Finally, Internet Connection!

---

A lot has happened this past week. It has been difficult to connect to the internet on my computer, so I’ll try not to leave anything out now…however, it may take a few entries to get up to speed with everything. Tuesday my dad and I rented a car and drove out to Jacó from our hotel in San Jose. On our way out there, my handy dandy travel book gave us a tip to stop at a bridge that passes over the Río Tárcoles. We pulled over the car and walked out onto the bridge to see a huge population of crocodiles. We counted as many as 30 crocodiles laying out on the river banks and floating in the water. It was amazing and I’m glad my dad noticed that section in the book; otherwise it would have been easily missed.

Once in Jacó, we immediately drove straight out to the beach. Literally, we drove on the beach, parked the car, and went swimming in the ocean. The water was incredible, the warmest ocean water I have ever been in. It’s hard to believe that that is the same ocean as in Redondo. My dad said it was like swimming in bath water, which is a perfect description. The ocean was especially salty though, like even the most amateur back floater could float for days in the buoyancy of the ocean. We dried off by sitting on a nearby piece of drift wood eating our lychees (or mamo chino as they call them here) and coconut we purchased on the road from a local vender. After we dried and towel changed we got back into the car and drove further south down the coast. The scenery was beautiful with wide open spaces and luscious greenery everywhere you looked.

We ended up in Quepos where we stopped to have lunch. Luckily we decided on a restaurant right before it started to down pour. After lunch we continued on to Manuel Antonio. It was too late to buy tickets for the park entrance, but that didn’t stop us from getting out and exploring the beach. It was a beautiful beach with large rocks in the ocean and a couple of locals fishing off the coast. You have to cross this rushing stream with crocodile warning signs to get to the park entrance, which was an adventure in itself. After wading across the stream, we explored an island where the entrance to the park rests. There wasn’t much to see besides the coconut trees because we couldn’t get into the park after four, but it was still fun to explore.

We left Manuel Antonio shortly after our little exploration and on our way back to the hotel in San Jose we got a flat tire. No phone, with only my small amount of Spanish skills to get us through, needless to say we were freaking out a little bit. As luck would have it, we got a flat right in front of a tow truck helping out another broken down car. Keep in mind none of the highways have emergency shoulders. So it was raining and dark outside, our car was parked in the middle our lane on a two lane highway. I was fully prepared to learn how to change a tire as my dad pulled out the jack and wrench. “First, you have to loosen the lug nuts before you jack up the car,” my dad says. As he tries to loosen the lug nuts, the wrench starts bending and then finally one of the lug nuts breaks off completely! None of the rest would budge; they were completely frozen in place. Now, we started to freak out. Thinking quickly, I decided to run up to the tow truck to ask someone if I could use their phone to call our car rental agency. The generosity of Costa Ricans hasn’t failed me yet. The man that I talked to was kind enough to let me borrow his phone, run down to our car, call Alamo, and run back up to him to give him his phone back. The man from Alamo said it would take about an hour to get someone out to where we were. So now we had nothing to do but wait.

Again, we found ourselves on the good side of karma as a man from another car rental agency happened to drive by five minutes later, notice our emergency lights on, and pull over to help us out. At first we thought he was sent by Alamo, but it turned out he was just a really nice guy who wanted to help out of the kindness of his heart. Immediately he went to work on our flat tire. He had a way better wrench that loosened those bolts right up and the tire was changed in a matter of minutes. He also offered to show us where the hotel we were staying at was by having us follow him the rest of the way back. Even though we knew where to go, it was good to follow him because he drove like a madman and we made it back to the hotel in half the time.

Wednesday, we drove up to Monteverde which was another beautiful drive through the lush vegetation of Costa Rica. It was funny though because three quarters of the way to Monteverde is smooth sailing on the same freeway, but the last 30km is up a very rough dirt path so that took about forty minutes in itself. It was interesting to see house and people living there, making their living the simple way, out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a simplistic lifestyle, but authentic in the fact that family and relationships with neighbors is more important to them than why Katie Holms and Tom Cruz broke up.

Once we made it all the way up to Monteverde, we found my hostel (Camino Verde), checked in, and walked around town. Monteverde is a beautiful place, a cloud forest reserve so it was definitely chilly compared to the humidity of the rest of the country, but green and lush as ever. For dinner, my dad and I ate at a tree house restaurant which was pretty amazing. The setup was lovely. The hostel was really clean and well kept, but very quiet as well. It rained incredibly hard that night and in the morning the wind was equally hard. We had breakfast at the hostel in the morning and later I decided I would rather be dropped off at La Fortuna where hopefully there were more people and activity. Jose, the man working at the hostel was sad to see us leave, but my tour guide from rafting said he loved Fortuna and I was excited to see what was around Arenal volcano.

---