After finishing finals, every student on the ship was ready to get to Costa Rica. It was a long stretch between Hawaii and Costa Rica, and a somewhat stressful one at that. Finals were fine- I didn’t have the pressure of getting A’s on everything since I was doing well in my classes, so it wasn’t a huge deal. I wound up doing well on them all, and getting credit for all of my classes on Semester at Sea! A lot of people bitch and complain about finals, but it’s part of school, so we just went along with it. Plus, a few nights before finals began, my group of friends signed up for Fine Dining, which is a fancy dinner that you can sign up for on the ship. It is $25 and a 4 course meal, which was delicious. It was definitely a nice break from dining hall food, and it was fun to get dressed up.
The night before getting to Costa Rica they showed Elf in the Union on the big screen, which got us all really in the mood for Christmas. After that we stayed up for about 3 hours singing Christmas carols…it was lovely. How weird that the next morning we would be in sunny, 80 degree weather where it would feel so far from Christmas..
Anyway, we anchored around 8am and the tendering process began around 9. During tendering, there is no dock that is big enough for our ship to port, so we have to take the 100 passenger tender boats to shore. It is a hassle, but it sent rather smoothly this time, and I was on the 4th tender. We were scheduled to meet the rafting company at the pier and there were 29 of us. Once we were all together, we piled into two different vans with our guides Kristen, Matt & Scott. They were all from the States…Kristen and Matt had lived down there for 3 years and Scott had just moved down there three weeks ago! We had about an hour ride to the place where we went zip lining! We did a total of 10 lines I think, and they were all tons of fun. I had been zip lining in France several years ago, but these were higher and longer lines so it was fun. Each time it felt like I was going to smack into the platform on the landing, but the guides stopped us every time! It was really fun and took probably about an hour and a half to get through the first section. Then we all climbed up a tower to do the Superman line, which was by far the coolest one. We had to wear full body harnesses, and we were attached to the zip line while laying on our stomachs. Difficult to explain, but just think of it as us being in the superman position. The line was probably a minute long and we reached speeds up to 70 mph!! At the end of the line we had to put our arms out beside us to build up some resistance to slow us down, but I came BOOKING in and was really nervous, but they stopped me! All it all it was a great afternoon. We had lunch there – chicken and rice and fried plantanes…delicious.
We got back in the buses for another three hours before reaching our hotel. Basically we drove from the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica all the way to the Caribbean Coast. We weren’t exactly on the coast, but we went pretty far. The countryside was BEAUTIFUL and the ride was so pretty. We got to the hotel for a fabulous meal of Garlic Bread, rice, chicken, potatoes – it was really delicious. The owners of the bar were from the States and they were a blast. We all hung out for awhile that night- there was a pool and a sauna – it was a good, relaxing time. Cindy, the owner, had all of these silly games planned that reminded me of the Feredjian’s Halloween parties (shout out to Honeysuckle). The next morning we woke up and had yet another delicious Costa Rican meal of eggs and rice and some other stuff…then loaded up the vans to head to the river!
We broke down into our raft groups…6 people plus one guide. My raft was Steph, Lacey, Daneka, Brittany, Paul and myself. Our guides name was Danny and right from the beginning we knew he would give us a good time. The last time I went white water rafting was back in 7th grade when I used to go to camp in Oregon and we would spend a day going down Hood River. I loved it back then, so I was really excited to be doing this again! The water was pleasantly refreshing – not too cold and the weather was beautiful. We saw lots of different wildlife – mostly birds as we made our way down the river. I think the biggest rapids were Class 3 or 4…they were fun. No one ever unintentionally fell out of our raft, but we would jump out every so often and ride the rapid down. For one of them we intentionally flipped the raft which was quite the adrenaline rush with everyone out of the raft and having to flip it over – that was probably my favorite part! There was one section where we pulled the rafts on to the shore and climbed up a little ways and were able to jump in and ride the “human rapids” down. I think we were out on the river for about 3 or 4 hours so it was a solid day. At one point Danny asked us what we were doing with the rest of our time in Costa Rica and we said we were headed to the city of Jaco that night. He gave us a look, and we asked him what Jaco was like. He said three words: Drugs, prostitutes and theft. We knew we’d be in for a treat later on…
After we got out of the river and got changed into dry clothes we loaded back on the buses for a little while and stopped at a really good restaurant for lunch. We sat out on the porch and the view overlooking the river was beautiful. And surprise, surprise…the food was delicious.
