Monteverde

So the last paid for by the school trip was to Monteverde. Which pretty much consisted of a long bus ride...followed by a huge pasta lunch (for some reason we weren´t fed dinner), and an overnight stay in a decent hotel. The following day consisted of a brisk walk through the National Park, some crazy zip-lining through the canopy of the cloud forest, a huge pizza lunch and then another long bus ride home.

Pictures (above and below) from outside the hotel room

Fallen Tree in the National Park

Me at the lookout point that we hiked to...it was really windy
View from the Lookout

Carly in her zip-lining gear...

Playa Conchal

For the last beach weekend in Costa Rica, my friend Christen and I headed for Playa Conchal on the Northern Pacific side. It was a very relaxed trip, as the town we were staying in (Brasilito) didn´t really have much to offer...but the beach was nice and the sunsets even better.

The beach itself as made up of a bunch of shell pieces

Close up view of what the beach ¨Sand¨was like

Just 20-40 ft over this hill was Playa Brasilito which was a completely different kind of beachPlaya Brasilito was dark sand and the water was a deep blue (although you can´t really tell in this picture) instead of the turquoise blue of the neighboring Playa Conchal

Sunset pictures over Playa Brasilito
My friend Christen, enjoying a Rock Ice con Limon

Another picture of the sunset over Playa Brasilito

My friend Xavier....came to hang out with us during dinner. He must have sensed my inner cat-lady, or maybe

Semana Santa

Since we got another week off for Holy Week (Easter week), my friend Carly and I decided to travel up through Honduras and Nicaragua. The trip was fun, but we definitely spent too much time on a bus. It was almost 21 hours one-way, not including at crazy border crossings. The Costa Rican - Nicaraguan border (picture below) took almost 3 hours!So our first real stop (aside from the layovers in Managua, Nica and San Pedro, Honduras) was the Bay Island of Roatan...Which I had actually been to before with the family, same week 7 years prior.

Anyone remember this beach?

It is definitely a lot more built up than when we were there before, but still beautiful none the less.

Pictures along the walk to the beach

Check out my tan after all this sunbathing...haha YEAH RIGHT!

We met this girl named Kathy from Ireland ( on right below) on the bus ride, she was traveling alone and ended up hanging out with us the whole time we were on the island....really nice girl, and lucky for me (who hadn't had a hair cut in almost 3 months) she was a hairdresser and ended up cutting off my rapidly developing fem-mullet.

Sunset from dinner table one night.

After the island and another long bus ride, we made it to Granada, Nicaragua an old colonial town.

Actually a picture of a fountain in Messaih...we went there hoping to hit up the cheap tourist market to buy presents for all of you....but it turns out that people take holy week pretty seriously and the whole thing was closed for good Friday...so now everyone will just have to settle for the gifts I find in the San Jose market...haha

Carly pondering what we are going to to do... since the market was closed.

Street outside our hostel in Granada

Yes...that is a goat grazing in the middle of one of the main streets in the city!

A closer view

More colonial type buildings

and after another long bus ride back to San Jose, this guy was waiting at the bus station for me

My friend Ryu and I....the face to go with the scabby diseased legs in my panama entry

Montezuma

This last weekend I went to Montezuma (Costa Rica) located at the southern point of the nicoya peninsula on the Pacific side. It was a lot of fun, although the beach (at least the part close to town) was dirty and for some reason smelled like cooked carrots which orange-tinted foam to match....we did find a cleaner and non-carrot smelling part after walking for about an hour outside of town though.

Outside of town also had a series of waterfalls and swimming holes. It was nice to go swimming in freshwater again...and you could even jump off of one of them.

The return home from the trip was quite a journey though. To get to Montezuma from the San Jose area you have to take a ferry over to the peninsula. Normally the ferry ride is about 1.5 hours, that is if your ferry doesn´t break down halfway like ours did....instead it took us 7 hours to make the trip. We had to wait for a tugboat to come get us, and then slowly...and I mean really slowly...pull us the rest of the way.

On a positive note...when we did make it to the other side, there was a news crew waiting to film us...and when I finally made it back to my house in Heredia...my tica mom was all excited because she said she had seen me on TV!! I am an international television star!!

Panama

So I recently had a week off of school and made a trip down to Panama to visit some friends from MTU who are in the Peace Corps there.


I spent part of the time visiting my friend Ryu in Panama City while he was undergoing treatment for leishmaniasis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leishmaniasis
I did get to see some other parts of the city besides the hospital, but I wasn´t very good about taking any pictures so you don´t get to see that much (I did go to the Canal, but I forgot to bring my camera...Sorry!)

These pictures are in Casco Viejo the old colonial part of town.

These pictures are taken from the Causeway which is near the entrance of the canal.

A ship on its way out of the Canal.

The other part of my trip, I went to visit my friend Brandon at his Peace Corps site in Bocas del Toro. Unfortunately, once again I didn´t take any pictures, but if you want to check out his website it is http://panamericanproceeding.blogspot.com/

The last weekend of the trip, Brandon and I met up with some friends from school on the Islands in Bocas...but the weather wasn´t that great (cloudy and rainy)...guess I will just have to go back when it is sunny sometime...and take more pictues of course.