Costa Rica is a beautiful country, and it was a great place to be the last stop of our voyage. We spent five lovely days there.
The first day wasn’t too adventurous for me. We didn’t dock until 10am, so we decided to just eat lunch on the ship and leave around 12. We walked around Puntarenas, the port city, for a bit, ate some icecream, got some souvenirs, drank a coconut. Really not that much. We went back to the ship pretty early because I had a field class that was meeting at 4:15am the next day.
Day 2 I woke up at 4am, met up with my class in the library, and we ate a quick breakfast before heading out. We drove for two hours to Manuel Antonio National Park, which is a beautiful protected area. We walked on the sloth trail and saw sloths and monkeys. Two of the park officials talked to us about animal trafficking and why we shouldn’t feed the animals and how harmful it is to them. It was really impactful. After that, we walked on the beach and through some more of the park trails, until it was time for lunch. We ate, then went on a crocodile riverboat tour and saw some crocs and the sunset over the river. It was so beautiful. Once we were done that, we just drove back to the ship.
Day 3 Danie and I left at 8 to go on a ferry her tour guide the day before had told her was super cool. It took an hour and a half to get there. We got off the ferry at Playa Naranja and there was literally nothing there. Like, it was not at all cool. We were very confused. We went to a little hotel with no one in it to get food and figure out what to do and we got these weird nachos. Did not like them. We realized it would make more sense for us to just get back on the ferry so we did and headed back. It was funny but at least the ferry ride was pretty. Once we finally got back to Puntarenas we just walked around some more. We got icecream, rode some bikes, got shoes for the Alumni Ball. We walked down the beach and I went swimming. Sunsets in Costa Rica are really beautiful. From my experience, it’s always cloudy and seems like it won’t be a good sunset, then it breaks through the clouds and it’s so lovely. After that, we went back to the ship and just hung out.
Day four we set out at 6:45am to go to a ecoadventure park. It’s a long story, but basically someone else was organizing the whole trip but backed out at the last second, but we were determined to do it ourselves. My friend Becca had a taxi friend named Pablo, so we organized our own transport with him. We were originally told the park was 2.5 hours away but turns out it’s 4, so we got there around 11, which sucked. It was fine though because it was a really great group of people so we had fun and talked a lot on the way there. When we got there, we immediately got to see crocodiles being fed. All the animals at the park were rescue animals that couldn’t be released back into the wild so it was good to see that. After my field class and learning about the hardships caged animals go through, it was good to know these ones needed help and were being taken care of. We saw a bunch of butterflies, different types of pretty birds, of course some monkeys, but best of all was a sloth. Her name was Lucy and she got burnt by some telephone wire she mistakenly grabbed on to. She has only been there for a month. She was really active when we were there, which is unusual because sloths basically spend their entire lives sleeping. She licked our hands through the bars of her caged room and it was so amazing. Love that girl.
Anyways, after that we went to the zip lining place. We did a LOT of ziplines and it was so cool. There was one where we had to lay down like superman and it was a whole minute long (a mile.) There was a baby free fall jump thing, where you jump and feel like you’re actually falling for a couple of seconds and then it catches you. There was a wobbly bridge where you walk over crocodiles. Then, of course, there were like 4 or 5 other ziplines we did. Once we finished zipping, we got lunch/dinner/ and got back in our van to head back. We had wanted to do more but it was raining and it was already getting kind of late considering we had a 4 hour drive ahead of us so that was basically it. It was worth it though. On the way back we stopped at the Costa Rica version of Walmart which was interesting. It seemed more like a Costco kind of, but also less nice. We finally got back to the ship at like 9ish. We unpacked and packed what we needed for the next night super fast and headed back out right away. We got in a taxi to Jaco, which was about an hour away. We got there, checked into our airbnb, then walked around the town for a while. It was a really cute little town, very hipster and beachy and surfer. I liked it a lot. We walked to the beach, then we went back to the airbnb and ate and played cards and talked a lot and tried to watch a show but the internet wasn’t working. We didn’t go to sleep until 3:30/4, then we woke up at 5 to see the sunrise.
We walked to the beach and sadly, it wasn’t that great because of the clouds, but the company was amazing 🙂 After that, we walked around the town some more, got breakfast and some souvenirs, went back to the beach and saw some dogs. We had wanted to surf but the tides were way too low in the morning so we didn’t get the chance to, but we still had a lot of fun. We caught the bus back to Puntarenas at 11 with basically all the rest of SAS. We got to the port at like 1 and Becca and I sat on the beach finishing up our snacks and talking for a bit, then we got in the security line at about 1:45. It took us until 2:45 to get on the ship. On ship time was at 3 and everyone was pushing it super close. But then again, it was the last time we’ll be on foreign land for a indefinite amount of time. We deserve to push it close.
Only 9 more days left, so I’ll see all of you soon…
Pura vida!
Rebekah
Cities and Waves 