Today we had no power all day, and most of the evening, it went off around 3 and came back on around 8:30, which is a lot of darkness as it gets dark around 5. When the power first went out, my first thought was joy, because I thought that this meant my host mom would be forced to order pizza or some kind of take out because I had seen earlier that our "dinner" of diced hot dogs and carrots was stewing in one of her four crock pots (how is it necessary to have 4 crock pots?!) and crock pots need electricity to work. However, when I got home, our house was pitch black and my host mom informed me that she owned one candle and that the hot dogs and carrots in the crock pot were a little cold, but I could sit by the candle and eat them. I opted to go to a nearby restaurant that had power instead of eating luke-warm crock pot hot dog delight. I feel good about my decision.
Following dinner, typical power-outage shenanagins took place on the roof of my friend Anne's apartment. Wine and ice cream were involved, and it was delightful.
A new addition to our house decor is a 16 inch skiing Snoopy which now resides on our kitchen wall. Happy holidays.
This past week/weekend has been good. School is school. I have to register for my classes for Winter Quarter tomorrow which is weird. It is strange to think that in a month I will be living an entirely different life from the one I am living now. I'll be seeing different people every day, going to a different school, speaking a different language. I feel mostly excited to come home, with pangs of sadness for leaving this place and the people I have grown close to here.
This weekend I had another unexpected adventure, which seems to be the status quo here. I don't have a cell phone, and I have literally not met a single person capable of giving accurate directions, so if plans get mixed up, the only option is to go with it. Which continuously has turned out wonderfully.
The original plan for this weekend had been to go to a beach called San Miguel with about 8 other people, a group a little large for my liking but solid nonetheless. So we met at the school as planned and got into 3 different cabs to get to the bus station.
The cab drivers had all been told what bus station to go to, so when me, Robin, Anne and Gigi got into the third cab, we double checked he knew and he said yes and off we went. We were the last cab to leave, but when we got to the bus station, none of our other traveling companions were there. We thought this odd, but figured they would arrive shortly.
After an hour, we started asking if there was another bus station for the beach we were trying to get to. Everyone we asked said no, we were at the only bus that went there. After two hours we decided to just get on a bus in the general direction of San Miguel and figure out our plan when we got off the bus.
We arrived at night in the port city of Puntarenas. Puntarenas kind of sucked, but it was dark and we had all of our stuff and the only way to keep going was on a ferry, and the first one didn't leave until the morning. So we reluctantly let a local shirtless man take us to a hostel, which turned out to be a shit hole with walls apparently made of paper.
Every time a car drove by or a person walked by, it literally sounded like they were inside of our room. The entire hostel also smelled like urine. In the morning there were tons of cars honking from 5am on, and Robin said "Jesus, why is there a parade outside?" After about an hour of honking and noise, I looked outside and to all of our surprise there literally was a parade outside. Well, rather, it appeared to be a race of sorts, but this was the cause of the noise. We got our stuff and left this hell hole for better things.
We walked through Puntarenas to get to our next destination: the ferry. We decided we would try to get to another beach, called Malpais. So we bought tickets to Malpais and got on the ferry. Two hours we got off the ferry and soon discovered that the ferry did not in fact go to Malpais and we would need to take a bus for 3 more hours to get there.
We didn't want to do that, so we asked a taxi driver if there were any hostels near by, and if there was a beach near by. He whipped out his cell phone and talked to someone, hung up and informed us that there was a hotel that would charge us $10 a night up the street. It was nice and clean, he assured us, and did not smell like piss.
I think that the gross paper hostel made the cabanas he took us to seem even more magical. We had a little cabin to ourselves, overlooking a clearing in the middle of the jungle. And three minutes down the street was a lovely little beach where we were the only people besides a few fishermen. We made friends with an Israeli guy who was working at the hostel and he talked to one of the fishermen and arranged for him to take us to the island across the water the next day.
The night was relaxing and wonderful. We went into the little town and ate the best meal I have had since being here. The night ended on the porch of our cabin with Rum and Cokes and hanging out with our new Israeli friend.
The next morning, we walked to the beach to meet the fisherman who would take us to Isla Tortuga. The toothless fisherman took the four of us in his rickity blue boat, that looked like a row-boat he had put a motor on. The motor gave out a few times during our 30 minute journey. Which was a bit nerve-wracking given that we were in the ocean and he had confirmed our suspicions that this ocean was in fact home to many sharks. But we made it without any shark attacks.
The island was perfect. Our fisherman friend dropped us off and simply said he would return in a few hours to get us. The sand was white, and although we were in the ocean, somehow around this little island, the water was completely calm. Perfect for back floating.
When we returned to the cabinas, our Israeli friend informed us that he needed to go to San Jose, so instead of taking a 4 hour bus, he sped us back to Chepe while we sat in the back of his truck. It absolutely felt like the perfect end to an unexpected adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment