunch was done at 1:30, so we had the rest of the day and night to do what we wanted. I still needed to get some presents for people since I didn’t have time last weekend, so Elise, Janelle and I decided to go to Moravia, a district in San Jose. We were told it had a couple blocks of shops, but it was the closest shopping area to INCAE. Too bad it was over an hour away. We took a cab there with the most insane driver we’ve had yet. He was this older guy with a huge mustache and he was super impatient. A semi had lost its cargo on the highway, which meant it was backed up for miles, and he was trying to go on the shoulder and around cars, constantly switching lanes and honking his horn.

We almost got hit by a semi truck and he almost hit a pedestrian – like, missed the guy by a few inches. He took us to downtown San Jose and then pulled over and started talking to us in rapid-fire Spanish. It took a few minutes to understand, since we were confused as to why he was pulling over in addition to listening to him talk in Spanish, but he said he couldn’t drive us anymore because it was past the end of his shift. We weren’t at our destination yet, and he just pulled over and said we had to get out. It was ridiculous. So we got another cab and finally made it to Moravia, over an hour after we left. It’s only maybe 15 miles away.

The shops were pretty standard, and all of us knew pretty much what we wanted, so we went in and bought our gifts and wandered around the streets for awhile. Like always, we were stared at like crazy. Three girls in sundresses wandering around the city probably wasn’t the smartest scenario.

All of us were broke, and all I have left here is traveler’s checks, so we found a bank but the ATM was broken. I couldn’t cash my traveler’s checks. Anywhere. Nobody in Costa Rica takes traveler’s checks. I was so upset – I officially had no money and we had traveled over an hour to get presents and I shouldn’t have brought traveler’s checks to begin with, they’re way too much of a hassle. I was semi-yelling at the guy at the bank because he wouldn’t let me cash them, I didn’t have enough ID on me. I speak pretty good fast Spanish when I’m upset, I’ve learned. So Janelle bought all of my presents for me and I owe her a bunch of money. (I finally cashed them all today at INCAE, but I had to pay a commission. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. The bank here sucks.)

It was getting late and we had most of our presents, so after wandering around and buying things for awhile, we wanted a taxi back home. We were in the middle of the city and all by ourselves, so it was definitely intimidating. We hailed a taxi and…the most badass car ever rolled up to the side of the road. It had a spoiler, a sick sound system (the same brand as the one in my Mountaineer but a little better of a model), multi-colored leather seats, custom headrests and racing stripes. And it was our taxi. It’s safe to say that it was a much better ride home than it was there.

Elise took a picture during the cab ride home, probably just to prove we were still alive after the afternoon. We all look a little flustered, but it was a good day.

Whitewater rafting.

I don’t have any pictures from whitewater rafting - we weren’t allowed to take our cameras on the river - so I’m going to describe it the best I can without photos.

Basically, it was a great last field trip day. We had to wake up at 5 and catch the bus at 5:45 a.m. to drive three hours to the Rio Pacuare. The whole river is a little more than 100 kilometers. We rafted 18 miles and we were only 25 miles from the ocean when we were done.


This is the website of the tour company that took us:
http://www.costasolrafting.com/

And this is what they said about our tour:

Pacuare is considered the most beautiful river in Costa Rica, and worldwide one of the best whitewater rafting rivers due to the scenic beauty, waterfalls, hiking trails and diversity of flora and fauna, among which participants will observe blue morpho butterflies, sloths, tucans, red frogs and great variety of birds. Thus, nature is present throughout the route.

Well, again, we didn’t see any wildlife. We saw a pretty purple butterfly (maybe that’s what they were talking about), and a few indigenous people and some of their houses, but that was about it. Our river guide told us a lot about the indigenous people, how they don’t have TV or electricity and they live in straw huts along the river. We rafted under a basket that was suspended in the rainforest with cords, and apparently the people use the basket to transport goods. When the Costa Ricans want to interact with the indigenous people, they pay in goods – like coffee or sugar – instead of cash, since the people would have no way to spend it. Amanda was really pumped to see an indigenous person – I just wanted to see a monkey. She got her wish, I didn’t. I guess that means I went three weeks in a monkey-filled country without even seeing one.

The waterfall description was accurate, though. They were absolutely gorgeous, these natural waterfalls spilling over the rocks and spraying water into the river. We rafted under a few of them and it was really cold but great. Even at 10 in the morning, when we got there, it was already probably 90 degrees and the sun was intense – so it felt good to get in the water.

