BIGOTE

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Word of the week: Bigote-- which means in spanish mustache. You may be asking yourself, Luke what does this have to do with anything... well, just for the record, Jeffery and myself are growing mustaches while we´re here in costa rica just for yucks. I´ll be posting pictures so you can see its stellar progression.

I´m going to do things a little differently this time, my thoughts are all over the place because so much happened since the last time we all had a little chat chit, and this could get very sloppy
... so here it goes; my expenses for the weekend.

Bus ride to San Jose+taxi to bus station+taxi back to other bust station+Bus ride back to desamporados=800 colones.... Well it all really started friday evening, when the girls decided that we were no longer going to go to Manuel Antonio because the weather was supposed to be dreadful do to Hurricane Emily. Our new plan was to go to Fortuna and climb around Arneal Volcano. I was slightly skeptical of their decision but, hey, we´re in costa rica and i´m just flowing with the flowsky. So Jeff, Kate and I attempted to go buy tickets friday evening right after class. We had no idea how to get to the bus station, to buy tickets, so when we got off the bus in San jose and got in a taxi, i just told the driver, take us to the bus station. (Are you still with me??) So, our man is just driving us around to god knows where, of course he doesn´t have the taximeter running as you would expect, and we´re getting ripped off like farneti at a gay bar, ZINNNNNNNG. He drops us off at some random street corner and we have no idea where we are. So after asking about 15 people where we are and how to get to the bus station, by now i´ve figured out that you have to say which bus station you want to go to and we´re making progress. 15 minutes later we find the bus station. YES! Right? No, of course not. Unbeknown to us, the bus station closes at 5 pm, so when we showed up at 6:30 we were a little late, and unable to buy tickets. So we decided we just wouldn´t tell anyone else (the other 5 people that were going to be traveling with us) that we didn´t get tickets and that we would still meet at 5am the next morning as planned and just wing the whole thing.

Bus ride back to San Jose 125 colones.....So after waking up at 4:15 am and taking my 397th consecutively cold shower, we all met at 5 and took a bus to San Jose. First Marcos tidbit. Mark decided that he didn´t trust his alarm clock so the night before he decided not to go to bed haha. So we catch the bus to San Jose, very successfully and we are making good time, becasue we know that the bus leaves for Fortuna at 6:15.

Taxi ride to the bus station FOR FORTUNA 0 450 colones. Now i´m a freaking pro at taking the taxi and i´m whipping out spanish with the taxi driver like farneti whips out, well.... umm, anyways i know what im doing and i even made him turn on the taximeter. So we make it to the bus station for fortuna by 5:30.. Phase 2 of 3 completed successfully.

Bus Ticket to Fortuna = 1.500 colones. Wow, we actually were able to purchase tickets to Fortuna, and we were on the bus and leaving the station at 6:17 am.

At the rest stop in San Carlos 9:17 am, a pastry, a coke, an apple = +3.500 colones. What? Hey Luke, why the plus sign in front of that 3. WEll, i bought my coke and what not and paid with a 10.000 colones bill, and the guy gave me back 13.500 in change. Hey, i wasn´t about to argue with him, and i didn´t feel bad about it beacuse i had to sit next to freddy kruger for 2 hours on the way up and he had the longest thumb nail and it kept tickeling my knee cap and i wasn´t appreciatin at all.

1 night in hotel = 3.500 colones. So after 2 more hours on the stink machine called bus, we arrive in fortuna a little before 11. (I sat in the way back corner, right where all the diesel fumes come in.) We scooped out 3 hotels quickly and came up with a beauty for only 7 bucks a night a person, swimming pool, hot showers, nice rooms, the works baby.

After unpackin quickly, we asked a few locals what to do, and we planned our day in 3 seconds. After talking to a lady, we thought she said we could go to the waterfall and be back in an hour. What she meant was that it takes an hour just to walk to the watefall hahah.

Coconut milk straight from the coconut, straw included = 225 colones. About 3/4 of the way up we were all dehydrated, exhausted and burning under some intense sunlight and came to this shack selling ice cold coconuts. Quite possibly my second best purchase of the entire trip. WE´ll be getting to my best purchase later.

Entrance fee to the watefall. 3.400 colones for foreigners. YEah, foreigners cost twice as much costa ricans, thats wack i know. But after an 8 km hike uphill i parted with the 7 bucks easily, and ready for a cold swim. After descending down this steep as gorge that was about as safe herpes, we came to this unbelievably surreal and the most beautiful place i´ve ever been too. The watefall stood about 8 or 9 stories high and reminded me slightly of pictures i´ve seen of angel falls. So we swam with some exotic freshwater fish i had never seen before and basked in the sun for about a half hour.

Taxi ride back down. 850 colones per person. HAd we walked, we would have never made it back in time to the hotel for our second excursion, plus i wasn´t exactly up for another 8 km.

