I suppose you could call this entire study abroad thing a vacation, but we actually have vacations away from vacation, so to say. This past weekend we went to Arenal volcano and Monte Verde. I suppose I´ll give a brief summary of our adventures.
We arrived Friday night after a four hour bus ride to our hotel at Arenal volcano. We weren´t really close to volcano... on account of the volcano being active. The first night, we got there and immediately went to the Baldi Hot Springs. This place was an absurdly nice resort where they utilized natural hot springs to make pools out of. How nice? Well I have some pictures which you can´t see until I post them, but I do have a measure for you. I bought a beer for $6.50 and two pina coladas for 10 bucks a piece. That´s right, $26.50 on three drinks. I also put my head under in the hottest hot spring, which is quite the accomplishment because the hottest one is about 152 degrees. Either way, it was a blast. Then we just hung out in a random hotel room for the rest of the night... nothing too special.
Saturday, we woke up and started out at a hydro power plant. First we saw the dam itself, which was sort of cool. I´ll have pictures later... once again. Later on we actually went down stream to the generators to see where the magic happens. Apparently the water travels several kilometers through large pipes from the dam into the generators. They were actually pretty cool looking. Afterwards we went horseback riding, which was absolutely unreal. It wasn't lame like in the states where you sit on a walking horse... you actually could get the horse up to a full on gallop. I'm sold on getting a horse later in life. Anyway, we rode said horses up near the waterfall, where we proceeded to walk down way too many stairs to reach the waterfall. Once there, we were hot, and the cool water felt amazing (not to mention the waterfall was gorgeous). After the waterfall we just got dinner then went out. Standard chill night.
Sunday, we woke up and took a van to a boat, the boat across a lake, and then another van to our hotel in the rain forest. The cool part about this lake is that there's a town beneath it. The last major eruption of Arenal was in 1968, and everyone in this town either died or left. So later, they built a dam on the river, the valley flooded, and the city went under water. Cool eh? Anyway, once at our hotel we did the coolest thing ever: zip-lining through the rain forest. First the zip-lines were standard... no more than a couple hundred meters. Then we did the tarzan swing, where you jumped off a platform and swung from a rope suspended from a tree branch probably 6 or 7 stories above the ground. Needless to say you swung far. the final three zip-lines actually went from one mountain to another over the valley between them. These were breath taking. The final zip-line was 600 meters long, and you would find yourself about 60 feet above the canopy of the forest. It was absolutely awesome. Later, we went on a night walk through the rain forest. However, we were all wet from the rain during zip-lining, and were very uncomfortable in the rain in the rain forest. It wasn't too bad though. We saw a variety of plants and insects, and we also saw a tarantula native only to Costa Rica. That was pretty cool. The next morning we were awake at 6 am for another rain forest walk to see different animals that would come out during the day. The problem was that it was still raining, so most animals weren't out. However we did see some rare birds that were pretty sweet. After that we took the ol' bus home, chilled for the rest of the day, then left again Tuesday morning for Manuel Antonio.
Manuel Antonio is a national park (and more importantly, a beach) on the Pacific coast. Sadly, it took four hours to get there, and it rained the entire time. It was okay though, because the rain was cold, but the water was really warm. It's hard to get a swimming pool that perfect of a temperature. So we got some booze, posted up on the beach and jumped in the ocean. We tried our best at body surfing. There were a few times that I'd make it about 20 yards, only because some of the waves were upwards of 8-10 feet high. It was a lot of fun. Then the trouble started when we realized a bar had a happy hour were you could get two drinks for the price of one. The drinks included pina coladas (my favorite), margaritas, daquiris, and rum and cokes. After many rounds of those delicious drinks we went to the hotel for a bit in preparation for the club. However, I got tired at the club and left with a few others earlier than everyone else. A good move on my part because I desperately needed to catch up on sleep. Then basically, we woke up today and took the 6 hour bus-ride home. Unreal week thus far. However, we have an exam tomorrow and I actually don't get to go out tonight so I can finish up another chapter and a half of reading. Later.
Burf
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