We had about a 3 or 4 hour ride to Jaco from there…some of us slept, I played travel battleship for a lot of the time, and I got to know Scott, one of the guides pretty well. He had quite the story of traveling around from place to place – usually on a whim. He had never been to Costa Rica before, but knew about the rivers and the guide industry. So he looked around online for a little while, shot an email to Matt & Kristen at Pacuare River Tours and they said come on down. So he did, and he sublets a room from them and so far he loves it down there.
Half of our group actually went back to Puntarenas while the rest of us headed to Jaco. We got there around 8pm or so, and had plans of meeting up with our friends at Hotel Tangerie at 930pm. Scott decided to stay and hang out with us for the night since he didn’t want to ride the bus all the way back to San Jose and figured he would just take one the next day. So a group of about 8 of us went to grab a quick bite at Subway before meeting Sam, Stacey, Peter & Erica at the hotel. We had a villa reserved there, and we actually wound up getting another one since there were 12 of us total.
The night was eventful – we ran into all three of the incidents that Danny said we would…numerous times. It was an interesting city and was much more unsafe than we had anticipated. Throughout the night there were several incidents involving SAS students…I had money stolen. Scott had his money, watch & camera stolen. One of my friends got mugged and literally dragged to the ground. Almost everyone got offered drugs at one point or another…it was quite eventful. But despite all of that we had a really good time and it was our last night in port together. Dani (roommate) and I ran into each other, which was fun because that never happens, so we got to hang out for awhile. The night ended late…or early….however you want to look at it, with watching the sunrise over the beach. No one wanted to go to sleep since it was our last night out together. We slept for about 2 or 3 hours before waking up to go grab a delicious breakfast right down the street at Coffee Zone. We were going to catch the bus back to Puntarenas at 130pm so for that morning/afternoon we just laid out by the pool…the boys went surfing in the ocean..or at least attempted to. It was really relaxing and a beautiful day that we didn’t want to end because we didn’t want to get back on the ship. Scott caught an early afternoon bus back to San Jose and thanked us for a good couple of days. We thanked him also and we all wished each other the best of luck. It is strange to look back on all of the people like Scott that we had met during the way. All of our tour guides and homestay hosts…people who we only spent a day or two with but had such a blast and such a big impact on our adventures. We’ve made a lot of friends outside SAS on this journey and I am forever thankful for that because they have enriched my experiences so much. Well back in Puntarenas we grabbed a quick lunch (I had a delicious salad) before doing some souvenir shopping and boarding the ship around 4pm. I showered and unpacked and Lacey and I watched a few episodes of Grey’s…right after the 8pm presentation about the Panama Canal, I had to call it a night. I was exhausted. I slept right through until breakfast the next morning…went up to the deck to lay out right after breakfast and fell asleep out there until noon. I clearly had some catching up to do.
The Ambassador’s Bal was that evening, which is more or less like a prom. I was sitting at a table of 4 with Ben, Mitch and Lacey and the rest of the crew was right next to us at a table of 6. The dining room was decorated beautifully and transformed in a way that made it look nothing like our dining hall. The meal was awesome…I actually had filet mingon- what is the world coming to? Haha. There was a good soup and tasty spring roll appetizer. Of course all of the boys complained that it wasn’t enough food, but it was delicious. They had a dance afterwards and a slide show that was playing in the Piano Bar…it was a really nice night. I wore the dress that I had tailored in Vietnam and although it was a little big and I had to safety pin it in order to keep it on, I got lots of compliments and was happy with it. I’ll take it to the tailor to get altered when I get home- but it’s a keeper! Everyone looked good because a lot of girls got dresses in Vietnam, and a lot of guys had suits made so everyone was decked out. It was lovely! Some boys had ridiculous suits on…like leopard print or bright orange….it was fun!
Time is coming to an end…only a few more days left aboard the MV Explorer…how weird!
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