Redo.
sat 23 nov 6pm
So I'm a granny and have this zoomed at 210% because I'm blind as fuck. Here's attempt number 2 at recapping Costa Rica and what's happened up until now in Chile and Argentina. I'm on a 15 hour bus ride from Barilohe to Perito Moreno for an overnight stop and heading on down again with a bus at 10am that goes for 11 hours to get to El Chalten. It hasn't been too bad, me and matty decided not to sleep last night so we could just sleep our way through the bus ride which worked fairly well to be honest. Woke up at 1pm for lunch, then kept sleeping and just woke up again for another pitstop. It's crazy how quickly the scenery/vegetation changed between cities here. It's looking real desert-y at the moment but with a fair bit of fluffy green/brown puffs of grases. Not what I was excpecting after coming out of an evergreen forest area, especially because we're heading further south.
I'm defs at a point where, hmm, I'm not over travelling, but I'm over trying to engage with people too much. Everythings very superficial because we're only ever sharing dorms for one or two nights, everyones doing their own thing and I genuinely don't give a fuck where you're coming from, what you do or where you're going and I'm tired of hearing travel stories. I don't care how good the cheese was or how huge the papayas were and 'amazing' doesn't cut it as a descriptor of a place you went. I spent 11 days with girls who said everythingggg was AH-mazing, it's lost all meaning. I sound jaded as fuck haha but eh, not here to make small talk, I'm here to see the scenery, I'm not even too bothered trying to experience the local culture anymore lol. I just want to sleep, site see and maybe do some adventure sport stuff. Ergh and everyons always so into drinking. Not my scene. Dancings my thing and sadly, after Cuba, I really don't think I'm going to find a place other than maybe Brazil that has dancing so imbedded into it's culture and people.
Me and Matty went to an Irish Pub last night, it was the plan but to be honest we were holed up in our room using the free wifi and we're pretty comfy. We probs would have stayed all night had it not been for that damn Isreale and his slutty conquest for the night. James the aussie was asleep in the bunk above me, I was facing mattys bunk and we were both sitting using our respective gadgets with the lights still on at 2am and in comes Isreale with some blond backpacker. It was awkwarddddd. He must have expected us all to be asleep, and if we had it wouldn't have been a problem. But we weren't. They kind of awkwardly chatted politely and climbed up onto his top bunk and I caved =.= I asked Matt to come dancing haha so we bailed. The music was pretty good but dayum, no one can dance. It's like white people dancing, all swayish and jumpy. I'm dissapointed in your Argentina. Maybe when we get to a bigger city. Costa Rica was similar though, in general, they couldn't really dance like how latinos are meant to dance to salsa/bachata/reggeaton. It made me sad. It was just such a hugeeee contrast with Cuba where the person who couldn't dance was the odd one out. Ehh, not that I'm a great dancer, but I like to see people put in a little more effort haha. I'm soooo keen to learn how to salsa properly, like with the spins. I've been saying that for years but maybe now that I fell in love with Cuba I will actually do it haha.
Lol what was that =S The bus driver stopped the bus and we all got out and took a group photo. I'm really confused, no ones even been talking.
Anyway, Costa Rica. I did that completely as a group tour. I had 2 free days at the start but I just wanted to chill out and ended up getting some wierd sickness, lethergy, dizzyness, headache thing that lasted until my first day of Contiki. Just chilled out ALONE in airconditioning <3 a="" and="" chanel="" disney="" got="" in="" lol.="" lot="" music="" nbsp="" of="" p="" room="" service="" spanish="" videos="" watched="">Everyone in our group blended really well, it was awesome. I kept my distance a little I guess, mostly because I couldn't be arsed drinking every night and I like my alone time but everyone was really caring and looked out for each other which was super nice. People were going nuts with fb and instagram because of all the free wifi but I'm glad I guess, the trips extremelly well documented haha. It was a massive change from my Cuba group with G-Adventure. I think it had a lot to do with the lack of internet, no one was ever on their phones infront of each other and we were just a different blend I guess. I mean, in Cuba we spent all our downtime together as a group too but it wasn't as intense or funny as with Contiki. We had a lot of characters and loud personalities in Costa Rica though which definatly made it what it was. Haha people even cried on the last two days, I think it also had to do with 4 of the girls having won the trip so everything was like a dream and magical for them. It's been good, everyones still uploading pics and tagging, uploading videos and sending group emails and we have our own fb group now haha. I've even kept talking to the bus driver. If it came down to it, I would totes go for a reunion, which they were all talking about, but it seems like a pipe dream getting together 17 people lol.
