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.
1 comment:
you totally should've gotten your hair braided like that freestylin' kid.
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