Anyway, we took nearly the same bus route that we did on the way to Puerto Viejo, going through Alajuela first, then San Jose, and then winding through the mountains (nauseating but beautiful, again). We stopped a few hours later for breakfast, and Paulo, our guide, let us know that was our last stop for food and a bathroom before the river. That’s when we realized that we wouldn’t be able to wear our flip flops in the water – so over half the kids ran to the store attached to the restaurant to buy water shoes, but I just decided to wear my tennis shoes in the river. We tried to sleep for the rest of the way, but Paulo kept telling us all these stories about how he became a rafting guide and he kept us pretty entertained for awhile. He told us jokes the whole way home later that afternoon, and a few of them were pretty hilarious – he was definitely a great dramatic storyteller, so it made the bus ride feel a little shorter.

We finally got to the starting point of the tour after a 3-kilometer stretch where we descended 1000 kilometers – it was pretty insane. I feel like my ears are just constantly popping here. The river is in the middle of the rainforest, and there were about 50 rapids we were supposed to go over in 18 miles. Only a few of them were really intense, where we had to “get down” and take cover in the raft so it wouldn’t capsize.

Our raft was six girls: me, Janelle, Elise, Natalie, Kristen and Amanda. We were the last group claimed by a river guide. I really don’t think any of them wanted an all-girl group. Janelle and I took the front of the raft and did maybe 80 percent of the rowing. I ended up in the middle and back of the raft eventually, and it was a whole lot easier than leading the way. We had to learn how to row and get the safety talk before we could start. A lot of the time, I was too busy watching Janelle and making sure we were rowing at the same time to look around and see the scenery, but the rapids were really pretty – I haven’t really seen a rough river before, and the water cascaded over the rocks like something I’ve seen in maybe a spring water commercial. I already talked about the indigenous houses, but it was mainly water and rainforest, occasionally with a scattered hotel or bar in between. There were just so few signs of human life. We could hear the cicadas really loudly the whole time. I kept thinking they were monkeys, but I was sorely disappointed. Anyway, the six of us definitely held our own during the trip. We were usually fourth out of six, sometimes third, and we even went into first once when everyone else decided to dive in the water and we kept rowing. Not like we were racing or anything.

My favorite part of the whole trip was the canyon. We had been rafting for maybe 2 and a half hours, I’m not sure because obviously we had no concept of time, but I was getting kind of tired and definitely hot. We didn’t get overheated because especially being in the front, Janelle and I were getting splashed pretty much nonstop from either other boats or the rapids, but I was ready to take a break from rowing. The canyon was this semi-covered, cooler section of the river that had high rocks on either side, and we all took a break there for awhile. Our guide wanted us to play the “Viagra game,” which meant we all went on one side and he tried to push the raft up in the air as high as it could go (and keep it up there the longest, beating the other rafts) but we had very little interest in it and we all fell in the water maybe within 10 seconds, so we just floated in the water in our life vests. I went to a huge rock and did a cannonball off it. It was probably a 3-meter jump, it was pretty high and a little scary once I was up there, but the water was really deep and the life vest obviously meant I wasn’t under water for very long. I was doing flips off the front of the raft, too, which was surprisingly tons easier than the diving board. I’m guessing the bright yellow helmet and the life vest helped me be a little more confident than in the pool. We sat on top of the raft while it was flipped upside down…and then everyone else started getting back in their rafts and rowing away. Natalie and Kristen were floating a little downstream, just waiting for us to pick them up, but the four of us couldn’t flip the raft over and so the other rafts had already disappeared from view by the time we finally managed to get back in the raft and rescue the other two girls. Like I said, I’m pretty sure our guide couldn’t stand us. We were a little all over the place.

We did the Macarena a few times in the boat, standing up, which was pretty fun and definitely beat “Row Row Row Your Boat” in terms of coolness (which was what a few of the other boats were doing). Our river guide nicknamed us the Mamacitas about halfway through the trip and it became our “team name,” which was great because let’s face it, mamacita is an awesome word to say.

Monday night at the casino.

This professor is pretty intense, so it’s hard to blog during class like I usually do. We went whitewater rafting yesterday, which was awesome, but we couldn’t take our cameras on the river and so I have no pictures. I guess the BBA director bought the professional picture pack and is going to put the pictures on a website. But until then, we don’t have anything from the trip.

Our course coordinator docked a bunch of us participation points during Monday’s class because only three or four people “ran the discussion,” but the BBA director was here to observe the new study abroad program and he was thoroughly unimpressed by our class participation. So now a bunch of us have check-minuses for participation even if we had been participating during the whole two weeks before that. Lame. Yeah, I’m griping.

We went out to the Fiesta Casino Monday night again, after going there the first Tuesday we were here.