Costa Rica turned out perfect really, we had amazing weather considering it was the rainy season. We had a lot of luck on our trip, we saw all the animals we were hoping to see within the first two days and we even managed to see the baby sea turtles hatching and going out to the ocean for the first time. IT WASN'T EVEN THEIR SEASON. We were late by like a month but I guess there was a late batch haha. It only started raining on our last 2 days but we were at a beach resort and all constantly wet anyway with all the water activities we were doing and it was refreshing. It did mean that 2 of the optional activities got cancelled (horse riding and sunset catamaran) but we were all actually hoping they would haha we were all buggered and chilling at the beach seemed like a better way to spend our down time than spending more money.
Our first day we were in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica and it's pretty much in the middle of the land mass so no beach. Like I mentioned earlier, fugly city, the cabbie warned me haha, he wasn't wrong but I'm glad I stayed and didn't take his offer of weed and coke on the beach at his friends hotel =P I was too run down =P Contiki took us on a quick city tour and to the nearest attraction of the city, Poas Volcano. My head was going to explode and suprisingly the altitidue actually got to me a little, I didn't even realise we were going up higher. Volcanoes are not my thing, I've been to a few and theyre always a fucking let down. Theyre not as pretty as mountains and they never explode so what's the point. We saw the crater for like 10 seconds before the fumes covered everything up again.
The next two days were spent in Tortugero and we stayed at this awesome island beach resort. There are no roads down there so the only way to get there was by a 2 hour boat ride. It was really humid there, probably the most humid of the whole trip but that's where we got to see all the animals XD Plus it was pretty kool, whenever we wanted to get to the town of tortugero, we had to take a 5min speed boat ride across the river. Lol dangerous idea for the night out =P One of our guys got hella wasted and getting him back on that speedboat was a task haha. Here we did a river boat ride to see all the animals which was really kool, the boat driver had an increadibly keen eye. We went and visited the beach for like 5mins. I got a massageeee. We woke up at 4am to see turtles D= We had buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner there. The food was never amazing in Costa Rica but defs decent. We also had a sunset river cruise ride here which was sweet, lots of boat rides these two days.
The 4th day we spent it nearly all day travelng to get to Sarapiqui Rainforest Lodge. We were told we would be camping in the jungle one night. HARDLY. There was 2 queen sized beds in each tent which also had a fan, telephone, and ensuit bathroom with hot water lol. We got there once it was already dark and we only spent the one night there but it was AWESOME. As soon as everyone was settled in we took a hike through the rainforest in complete darkness, but I was a smart cookie and came prepared with a dorky head torch haha. We walked to a river and went night swimming, so fucking refreshing and the current wasn't strong. We saw snakes along the way which freaked people the fuck out. Lol our group were whinny babys, they screamed and freaked out over every fucking insect and snake. Sure, the snake was poisonous but chill, jesus. Screamings not going to help. We met again for dinner that night and I conked out while they all played some kind of trivia game. Like I said, granny. =P
The next day we made our way to Arenal where we stayed in this really lovely resort style hotel with cabins. I got my own room those nights <3 a="" accomplished="" action="" activitie="" activities="" almost="" also="" american="" an="" and="" anything.="" are="" back="" be="" beautiful.="" between="" blurry="" but="" can="" commercial="" d="Not" day="" did="" didn="" do="" ever="" exactly="" fall="" far="" felt="" figured="" first="" for="" friends="" from="" fun="" girl.="" girl="" girls="" good="" got="" had="" haha.="" haha="" here="" hiding="" hike="" honest="" i="" in="" inside="" is="" it="" jump="" jumped="" just="" justice="" kind="" like="" little="" lot="" m="" me.="" me="" most="" motherfucker="" much="" my="" nbsp="" of="" off="" once="" others="" out="" p="" paddling="" pair="" peruvian="" pictures="" raft="" rafting="" really="" right="" rotate="" s="" scary="" so="" some="" soooo="" spring="" stuff.="" stupid="" swam="" t="" take="" tell="" that="" the="" then="" there="" thing="" things="" this="" time="" to="" toughie="" tried="" uneven="" up.="" was="" water="" waterfall="" we="" went="" were="" what="" where="" which="" white="" xd="" you="">
