Fiji- Flying Fish Organic Village, Nadi & Matacawa Leva Island

I always knew that I wanted to travel. I thought with a world so big and full of possibility, who wouldn’t want see it all? Growing up in America, we’re told we live in the greatest country in the world, but I wanted to find out if that was really true and what the other places around the world had to offer. I knew that we were more progressive in the U.S., but as a liberal thinker, I had grown a little disdainful of the political games played here. I began to think about what life is like for other people in all those far-off and exotic places I had dreamed about. It wasn’t much longer after that, that I was starting to go to these places, and I made it a priority that as I traveled, I would learn about the places I was traveling to. I wasn’t going to be one of those travelers who spent gobs of money to sit in a resort on the other side of the world and have all the comforts of home. I never understood the point of that other than to prove you can spend a lot of money on vacation. No, traveling was going to be an experience for me, not just a change of scenery. I wanted to learn about the cultures that lived in these places. I wanted to know what their socioeconomic problems were or weren’t, and hopefully I would really be able to adventure and learn from my travels, instead of just having nice photographs.
In the last six years, I have managed to visit nearly all of the lower forty-eight, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, France, and Costa Rica. I have had beautiful and different experiences in all of those places. Sometimes those experiences were uncomfortable or scary, but none thus far had prepared for my recent trip to Fiji. While in Costa Rica a year prior, we had met and made friends with some other travelers who were abroad on a Habitat for Humanity mission. Their stories made me realize that the humanitarian experience was something I wanted to make a part of my travels. What can I say? It sparked the warm, fuzzy part of me that wanted to do something good for someone who less fortunate than I. I set out to determine what experience would allow me to give back to others while taking me to a different part of the world.
I knew of a friend, (we’ll call him Peter), who had been living with a tribe in Fiji for some time. We corresponded via email, and he told me how the tribe was running an eco-village to help support their needs. I thought what a perfect opportunity for the trip I’m looking for! He explained that he had been helping to teach natural building and they were teaching him about organic living. We could come and stay with the tribe, located on the beautiful Blue Lagoon, in exchange for a minimal cost of stay and four hours of work each day. The work would consist of helping to build the bures, snorkeling and fishing for food, and learning about sustainable living. The island itself is located across from Turtle Island which is a high-end resort for the extremely wealthy, and is inhabited solely by the chief and his family. I thought, paradise and humanitarianism- what could be better?
I had a lot to learn about traveling, especially as a woman, and about helping others. From the moment we stepped off the plane, our adventures began. Peter, my supposed friend, was in New Zealand helping in Christchurch from the earthquake aftermath. He was arriving in two days, and he wanted us to wait on the mainland for him and take the boat to the island together. We came with very little money, which was all we had, because we had pre-paid for our stay on the island with the tribe in advance for every day of our trip. Luckily, we had the good fortune to meet a young local couple who had lived very near where we do now in California. They put us up for the night at no cost, and actually our time with them ended up being the only thing close to enjoyable the whole trip. Our first day there, just hours after getting off the plane, they take us into town to show us around.
We learned very quickly that in Fiji there is racism between the native Fijians and the Indians who were brought over for labor by the British. In the town we were in, Nadi, the Indians have the pull because they own the shops. We also learned that many of the cops in town are paid off by the shop-owners to keep local Fijians away from tourists. Here we are in downtown Nadi and we’ve been offered every hospitality by our local friends (who happened to be a mix of Indians and Fijians) that they can offer. They even offered to cook us an authentic Fijian meal for lunch as there are only Indian restaurants in that part of town. In an effort to return some of their kindness, we decide to buy the groceries. One of the girls, probably no older than eighteen, went with us to the market to help us pick out what to get. We went to the store and we’re taken aback to see that a small chicken, not much bigger than the size of one’s hand, was $10FJD. Their minimum wage is only $2FJD! It’s no big wonder why the poverty is so rampant in downtown. And to be honest, I expected to see a certain amount of poverty and social unrest.
This wasn’t the really disturbing part of our market venture anyways. After we left the grocery store, we went to an open air market to get some cassava, which is a root much like a potato. While waiting for our cassava, an un-uniformed cop approached the local girl we were with and began to harass her. He was speaking in a language I couldn’t understand, but it obvious that he was getting irate. He then began to slap her in the face, and no matter how much we tried to protest or step in, he wouldn’t stop. Even when we were at the point of standing in between them so he had to reach around us to try and hit her, he wouldn’t even so much as look at us or acknowledge our presence. Another woman came up and helped us to get her out of there and away from the cop. The other woman even threatened the cop by saying she would go to the police and report him so that he would lose his job. Apparently this is a common problem in downtown Nadi.
It was so upsetting, especially as a woman, to see another woman hit in the face in public for no other reason than that she was a Fijian female, and she was with white people. It wasn’t fair and I was upset, but when we relayed our concerns to the rest of our hosts, they seemed to just accept that this was the way it is. We figured things would be better on the island with the tribe. They wouldn’t have these problems in a closed community where all their needs are provided for by their natural surroundings. Boy, were we naïve. We still had another full day before we would meet with Peter and take the boat to the island. Most of that day was spent at the whim of our hosts, and being told, ‘Hey, this is Fiji Time’.
The evening of our second day we met with our contact and departed early the next morning to take the boat to the island. Now there are two options for a boat to take us where we need to go. There is the village boat, where the only expense is the fuel. This was the original plan, but Peter thought that the villagers bringing the village boat would want to do shopping on the mainland, and he was in a rush to just get home. He tells us that he can get a deal on the expensive boat so we will be able to take it for cheaper. Wrong again. While in line to board the boat, he returns from the ticket line, requesting the very last of our cash. As it turns out, the tickets were $120USD one way, per person. That was almost as much as we had paid apiece for our ten day stay with the village! He reassures us that the village boat will be able to bring us back. So we embarked on a four hour boat ride to the second to last Yasawa Island, which would be our home for the remainder of our trip.
Once we get to the island, the tide is out and the villagers have left the small boat on shore. We were stuck on the boat and had to ride it the rest of the way through the island chain and back around. This time the local resort boat gave us a lift to shore where we walked a good mile or so through reef and sand to get to our part of the island. We had to leave our luggage on the ferry boat from the local and resort because there certainly was no carrying it with us on this hike. We hoped that our luggage would be okay and nothing stolen. At least our passports were with us, and it wasn’t like we had any money left to steal. Peter in the meantime has learned that the larger village boat, which goes to the mainland, went there anyways to pick us up because there wasn’t any communication between Peter and the villagers about our pick-up arrangements. We would’ve been able to take the local boat and save our money. Now the local boat was on the mainland, looking for us, and without the fuel to get back to the island or a return trip for when we would need to go home.
