2 month mark!

Today is the 2 month mark! My apologies for not blogging more often. I just got really busy and I kept putting it off. But I have so much to tell. I don't even know where to begin. Here's what I've done since I last blogged. Went to a pool near my house that is sourced from a natural spring. It had a waterfall you could sit under and some high dives from which you could jump, dive, or bellyflop (yes I did that) into the water. Minus the painful bellyflop, it was really fun. I went to an electronic festival in San Jose. That was fun. The next weekend I went white water rafting in Turrialba (about hour and a half or two hours away. One of the shorter bus rides). It was AMAZING! The white water rafting was SO fun. The Pacuare and Reventazón Rivers are two of the best rivers in the world for white water rafting for the rafting itself and for the scenic views of the surrounding jungle. It was incredible. We rafted the Pacuare. I got to sit on the front tip of the raft while we went down a rapid (we called it riding the bull). It was so fun! We swam in the river along the way. We got to jump off a pretty high cliff (I'd guess 15-20 feet up) into the river and swim underneath a couple waterfalls. We stopped halfway to eat lunch on a little sandy bank along the way. The lunch was delicious!

The next day we met up with some more people from the group and a professor who showed us Costa Rica's oldest and most intact archaeological site. It was over 2,000 years old and some of the infrastructure was still there and the aqueducts still worked! We went to two really old churches too. One was completely intact and we arrived minutes before a matrimony was set to take place, so that was awkward. We quickly poked around while the wedding guests stared at us and then we promptly left. The other church was only partially intact, so we didn't have to worry about reenacting "Wedding Crashers."

The next weekend we went to the Osa Peninsula. It's in the southwest part of the country and it's super isolated, which means that it's not easy to get to. After a five hour drive we arrived at the Peninsula. Then we got on a boat on a river and went out into the ocean. We searched in vain for some whales and then we pressed on to the remote beachfront research station that would be our home for the next few days. The boat got as close as it could and then we unloaded all our bags and provisions of food for the weekend by handing them off to each other down a line. The scene was breathtaking. There we were on a beach surrounded by jungle. The nearest road was a 3 hour hike away. It was unbelievable. We spent the weekend swimming in the ocean, laying on the beach, and doing A LOT of hiking. There are trails that go on and on within the massive forest preserve. We saw a lot of animals including a lot of big spiders (not everyone was thrilled about that). Look out for a picture of my face next to a substantially large spider on Facebook. We also went to a bat cave just as the sun was setting, which meant just in time for all of the bats to whiz out of the cave and fly right in front of our faces. It was pretty cool/pretty freaky. We caught some bats in nets and looked at them up close. We also took a hike along the rocky coast part of the preserve at sunset. It was absolutely beautiful. On Sunday (our last day) we went whale and dolphin watching and this time we were extremely successful. We watched to whales surface for air several times and then we saw multiple large groups of dolphins playfully leap into the air. It was so cool! Then we went to Isla del Caño off the coast and snorkeled at the coral reef. We saw so many fish very up close. My friend, Audrey, was mere feet away from a shark. I'm so jealous.

The whole weekend was very interesting. The research station had no electricity, so when the sun went down, it got VERY dark. It's easy to forget how dark a place can be at night with no lights for miles and miles. It was refreshing. As I said, there was wildlife everywhere and that included our abode. One giant toad made himself cozy right next to the toilet one night and an even bigger toad (it was hard to believe a toad could get bigger than the one next to the toilet) posted up in the shower. Thankfully, my room was in the main house so it was a little more bug-free (though I saw a cockroach crawl across the ceiling on my first day) and I still got my fair share of bug bites at night. But my friends who stayed in the cabins detached from the house had a visit from not one but two scorpions right before they went to bed. Fun stuff. The trade-off to sharing your bed with creepy crawlies was that falling asleep and waking up to the sound of the crashing of the ocean's waves was incredible. One of my favorite parts (though there were many) was napping in a hammock on a hill that overlooked the surrounding jungle, the beach and the ocean. Hence the inspiration for my current profile picture. Well, I could say so much about that weekend but I'll wrap it up here.