8 Passport stamps in 8 days May 1, 2009

So all of Holy Week, I was traveling.  I’m pretty sure that’s where I left off at least.

So we had to be at school at 6:00 in the morning.  Let’s just say I’m not so much a morning person.  Everyone else was looking a little tired too.  So we head out in the bus.  I took some Dramamine and woke up at the border (Dramamine, fabulous invention).   We got out, filled out customs forms and such and got our exit (Costa Rica) stamps.  Then we had to walk across the sketchiest bridge ever, like, no joke, scariest experience of my life.

Sketchy bridge.

So we go across, and get our entrance (Panama) stamps.  We get back on the bus and continue on our way.  I fall asleep again, go figure, and wake up at the docks.  We were headed to Bocas del Toro which is an island.  We all piled into a ferry boat to get out to the island.

The very crowded ferry boat.

On the ferry ride to Bocas (note the weather).

Still on the ferry. Sky's getting clearer!

Bocas from the ferry (blue skies!)

So we get to the hotel, and it is super hot outside so we decided to go for an afternoon swim.  We meet some of the girls that are in a different city but with the same study abroad program.  We click with them, and spend the rest of the weekend together.

Getting ready to go out.

So we dance the night away, and jump in the pool to cool off before retiring for the evening.  The next day we decided to explore the island by ourselves and not do any of the optional tours offered.  So as we were wandering, we took pictures!

Kendylle and I.

Self-portrait while walking.

We came upon this nice looking resort, and knew that they had a nice beach so we walk straight through the hotel like we own the place to the beach and go swimming.

A restaurant/bar? we didn't stay long enough to find out.

By this time (it was a long walk), we started heading back and stopped at this lofted restaurant to grab some food.  There was the cutest doggie ever that lived there!

Puppy kisses!

The food was probably the best meal that I have had in Costa Rica to date.  It was the right combination of delicious, and savory and not too heavy.  We got back to the hotel and had a nice quiet evening in because we were exhausted.  The next morning, I decided to go on one of the optional tours and can I tell you it was the best twenty bucks ever!  We did an island tour meaning we took a boat and went to different islands to see different things.  The first stop was Isla de Pajaros (Bird Island).

Bird Island. Look how gorgeous the water is.

There were lots of birds, but this was the only one I caught on camera.

The next stop was Bocas del Drago (Mouth of the Dragon).  We were allowed to snorkel here, and holy cow, this was the best snorkeling ever!  I went in Hawaii and it was nothing compared to this.  Sadly I do not have a waterproof camera, so yall don’t get to enjoy pictures of that excursion.

I am such a dork.

Snorkeling again. I'm on the left with the yellow snorkel.

Where we ate lunch

After we ate lunch, we headed to Playa de las Estrellas (Beach of the stars) to hang out with the starfish.

Playa de las Estrellas (doesn't it look like it could be a postcard or something?)

Starfish!

The underside of a starfish.

They suction cup themselves to you, its awkward feeling.

Yep, I'm a treehugger!

After Playa de las Estrellas, we headed back to the hotel and had a quiet evening in the room.  The ride back to San Jose was decently uneventful.

That evening some of the girls from a program in a different city and I went out to see Gran Torino with them.  Can I just say that that movie is the most depressing movie ever especially when we were in the mood for something chick-y and upbeat.

The next day I was off to Nicaragua and ohhhhhh what a (mis)adventure that was.

The ride to Nicaragua was about six and a half hours, fairly uneventful.

Welcome to Nicaragua.

Border patrol stamped my passport crookedly and messed up my nice design of stamps.

So we get to Granada (the oldest colonial city in the western hemisphere) at around 8:30 at night.  We find a taxi and tell him the hostel where we have reservations, he doesn’t know where it is so we go to the hostel district of the city to try to look for it.  We can’t find it, so we go to the hostel where we have reservations for the second and third nights we’re staying there.  Well they don’t know where the other hostel is, so we decide to just stay there for the night.  There was, however, only three open beds in the room, and we were  five, so we pushed the beds together to make one big bed.  Because Granada is NOT in the/a central valley like San Jose, it was ridiculously hot, including after dark.  The room was too hot, so this is where I slept.