The villagers greeted us with the welcome song as we walked up, a rare beautiful moment in our nightmare vacation. After the song was over, however, the villagers walked away and most were never seen again during our stay. Our company now was Peter and the other travelers staying in the village: a German couple who had been living in Australia for the last several years, and a young English musician who had been traveling on his own for quite some time. All three had recently arrived before us. They were quick to inform us that they had found bedbugs in the bures. The German girl showed us her arms and legs which were covered in more bites than unaffected skin. We were grateful we had brought our tent to sleep in. Oh wait, but the tent was still with the luggage, which was still on the boat. Peter comes over and tells us that we will be sleeping in the bure. We insisted several times that we pitch our tent, but they didn’t want to clear a space or get our luggage at that time. He was certain that our bure did not have any bedbugs, and that we would be fine. He also instructed us briefly on the activities we would be doing there. I would be doing the “women’s work” of making brooms, cleaning, washing dishes, and doing laundry. My boyfriend, Ben, however, would be snorkeling for clams and hunting octopus with the guys all day. At that moment, the girl got up and took me over to start making the brooms. She turned and winked at the guys, saying this was the “girls’ job”, they needn’t worry themselves. We were dumbstruck. We didn’t mind working, but we came on vacation together, not to be split up into gender roles for all of our activities.
We eventually got our luggage that night, shortly before we had our kava ceremony with the “chief”. The actual chief was on the boat that had gone to pick us up on the mainland and was now stuck there, so his brother was the acting chief. That night at the kava ceremony was my first real interaction with the tribe’s males. None of the women were present at the kava ceremony other than me and the other female traveler. The men wouldn’t look me in the eye or interact with me at all, yet they were the friendliest and most hospitable people I had ever seen to Ben. It was as though they viewed him as chief of some of other tribe, and I was simply his hand-maiden he brought along. The acting chief kept insisting that my bowls of kava be smaller and smaller, until it was just ludicrous and I decided to go back to the bure. Upon saying goodnight, I thought it would be respectful and would maybe earn me some brownie points to say goodnight in their Fijian language. I had been picking some up on the mainland and was getting conversational in it. The chief immediately reprimanded me for my accent and misuse of a word and then turned sweetly to Ben, who had no interest in using their language, and wished him the warmest of goodnights.
Back in the bure we tried to sleep, despite the sweltering heat. That’s when the bites started. We could turn on the light and see their little black, hard-shell bodies crawling around in the bed. Every time you went to squish one, blood would squirt everywhere from the bite they had just taken. It was horrifying and disgusting. We had to stack the beds in one corner. We used our sleeping pads and sheets on the floor and wrapped the mosquito net around it all. It was infinitely better than getting eaten alive, but far from comfortable.
The next morning, Ben and I were uncomfortable enough that we felt it prudent to say something to our host. We voiced our concerns and his response consisted mainly of telling us that we were ignorant to the beautiful culture around us, and as Americans, we were really going to have to start adjusting to “Fiji Time”. All Fiji Time meant to us at this point was being on everyone else’s time but our own since we had stepped off the plane. We decided that this was not the place for us and it was time to leave. But how since we had spent the last of our money on the boat from the mainland?
It was some small miracle that, as a bon voyage gift, my mom had paid for and set up my phone to make 50 and receive unlimited text messages. We figured out that if we walked to the tip of the island, and mostly this had to be done at sunrise or sunset, we could get a little reception. So, we start text messaging family back home to have money wired so that we can get off the island for starters. In the meantime, we’re making the best of it by sticking together. The men looked at Ben as if he must be crazy for wanting to spend time like that with a female. Apart from the male elders, they don’t even associate with their women. The men themselves are cast into a hierarchy based upon their relation to the chief: chief’s brother, chief’s son, chief’s nephew, etc.; if you aren’t a close relation to the chief, your rights seem to be limited. Nothing in the village was done without the consent of the chief.
We tried to talk to some of the women throughout the day while the men were out fishing. As I mentioned before, I was picking up a fair amount of Fijian conversation at this point. There aren’t nearly as many concepts in the language as others I have spoken/ studied, and in many ways it was nearly impossible to communicate our concerns. Not only is the topic apparently taboo, but it didn’t seem that we could express ourselves in a way that they deeply understood. They could sense our pain and see it in our eyes, but they couldn’t seem to be able to comprehend it. They see the tourists who come and spend all sorts of money to vacation there, and so they seem to have a general conception that all the tourists have a lot of money. They seemed to think that perhaps it was the lack of running water and electricity that was making us so uncomfortable. We couldn’t even be bothered by either of those things at that point.
By the evening we had been split up a couple of times, me to bathe and dress the little girl, and Ben to do the ‘manly’ work of building the campfire. I went to the campfire to meet Ben before dinner and I notice upon my arrival that I’m the only female present, of course. Not one of them bothered to say ‘hello’ or acknowledge my presence, even when I complimented them on their fire. They couldn’t seem to stop chatting up Ben, and when dinner was ready they turned to us and said, “Benny, Benny come to dinner,” and walked away without so much a glance in my direction.
At dinner it was mentioned that two octopi were spotted during the snorkeling/ fishing excursion for the men. They described how beautiful they were as they changed from bright purple to blue, and then camouflaged into the reef. Then Peter says how he wished he had a spear to kill it. They had also taken nearly a dozen beautiful, live mollusks from the sea and instead of preparing them for dinner, left them out to be eaten alive by the ants over the next couple days. To what purpose, I never really understood. I guess to have pretty shells outside the bure. They didn’t seem to have any regard or respect for the life around them they were taking. They had a couple dogs at the village as well, and it obvious by the way they would constantly cower and whimper that they had been severely beaten. It was shocking how they treated the life and the earth that surrounded them with such indifference.
We were done, and we had barely worked anything out with our family back home via text. It was another sleepless night. In the morning I found Peter at sunrise and told him we needed to leave. He asked us to stay just a couple more days, because we were in paradise. I said that visibly it was paradise, but that there were a lot of other issues going on that made it not really so. In the meantime, both of us had become terribly ill from dehydration and sunstroke. There was no medicine or medical care on the island whatsoever, so our health was starting to enter a critical state. The airline was telling us it was going to be $1200 to change out tickets, but we had to get off the island. We managed to make enough contact back home to have some money wired to our account. We boarded the boat penniless and told them that we would have to pay them from the ATM when we reached the shore. They were kind of enough to abide and even discount our tickets $50.
By the time we reached the airport, it was only a few hours before the flight to Los Angeles was departing and there was a group of 400 Americans on board. We were ready to beg, borrow, or steal to get home at this point. The thought of, “what do we need to do to get deported,” even crossed our minds at one point. We told the lady at the Air Pacific counter our story and she changed our tickets for merely the $100/ per ticket change fee. I’ll be eternally grateful to that woman for doing so because there are only four flights per week from Nadi to Los Angeles. Somehow, we even managed seats together. While smoking a cigarette outside before our flight, we met two Americans from the large group on our flight. They explained how they were on a group business trip, and one of the activities was to visit a local tribe for a kava ceremony. Their tour guide had warned them before hand of the gender roles within the tribe’s culture and to be prepared for un-equality. I was thinking, why didn’t our host do this? Well, because he would never have any guests, I imagine.
