Epic Weekend

Man, this weekend was awesome. Again, I'm going to TRY to summarize it the best I can, as not ALL details are needed, but it seriously ranked up there with one of the best weekends I've ever had.

So we got in on Friday afternoon, after enduring a 4.5 hour bus ride (by most Latin American standards, this is a quick trip). As usual, I took enough Dramamine to knock out a hippo, so I spent most of my time there making an ass out of myself with my head cocked back snoring like an 80-year-old. I have realized that I now possess my late Grandpa Bus's ability to fall asleep pretty much wherever and whenever I want. He'd be so proud:)

We got into town, and it was effin pouring (as is usual for CR at this time of the year). I almost killed this Chinese guy who was cutting in front of everyone with his stupid umbrella in our faces while we were all waiting for our luggage. Sadly, this wasn't the only time that I hurled expletives at the elderly during this particular weekend, but again, I digress. We traveled with our ridiculously large group of 11 gringos in an effort to find "Gringo Pete's," which is a local hostel. After some initial confusion (and of course frustration to go with it), we found the place; it's owned by Pete, who is an older guy from Washington State. He seemed friendly at first, but this turned out to be untrue. I'll get back to that...

After some priming (see initial pics on FB...in front of the mural), we headed out to "Baldi Hotsprings," which was incredibly awesome. This place had a bunch of thermal pools of varying degrees, and we had a lot of fun bathing in them (and sneaking around our contraband of rum and coke...like everyone enjoys Coke so much that they feverishly pass around a 2-liter). We did this for a couple of hours, and then found the swim-up bar...something that has been on my Top-10 things to do for years. Later, we hit the buffet, where I proceeded with my "shock and awe" campaign. You should have seen the looks I was getting...LOL

After that, we found the deadliest waterslides imaginable. We went down them with pure recklessness, and suffice it to say, I am still having a hard time moving my neck and my back feels like Andy Rooney's must. Fun while it lasted though! After Baldi, we all headed back to the hostel for some more drinks. Jacob and I decided to go big and head out to a club. Back at 2:30 AM...enough said.

The next day, we got up and decided to do some gnarly zip lines about 45 minutes outside of town. We got picked up by the friendliest Costa Rican EVER. He was awesome. I think he was probably in his 50's and was SO eager to show us a good time and make sure we enjoyed ourselves while in HIS country. Ticos, like so many other natives of any country, are extremely proud of Costa Rica. Throughout the whole trip, he was telling me about their economy, produce, imports/exports, etc. Being the eldest, and the guy with the longest legs, I took it upon myself to sit up front. This also enabled me to practice my Spanish, which goes by the wayside when traveling with fellow gringos. We got there, and immediately set our eyes upon the biggest, scariest zip line imaginable. All of us were pretty nervous (varying degrees of course), but after getting suited up, nervousness was replaced by excitement. We headed out in our group to embark on the next great adventure.

The first cable was definitely mellow, comparatively speaking of course. Even though these cables could probably have supported a mac truck, I couldn't stop thinking of impending death on every single one. We worked our way up in length, until about the third, and then hit the "Tarzan Swing." I have a clip of it for those of you who don't use FB (I'll never understand you):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uti8enoa3T8

After the swing, the cables continued to intensify until we started hitting the 100+ meter lines. When we had finished all of the jungle swings, we headed back for three more super intense lines that were hooked up to really tall towers, all of which hung probably at least hundreds of feet above ground. This is when I started to get downright scared. As I said, there were three more, and unlike the others, these ones required us to climb up what I referred to as "The Towers of Terror." Now, it might seem a tad bit ridiculous that someone who is semi afraid of heights and gets vertigo pretty easily would do something like this, yet here I was. We had to cable up and begin the ascent up about 5-6 flights of super scary, Dutch-style skinny metallic steps while in the wind and pouring rain. Let's just say I walked up them rather daintily. Getting to the top and eventually getting off of the tower was actually the most relieving part of the trip. No kidding, I was scared to death climbing up these stairs.

