Saturday, February 15, 2014

Well, I have turned into my parents because I was up at 6:15.  Wide awake.  I got a start on my book about the caning of Charles Sumner (I wrote a research paper on the topic in college, so I am excited to read this book) while my travel companions slept in a little bit.  By about 8:00 the two girls were awake so we set off for the ferry!  The walk to the ferry was by far the longest one kilometer in my life, but we made it just in time to catch the 9:00 ferry.  The ferry ride lasted about 70 minutes and was a pretty cool experience!  Aside from cool shoreline/ocean views, I saw several things jump out of the water; I’m sure that they were giant whales trying to greet us to the Nicoya Peninsula.  Eventually, we made it to Paquera where we jumped on a bus headed towards Montezuma.  We were packed in like sardines.  There were people hanging on from outside the bus.  ‘Twas crazy.  We rode this bus for about 90 minutes until we got to Cobano which was a small town in the middle of nowhere.  We had to wait there for 2 ½ hours for the bus that got us the rest of the way to Santa Teresa.  We stopped in a little soda to wait it out.  I had a very interesting hamburger.  While waiting for the bus, we met some people from Slovenia, Germany, and England.  The last leg of the journey consisted of an extremely bumpy road that took 30 minutes to go about 15 kilometers.  (It’s weird, only two weeks in and I think in kilometers).  Once we finally got there, it was about 3:30 in the afternoon.  We tried to check into one hostel, but it was full (which was weird because it was a small little town).  We tried a different hostel.  We walked toward the check-in area and found one guy.  We asked “Tiene espacio por anoche?” and the guy was like “Dude, do y’all speak English.”  It was a neat little hostel with a pool and pool table, along with other things like hammocks, common living rooms, and kitchens.  My only problem with it was that almost everyone staying there smoked, which was unpleasant in my opinion.  We made the trek down to the beach.  It was a really pretty beach during the daytime with lots of big waves and surfers making use of the waves.  Plus, there were people with their dogs out playing on the beach and even people who passed by who were going horseback riding on the beach.  However, the best part of the weekend, and the thing that made the long journey there worth it, was the sunset!  It was magnificent and I could not take enough pictures of it!  The pics are on my Facebook page.  I now have a new background for my phone.  On the way back from the beach, we walked by a bonfire that was happening on the beach.  I hope those people at least roasted marshmallows.  We took a quick dip in the pool and grabbed something to eat.  I had a casado which is a traditional Costa Rican meal of rice, black beans, meat, macaroni, and salad.  I was beat (because of the whole awake at 6:15 thing) so I chilled in a hammock for a bit and then went to bed.  The two girls went to some fancy party shindig.