We made it home a week after we had left. It was only really four days in Fiji, but between losing and gaining time, there were about three days of travel. I had gone from 100 lbs. to 85 lbs. in that week, and Ben had gone from 185 lbs. to 175 lbs. For as horrible as we felt physically, (and probably looked), we couldn’t have been happier to touch ground in the States. I was so grateful to be an American at that point. Something I hadn’t truly felt in a long time. As I was writing in my travel journal on the plane home I realized that I regretted none of it, because I was changed as a person. There was my life before Fiji, and now there is my life after Fiji. It had been a real adventure, but I walked away feeling that if only we had known, maybe things could have gone differently. Then I realized, people do need to know about this. I felt an obligation to share what I had learned, and maybe spare somebody a ruined vacation, or much worse. In a lot of ways I feel like we came out of this lucky. I did end up writing to Peter after our return. As articulately as I could, I told him that our experience was not what he had prepared it us for, and that he had an obligation, as the person responsible for bringing travelers to the island, to make his visitors aware of that real situation there. His response was pretty much what I expected; I was a close-minded American who couldn’t possible understand their culture, and America was worse under any and all circumstances. He also didn’t refund any of our money after we had paid for ten days with tribe and ended up staying with them only two.
I’m not entirely certain that we had been drawn into a tourist trap. There were many times it felt that way, but there was another feeling too, another lesson. No matter how good one’s intentions to help others, or how much better one thinks they can make the situation for another, true change, real change has got to come from within. I also learned that despite our problems in the U.S., at least we have come past some of the most basic social pitfalls. Our problems are really much more systemic and philosophical than the core issues that plague a lot of societies in the world. It put a lot into perspective and so yes, it’s a cheesy way to end, but moral of the story: I’m proud to be an American.

Costa Rica- San Jose, Quepos/ Manuel Antonio, La Fortuna, & Monteverde

Costa Rica (February, 2010)
Crestline:
We decided after the New Year to take a trip and began looking into to flight prices for Costa Rica. We found a good deal originally; $289/ ticket. Not too bad, but we had to wait until our finances were right to buy them. We watched the ticket prices over the next few weeks and even though they increased slightly, we were still able to afford them at $378/ ticket. Ben picked the dates, February 8th through the 18th. Eleven days total.
I thought back to my 7-day trip to Paris and wondered if that would even be too long… Although I loved going to Paris and I had a wonderful time, I was certainly ready to come back home after a week. However, I told myself that more time would be better in the long run and I would be happy we had more time once we were there.
We started packing a few days before, looked into to where we would keep the car, and mostly just tried to keep ourselves busy and our excitement at bay as much as possible. The last week before we left seemed to drag by so slowly, I found myself doing a lot of cleaning around the house. But eventually, our day for departure came and I was as nervous as I was excited. Were our packs going to make it through security with everything we needed? Would we have enough money? Would we find places to stay? Although none of this really worried me so much as the security issue. Flying in this day and age has become so cumbersome to passengers; it is often you who is punished, rather than any terrorist or lackadaisical security guard.

Los Angeles – San Jose – Alajuela:
Our flight left LAX around 10:30 a.m. which meant that we would have to leave the mountains around 6:00 a.m. to beat the traffic and get there in time. For once, we actually left pretty much on time. We drove to LA and parked our car in the cheapest overnight garage nearby. They had a shuttle to drop us off at the International Terminal for check-in. We got our seating assignments and passed through security, no problem. I think Ben was irritated that he had to take off his shoes, belt, etc. now through security. It had been a little while since he had flown, and never internationally. It really has become so ridiculous now at the airports, I can’t say that I really blame him.
As we were getting on our first flight, they already had too much baggage in the overhead compartments, and they insisted that Ben check his pack. Mine would fit under the seat, they said. This didn’t go over too well with either of us, and so, stupidly, we still tried to bring it on and shove it under the seat. At this point, we’re holding up the line, he has to take it back up front, they have to call back the porter, and everyone is pissed because our flight is now leaving late, and there’s a bunch of us trying to make that quick connection to San Jose. The mood was not the best at this point, especially because when we got to Phoenix, we had no time for a cigarette.
We arrive in Phoenix, early somehow. Our pilot must’ve hauled ass across that sky to get us there early. We jump from one terminal to the next and then we were off to San Jose. This flight was longer, 6 hours maybe. We’re cranky, hungry, and tired at this point. Ben ordered some airplane food and became very sick within minutes of eating it. I stupidly, also very hungry, ate a bite, and felt it immediately. Ben kept having to run to the bathroom to vomit until I was able to get some Tums from a woman we had sat next to on the first flight. (She was also going to Costa Rica.) There was no reprieve at this point. He was angry and not having it, and I had been pretty miserable the first part of the day, so he wasn’t too thrilled with me either.
We get off the plane in San Jose around 7:30 p.m. and while Ben was changing money for colones, I grabbed a $5 taxi to Alajeula for us. It was a short ride to a hostel they recommended, Hotel Internacionale. We pulled up on a street corner and it was all gated and barred in. I thought for a second that we were in a bad part of town, but after a longer consideration, I realized I felt comfortable and was just grateful to have a room for the night. It was $39 and we had a hot shower, cable t.v., and air conditioning. At the time, we thought this was a pretty great price for the room. Later we would find out it was about $10 too much, but for the time, it was perfect.
We checked into our room, took some showers, and headed to the soda (café) next door for some dinner. We were both feeling pretty sick still from the airline food, but we needed to eat. We walked into the soda which sat on the street corner next to the hostel. It had a few tables, dim lighting, one soda cooler against the wall, and two young Ticos eating dinner. It was weird, my first impressions of both Costa Rica and this soda were apprehensive, and both proved to be false. It only took a minute in the soda, speaking with the cook/ owner, Olga, to feel comfortable and welcome. The microcosm of the macrocosm, my experience with Olga would be representative of my experience with the country.
We had ordered arroz con pollo and a ginger ale each. They serve you so much food there. American-size portions, one might say. The food was very good, but as we were both sick and stuck with portions way too large for us, we couldn’t eat much. I didn’t want to offend her by not eating the food, so I explained in Spanish that we were sick from the airplane food and I had a bad stomach. She immediately started to tell me (in Spanish) that she was also a professional masseuse and that she would come by our room next door at the hostel once her shift was over to give me a massage. Good to her word, she showed up about twenty minutes after we got back and gave me an entire massage. It was wonderful and I was able to mottle through a conversation in Spanish with her. She told me how she owned the soda and also did massages out of her home. She asked me about my life as I she told me about hers. At the end, she began to leave, not expecting anything in return. Ben pulled out a $20 to give to her and she gave us the biggest thanks and hug.
