Saturday, June 30, 2007

Costa Rica and the Joy of Flying

I got back from Costa Rica on Friday. My trip was very exciting and filled with beautiful animals. I can't explain how cool everything was myself, so I am just going to rewrite the itinerary.

Day 1: I met the group at San Jose airport. I was traveling with my aunt, who teachers science at Keys school. 15 students from the 27 student class had decided to attend the trip. I felt awkward, but 10 hours of flying changed that. We flew to Dallas, Texas and then to San Jose, Costa Rica. We drove in a bus to a small hotel/lodge, where we spent the night.

Day 2: On our way to El Station las Tortugas (Station of the Turtles), we stopped at The Butterfly Garden. There were quite a lot of butterflies there. The entire place swarmed with them. We also say a sloth. Then back to the bus, where we continued the drive to El Station. We arrived at a dock and were taken by boat to the station. At 8:00 that night I walked the beaches patrolling for turtles. We say one leatherback sea turtle. This huge beast gave birth to over sixty eggs, which we took to a hatchery to prevent poachers from stealing. We wandered the beach until 12:00 at which point we slept.

Day 3: The day was uneventful, some fun activities interspersed with plenty of free time on the beach. About 4 kids played spin the bottle. I laughed at them and took pictures which I used to mock them. Losers. At 12:00 Midnight I was woken to patrol the beach until 4:00. It was really, really tiring.

Day 4: Another uneventful day. At 8:00 I walked the beach, this night only till 10. What a relief that was. However, it was short lived because...

Day 5: We got up at 6:00 today. We had breakfast, and then hopped on a boat with our luggage and went back to the dock. On the boat ride we say sloths, spider monkeys, and howler monkeys. Then we drove in a bus for about an hour. We stopped at a river to go White Water River Rafting. It was great, even though it was on a 2-3 rank river. Challenging enough for a noob like me. We slept in a hotel that night. My bunkmate did a strikingly accurate Asian accent, so we made prank calls to the other cabins with other members of our group. We designed two prank calls. The first went like this:

"Herro! You stupid for pick up phone. You know why? This a funny prank call! We laugh at you now. You retarded or something! We making funny prank call and you pick up phone and believe us. You retard!"

The next prank call went like this:

"You want order Asian sensation phone sex? We good, we have pikachu penis! So cute and mini! You wa-ant, you know it. Normally 10 darra for you, 1 darra. We give you sample now! 'Dis a sample of phone sex. Oh, yea. We having phone sex now. It good. Oh yea. Phone sex'"

Quite a funny night. Also, we had lighting that night. One bolt landed 15 meters away from our cabin. The window shook really hard, and scared the crap out of me.

Day 6: We ventured up a mountain and swam by a waterfall. It was beautiful and scenic. Then we went into town and bought souvenirs. We went back to our hotel and continued making prank calls. We did our phone sex call to some girl cabins. They all came to our room in the pouring rain to give us one dollar. They were only wearing panties. Too bad there was only one attractive girl in the group. Then they ran out of the room because they thought a teacher was coming. Once they got back to our rooms they called us and demanded we give them phone sex. What started out as a joke got nasty really fast. We hung up because the girls were getting to into it. I felt sick from the realistic sounds they were making.

Day 7: We left the hotel and drove to our homestay. The group got divided into 5 sub-groups. Each sub-group went to a separate household. We stayed with people who only spoke Spanish and worked on a farm. We had one translator. This was fun, the people were nice. I felt bad for them though, they lived in a lot of poverty.

Day 8: Early in the morning we got up and planted trees. I was covered in mud and soaked to the bone from the rain. Then we drove to a resort. It was amazing! The drive took 5 hours, but it was worth it. 3 swimming pools, a dance hall, mini-golf. (Don't tell anyone, but there was also a porn channel on the televisions).

Day 9: We spent the day at the resort. We went swimming in the pacific ocean, where we spotted some sea turtles. Huge waves, too. Then we went up to a mountain and watched scarlet macaws. We counted 130 macaws.

Day 10: We went ziplining today. I even went upside-down. What a thrill! Then we drove to the first place we stayed, where we spent the night.

Day 11: Early in the morning we got up to catch our flight. Too bad it was delayed 10 freaking hours! It was supposed to leave at 7 in the morning, but it left at 5 in the afternoon! What the heck do you do with ten hours at an airport? NOTHING! We landed in Dallas, Texas at 10:00 that night. We were bussed to Austin, which took 4 hours. I couldn't sleep, but it still brings me to the next day.

Day 12: At 2:00 in the morning we went to an IHOP to get something to eat. We hadn't eaten in 14 hours, and we were starved. Too bad IHOP had a 40 freakin minute wait at 2:00 in the morning. Who the heck goes to IHOP at 2? Texans, apparently. Instead we went to Denny's. I had hashbrowns with eggs over easy. We got to the airport at 4, when it opened. At 7:00 our flight left. I sat on the plane with two people I didn't know. A black guy with dreads and a skinniny white guy with gelled hair. Finally I landed back in Cali. It feels good to be home.

TLDR: Super fun trip, American airlines has lame service. Delayed flight. Animals. Cool stuff.

3 comments:

Kael said...

That is probably the most interesting post I have ever seen on this blog. I love Costa Rica, it is such a interesting place.

Kyle said...

that was fun when kael and i went 2 costa rica. did u forget how to spell saw??

Anonymous said...

Glad you like it.

Spell what?