The first tower and subsequent zipline were fairly gnarly; the cable was about 250 meters long. That one actually wasn't that bad. The next one was worse. As I was climbing up the tower, a crazy wind picked up and was strong enough that I had to start kind of bracing myself. The cable was about 300 meters long on this one, and really wasn't that fun as the wind combined with rain were hitting me in the face pretty hard throughout the whole ride. Plus, the fog came in and you really couldn't see. After this cable, and about to do the last one, several people in our group opted out. The last tower was really quite high, the wind and rain were there to stay, and the cable was 750 meters long. I debated skipping it myself, but didn't want to give in and certainly didn't want to regret not doing the "daddy" of all ziplines. As I said in my FB status post, 750 meters & 85 km/h, and the fact that it took nearly a minute to complete will never do this one justice. You'd have to see it to believe it.

We got home later that night with the intentions of going up with our new friend to check out the volcano, but the unrelenting rain put a damper on those plans. Our driver suggested that we get up at 4 Am and try to see it in the morning. And believe it or not, we did just that. At 4 AM, he came to pick us up. As I mentioned earlier, "Gringo Pete" really should have been called "Asshole Pete." We found out too late that he has a no-drinking-past-10 PM rule that he vigorously enforces. He came out the first night and proceeded to reprimand everyone who wasn't obeying his law, telling them that he'd give them the choice of A) Leaving voluntarily, and letting him keep their money and deposit or B) Calling the police and being escorted out. It was REALLY uncomfortable, but kind of funny at the same time. So, Cranky Pete apparently comes out around 3:45 in the morning to reprimand all the Germans (who were outside smoking, waiting for our taxi driver) for being too loud, saying something like, "Don't you know that there are people trying to sleep?" I guess they ignored him and continued, which ired Asshole Pete. A couple of minutes later, the taxi guy comes out and starts hollering, "Pura Vida!" and shaking everyone's hands. I was told that Old Man Pete came back out and said that he was going to shoot someone...LOL

Our driver took us up onto the volcano, where we waited for about an hour with the hopes that the clouds would clear...they didn't. While that sucked, and we didn't get to see any lava, we did get to see the base of the volcano and grab some rock souvenirs. After that, he took us to a somewhat "secret" thermal pool, where we clearly interrupted some CR's with our gringo-ness while also taking over the area. Again, our driver was all too excited to show off his "find" while running around in his skimpy see-through shorts and amazingly large beer belly. Regardless, it was a hot river that formed a couple of pools that were awesome (and free)!

After the early morning trip, we came back to the hostel and crashed for a bit before heading to the bus station. Here, we met a scene. Me, not wanting to get stuck in a seat with no legroom, was HELLBENT on getting on the bus first and securing a spot. Again, the bus driver seemed to find a problem with the bus, and spent the next hour or so tinkering with things using...what? A screwdriver?! Yet again! Rumors were flying that the bus was broken, and some criminal guy (who another gringo said he had seen get in a machete fight the day before...not that I think he actually used it, just threatened with it) told us that we would not be able to get a seat on it. Now it was on. I had been waiting for over an hour...mind you, the first one at the station. I was DETERMINED to get a seat and told Jacob that I'd fight someone if I had to (he replied that he believed me) to get a seat. Finally, rumor goes around that the bus is fixed, and we all lined up again. Some ass, who's sole job it is to stamp tickets, tells us that we have to move so the bus can pull up for some arbitrary reason. Now I'm really fired up. All the gringos are crowding around, pushing and shoving for their place in line. Some fat old lady comes up and cuts right in front of me, telling the bus driver that somebody had told her the line was over in another spot and that she somehow deserved to be in front. This was met by a "F&*$ NO" from me, and I pushed my way right in front of her. Finally, it was time to board. I jumped on maybe third, while the ticket guy implored us not to push, and found my way to the back, where I found a seat with a ton of legroom. I was happy.

The sad part of this story is that I somehow came down with a nasty cold, and can hardly move my neck and back without searing pain from the ziplines and waterslides of death. All worth it though:)