Later that night, we met an American backpacker staying in the room next door with his girlfriend; they were from Vermont. They had been in Columbia and Panama for two months and were now heading back. However, the ticket his girlfriend had purchased for the flight home ending up being from San Jose, California and not San Jose, Costa Rica. Oops. They were supposed to flight out that day, but ended up having to wait to catch a flight until the next day. We also met an older American ex-pat who was staying there. He recommended we go to Montezuma, a coastal town on the western side of Costa Rica. He seemed to really enjoy living in Costa Rica. We also had a visited by a small kitten that I called ‘Amigo’. He looked pretty undernourished, so I fed him most of the leftovers we had brought back from Olga’s. He was so cute, and I wished I could have brought him home with us.

Alajuela – San Jose (Coca-Cola Station) – Manuel Antonio:
Our hostel manager came by early in the morning to get us a cab. We were still pretty tired and just waking up, so we asked him to come back in an hour. Not long after we got up to get ready, Ben and I were fighting over something stupid. The stress of traveling into the unknown usually ends up being projected onto your traveling partners. That's why its so important to have good traveling companions or be comfortable with traveling alone.
After the argument, I felt horrible and really scared and lonely. It’s the strangest thing how feeling lonely in a foreign place can cause so much fear. It’s a very different lonely than the kind you feel at home. There’s always a familiar sight, at least; maybe it’s my cats, or a book, or even looking out at the same roads and trees. I never noticed it at the time, but these little things are subliminally comforting when you’re upset. Now, sitting in a hostel room in the middle of Costa Rica, with my only friend and comfort hating me, I felt so horribly, horribly alone and afraid. I told him I was going to go back, and I meant it so whole-heartedly in that moment, that had I been in charge of the cash, I probably would’ve done it. Okay, I would’ve made it to the airport and then realized how much I wanted to be on this trip, and then moved on. Either way, it sucked, and now things were off to a shitty start.
We got our cab, who was supposed to cost $20 the night before, and now cost $30 once we got in the cab. You live, you learn. Actually, he gave me the price in Spanish as we were leaving, but my Spanish was still pretty rusty at this point, and it didn’t really register. So we arrive in San Jose at the Coca-Cola bus station, so named for the Coca-Cola bottling plant that once stood there. Immediately after we get off the bus, we’re approached by a guy trying to sell us trips, tickets, and cab rides. He was somewhat helpful as far as letting us know what time to take the bus we needed. We walked into the bus station, which is really a stand inside of an indoor/ outdoor market place. Apparently we were in the wrong line and a Tico behind us was trying to tell us in Spanish. Eventually we figured it out and got in the right line and purchased our tickets for Quepos/ Manuel Antonio.
After we bought our tickets, we headed out to the bus stop to wait the next two hours or so when our bus would be here. We realized quickly that the bus times I had pasted into the journal were off by about an hour or so. We rolled some cigarettes and bought some drinks from a local man selling them in the station. He was helpful and gave me the impression that he was keeping an eye on us. There were plenty of police in the station as well. You never necessarily felt unsafe. It was funny when we were rolling our cigarettes because two of the cops came over and asked us what we were rolling. We found out later that you can’t buy loose tobacco in Costa Rica, only rolled cigarettes, so they probably thought it was pot. We also saw two cops run into each other on motorcycles literally a half a foot from where we were waiting for the bus. They drive absolutely crazy in Costa Rica, but somehow it seems to work out better or at least more amicably than in the States. We also met a transvestite named Gypsy while we were waiting for our bus. Gypsy was an ex-pat from Palm Springs who now lived in Quepos.
Finally, our bus arrived and we got on, handed the driver our tickets, and chose some seats. As people were coming onto the bus, a Tica woman came over to us and was just staring at us. Her ex-pat husband told us that they have assigned seats on the bus. However, nobody had told us this and we had already given the driver our tickets. Actually, I looked up for seat numbers when he said that and didn’t see any, so I was kind of a bitch when I responded to him. I think I said something like I don’t think they have assigned seats, but we’ll move anyways. He said that he had been living there for 15 years and they’ve always had assigned seats; we probably just missed our numbers on the tickets. He was pretty nice about it actually. His wife wasn’t though; as we were moving, she called us estupidos. I said I knew what that meant, and told her in Spanish that I could understand much more than she thought.
So we go back up to the front of the bus and ask for the seat numbers of our tickets. The bus driver couldn’t tell which ones were ours, so we just had to wait for a seat once everyone got on. Of course, there weren’t two together, but I asked a young Tico to switch with Ben and he did. The bus was hot, no a/c, only open windows, and we were heading to one of the hottest areas of Costa Rica – Quepos and Manuel Antonio. However, once we started heading out and seeing the countryside, it was hard to stay in a bad mood. We were here, and we were doing it.
We listened the ex-pat and his wife argue with each other most of the way. She seemed miserable and it turned out that he was having some serious legal and business issues from the tone of a very loud phone call he made on the bus. We watched the crazy drivers, fences made from trees, and rolling hills dotted with vacas as we made our way to the south-western coast. The bus made a stop for drinks and snacks; we just smoked cigarettes. Things were still unpleasant from the airline food.
Finally we arrived in Quepos and then Manuel Antonio. We got off in Manuel Antonio right at the beach. Immediately we were approached by a surfer who wanted to give us lessons. It was something Ben and I had mentioned doing earlier, so I thought he wanted to go. However, I didn’t have my bathing suit and when I went to the bathroom to change, Ben was angry at me for saying we would surf. He never opposed it in front of the guy, so I had been thrown off. Either way, he was kind of upset with me now, and just wanted to hike down to the beach to get in the water. We started hiking with our packs and everything down the beach, through a strip of rainforest, and to another beach.
Ben went down to the water, and since I didn’t have my bathing suit, or the desire to be yelled at, I waited on the sand. As I was sitting there, I noticed a spider-like creature walking over the sand. By the time Ben came back, it had made its way pretty close. We walked over to look and saw that it was a crab. We started to walk back to the rainforest trail to a beach 200 ft. on the other side. That’s when we heard the clicking sounds and noticed that ground was moving! (We were wearing our flip-flops at this point, by the way.) It was tons and tons of those little crabs. Well, all sizes really; some of them were actually quite large. I was freaked at first, but you learn to just watch your feet, and they scatter away from you.
On the other side of the rainforest, was another half-moon beach, practically deserted. We dropped our packs and sat down next to the water. I don’t think either of us was really in the greatest of moods at this point. It was nice to get away from people for a moment and then of course, right at that moment, two girls came out onto the beach. They sat their stuff a little way down from us, but for whatever reason, decided that the one spot on this whole empty beach where they wanted to stand was right directly in front of us. I’m not too sure what that was about. I got the feeling that it was about showing off their skimpy bathing suits, or just a cultural difference of not feeling the need to give strangers space. It was probably a combination of both in hindsight.