We also went Canyoneering and Rapelling here which was absolutely amazing. I didn't really understand what it was, we were kind of just told that we would be climbing down a waterfall and get really wet. They put us in harnesses and helmets and off we went. It was a lot of walking down mini waterfall things which was so beautiful, these really narrow passages and sometimes getting to wade through water that was up to our waist. The cold water was so refreshing in the humid rainforest, and spectacular views, unfortunatly no one got any photos of the area itself because the canyons were so pretty, like from a commercial <3 2="" 4="" 75m="" a="" also="" and="" being="" came="" climbing="" day="" descents="" down.="" down="" flung="" from="" got="" had="" haha.="" i="" just="" kinda="" last="" like="" line.="" longer="" nbsp="" next="" of="" one="" p="" rapells="" rock="" scary="" so="" sore="" stretches="" tense="" that="" the="" too="" was="" waterfall="" we="" were="" when="" where="" which="">
We also did a 'cul-tour' there which was the closest we got to the locals the whole trip really, other than in bars and stuff. Costa Rica Unplugged was much less about the culture and people and more about the animals, scenery and adventure sports. They took us to a primary school and some kids performed some folk dances for us and then we had a Q&A haha, back and forth, simple stuff, what do you do, what do you want to be when you grow up, what's your favourite colour ect. Then we went by a bus thing, led by a tracktor to a farmers house. Except he wasn't really a farmer, he and his wife bought this old farmers home with the help of a tourism company and preserved all it's glory and made it into a tour so that people could see how people used to work the land. So they had 2 ox and an old sugar cane mill, I'm pretty sure they don't produce anything other than for tourist sales. They "taught" us how to make tortillas, but we basically just flattened out a ball of pre-made dough haha. They gave us shots of some alcohol they make there which was super sweet, guindao. Then they also gave us a shot of what tastes like tequila. They made us the traditional food, which we had been eating every day anyway. It's called Casado, translates to Married. It's rice and beans, salad, friend plantain which is like banana, and a meat of your choosing (chicken, fish or beef). That was really nice though, their home was super beautiful and the decorations were so cute and roustic/folk-ey. The guys wife had an increadible voice and we ended the night by hearing them play us some songs.
I think I'm getting confused and I can't remember if those activities happened in Monteverde. But we were there too =P
Next we stayed in MonteVerde, I can't really remember what we did there other than needing stitches and sharing my room with the Peruvian girl. We had an optional dinner here which was alright, was stuffed. I think this is where we went to the Selvature Park from. The cloud forest. We took a hike, we went ziplining, which was a breeze after canyoning, I even did the Tarzan swing, ergh that was unpleasant haha, I don't like that flippy stomach feeling. BUT I DID IT. We got to go to a butterfly reserve and we also went to a humming bird sanctuary. It poured here, but I'm a smart cookie and had a cheapo plastic poncho which kept me drier than anyone in their rainproof jackets haha.
The last 3 days were spent at the beach in Manuel Antonio which was great, we finally settled down a little and weren't doing like 10 things per day. There wasn't as many group dinners/lunches so everyone had a bit more freedom. There was just a lot of beach going from here, we walked to a national park and went to a beach there too but got stung by jellyfish, oh and we did kayaking too. That was pretty but meh, not for me, it's too slow and tiring haha. We kayaked to a really beautiful cove beach and had pinapple and snacks, we were meant to snorke but I don't think there was anything in the water other than more jellyfish who stung the fuck out of me. I got thai food here! Wasn't terrible. We also had our last group drink up together where I finally joined in and that was fun. I didn't even get tipsy =( but the shots we were having were delicious and we ended up following some shifty locals to this other deserted bar, but it had a dj and was just small enough to be filled by the 17 of us dancing. It was awesome xD
The last day we drove back to San Jose and got there by 5pm but most of the group was still together, minus 2 americans who stayed in quepos along the way. We all got together again for dinner and then a chit chat in one of the hotel rooms reminsicing about the last 11 days. The next morning we had another group breakfast with the people who were flying later in the day and me, Fi (peruvian) and Joe went for a walk in San Joses town centre. It was still just as fugly and we got taco bell coz the americans couldnt stop raving about it the whole trip. Festy =.=
Me and Fi shared a cab to the airport and off I went to Chile.
OHH we're in Perito Moreno. FUCK. finally haha I managed to recap costa!
Now I need to do chile and argentina haha.
byeee
xx
