Into the Mystic

Moving on from Nicaragua into Costa Rica has been like going from floating peacefully down a river to plunging head first into rapids. In fact, I've experienced this both physically and metaphorically in the last week...but I'll get into that in a bit! Just a quick note before I begin - I managed to get a few pics up in my previous blogs. Not many because the internet still is too slow, but at least a few pics! So enjoy :)

First, I'll tell you about the rest of my time in Nicaragua. We traveled from Granada to Ometepe Island via Chicken Bus, Chicken Boat, and then a minibus. It was a terribly interesting traveling experience...Similar to the Philippines (although less extreme), the Chicken Bus was extremely full for our trip. It was fun though, I really like trying the local transportation. We arrived at the ferry terminal a bit early, and just in time for the rain! It's always more fun traveling in the rain, as I'm sure you can all imagine. It was especially fun getting on the rickety chicken boat in the rain, and sitting by a window through which rain poured for a good portion of the trip. It was certainly an experience! However, upon arriving at Ometepe, I quickly recognized that it was well worth the trip. Ometepe is a very rustic and scenic island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, dominated by two large volcanos with beaches here and there along the coast. It is really a beautiful place! I spent the arrival afternoon relaxing and reading in a hammock, and enjoyed a really nice dinner followed by some group bonding and live music - Some of the boys we were traveling with are in a band, and played for us sometimes in the evenings. There's just something special about lounging in hammocks listening to acoustic music with friends...

The next day I took a hike to visit the San Ramon waterfall. It was an excellent hike, including a scramble up a rocky riverbed, ending at a gorgeous waterfall, in which we got to walk and stuff. After the hike we had lunch, and took another walk to see some petroglyphs. The Petroglyphs are carvings dome by indigenous people from the island a long time ago, sort of like cave carvings, except done on volcanic rocks which were shot down by the volcanoes hundreds of years ago. They were really interesting. Then we took a short trip to the local swimming hole, Ojo de Agua, which is a natural freshwater spring in the area. It was beautiful as well! More nice food and chilling in hammocks with music in the evening, this was a really cool day.

Next we had a very long trip from Ometepe to San Jose, Costa Rica, involving the ferry (slightly more secure than the chicken boat!), and a first class bus (yay!) to Costa Rica's Capital. San Jose definetly seems like the most cosmopolitan of the cities I've visited in Central America, and I quite enjoyed my time there. In a day and a half, we managed to check out the night scene, several markets and a few of the parks in San Jose. It's beautiful, although there are definetly some rough areas...my favorite part was the Central Market, which sold a mixture of local things (like food and flowers and clothing and such) as well as some souvenirs for us gringos. The fish and meat areas of the market were particularly interesting, featuring things like cow tongue, tripe, and chicken feet (with a plethora of interesting smells to go along!). In the souvenir section, I really liked the natural wood products - there are countless species of trees in Costa Rica and they make gorgeous things with their wood, the natural colors are so vibrant, I really enjoyed just looking at everything!

After San Jose, many people left our group and a few people joined, bringing our group size from 21 to a more manageable 11. It's always a bit nicer in a smaller group, although I was definetly sad to say goodbye to the others. En route to La Fortuna (our next destination), we thought it would be a good idea to try some White Water Rafting (no adventure trip is complete without some rafting!!). We did the Class 3/4 rafting, and it was seriously intense. For those of you unfamiliar with rafting, rapids are graded from Class 1-5 (or 6?), with 1 being barely a rapid, and 5 being very powerful and pretty dangerous. These were probably the most intense rapids I've ever seen. It was an awesome trip, except of course that we flipped our raft in the first rapid! To be fair, it was a Class 4 rapid called "The Devil's Elbow"...we did flip in the middle of the rapid, and being on your own in a Class 4 rapid is not fun. I was pretty scared for a bit, but we all managed to get rescued before entering the next Class 4 rapid, so it's all good in the end. And although I was a bit shaky, I did enjoy the rest of the rafting! It really was fantastic rafting. In the evening we arrived in La Fortuna, a pretty little town in the shadow of Volcan Arenal, the most active volcano in Costa Rica, and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It errupts constantly, and on a clear night you can see lava flowing down the side. Don't worry, this one is illegal to climb, so I didn't go up :)

Anyway, the day after the rapids, I went Canyoning in 'The Lost Canyon' near La Fortuna. This entailed 4 rappels, and a hike through a beautiful canyon in the middle of the rainforest. It was breathtaking, everywhere you looked was something amazing. This hike included several climbs down waterfalls, jumping in pools and scrambling over logs and such. On top of all that, the rappels were absolutely crazy. We did two really big ones, 50m and 68m. To put this in perspective, my German Architect friend estimates 68m to be about 18 stories high.
Basically it went like this:
Guide: Please step up to the edge of this 68 meter platform
Me: That's crazy! No thank you! (but of course I do it anyway)
Guide: It'll be fine (hooks me up to a rope). Please lean backwards off the platform
Me: That's crazy! No thank you! (Attached only to a rope, like a crazy person, I do it anyway)
Guide: Okay go. Make sure to go faster this time (I was a chicken for the 50m drop)
Me: aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! (but mostly in a good way!)

Rappelling was definetly one of the coolest, funnest things ever, and I would do it again in a heartbeat! Although it sounds scarier, it really was much safer than the rafting. Either way, it was amazing. As icing on the cake, we visited another beautiful waterfall before leaving the canyon! Best single excursion I have ever done :)

In the afternoon, I went on a nature hike on Arenal Volcano with a very experienced, very interesting guide. He explained things about the volcano's scarey history, medicinal qualities of local plants, and spotted wildlife for us, including (but not limited to) a wild turkey, howler monkeys, and Tucans!!!! We then stopped to see the lava flowing down the side of the volcano - it wasn't a perfectly clear night but we did see some lava. No big erruptions (although I guess this is a good thing?). Next stop was the Baldi Hot Springs, an amazing place which has 27 pools of different temperatures (from 25 to 65 degrees celcius!), including swim up bars and waterfalls all over the place. We spent 2 hours there and I could have spent 2 days, it was one of the most beautiful man-made things I've seen (although of course the water is heated by the volcano). It was awesome!

That brings us to today...We travelled from La Fortuna to Monteverde, home of the famous Cloud Forest. En route, we took a two and a half hour horse ride around Lake Arenal. It was a gorgeous day with bright sun and beautiful views in every direction. The horses were great, mine was named Baloo and was much more pleasant and docile than my Honduran Spitfire horse! It was really relaxing and beautiful. Driving to Monteverde was rough but beautiful. Like most places in Central America, everywhere you look is some sort of amazing view, although I have to say this was especially amazing, with Volcan Arenal looming in the background all the time. The forest in Costa Rica is more like a Rainforest than further north...It seemed to me Belize had more of a jungle, whereas Costa Rica has a bright wet rainforest. Of course I'm no expert, this is just my impression. Monteverde is small and quaint and has been raining the whole time I've been here so far! I'm looking forward to exploring the cloud forest. After this, I'll be starting my homeward journey. This is both sad and exciting...nice to be seeing everyone at home again, sad to be at the end of such a great trip. But then again there's always next year...

I'm sorry I haven't added any pictures to this blog, by the way, I spent all m

---

---

---