Ben watched a guy swim out past some rocks and around the corner, out of sight. He never came back and it was getting dark. Ben knew of another private beach on that side that could be hiked to from the rainforest. We decided to try and hike over there to find a spot to camp for the night. He figured that’s where that guy must’ve gone too. You’re not really supposed to camp on those beaches, but there were no signs anywhere prohibiting it, and there were bathrooms and showers. So, we said, fuck it, let’s try and go.
We started hiking back through the rainforest to the where that spot would be on the other side. It was getting pretty dark now and we knew we were in the park past closing. None of these things had ever really stopped us before. However, our trail took us right past a ranger station where a bunch of rangers were sitting on the porch talking. We continued on our trail, figuring they would have stopped us if we had to leave. We started walking through a denser trail now, still in flip-flops, and it its getting very dark. The sounds were starting to come out of the forest: shrill, hissing beetles that made the tree branches shake, birds and bats hooting and swooping overhead, howler monkeys screaming and jumping in the branches above us, and god knew what else rustling the bushes and undergrowth. It was at this moment that I felt sharp, spiny legs run across my foot. I knew it had been big too. I screamed and looked over and saw a giant, jungle crab, about a half foot in diameter run through the brush. The legs I saw running away looked more like a giant, jungle spider, but when I relayed the story to a local later, I found out that it was a crab.
It was at this point that one of the rangers came and told us the park was closed. He sent us back out through the longest, darkest trail out of the park. That’s when we really saw how scary and alive the rainforest is at night. All the sounds seemed amplified and everything was starting to move, the ground, the trees, and the sky. There were so many animals and creatures moving everywhere and making so much noise, it was as if the forest was alive itself. We started to hike out pretty fast, but we were still in our flip-flops. We stopped to put on our hiking boots and hauled ass out of there. We made it to the entrance of the park, and I decided that was the last time I cared to hike in the rainforest at night.
The entrance of the park drops you right at one of the main hostel and restaurants streets. We started walking around to the hotels right at the entrance and stopped in to ask the price on one. The man said 140, and I was so blown away by the price that the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “in colones?!?” I realized afterwards that 140 colones is about fifty cents. “Uh, no, in dollars,” the man replied. We left and headed to a Backpacker’s hostel we had seen a flier for. It was just down the road and we walked in and spoke with the owner and soda manager, Oscar. They had rooms for $20/ night, much better, I thought. Unfortunately, they were full. However, Oscar was kind enough to call a friend of his Betty, who owned another smaller, unmarked hostel down the way. It would only be $25/ night and we would have our own private bathroom. We walked down to meet Betty, who was waiting for us out front. She showed us the room, and we were ecstatic. It had two beds, all brand-new tile, a private, clean bathroom, and was set back from the road. This was perfect for the price. We told her we would take it and would be staying at least a night.
Once in our room, we unloaded and took showers. There are only cold showers in Manuel Antonio, but we would be grateful for that over the next two days and about twenty showers. We decided to go back to Oscar’s and get food. He was pretty busy and we had to wait awhile for our food. We sat drinking watermelon juice and a beer that Oscar accidentally thought Ben had ordered. After awhile, I wanted to talk about how tense things had been in an effort to make up, I guess. That plan backfired pretty good. That was the last thing Ben wanted to talk about. We sat there in silence, realizing we had forgotten our cigarettes, and listening to the two older ex-pat women at the next table talk about some man. Ben left to go get the cigarettes, and as I’m sitting there by myself, one of the ex-pat women showed up with our surfer guide we had ditched earlier that day. Great…..
Ben returned soon after, and our food arrived. I really couldn’t eat at this point, especially because we were fighting so badly. My anxiety was through the roof. So, we got a box for the food and headed back to the room. I just went to bed and Ben took a walk out to the beach by himself. It was just time to end the day at this point. I kept thinking, is this how the whole trip is going to be? It had to change and get better, we couldn’t keep arguing. We were in Costa Rica for chrissake!

Manuel Antonio – Canopy Zip-Line Tour:
We got up early in the morning. It had been pretty hot during the night and a little difficult to sleep. Ben got up a little before me and tried to get me up. I’m so cranky in the mornings, that I snapped and said something without thinking. Oh, great, here we go, another day off to a bad start. We started to bicker, but somehow we nipped it in the bud, and were able to go to breakfast not hating each other. We went back to Oscar’s soda for breakfast. I was still feeling pretty crappy, so we split a breakfast, which like all the other portions, was plenty. We met a guy from Colorado at breakfast that had been to Costa Rica many times before. He was going to Dominical and then to stay with a friend who lived at the base of Mt. Chirripo. He said his plan was to climb Mt. Chirripo; I wonder if he actually made it to the top. He noticed I wasn’t eating, so I mentioned some of the issues I have with my stomach. Ironically, he had similar problems with his own stomach, and it turned out to be blood parasites. He had gone to the doctor, but they had been unable to notice the parasites until they did a live blood scan. He decided to remedy the issue with homeopathy, and began using aloe vera after hearing a recommendation from a friend. It took about 6-8 weeks, but the aloe completely healed him. I was so happy to hear from someone who had the same issues and was able to get rid of them. (I have just started taking the aloe now. Hopefully it will work.)
After breakfast, we decided that we would do some zip-lining and walked into to town to check into some tours. We found a stand that offered a zip-line tour that afternoon with lunch included for $50 apiece. We headed back to our room to get the money and let Betty know that we wanted to keep our room for another night. She wasn’t there when we returned, so I wrote in note in some mottled Spanglish, explaining that we would pay when we returned from out tour. We headed back to the stand, purchased our tickets, and were on the shuttle about 15 minutes later. The shuttle made one stop and picked up four Americans, a mother and husband, and her daughter and her husband. They were all older than us, and extremely friendly and nice.
The shuttle took us the Titi Zip-Line Canopy Tour drop-off which was actually a very nice hotel as well. We signed our waivers, left our bags and geared up. As we walked up the trail to our first zip we saw secondary rainforest, two brown and yellow striped millipedes (our guide said it’s rare to see two together), a black and yellow poison dart frog, and sloth holding her baby up in the tree. They gave us a safety briefing, and then we were off! It was fantastic. We did 12 zips in all. Before our last few zips, and our best zips, we walked to a canopy hut overlooking the rainforest. On the way, we saw sleepy/ sweepy (?) plants, which were ferns which pulled in their leaves and protruded spines once you touched them. Once on the canopy overlook, the view was spectacular. We got some pictures and had some cold water. It was so incredibly caliente in Manuel Antonio, we were pouring water on ourselves even in the shade of the rainforest.