Bus tour, plus drinks, plus jungle bushwacking, volcanoe hike, hot springs entrance fee and bus ride back to the hotel. 12.000 colones. The biggest purchase of the trip.. A little before 4 pm we met up with "JC", the tour guide who took us around the Arneal volcano explaining its history and what not blah blah blah.. I´m gonna have to hurry things up here cus i have to be back for lunch in 20 minutes. After our history lesson, we went on a nature hike, through the rain forest for about 2 hours. It was wild, to say the least. The flora is so specatular, big, green and luscious. Throw in some monkey´s throwing shit at you and some classic views of the surrounding terrain and that was the hike. Yes, thats right, monkey´s threw shit at laczak.

So we hiked around and saw the volcano and waited until dark and saw some spewage of some lava. Its hard to describe. hopefully i´ll have some pictures posted of it. Anyway, its massive, it looks like what you expect, a big ass volcanoe.

My writing is getting sloppy so i´m gonna end it soon, and write a part 2 tomorrow. After the volcano tour with the crew and a couple sweds, we went to baldi hot springs. Unbelievable. 10 different pools of varying temperatures. The hottest one was scalding hot, you couldn´t even put your foot in for more than 5 seconds. Of course Mark decided to take the waterslide into this one and he payed as you can imagine. Mark did a lot of "silly" things this weekend such as 3 consecutive belly flops into the pool, not putting on sunscreen.... and much more. WE alll bought a drink and just relaxed and enjoyed hte pounding cool rain while we basked in luxury. Gotta go. Catch you all manana. I´ll promise ill have pictures by then.

hasta luego
luke

ps. dunk, how´d the macker go, i´m curious to know??

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Comments

[rica]

a couple of swedEs.

[Jeremy]

blog response #5
i wont lie sac, ive been quite lacking in the blog responses for the past few days - i apologise. my computer decided to go all farneti on me (and yes, i do appreciate all the farneti zinging withing your blogs) so i couldnt really do much about it. im glad to read that youre at least having an interesting time and have learned a substantial amount of spanish in the process. this will help me greatly as i begin to form and ultimatly create the first government sanctioned US cock fights. first off, youre spending mad colones. thats alright. from my basic understanding of third world countries, youre like...rich. spend all the colones you can, spend them like theyre going out of style like farneti at a straight convention. youre only going to be there once so why not? (coinsidently thats what farneti said about girls) ZING! the central american taxi - i would not in any concivable way have been able to talk to the cabbie, lord knows what kind of slang he was using. quite frankly im suprised you werent raped. anywho, at least he wasnt as bad as the guy you had to sit next to on the bus, thats just plain weird. odds are he was unemployed, single, and a drunk; the predicament farneti will be in within 5 years. i highly approve of your "winging it" approach to your stay there - basically ive been "winging it" since like 8th grade. in the end it always works out because not only do you have no control what-so-ever over your fate, everyone around you is directly influenced by your apathy; theyre just like "you know what, fudge it, lets do this" - then its party time. that sucks about the whole "foreigner" thing at the volcano - people all over the world always bust americans for being racist and prejudice, but you know what, it doesnt matter where youre from or what language you speak - if you come across someone who you know isnt from your country, you treat them differently, thats just how it is. at least youre a nice guy, but its not like juan lopez is going to understand that. hes just gonna be all "give me money or im going to cut you". if theres anything luke dont need, its a good cuttin. monkeys do throw poop. holy moses, didnt you pay attention at all in history class with hemsick? did you just completly zone out me and barklow? christ, we could have saved you hours of monkey-poo shelling. my sentiments on marcos - punch him in the face, and everday, poo on his breakfast best wishes gid

[Mom]

Hi Love
Hi Love, Boy, does it sound like you had yourself a great adventure. Lindsay is jealous! Once again, we are getting a lot of laughs from your stories. I have been passing copies of everything on to Grandma Betsy. It was hot and steamy today - so hot you don't want to do anything. After 10 in the morning all you want to do is sit around and try and stay cool. Today Daddy had his team over for lunch and then they worked - ever so little on the front porch. Lindsay fixed the team lunch and she put on a really nice feast. AnnElise is up for the week to see Mike. She is going to stay at Grandma's while Mike works the next two days and then they are driving down to New Jersey to see some of Mike's family and she will be leaving from there to go back home. Yesterday Grandma Betsy, Lins, Courtney and I drove to Albany again to get more painting done. We finished it all up and it looks really good - nice and clean now. We were so hot working - not a good day to paint, but had no choice. It had to get done so the carpets can get cleaned. We will be going down to Don A. this weekend to visit. We'll be sure to say hi on your behalf. Daddy listening to the Yankee game in the bedroom with the air conditioner on. I am about to join him to get away from this heat. We are thinking of you all the time and look forward to your daily blog. Stay safe. Lots of love........HKHKHKHKHKHKHKHK Mom and Dad

[deleted_12102]

Farneti
Farneti sounds like a real gay.