Personal #2-Monteverde Weekend

Well today is the first day back at the university since last Friday, and I am exhausted. The past weekend we took our first trip of the month and visited Arenal volcano, Baldi hot springs, and Monteverde. It took us about four hours to get to our hotel Friday night. While on the bus all of us slept, listened to music, and played Mafia. Mafia is a card game where you have the same number of cards as people playing, and you have an ace, king, queen, and the rest of the cards are numbered cards. The ace is the Mafia, the king is the cop, the queen is the doctor, and the rest of the cards are citizens. During the game, everyone goes to sleep and then the Mafia wakes up and kills someone, then the cop wakes up after the Mafia goes back to sleep and chooses someone that he or she thinks is the Mafia, and then the queen gets up after the cop went back to sleep and tries to guess who got killed so he or she can save that person. After all of this, everyone wakes and and tries to figure out who the Mafia, and convince each other who it is. I think that we probably played that game for a good two hours of so on the bus ride.

When we got to the hotel we got our room assignments, and then changed to go to the hot springs and enjoy the rest of the night there. The hot springs was probably one of the favorite things that we have done so far. It was located at the base of the Arenal volcano, so the water was naturally heated by the heat from the volcano. There were I believe six or seven different levels, and the further you went up the hotter the water got. The hottest that the water got was 152 degrees. You wanna talk about hot. It took me a while to build up to get into the 152 degree hot spring. The worst part about that one was actually getting your legs all the way in. After you had your waist under it was not that bad; as long as you didn´t move so much. It helped me to rub my legs to get some of the pain and heat off of them. We were probably in the hot springs for a good two or so hours, and I am pretty sure everyone loved it. After being in the springs for that long we had dinner there. The dinner was probably the best I have had yet. I don´t know if it was because I was tired from the springs or what, but it was amazing. The fish was the best part about it. After that, we all went back to the hotel where some of us went to sleep, and the rest of everyone else hung out in one of the rooms watching TV and playing games.

The next day we had to wake up at 6:45, so that we could make it to breakfast by 7:00 and leave by 8:00. The first site that we went to was the ICE hydro-powered water plant. It was pretty interesting to see how one of those worked. It was amazing that we were able to just drive right up to the gate, and get into the plant that easily because I know back in the states you would not even begin to get close to do that. We also went to the damn that supplies the water for the plant, which was about three miles away I would guess. It was amazing to see that because the night before there was three feet of water that was overflowing the dam. I asked the engineer how long it took to fill up the lake behind the dam, and he told us that it only took two days. That just made me realize exactly how much water they get down here because that was a very large lake.

After the power plant, we went back into town and went horse back riding to La Fortuna waterfalls. It took us about half an hour or so to ride up to the enterance of the waterfalls, but the ride there was awesome. My horse took awhile to break in, but after I broke him in he began to run and gallup a lot more. Once we were actually at the waterfall enterance we then had to hike down (supposedly) ten flights worth of stairs. We were at the waterfall for about twenty or thirty minutes until we had to hike back up the stairs; where I found out that I really needed to get back into shape. We then proceeded to go back to the hotel and pack our bags to head out to Monteverde.

While at Monteverde, we went zip lining through the canapies, went on a night and morning walk through the rain forest, played cards games all through the night, and had PIZZA. The zip lining was amazing. I have gone zip lining before in Jamaica and that was nothing compared to this. The views from the zip line was unforgettable. There were 14 different lines that we did, and there were also two or three walking bridges which was very interesting to try and get across because once there were about three or four of us on it we would start jumping on the bridge or swinging it. Two lines that we did were the free fall line and the George of the Jungle swing. The George of the Jungle swing was literally a huge swing where we jumped off a plattform. The plattform was about three stories high, and for some reason I decided to go off backwards. The feeling of free fall is a very scary thing esp when you are not looking down at the ground; not knowing when the swing is going to finally catch you and take you flying through the air. After the zip lining we went back to the lodge where we were staying and then went to dinner. Oh dinner, it was an amazing thing because by this time I had not really had any "American" food, and we had pizza for dinner. Even though pizza is really Italian food, I have it back in the states so. At dinner I sat with Steve, Paul, Stephanie, and Morell. It was probably the funniest dinner I have had here yet, and I dont know why because everything we were laughing at really wasn't that funny. I think we were through seven or so pizzas all together, and at dinner I made a new best friend. This new friend was a mixed dog that looked like he had a little of yellow lab and I dont really know what else. We then returned to the lodge where we went on the night walk; which was pretty cool because we got to see bats and all kinds of other little bugs even though it was raining really really hard. For the rest of the night we just played Mafia and Sniper. I explained what Mafia was earlier, but Sniper is another card game. The point of the game is for the sniper to wink at everyone in the game without getting caught. The way that the sniper is choosen is by having one or two Aces in the cards, and whoever chooses those are the snipers. It is alot harder then it sounds because you will be sitting in a circle while everything is looking at you or someone else.

We started off the next day by waking up at 5:45 to go on our morning hike at 6:00. While on the hike we saw hummingbirds but most importantly we saw the female and male Quetzal. The female Quetzal is seen more frequently then the male, but that particular morning we saw two females and a couple of males. The female is a darker bird that is not as pretty as the male, but the male is a beautiful bird that can around three feet long with its tail. The male is a mixture of green, white, red, and a blueish color. After the morning hike, we had breakfast at the lodge and then headed back to San Jose.

Overall, I would say that the weekend was a great weekend, and I feel like everyone had a great time and got to know each other even better. I really can't complain about one thing while on the trip, but I can say that I just think that things are going to get better.