Monday is ladies’ night – which means free drinks for all ladies between 8 and 11 p.m. The results were insane. The bar/casino was packed for a Monday night. A lot of the men there weren’t drinking, or they were sipping Red Bulls or Smirnoff Ices, which we found hilarious. We had to get up at 5 a.m. Tuesday to go whitewater rafting, so we agreed we’d be in bed by midnight and go to the bar at 8. It’s definitely the earliest I’ve gone out in awhile, even including Saturday’s early bar night adventure. The bar was a lot of fun, though. We danced, the girls got the boys a lot of free drinks (until they got yelled at, because the free drinks were in different cups). I won 300 colones on the slot machines (that’s 60 cents). I spent 200 and won 500. Big payday for me. Aaron won 55 dollars, I think he was playing blackjack. I’m really going to miss walking into bars and getting big, fruity, frozen drinks. It’s expensive but so amazing.

There was a live band there, so we danced a little but mostly just sat and chilled.

Four of us girls took a cab there because there was no way I was going to try and organize another 30-person bus after what happened last time, but mostly everyone ended up showing up in cabs anyway. We had 25 of the 30 of us there, I think. Funny how that works.

Elise, Jeff, Shunji and I went to the adjoining Denny’s for dinner. We’re eating increasingly American here. I’ll still refuse to go to a McDonald’s, I don’t even go to those in the U.S., but I’ve been sick all weekend and I was finally craving Coney Island-type food. I would never go to a Denny’s in the U.S., either, but my egg white omelette and hash browns were absolutely amazing. The only thing was that everything was over twice the price it is in the United States. My omelette, hash browns and toast was $11.50 U.S. Elise’s grilled cheese was $7.50. That’s insane. Our meal was so good, though, and at least I feel a little better lately.

I’ll write about whitewater rafting soon. We only have one class this morning, then we have lunch with a few CEOs, then I’m going into the city to shop with a few of the girls for the afternoon since we have a free day. I think we’re bungee jumping Thursday. I still haven’t decided if I can afford it, though, after spending so much money during the past 2 weeks. I’ll probably be too terrified to move, I know it’s a crazy idea, but I still want to do it.

Manuel Antonio, part III.

It was such a tease to be by the Pacific Ocean for a full day and two nights and not be able to go to it until Sunday. It was a pretty long walk to the beach, since we were at the edge of a cliff and all, and we had to go through the rainforest to get there, so we didn’t attempt to do it Saturday since we were so busy. It was definitely different from Puerto Viejo, where we just ran across the little street and we were on the beach. I woke up at 8:45 Sunday and was determined to spend all day at the beach. We ate breakfast at the same restaurant – French toast, fruit and orange juice, looking out over the ocean, and it was amazing.

We had to check out of our room first, but somehow, the three of us managed to lose our room key. We thought maybe the boys took it, but they didn’t, and we tore apart our room and luggage looking for the key and never found it. How on earth we managed to lose our key when we used it to get into the room the night before, I have no idea. They didn’t charge it for us, though, and so we checked out, grabbed straw mats and headed for the beach.

It was maybe a 15 minute walk, but we saw a few iguanas and an animal that I have no idea what it is, but it looked kind of like a hairless cat with a long snout. The signs in Manuel Antonio were so amusing – it reminded us we were still in the rainforest.

The beach was disappointingly touristy. They had a bunch of lounge chairs that were rented out to tourists and there was a street market next to the beach that was obviously a tourist trap. Vendors kept walking by us on the beach and asking if we wanted drinks, but the drinks were all insanely expensive, as can be expected. We laid out our mats semi-away from all the tourist stuff and I went in the ocean.

I’ve never been to the Pacific, and it was pretty different than any beach I’ve ever been to. It reminded me much more of Cape Cod than the Puerto Viejo beach did. The Manuel Antonio beach was really rocky and the surf was pretty rough, but it was just much more wild than the Caribbean side. Besides the obvious fact that there was a rainforest right next to the ocean, the water was a little colder and the rip currents were much more intense. I only went out to maybe my waist but the waves were already burying me and the rip tide was coming from multiple directions. It would have been a sweet place for surfing, and a lot of people had their boards, but none of the guys took surf lessons this time.

It was really cloudy and not very warm (for Costa Rica, anyway) so I decided not to put on a lot of sunscreen. I knew it was stupid at the time, but now I know it was incredibly stupid – my whole body is bright red. Awesome. I didn’t really lay out all that much, though – I was in the ocean and walking around for a lot of the time. We walked down to the entrance to the Manuel Antonio National Park. It was 10 dollars to get into the park and go to the four beaches inside it, but we chose to go to the public beach right outside the actual park. I’m guessing the park beaches were a little prettier and much less touristy, but I was content with just beach and ocean. It was a lot less touristy near the entrance to the park, and I saw a guy selling coconuts and wanted one. They were awesome.