At last we made it to the end, and did a rappel instead of our last zip. It was just like when I had gone with Matt Bell, my old stepbrother from PA. It was a really exciting experience, and you never really felt unsafe. The gear was sturdy and our guides were so attentive. (Actually, I think one of them was flirting with me during the tour. Ben made a comment afterwards that he thought the one guide enjoyed having a younger girl on the tour. Ha ha:) The older gentleman who was with us, had a heart condition, and they took very good care of him. They used an extra harness, even after he initially refused and said he was fine, and it turned out this guy was 75 years old. His wife asked the guides how old the oldest person ever on the canopy tour had been. They told us that 107-year-old woman had gone on the zip-lines once. Boy, I hope I’m doing zip-lines if I’m still around at that age. Why the hell not, at that point? Overall, it was a great experience and we definitely wanted to do it again while we were there.
Afterwards, we went back and took another one of many cold showers in our hostel room. We paid Betty for our second night; somehow, she had understood my horrible Spanglish note. We had walked past a young guy earlier in the day selling hand-made jewelry in the Artisan Market. The Artisan Market was really just a dirt path over a creek and through some guava trees that led from the road to our hostel to the beach. When we had passed earlier, we had smelled pot and an older American saying, “Smells like someone’s smoking the mota, but it doesn’t smell as good as California weed." So, we were walking back from our canopy tour, we stopped and looked at his jewelry. There was a leather Rasta bracelet that I liked, but he also had these interesting roach clips made to look like spiders and other insects. When I asked about it and he saw our reaction, he must’ve realized we were cool, because he offered us a gram of pot. It wasn’t the greatest quality, but it wasn’t the worst either, a good middies; so, we bought that and the bracelet. We went back to the room and rolled a joint and went out to the more private half moon beach to smoke it. We sat all the way at the end near some rocks with all the crabs spread out around us, keeping a good 4 ft. distance in every direction, of course. It was lovely, we got stoned and watched the sunset.
Afterwards, we went back into to town. We ended up having dinner at Oscar’s soda again. My stomach was starting to feel a little better at this point, and I could eat a little finally. He was actually playing some good indie rock, too. I got to hear a little “New Slang” by the Shins and some Dave Matthews Band. We decided that the next day we would take the bus to Monteverde and then do the horseback ride from Monteverde to La Fortuna from there. We got up early again, and ate breakfast at Oscar’s soda, again. We used his computer there to check to see if there were any e-mails from the person taking care of our pets and to send out an update to everyone, letting them know we were safe and having fun. Then we walked back along the road and found a tourist information stand. They helped us to book the Interbus Shuttle, which was a private shuttle, with air-conditioning, that would pick you up from your hotel and take you to another one in your next destination. It was a little more expensive, $39/ person, but well worth it.
We were all excited because he found an Interbus going to Monteverde in a little bit. Unfortunately, by the time Ben had returned with the money to pay, two girls had already got the last two tickets from the actual station. The tourist stand calls the station to purchase your tickets for you, and then you just pay them. However, they had a shuttle going to La Fortuna, and we could always ride the horses from La Fortuna to Monteverde. Now, that would be taking the horses uphill, and we were concerned about the 5-hour ride on both us and the horses, but we figured we’d just handle it once we got there. We had a couple hours to kill, so we headed down to the beach and walked out to some rocks in the water. On the way, we saw a fat, white woman just strip her clothes off right in front of everyone! This wasn’t a nude beach, and we hadn’t seen one nude person the whole time. Then when we were walking back from the rocks to our room, we saw a topless woman just sitting on the beach. They didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t nude. It was kind of funny, but I’m not sure we really cared either, except to have a little chuckle to ourselves.
We went back to the room and showered again, for probably the thirtieth time, now. We packed our belongings, said goodbye to Betty, and went to wait for our shuttle. We didn’t have to wait long. Our driver, Alamar, showed up right as we lit our cigarettes. We loaded up our bags and hopped in the wonderfully air-conditioned van. We stopped not far from our pick-up to pick up two more passengers, who turned out to be the girls who got our Monteverde tickets. They were from OC and they were heading to Monteverde to do the same thing we had planned, the horse-back ride to La Fortuna. They were also slightly concerned about the horses carrying all the weight for so long. We never actually did the horse-back ride; I wonder how that turned out, especially because we had rain in the following days.
It was still a decent trip by Interbus. An earthquake knocked out their rail system back in the 90’s and so there are no more trains in Costa Rica. All public transportation consists of the bus and taxis primarily, which end up being mostly privately owned. The government only allots so many taxi cabs for a geographical area, so many of them just use their own cars and work for themselves. Because of the geography of Costa Rica, and all the mountainous areas, the roads tend to be very narrow, winding, and routed in wide paths around mountain ranges. This is why it takes forever to get anywhere in Costa Rica. So, taking the Interbus is a little quicker, and much, much more comfortable.
The girls from the OC ended up being very nice. We loaned them our guide book so they could write down some information and said goodbye when we parted ways at a soda break-stop. We got some popsicles and drinks and smoked our cigarettes. Then Alamar had us on our way to La Fortuna, passing through beautiful villas like, Palomares. Palomares was a gorgeous little town nestled in a little valley between the mountains. Like most of the Costa Rica countryside, it had beautiful, rolling, green hills spotted with dairy cows. We were fortunate enough to drive through at sunset and have Alamar to point out different areas as we drove through them. As we were nearing the end of our trip, we came upon a car accident on a steep, two-lane mountain road. It was crazy! People would start to drive on the other side of the road to go around, including Alamar, and then cars would start coming and the whole lane would have to back up and try to squeeze into parking spaces on the other side again. Eventually, the police showed up and directed traffic enough to get our lane around the accident. We were back on our way and we made it to La Fortuna by nightfall.
At the Interbus office, we could book our tours straight away. We browsed the tours and decided to do a class II and III white-water rafting trip the next day. We also didn’t have a place to stay, so we asked Alamar about La Fortuna Backpacker’s. They have these “Backpacker” places in just about every city in Costa Rica. There always named for the town: ‘La Fortuna Backpacker’s’, ‘Alajuela Backpacker’s’, etc. Most of them just seem to be overpriced. What ended up being luck for us, was that they were full and so he took us to his friend’s hostel around the corner- just like at Oscar’s. This hostel ended up being a way better deal. It was a lot cheaper and just as clean and nice – ha, just like at Oscar’s, again. The hostel was called Cabinas Hervi and was run by a man named Alvaro and his wife and family.
We set our stuff in our room, paid for three nights, and went to eat at the attached soda. We ordered some more arroz con pollo; just one order this time. After a minute, a local Tico came and sat next to us and ordered a strange looking drink with little blue berries and syrup in it. He tried to explain to us what it was, some local berry, and it can be used in soda as an herbal remedy for the stomach. We finished our dinner and then headed back to the room. We were so beat, we only watched a little t.v. before we passed out.

