Hacienda Tayutic Turrialba

... will be tepid compared to my shower.

Now I know my cousin is disowning me. I'm not even sure I blame him. Patron anyone?

The rafting transportation van was right on time at 8:30. Amazingly we all were ready to go. We set out with 2 other whitewater thrill seekers- 2 recent high school graduates. Oh joy!

We arrived at the Rio Pacuare and were given our gear and brief introduction to the rafting lingo and ...

... did however turn into a short-sighted decision...

We returned to our SUV and continued driving and driving and driving. Now we are in the jungle-filled mountains, the clouds are rolling in, and it is getting dark. Towards the last 2 hours of our now turning into an all-day drive, it is pitch black and mind you there are NO "highway" lights. Oh, and there are also no guardrails on this "highway" over the mountains. It gets to the ...

... print of tourist brochures the fact remains; Costa Rica is still a developing country with a lot of poverty. Help is needed to make the situation better. This summer you can go to a hotel, take tours and see some famous, touristy places, and feel like you ...

... our 'to-do' list in a letter to my sister(oops). After that we went to a very inexpensive Internet cafe to check in with our friends Scott and Junko who we were hoping to meet up with soon. Later that evening, we had dinner with Alex and made arrangements for the following days adventure. As it turns out, the volcano is actually pretty far away 1.5 hours by car, (we have no car) so...we decided to go to Guayabo National Monument, a pre-Colombian site, on the ...

... visiting. I have have started going to the local public school each day. We wear uniforms, white shirts and navy pants. The school is nice. I have a very bright and airy classroom. I like my teacher a lot. My friend Max goes there too and I have a new friend named Coleston. We make paper airplanes at recess and I write our names on them. Three is the magic number. Yesterday I finished I finished my fifth Magic Treehouse book. It was called Eathquake ...

... in the valleys! We went zip-lining through the forest one morning which was great fun, although i did scream a lot on the tarzan swing (i dont like free falling like that!!) I've also be to see lots of colourful frogs! and had a tour around a coffee plantation, so I now know all about coffee growing and got some free tasters (and some yummy homemade rice pudding!!). I ...

... eggs, if we ever get a leatherback arrg, and it has been very hard work. Because our beach is an arribada site the sand is SUPER contaminated with olive ridley eggs so we had to go through the whole seven by four meter area, dig the sand out to half a meter depth and hand pick out allllll of the nasty nasty stinky maggoty rotten eggs and feed them to the stinky nasty vultures. It was all very glamorous. It has been nice though to do some hard work in the day ...

... group of kids whose grandparents might not even remember when there was an army in Costa Rica. "Child's Song" could also potentially cause a bit of disconnect, I realized as I tried to give a summarized translation of the lyrics, in a culture where children often remain at home until marriage. And I must confess I'm still not entirely sure what Cat Stevens was singing about half the time. They really liked Tracy ...

... picked us up at 6:15 and we traveled for a couple of hours, alongside banana plantations with the fruit, wrapped in blue plastic, hanging off the trees. The buildings are usually very brightly colored, whether houses, hotels, or restaurants, and the cement infrastructure and metal roofs make quite the sight nestled in their green surroundings. The thing that makes Costa Rica so beautiful is the greenery...it is endless, though varying in the type ...

3 buses later we arrived and immediately liked this town. Pretty and everyone is happy out! We stayed in Innes house- she owns the 'other' Spanish school in Bocas and has another one here in her home. She's the most wonderful lady, so welcoming and friendly. We chilled out and prepared ourselves for the next day of rafting! Rafting was so much fun! It took us most of the day- we came down from ...