He had a machete and used it to cut the tops off the coconuts and then inserted a straw into the hole. It was only a dollar – 500 colones – so I bought one and drank coconut milk while walking on the beach. I had never tasted it before, not straight out of a coconut. It was really refreshing and not at all what I was expecting. It didn’t taste like coconut at all. it was more like water that was slightly tangy and had a little bit of a bite. After I was done, we played catch with the coconut in the water – since it was hollow, it floated. It was just a completely relaxing afternoon, exactly what I wanted.

Elise, Janelle and I had set our mats down with the boys, and they decided to take a walk down the beach. They still weren’t back over 2 hours later, and we needed to go back to the hotel and get all our stuff and shower before the bus took us home. We didn’t know what to do, so we waited there, walked down the beach two separate times looking for them, and finally took all their valuables with us. I wrote a note in the sand that just said, “We have your stuff, see you at the hotel.” We were a little peeved they didn’t come back since we wanted to check out the street market but couldn’t do anything while we had to watch all their stuff, and we didn’t end up being able to shop after all since the boys just decided to disappear.

But I mean, we got to spend a full day at the beach, which was absolutely amazing. We had one last meal at the hotel restaurant and headed home, and that was our weekend. We came back to the house, ordered Pizza Hut again (we’re living on Pizza Hut, oddly enough, whenever the cafeteria isn’t open) and just chilled out last night. The boys came over again and were reading Cosmo, and we had another bat in the house (I think it might have been the same one, it was in the exact same place) but it was a really low-key night.

We had one class today, this morning, and then a company visit to Baxter. It was in Cartago, which was like two hours away, so once again we spent most of our day on the bus. The visit was all right. We got to see the factory where they make IVs and other medical equipment, and the whole place smelled like a hospital.

We’re going whitewater rafting tomorrow. We’ll have a lot of free time this week, so a few of us were maybe thinking about going bungee jumping Wednesday, but I also want to go into the city and shop, so I’ll have to see how much time I have. I can’t believe it’s my last week here!

Manuel Antonio, part II.

The first thing we wanted to do after we got back from the zipline tour was jump in the pool, so that’s what we did.

The view from the pool was gorgeous – we could see the ocean, but we were on top of a cliff so all we could see was the rainforest meeting the water. We chilled in the pool for awhile and wanted to see the sunset, but it was too cloudy, so we got dressed and went to dinner.

We ate all our meals at the same restaurant this weekend – it was in the hotel but didn’t really feel like it, since like everything else here, the “hotel” is really a bunch of buildings and everything is half-outside.

The restaurant had an equally great view of the ocean. The whole lodge was on top of a mountain, so we just looked out over the Pacific and saw palm trees and the rainforest for two days. The food was really good – we were definitely spoiled this weekend. All of us went to a candlelit dinner and it was definitely one of the nicer meals we’ve had here (with the other one being the mountaintop dinner). Elise and Janelle and Aaron ordered a pitcher of margaritas and the aftermath was pretty hilarious. I had this great chicken dish with gorgonzola cheese (the cheese is really good here) and, as usual, had my 2-liter of water with me. I thought I drank a lot of water before I got here, but that was nothing compared to my probably 6 liters of water per day now. I still was feeling really gross, so I lived on Pepto and water for most of the weekend, unfortunately. Go figure.

Everyone started going a little crazy after dinner, and I had my water bottle and my ginger ale and basically just sat and laughed at everyone. Again, it always feels so much later here than it actually is. We had dinner around 6, everyone was pretty much gone by maybe 7. We headed out at 9:15ish – we wouldn’t even dream of going out that early in Ann Arbor, but it had already felt like night for at least three hours – and took cabs to the Barba Roja, which all the locals had talked up during the zipline tour. The only problem was that it wasn’t open yet. We were a bunch of stupid, drunk Americans showing up to the bar 45 minutes too early, and they were all mad the bar didn’t open that early. So we went to the hotel down the street, which had a bar/casino, and just chilled there until maybe 11. We hung out in a corner of the bar, sitting in a chair circle and just talking, until Alex and Aaron busted out with one of their impromptu singalongs.

That kept us occupied for an insanely long time, just a group of maybe 7 or 8 of us sitting in the corner of the bar singing Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls songs. Alex decided it’d be a good idea to freestyle, so he was sitting in the middle of all of us rapping Eminem, which was pretty hilarious. Again, like everywhere we go, we were just being ridiculously loud and, well, singing off-key in a bar. Someone would start singing a song and everyone else would chime in if they knew the words. It was honestly hilarious and just so chill – I can’t picture myself doing that at all anywhere in Ann Arbor. We actually got applause after “Build Me Up Buttercup,” and all turned around kind of embarrassed, but it was just these students from Texas who were studying in Costa Rica and thought we were funny, I guess.