The hammock I slept in.

ANYWAYS.

So the next day we were wandering around Granada, and we found a hostel that looked a little bit nicer to where we would all have our own beds(!)

The Bearded Monkey...our hotel for the second and third nights.

We moved all of our stuff and headed to the town square.  As we were walking to the centro for lunch, we saw a man on the other side of the street.  When he saw the five of us Americans approaching he ran across the street (to the side that we were on), sat down, proceeded to pull down his pants and started masturbating to us as we walked past.  Honestly, did that really just happen??? Yes, yes it did.

So we walked around a little, see the city, take some pictures and eat lunch.  The rest of that day was fairly uneventful, but here’s some pictures:

A tower.

A church.

Another church in the centro.

Inside the aforementioned church.

The gazebo in the middle of the town square.

Anyway, the rest of the day went off without hitch.

The next morning, we went to a little cafe in the centro for breakfast.  My friend Olivia hadn’t eaten a little bit of her beans and rice.  Some little Nicaraguan boy asked if he could have it, and I said “no.”  I don’t know how much yall know about Spanish but “no” in Spanish is “no” meaning that there should’ve been no miscommunication.  Well the kid invites himself to sit down and starts eating.  I tell him to go away and leave us alone, at which point he calls me all of these obscene names (that I shan’t repeat for the sake of keeping this blog somewhat clean) like I wouldn’t be able to understand what he’s calling me.  He leaves and I’m pissed, so I’m ranting about this kid when this bilingual tour guide says that he would help me beat this kid if I ever see him because of the sheer amount of disrepect the kid was showing.

We did some shopping before heading back to the hostel for the night.  That night was Super Dave’s birthday (he was a worker at the hostel) so everyone decided to go out to the bars.  I skipped because I had to be up really early the next morning to catch the bus back to San Jose (I’m glad I did).  One of the girls in the group had had a little too much to drink, and on the way back to the hostel, got lost (it was a whopping block and a half away from the hostel), and was mugged at knifepoint.  Her purse was stolen with her passport, credit and debit cards, cash, and replacement Ipod (she already had one stolen during the first month of the program).  She started chasing after the guy screaming “you can have it all, just give me my passport,” so he threw her passport.  She picked it up and stopped running.  A taxi drove by a couple seconds later, and returns a little while later.  The taxi driver had a nightstick and had gone and gotten her purse back.  It was torn to shreds, and the cash and the Ipod was gone, but the mugger hadn’t checked the little zipper pouch where her cards had been, so at least she got those back.

The next morning, our tickets said that we were scheduled for the 7:30 am bus.  Well, you’re supposed to be an hour and a half early to check in, and yada yada yada, so we woke up at 5:00 am and were at the bus stop by 5:30 (we didn’t know how long it would take to walk to the stop).  Well we try to check in and the guy says you can’t check in–you’re too early.  Apparently when the ticket said 7:30, it meant that the bus left Managua at 7:30 and would be in Granada at 8:30.  Yeah, that’s right, waiting 3 hours in the bus stop at an obscenely early hour (fabulous start to the day).  So we finally get on, and start our journey home and all is well until we get to the border.  Since this is Easter Sunday we’re traveling on, the border is packed.  There were probably thousands of people there.  All in all, the border crossing itself was a three hour process between getting exit stamps from Nicaragua, entrance stamps in Costa Rica, and getting checked by customs (it only took less than 30 minutes on the way there).

Only some of the people trying to cross the border.

So, we eventually get past the border and we hit traffic.  Fabulous.  As if, the trip wasn’t bad enough, lets add an extra hour or two due to traffic.  All in all, the supposed six and a half hour journey was almost twelve hours.  Not a fan.

So anways, it took several attempts/weeks to finish this.  I applaud you if you’ve made it to here.  Check back for the final installments (even if I’m already home).