Day 2 & 3 - Costa Rica

The school group arrived bringing with them noise and the energy of the States. They had been sitting too long and the kids ran amok through the hotel playing hide n seek and entertaining one another with travel stories. A small group of us ventured out into San Jose for lunch, settling on a quick sandwich place. Since the Spanish teacher was with us we all had to order in the native language with her jumping in to assist when necessary.

I had my rice and beans, this time with pollo (chicken) and cilantro. I washed it down with Coca Cola, my first since entering the country. Returning to the hotel our group joined others poolside and we talked and sampled the local beer until dinner time, which was crowded and noisy. The hotel had brought in more workers since the school's arrival and added a few more guests as well from our first night.

Our room was quite large, larger than an American hotel room, with two queen beds, a convertible couch, much like our futon, a table and chairs, and the typical dresser and night table. The floor was all tile save for a small rug between the two beds. The bathroom was small with toilet, sink and walk in shower. No notice of flushing the papel (paper) so we used sparingly and had no trouble.

The next morning we met for breakfast in the hotel. It was not at all like our breakfast the day before, but more American with cereal and toast. Eventually out came the rice and beans with scrambled eggs and fried potatoes in the shape of a large triangle. The coffee was weak and not the delicious brew we had experienced earlier. Apparently larger groups require less local details.

We were loaded in the 50 seat passenger Mercades-Benz bus by 8:00 AM, but a mechanical failure put us back a half an hour. Our driver, Wilbur, spoke not a word but showed skill in maneuvering a large piece of machinery up and down winding, narrow, scary, Costa Rican roads. Our guide, Alonzo, spoke perfect English with an accent quite thick that it took me quite some time to realize he was saying, "important" instead of "impedent".

It was a 3 hour bus ride to Arenal. We stopped once in a small town to visit a bank to exchange our dollars into colons and to engage in a 3 on 3 pick-up basketball game with three local boys in the park. We won 16 to 10, but all six boys played evenly and were quite gracious.

We had lunch at a large roadside restaurant about ten minutes from our hotel. It took a lot of time to feed 42 people, but the portions were dinner size and delicious. I had black bean soup with lots of cilantro and a large hard boiled egg dropped into the middle. The view of the main attraction, the volcano, was impressive, but the clouds covered the top and therefore we didn't get much of a look-see.

We had five minutes at the hotel to check into our rooms and change into suits and hiking shoes before climbing back on to the bus and heading to our tour of the rainforest and volcano. Unfortunately, some people had trouble with the instructions and took us more off schedule then we already were with the late lunch.

The rain came down as we drove the ten minutes to our destination. We had three new guides who jumped on board at our hotel for this adventure. We were split into three groups alphabetically with our group being the smallest. Our guide was Heime, who was soft spoken, but adept at English and his knowledge of the rainforest. The rain stopped as we set off and right off we saw two toucan mates flying about in the trees. Heime had binoculars that were so powerful we thought the birds, with their colorful heads were right in front of us. Unfortunately that was pretty much the end of anything exotic, although we saw worker ants, a frog, and three huge owl butterflies that pranced in wild circles around us. The hike was strenuous with large gaping steps uphill and then downhill until I was drenched in sweat and ready to leave the rainforest hiking to Walt Disney. The entire time the clouds stayed hovered over the volcano until our group decided it was all fake - there is no volcano and there are no monkeys in the rainforest!

Of course the other group saw two monkeys and two species of snakes, but our made up stories were more colorful and entertaining around the dinner table later that night as we sampled more of the local beer. We did see guava trees, and Heime allowed us to cut off sugar cane to eat after we found some stalks growing by our bus at the end of the hike.

We next were taken to the hot springs resort with several different baths heated by the lava from the volcano that we still hadn't really glimpsed. By now it was dark and instead of our two hours of relaxing hot-tubing in natural springs we had one hour to let the heat and waterfalls massage our aching muscles. There were slides for the kids and Tom, and plenty of secluded baths ranging in various temperatures the higher you climbed. I tried 95, 110, 130 and freezing, opting to stay with the 110. One bath even had a bar in the middle that you could swim up to and order drinks.

After changing into clothes, we hiked a ways up the resort to a large room for a buffet dinner that consisted of American food with spaghetti and sauce to Costa Rican food with fish and the ever present rice and beans. There was fresh fruit, salad, soup, cole slaw, rolls, and a chocolate fountain with pastries and strawberries. By the time we hiked down, loaded on the bus, and drove back to the hotel, I was drenched in sweat again and sorely tired. I took a cold shower, washed out my delicates and climbed into bed.