We finally decided to head to Barba Roja (for the second time) after a few hours, and got there and it was pretty packed. It was two separate buildings – one dance floor, then an outside pathway to the actual bar – and like everywhere we went this weekend, it had an ocean view.

The greatest thing was that it was 10 dollars for males to get in, and they got one “free” drink ticket – but it was 2 dollars for girls, and we got three free drink tickets. Two dollars for cover and three drinks…more American bars need to be like that. The only downside was that it attracted every creepy Tico in Costa Rica, since obviously there were going to be a bunch of drunk girls there, but we all stuck together. Case in point: Steph and this guy. This might have been the funniest picture of the night.

The bar was insanely full. We all mostly danced in a big group and sort of paired off, but we were mostly just avoiding the older Costa Rican guys that were sipping drinks around the perimeter and staring at us. We saw a guy who must have been 40 or 50 cut through the dance floor and we were definitely creeped out. It was a complete blast, though. They played a lot of reggaeton and a few U.S. hits – the Shakira/Wyclef song (the English version) is a big hit here, they’ve played it at pretty much all the bars we’ve been to.

After we left the club, we headed back to the pool for a midnight (well, more like 2:45) swim. Elise kept insisting we should go to the discoteca – it was the only dance club in Quepos, but it was open until 6 a.m. and was apparently the hot spot after all the bars closed – but we had heard it was shady (to be expected, right?) and all of us (except Elise) were tired and ridiculously sweaty. She kept trying to dance with everyone as we were waiting for a taxi and then she, Corey and Aaron decided to just walk home – which was a bad idea, since Quepos is apparently notoriously dangerous. Jeff and I finally hailed a cab and we passed the three of them on the way back to our hotel, but our cab driver wouldn’t let more than four people be in a cab and we already had four, so we made him promise to go back and get the three of them so they wouldn’t walk back. Once everyone was back at the hotel, we changed and snuck down to the pool. Since there were no walls in any of the rooms (they were more like screens) we had to be really quiet or else we’d be caught, so we snuck down and just relaxed in the pool for awhile. None of us said much. We just stood in the water and stared out at the ocean. it was the prettiest thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here, even better than Puerto Viejo and the bar there last weekend. The clouds were finally starting to break up and so we could see a lot of the stars, just like last weekend, but it was even prettier because we were high up. The palm trees looked so pretty with the ocean as their backdrop and it was really calming. I’m really going to miss seeing the ocean and the palm trees and being out at night where the stars are so unbelievably bright.

Corey and Aaron just ended up crashing in our room – Corey slept on our straw mat on the floor, we had extra pillows and we gave him our bedspread, but he was still sleeping on the floor and we were basically outside. The seven boys only got one hotel room, though, and their room was much smaller than ours, so they were all sleeping on the floor or sharing a bed and I guess our floor was an upgrade. Aaron had to wear Janelle’s pink shorts because he didn’t have any other clothes, which was probably the funniest thing I’ve seen in awhile, especially when he started posing with them. We finally went to bed, though, and woke up pretty early the next day to go to the beach.

Manuel Antonio, part I.

I am so sunburned, it hurts to wear long pants. And pretty much any clothing, for that matter. It’s my fault, I was stupid not to put on sunscreen while I’m on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, even if it’s cloudy, since I’m part Irish with the fairest skin ever and I burned in Ann Arbor in April before I left, for God’s sake. But oh well, it was a good weekend.

We left for the coast at 5:30 Friday. I was still sick…for the second Friday in a row…so I barely had an appetite all weekend, which was rough since the food was amazing and all I wanted to do was feel decent. The bus ride was miserable, but it was shorter than last weekend, and we got to the hotel and pretty much went to sleep right away after exploring the hotel.

Our room was awesome. We were in Costa Verde II, which was the "honeymoon suite", the couples area.

We thought this was hilarious. The complex had its own swimming pool (we're convinced a couple was having sex in the pool, but people were making out all around us every time we were there) and we were just way too loud for a honeymoon suite. We're not quite sure why a honeymoon suite room would have 2 double beds, like our room, but it was just such a great room. It definitely would have been 400 or 500 dollars per night, maybe more, in the United States.

The room was pretty much as big as last week, except we were quite literally in the middle of the jungle. We had a balcony where we could walk out and see the monkeys in the morning. (We heard them, but I didn’t see any...they were supposed to come out at sunrise and sunset, but sunrise was at 5 a.m. and it was cloudy for the sunset.) We had geckos in our room, and the girls in the other room had the biggest toad I’ve ever seen outside their door.

We walked past iguanas on our way to breakfast and saw this ridiculous rodent-like animal that I’ve never seen before on our way down to the beach. Combined with the fact we were in the middle of the rainforest, it was the most wildlife I’ve ever seen. I’m definitely more of a beach or city vacation person than a rainforest vacation person, but it was still amazing.

