Spinsters in Costa Rica 2008

I'm just now getting caught up on posting trip pictures all the way back from October 2008. My Spinster friends Kate, Christa and I headed to Costa Rica for a week of what we thought would be fun in the sun but instead turned out to be a week of fun in the rain, with a little sunshine at the end. We were told not to worry about what time of year you visit Costa Rica because they don't get hurricanes down that far down supposedly. Well, we didn't get a hurricane but we did get three tropical storms which converged over Costa Rica just in time for our visit. Really it wasn't that bad though and we had plenty of fun.

The first place we went was to the Volcano called Arenal. It is still an active volcano and at night you can see the hot ash spouting out the top...pretty dang cool. It is the same type of volcano as Mt. Vesuvius which is sort of scary. And although it could blow up completely at any moment the odds of it not blowing its top while we were there were with us so we went ahead and slept a couple of nights in the little town at its base.

Here's me in front of Arenal, although it looks different when the top is covered in clouds and or smoke.

And in my defense, the hood of my jacket isn't on my head because I went all gangsta and joined some Central American gang or anything...it was just raining lightly at this point, but you can't tell it's raining in the picture so I just look like a weirdo with my hood on. But I wasn't just some weirdo with a hood on.

Around Arenal and in all of Costa Rica there are TONS of waterfalls. Everywhere you look there's another one. We went rappelling in the jungle and either climbed down or rappelled through several waterfalls. It was way fun even though due to lost luggage I was wearing levi shorts that were pretty heavy when wet and borrowed shoes.

After Arenal we took a jeep-boat-jeep ride to the Monteverde Cloud Forrest. On the way there we drove through some gorgeous places like in the picture above. Everywhere in Costa Rica just seemed green and beautiful. While we were driving though those three tropical storms descended upon us and soon enough we found ourselves in the following predicament...

totally stuck in the mud.

They made us get out of the van so they could try and get it up the hill. Of course we were all wearing flip flops and they made us get out in the middle of it all so our feet and legs got completely covered in mud but it was fun. And the good news is I, as of yet, haven't found any weird parasites in my feet due to basically walking bare foot through the Costa Rican mud.

After our driver got our van up the hill he had to go and be a hero and drive the other 8 vans stuck behind us up the hill as well. He was the craziest and most brave driver so I guess that made him the best one for the job. I named him Evel Knievel and that's what we called him for the rest of the journey.

So while we're waiting for our driver to get EVERYONE unstuck, we could have been waiting in the dry, warm van with all the other sensible people, but of course we weren't. There were pictures to take and adventures to be had. Besides, we were already soaking wet and muddy anyway, so we figured we may as well enjoy this crazy storm we all of a sudden found ourselves in.

Here I am trying to keep at least some of the torrential rains off me. I don't know why I was even trying though...I was already completely soaked through. And yes, that is my completely wet, heavy jacket blowing in the wind and almost getting torn from my grip...that just shows how windy it really was.

And here's Kate...getting it all on film. She's so hardcore when it comes to pictures.

We luckily made it to Monteverde before the ground got saturated enough from all the rains to lead to mudslides. Once we got to Monteverde it really started coming down and then tree branches started falling and the mudslides began. This is a picture of one of the really small mudslides we saw after it was cleaned up. We didn't get any good pictures of the big ones but we saw multiple lane highways completely covered with mud with cars trapped in the mess. It was pretty crazy.

We basically got trapped in Monteverde for a few days as mudslides closed off all the roads leading into the town and there was no movement in or out. We weren't too disappointed though as we were planning on staying there for a few days already, and we couldn't have gotten out if we'd wanted to anyway.

And... you could get around within Monteverde...just not in or out. So we were still able to do most of what we'd planned. One rain forest tour we were supposed to go on got cancelled because the trees were so saturated with water and tree branches were crashing to the ground and stuff and I guess they didn't want us to get killed or something. But other than that we did everything we'd planned to do. And more...

because we met this awesome couple from Israel who just happened to have a rental car and who for some reason decided it would be fun to invite us to travel around Monteverde with them. They must have really either liked us right off or must have been completely bored with each other because they invited us to hang out with them after only talking to us for about 10 minutes. Score! They were super nice and we basically had free transportation the rest of the time we were in Monteverde. So I guess sometimes it pays to talk to strangers.

And because everyone was basically trapped in town, we got to know some of the other tourists too. It was pretty fun because they had a TV in the lobby (actually the only TV in the hotel) and so we were all glued to it finding out about the storm and where the most recent mudslides and devastation were and when we were ever going to be able to leave. I was secretly hoping to get stuck there for a month or something, to avoid going back to work, but that didn't happen. But it was fun to all be huddled around the TV and talking about the storm. It felt like when a huge snowstorm hits Idaho and everybody is almost excited about it because the weather is so crazy and there's always the potential of getting to miss work, school, and/or church.

While we were at Monteverde, the pouring rain (like I had never experienced before) let up slightly so we were able to go Zip-lining. Flying through and above those HUGE, TALL, trees was exhilarating. A couple of the zip-lines were so high up I really couldn't even see the ground at all.

And other then the fact that those orange suits we were wearing had that "wet kids in the winter right after recess" smell and the fact that it was raining a little it was SO MUCH FUN. I'd highly recommend it.

Finally the rains let up and we were able to get on our way to Manuel Antonio. Since we'd had to walk up a muddy hill in the rain on the way into Monteverde, we decided to wear our awesome rain boots we bought at the local grocery store on the way out of Monteverde just in case it was a treacherous journey. But, it wasn't...the sun shone the whole day and the only water we saw was in the puddles drying up.

So, we got some weird looks wearing our rain boots that day. Probably especially because we first of all were all wearing shorts with our boots, second of all we were all wearing big tall soccer socks under our boots, and to top it all off, Christa had accidentally purchased 2 RIGHT boots!

Here we are looking stylish in our boots. If you look closely you'll notice that Christa (on the far right) is looking all right.

We'd vowed to wear our boots all the way to Manuel Antonio even though the sun was shining, but then we got stuck in a four hour traffic jam due to the mudslide clean up, and I had to ditch the boots for the rest of the trip. But I do have to say that was probably our best purchase on the trip...we had a lot of fun with those boots, they were great conversation pieces, and they kept our feet dry.

Here I am at Manuel Antonio wearing jeans because my shorts by that time smelled like mildew from getting wet and sort of dry so many times. We had such a hard time getting anything dry while we were in Monteverde. In fact, Kate melted her hairdryer into her gym shoe trying to dry them. It was pretty dang funny.

Manuel Antonio was gorgeous and we actually got a couple of days of sunshine just in time for the beach. We saw lots of animals in the jungle there too...from sloths to snakes to bats.

The trip was so much fun. Christa and Kate are great Spinsters to travel with and Costa Rica is a beautiful country and all the people we met were great.

The end.