La Fortuna – Rio Balsa:
We got up early and had a breakfast of fruit, eggs, and milk at Alvaro’s soda before the shuttle arrived to take us to Rio Balsa. We were doing our white-water rafting trip on Class II and III rapids, and it was Ben’s first time. The shuttle arrived pretty quickly after we finished breakfast, and we loaded up and headed to the river. On the way, they took our lunch orders, as we would be stopping to eat on the way home. When we arrived at the river, we geared up, and prepared for our safety briefing. The woman who did our helmets for us asked if I was Italian because of the way I spoke my Spanish. I told her I wasn’t, but she asked if I spoke any other languages. Turned out she spoke French as well, and so all three of us (Ben included), were able to have a little exchange in French.
After the safety briefing, we divided into smaller groups of four to go in the three rafts. We were with a younger couple; the guy was from England, and the girl was Russia. I was able to finally use my Russian a little bit with her, and she understood me! It was really neat. That’s the first time I’ve ever really been able to use it. We loaded up into our raft and took off immediately into a rapid. It was a blast! They threw us the best fruit juice from the banks as we were rafting by, and at one point we stopped for fruit and cookies. There were a lot of points where we could just swim alongside the raft in the river. Although, we were the only two who did.
A couple of times I got to sit in different parts of the raft for a rapid. The first time, the guide had me sit way down in the front and just hang onto the ropes with my head down. That was pretty cool but it was hard to see what was happening because my head had to be down the whole time. The second time was better. He had me go to the very back of the raft and sit on the edge, holding the ropes. I didn’t know it at the time, but he told everyone else in the raft to watch me. When we went over the rapid, I flew off high into the air, and landed on my ass in the rear floor of the raft. It was great! It was a really wonderful trip.
Afterwards, we dried off and loaded back into the van. The restaurant we stopped at for lunch was really private and beautiful. They had a lot of land with chickens and tropical birds feeding from home-made fruit feeders. The lunch was pretty fantastic as well. We had the carne with rice, beans, polenta, and fried plantains. It was the first time I felt like I had been able to eat really well; only because my stomach had taken a few days to recover from the airplane food and the stress. Our tobacco had gotten wet on the raft, but we were able to get a smoke off a local employee and share it before we headed back to the hostel. Luckily, we were the first stop because I was pretty beat at this point.
When we got back, we booked a couple more tours through Alvaro. He offered to have his brother, Roger, take us to the lava flows that night, but we were exhausted from our trip. Instead, we booked it for the following evening along with a nature hike in the morning. That night we went for a walk around the town of La Fortuna. We stopped and ordered a pizza to take back to the room along the way, and then wandered up the road to the far edge of town where all the luxury, resort hotels stood. It seemed such a shame; they were all gated in, separated from the town and the locals. It was interacting with the locals and being in the town that was really making the trip for me. The people were all so warm and welcoming, and I was starting to be able to converse pretty well with them in Spanish because of it. It was making the trip more of an experience than just a vacation. It seemed like these people wanted to vacation somewhere else, but with all the comforts of home. What’s the point of the leaving home, then? Why not move to Florida and set up a hammock and umbrella in your backyard? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper. I guess I just don’t understand people like that, or people with money, who spend it for the sake of being able to claim you have (done) x, y, z.
La Fortuna – Geovani’s Eco-Park and Arenal Volcano:
We got up, had breakfast at Alvaro’s soda where we met two Canadians who were coming from Nicaragua, and then got ready to go to Geovani’s Eco-Park in town. He was already there by the time we had finished eating, but was kind enough to wait a few minutes while we showered and dressed. We walked from our hostel down the road, towards Arenal, and to a place called Café Vienna. There was a little bamboo stand outside that served at Geovani’s office and headquarters. There we met an older man from Colorado who helped Geovani run the park. I’m not entirely sure that Geovani needed any help. Rather, it seemed more like the man who needed some company, and Geovani was doing him the service.
The entrance to the park sat right behind us, and the two of us followed Geovani into the rainforest. He was really an amazing guide and person. We came to find out that he had planted most of the park by hand, himself. There were still some very large trees that had survived the initial clearing of the forest when it was a cattle ranch, but all the rest had pretty much been planted by him. He had also brought most of the wildlife back to the area of La Fortuna. Including the sloths; the sloths had left the town and only returned in his park. It was really a very beautiful park too. There were hand-carved bridges he had built over small creeks that ran through the jungle trees. He would call the birds and they would mimic his calls back and then fly over to us. We were able to see and photograph a toucan and a rare squirrel-cuckoo this way. We ate termites! He had a huge termite nest that he poked a hole in. He licked his finger, stuck it in the hole so they could crawl all over it, and then stuck his whole finger covered in termites in his mouth. We were like, “we gotta do this!” So, we licked our fingers, covered them with termites, and ate them. Not too bad really, they tasted more like cabbage than anything.
We ventured on to see beautiful (and poisonous) trees and plants, a strange whippoorwill bird that looked like a seal, leaf-cutter ants, a natural copper spring, and at the very end, a view of the Arenal Volcano. It looked so beautiful and you could see it clearly enough to make out both cones at the top. Arenal has two cones, but only the back one is active, and lava regularly flows down that side of the volcano. It also creates a series of hot springs in La Fortuna, some of which have actual waterfalls that make up the hot spring. We headed back to the entrance of the park, where we had started our hike. There Geovani told us of his plans to build a café out front for the grandmothers to wait with the grandchildren, and to run a rope and ramps through the park so that the blind and the handicapped can go on his nature trail. He was a pretty amazing person, and you could see his genuine concern and passion for his natural surroundings. It was uplifting to meet him and most of the Ticos we met. Their culture is so much kinder and simpler than ours. It re-instilled my hope and love for humanity.
After out nature hike, we returned to Cabinas Hervi for some lunch and a nap. We got up later in the afternoon and decided to hike to the waterfall from our room. We started hiking out a little a later than we probably should have. The hike was uphill towards the end and we were within the last twenty minutes before it closed. I tried pushing myself because I knew Ben really wanted to see the waterfall, but that only seemed to make him angry. So, we bickered a little bit back and forth about and then decided to turn around. On the way back, two Hungarians who were now living in Canada, stopped to give us a ride back to our room. They said they had driven up to the entrance and they wanted to charge them $10/ each for the last ten minutes, so they ended up turning around. We all agreed it wouldn’t have been worth it. They let us off back at our room, but things were not over for Ben and me.
He was pretty upset about the hike to the waterfall and the tension kept escalating. We got into a huge argument and ended up yelling things at each other we really didn’t mean, of course. At the end, we forgave each other and I think we both felt a lot better about things. At that point though, we were supposed to head to our trip to see the lava flows. We got some hot water and cooked up a dehydrated meal and then met Alvaro’s brother, Roger, who would take us up to the Arenal flows. His cousin Maximo, who owned the local butterfly garden, also came to see the flows with us.