Elise, Janelle and I had all went to bed already – we were tired and we had to get up early to go ziplining tomorrow – when we heard a knock on the door. Janelle answered the door, and Alex turned on the lights, whipped off our covers and dragged Elise out of the bed and outside because they wanted us to go out. We ended up not going, but seeing Alex and Aaron carry Elise out of our room was pretty funny.

We were picked up early Saturday to go ziplining. It was a 45-minute drive through the rainforest to get to the site, and our tour guides were awesome – they kept getting out of the car to show us leaves (like the one that’s used to make henna tattoos) and berries (citronella berries – the ones that are used to make bug spray. It smells like Lysol). We stopped to see a caiman (a small crocodile) that was in a river, and our guide got out of the car so he could scare a little lizard and make it run across the water. (I forget the real name of the lizard – I think it’s a basilisk – but they called it the “Jesus Christ lizard” because it walks on water.) We were on these little dirt roads, rumbling through the rainforest and across little bridges while listening to reggaeton just quiet enough to not scare the animals.

The ziplining was a little scary but a lot of fun.

We knew that we were safe, but still, being strapped into a harness and flying on a cable strapped across a 120-foot drop in the rainforest is a little intimidating. It was a little hard to look down when I had to focus on looking across at the next platform while I was ziplining, but I did, and we could see down the entire length of the trees and sometimes even to the ground.

The rainforest was pretty hilly with a few rivers and a waterfall. We didn’t really see any animals while ziplining – we were way too loud for that, the cables made this loud whirring noise and people (like me) screamed a little bit on the zipline (okay, it was pretty much just me, and I was made fun of a lot) so we probably scared all the animals away, like usual. We’re a huge group of American college kids, so we’re obnoxious everywhere we go.


The scariest part of the zipline was the Tarzan swing, which was just a rope where we had to hold on and swing across a huge cliff. You were only strapped in on one clip, and it just felt like there was nothing holding you except for your hands on one little rope. There was one zipline run where we had to step off the platform before going, and that was creepy because I was just dangling in the air without moving.

The rappelling was also a little scary the first time – it was a rope straight down and required a little more physical activity than the ziplining, since we had to use our hands to control the speed and we couldn’t get anything caught in the pulleys. Jumping off the platform and rappelling down was definitely an unreal experience.

By the time we were finished, we all looked and smelled disgusting – the equipment was smelly to begin with, and being in the humid rainforest didn’t help.

We got to eat lunch at a restaurant in the rainforest and then headed home – but not before our tour guides stopped at a bar on the way home to grab a beer with us. They were both young guys, they (and others) kept poking fun at me and telling me I had pretty eyes, and so the boys made fun of me for the rest of the day because our tour guide was hitting on me. We made our pit stop, got home and then the night began.

I’ll write about Saturday night and Sunday (Manuel Antonio on the beach – gorgeous!) later. We have class until noon today and then we’re going on our last company visit this afternoon (a 2 hour bus ride, apparently – I’m so sick of bus rides) but I’ll probably write about it tonight.

We have whitewater rafting tomorrow – we have to wake up probably before 5 a.m., since the bus is leaving at 5:50 – but it’s ladies night at the Fiesta Casino and I really want to get a group together since it’s supposed to be awesome, but I doubt we’ll get a big enough group since we have to wake up so early.

How the locals party.

Yesterday was a little nuts. We didn’t go to Escazu like we had planned – Alex and I had set up the bus on Tuesday, but one of the girls and a few of the boys backed out during dinner, so Alex canceled the bus. It was a little upsetting but not surprising, since it was the same girl who backed out at the last second with Puerto Viejo last weekend (the whole malaria thing). So it sucked that our plans were at someone else’s mercy, but we girls decided to have fun anyway.

We took a cab to the supermercado, five of us squeezed in this tiny cab going maybe 50 kph, I’m not exactly sure how fast it was but we were speeding enough to feel like it probably wasn’t the best idea to be going that fast. We stocked up, came back and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Kristen kept calling our house “Club 142”, and it was basically all girls – Jeff stopped by for awhile but felt awkward, probably for good reason.

We were just chilling around the big table when Amanda looked over at the corner and said, Wow, that’s the biggest bug I’ve ever seen. She walked over to it, a few of the girls followed, and then she jumped back and screamed at the top of her lungs and ran out of the house. …We had a bat in our house.

We all started screaming and ran out of the house, and it started flying around. It was probably terrified, it was a really little bat, probably a baby or something. With 9 or 10 girls screaming in the house next door, Alex came running over to see what on earth was going on. From the look on his face, you would have thought someone was being murdered. He was just like, All this screaming for a bat? and then tried to trap it with a trash can. Amanda and I were still outside when I started to come back in, and Elise was just like, …you probably don’t want to come back inside right now. I peeked in and the bat was trapped right outside my bedroom door, which of course made me scream and run away again. Alex tried to pick up the trash can and it escaped again, which set us all off again, and I ran inside to lock my bedroom door (don’t ask me why, I guess so that the bat wouldn’t get in). Alex finally trapped it, two people put magazines underneath the trash can and they let it out.

There was a party thrown by the MBA students.

It was a huge deal, they wrote it on the board during class and everything. It was funny because pretty much everyone on campus was expected to go, there was one party…definitely different from Ann Arbor. It was right across the hill, we trekked over (with a short detour on the swings, where I lost my battery pack to my camera and Elise and I had to backtrack as soon as I noticed) and the party was already going. There was a band and the music was pretty good. We just all danced outside on a patio and semi-mingled with the locals.


We went to Intel this morning for a company visit, but it was only 45 minutes long. We didn’t really get a “company tour” – just the visit that any tourist would get. So that was a little disappointing. Everyone was semi-sick today, though, so it was probably for the best. I went home, took a nap and now we have a visit to Dos Pinos (a dairy company) this afternoon. We’re going to the Pacific right after dinner, so again, I won’t have Internet until Sunday night/Monday morning. Even though only half of us are going, I’m still looking forward to it.

This week has gone by so fast.

We had another group dinner last night, this one a lot better than the last. First of all, the bus ride wasn’t through the winding little roads – it was on the freeway, which was definitely a welcome change. But we had only been on the bus for maybe ten minutes when we heard an earsplitting popping noise…our tire had popped. Lusa and I were sitting on the seat that was right on top of that tire, the back left one, and the bus started rattling and shaking. We had to pull over, five people had to get on the other bus (they ran off our bus like they were avoiding an execution) and we had to move to the other side of the bus to shift the weight…and then we kept going. So there we were, trucking through Costa Rica with a shot tire.

Our restaurant was on top of a mountain. We went up and up until my ears popped and we finally got there.

It was right on the edge of a cliff, and we could see the lights of San Jose below us for miles – it was an amazing view. It was also the best food I’ve had since I’ve been here. We had pineapple (like always), pollo y arroz, some type of spicy root, potatoes, and these coconut balls for dessert that were absolutely amazing. They also served us spiked fruit punch, which was kind of funny because our course coordinator is adamant that no alcohol is served during school-sponsored events on this trip, and they’ve already broken that rule like 4 times – so obviously when she finds out, it’s amusing.


After dinner, we watched a traditional dance show, which was especially great when Jeff and Alex got pulled onto the floor to dance. Jeff was pretty awkward, but it was cute, and Alex just looked like he was right at home, he was so comfortable. We all definitely got a kick out of it.

We have a class with the MBA students today – we had to read a case study and I guess we have a discussion about it this afternoon. We’re going to Escazu tonight – we drove through it last night on the way to the restaurant and it looked really cool, a lot of restaurants and bars, so we’re all looking forward to that. And then our essays are due Friday, we have two company visits and then we’re on a bus heading to the Pacific for the weekend. This week has been a whirlwind.

Weekend plans.

We’ve pretty much finalized our weekend plans. They’re a lot more expensive than last weekend’s, even though we’re only going about 3 hours away instead of 5 and a half. We’re going to Manuel Antonio, a national park/region on the Pacific Ocean. Our hotel is the Costa Verde, and we’re staying in Costa Verde II, which is no kids allowed – it’s the honeymoon suite, so obviously, the three of us girls who are sharing a room are pretty pumped about that.

Here’s the website:
http://www.costaverde.net/

And this is what it has to say about our hotel:

Costa Verde II is designed for couples seeking a romantic getaway with a balmy, tropical ambiance. Each studio apartment features 750 square feet of space with expansive screened windows and doors that draw in ocean breezes and commanding rainforest or ocean views. Guests will enjoy a spacious balcony, two queen-size beds, kitchenette, and ceiling fans.

Manuel Antonio is supposed to be a little more touristy than the Caribbean side, where we went last weekend.


The girls are all determined to do the zipline tour on Saturday, but all I want to do is lounge on the beach, so we’ll probably do the tour Saturday and chill on the beach Sunday. On the zipline tour, they basically strap you into a harness and you fly across the canopy of the rainforest on a giant cord. The tour includes some hiking and swimming also, I think. Basically, this weekend will probably be less beachy and definitely much more expensive, but I’m still pretty excited for it.

The only disappointing thing is that only about half of us are going, mainly because it’s going to run about 200 dollars, maybe more, to get there and do the tour (that doesn’t include food, drinks or souvenirs). The rest of the group is just going to stay at INCAE and go on a day trip zipline tour, but I really want to go to the ocean – and besides, I’m only going to be in Costa Rica once, so I’ll just earn the money back when I get home this summer. I’m not going to worry about saving money right now.