It was raining pretty hard that night and had been storming off and on for most of the day. We weren’t sure we would be able to see them, but we drove up anyways. It was actually a really nice trip. Roger spoke very good English and Maximo spoke a little. My Spanish was improving at this point, as well, so we were able to have a pretty decent conversation. They told us about their family, their jobs, and their lives in Costa Rica. They seemed to genuinely love Costa Rica and their people; they also seemed to be very aware of how rich and beautiful their surroundings were.
We made it up to the top, but it was raining pretty hard up there. The road coming in had been rough and muddy, yet we had seen several other cars making the pilgrimage there and back. Once we got to the viewpoint, it was still pouring and low visibility. We sat in the van with Roger and Maximo for a long time, talking with them, and waiting for the rain to stop. Sometimes we would sit in silence for a few minutes, listening to rain, and tricking our brains into seeing faint glows of lava and stars in the sky. After awhile, we decided to turn in and head back to town. Roger had to be up at four a.m. for his next shuttle job and it was already ten o’clock at night. We had told him we would be willing to turn back earlier, but he insisted on waiting longer to try and see the lava. They really were accommodating people. On the way back, we told Maximo we would try and get up early to see his butterfly garden in the morning before we took our Jeep-Boat-Jeep to Monteverde in the morning. We retired to our rooms for the night. I packed my bags for the morning and set the alarm so that we would be up in time for Maximo’s garden. We were so exhausted at this point, we just passed out.

Jeep-Boat-Jeep – Monteverde/ Santa Elena (Valentine’s Day):
The next morning I woke up early before the alarm went off. I checked the clock and saw I had an hour before we had to be up. I was so tired, I went back to sleep. I found myself waking up to Ben asking why the alarm didn’t go off. I checked it and I forgot to compensate for the time change. My phone had been set to Colorado time for the entire trip for whatever reason, and the time difference had been throwing me off ever since. We had thirty minutes before our shuttle would be here. Luckily, I had packed my things the night before, so I showered and was ready to go in 15 minutes. Ben, however, had decided not to pack the night before, and was frantically rushing to get all his stuff into his pack. I felt really bad; it had been my fault that I set the alarm wrong. He had everything packed and was showered quickly enough though, and we ordered some breakfast to go from Alvaro’s soda. We went to say goodbye to him and his family. Maximo even showed and we apologized profusely for waking up too late to see his butterfly garden. He was so gracious and didn’t seem to mind at all, just came to say goodbye. By the time our shuttle got there, we had a box of fruit and toast, and Alvaro’s entire family was there to see us off.
We loaded up on the shuttle in the back. We munched our pineapple, watermelon, and toast on the way to the dock for our boat across Lake Arenal. We finished breakfast by the time we arrived at the dock, and loaded up onto a ferry boat. The lake was narrow and surrounded by rainforest on either side. It was overcast and the fog hung low to the ground and filled the trees. I sat next a lawyer from Seattle and his family. They were really nice and were also just leaving La Fortuna. They had been fortunate to actually see the Arenal blow the morning before and so we got see pictures of the eruption. After about forty-five minutes, we arrived on the other side of Lake Arenal. We smoked a quick cigarette before hopping on our next shuttle, or Jeep, I guess. It was really a van because the roads had been improved and they no longer required the 4x4 Jeeps.
We drove for about an hour through the countryside between Lake Arenal and Monteverde. It was beautiful and the time passed quickly. We met some more Canadians on this shuttle to talk to along the way, and soon we had stopped for a break and were back on our way. We arrived in Monteverde around noon, and went to the place that Alvaro had been kind enough to book for us. It was $30 a night and had a private bath. You couldn’t beat these hostel prices, especially for the quality of the rooms. The owner, Jessie, checked us in and showed us the room. It was our nicest yet, and had a great view of Santa Elena and the cloud-forest. We talked with Jessie a little bit. She had some Hebrew written on the back of her hostel flyer and I asked her about. It turns out she had taught herself Hebrew and wanted to travel to Israel in November. We had an interesting conversation, but we were anxious to get to our room and rest. She told us about the Extremo Canopy zip-lining tour, which had also been recommended by the French Canadians we met on our Jeep-Boat-Jeep ride. We counted our money, booked the tour with the last little bit of extra money we had, and went back to the room.
We were down to bare bones and were going to definitely have to finish off the food we had left because there wasn’t too much left over for restaurant meals. But, hey, we figured we were going to have fun on that canopy tour and we had brought the food for a reason. We relaxed in the room for awhile and then went to Jessie’s soda for dinner. Her food was excellent and tasted slightly different. She told us that she’s from Nicaragua and that we were eating authentic Nicaraguan food, which I have to say, was pretty damn good. Her plantains were best I had eaten the whole trip. Her milk was also the best too. She told us that she got it in the bottles every morning, and I have an idea that she was probably getting it fresh-squeezed and unpasteurized. It tasted wonderful and never once made me sick.
After dinner we went for a short walk around the town of Monteverde to check out the town and see if we could find the bus stop for when we would have to return to San Jose in a few days. Monteverde was mostly dirt alleys that all seemed to connect at different places to the three larger main roads that made up the triangle of downtown. It was easy enough to navigate and figure out, but there didn’t seem to be any bus station anywhere. We figured we’d ask Jessie about it the next day after our tour. We headed back to the room and gave each other massages for Valentine’s Day before turning in for the day. I think I passed out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Extremo Canopy Tour – Research Station/ Cloud Forest Hike
I didn’t wake up again until maybe four hours later... The wind had picked up and was now howling and rattling the windows with such a force that I thought they might break at first. Down the road, a small dog was barking incessantly and the combination of the two had woken Ben up. He got up and walked out of the room; about five minutes later, the dog stopped barking. Another minute later, he came back into the room and got into bed. Apparently it was an issue a few rocks wouldn’t solve. Normally I would be shocked and dismayed at this, but when it’s three in the morning, you’re dead tired, and it’s the difference between going back to sleep or not, well…. Let’s just say I’m not as compassionate when I’m sleep deprived.
I couldn’t go back to sleep now though, and decided to get up and read for a little, and then for awhile, and then smoke some cigarettes, and eat some crackers; it was a little while until I went back to sleep. When I woke up again it was the latest I had woken up yet. I was getting up near dawn every morning and it felt like it must’ve been seven thirty or eight. Ben hadn’t slept well, either, and we weren’t in the greatest of moods. We showered and had breakfast and we felt a lot better. We barely had time to smoke a cigarette and grab the camera from the room before our shuttle had arrived. We got onto a much more crowded shuttle as compared to our first zip-line. And it seemed that everyone around us was speaking some German dialect, or Dutch, or something I couldn’t quite place. Ben turned to me and said, “I wish we had our old zip-lining crew back.” And at that moment, I couldn’t have agreed more. It’s funny how more apprehensive you are of people when you’re out of your element, and yet, nearly everybody we met in Costa Rica ended up being friendly, no matter where they were from.
(This is unfinished, sorry...)