Arenal volcano and hot springs.

I’m exhausted after three days of all play and no work. What a life, right? We have two days of six-hour classes and a paper due Friday, though, so it’ll get a little less fun soon. We don’t have class until 2 today, though – our only day without morning class – so I woke up at 9 and laid out for awhile, then swam in the pool for the first time since I’ve been here. I’m still sort of sick, so I was gasping like an asthmatic after like 2 laps, but it felt good to get out and swim. Everyone is at the library right now writing their essays, and so I felt like a total slacker not doing my essay right now…so I’m in the cafeteria and I’ll start my essay after I write this.

Anyway. We went on a “field trip” yesterday to the Arenal volcano and Baldi Hot Springs. Everything is so inaccessible here – like, it’s only 9 miles from Alajuela to San Jose, yet it takes over a half hour to get to the capital. It's because the roads are so curvy since they have to get through all the mountains, and traffic is just sometimes really slow. The scenery is awesome, though.

The volcano was still in the Alajuela province, but we left at 8 a.m. and it took 3 and a half hours to get there. We stopped at an artisan shop on the way and took a few detours through cities, but I just wanted to get off the bus after being on it for over 10 hours this weekend.
I don’t usually get carsick, but the roads are so winding in Costa Rica that everyone was feeling pretty nauseous by the time we were done. One of the girls actually got sick, but the rest of us were just glad to be on solid ground.

We went to another Italian restaurant for lunch. I don’t know what it is about Costa Rica and Italian restaurants, but I’ve had pizza three days in a row now and it’s all been really good. We ordered Pizza Hut Sunday night after we got back from Puerto Viejo, since the cafeteria wasn’t open and it was too late to get a taxi and go out. The Pizza Hut here is better than the Pizza Huts in the U.S. The cheese is better and the crust isn’t as greasy, two things I can’t stand about Pizza Hut in the U.S. It was actually amazing.


After lunch, we went hiking near the volcano. The volcano was dormant for 400 years and then erupted in the 1960’s, wiping out the village that was right next to the volcano. It’s erupted pretty much every day since, and we got to see the rocks rolling down the volcano and the smoke rising from the top. We obviously couldn’t go near the summit, since it’s an active volcano, and we couldn’t go on the actual volcano but we hiked pretty close.

We had the option of going on the long hike or the short walk once we got to the volcano, and all of us elected to take the long hike. A few people should have definitely taken the short walk, because once they realized we’d be walking through the forest and hiking on lava rocks, they started complaining nonstop. It was awesome. The first part of the hike was really easy, just walking through the rainforest. The guide warned us about snakes, so everyone was staring at the ground instead of looking through the trees, which was especially funny when Janelle freaked out after seeing a dead leaf and Alex almost went through the roof.

After walking through the forest, we finally hit the lava rocks from where the volcano erupted in 1992.

(The sign on this picture says, "Danger - Area of High Volcanic Activity. No Trespassing." If you click on the picture, or any picture on here, you can see the enlarged version. Our guide let us go past the sign, which was pretty badass.) We had to climb up the lava rocks, and a lot of them were loose, so we had to call down to the others when we stepped on a loose rock so nobody would trip. Again, a few of the girls were complaining about having to climb the rocks, which was pretty annoying…but climbing near the volcano was just one of the coolest things ever.

The scenery was gorgeous. We could see the Lago Arenal from where we were, which was a good 10-12 km away from the volcano, and we were so close we could see the rocks rolling down the ash on the slope. We got to the top, took pictures (“we made it!”) and made our way back down.

We were all pretty sweaty and tired by the time we were done, so we got on the bus and went to the hot springs.

It was more of a tourist trap than a natural hot springs, I think, but it was still so relaxing. There was an insane water slide that was so fast, my body wasn’t even on the slide by the time I hit the last curve – I just kind of careened into the water, and everyone was on the other side of the pool, dying of laughter every time someone flew into the pool from the slide. There were maybe 10 pools of all different temperatures, but the coolest one was about 100 degrees and the hottest was about 115. With my splotchy back sunburn, it was a little too hot for me in the hottest pools, but we all just relaxed and soaked in the pools.


We were the youngest ones there by about 30 or 40 years, except for one couple who looked like they were on their honeymoon and were full-on making out in the coolest pool. Everyone else was old and European. There was a wet bar, but the cocktails were 10 dollars and a Corona was 6.50, so nobody bothered getting a drink. Again, so much on this trip is so chill. I’m used to doing a million things at once and being super busy, so I’m trying really hard to learn to relax and just enjoy myself. It’s been great.