Broken fingers and string ray bites
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Puerto Jiminez,
Costa Rica
Sunday, February 11, 2007
The four of us hit the beach early for some sun. I got out on the board for a bit. Surf was decent, but all I managed to do was to nose dive the entire time. Some sweet wipe outs. After introducing Charlie and Lisa to Gallo Pinto for breakfast, Chelsea and I retreated to the hammocks to chill and Charlie and Lisa headed back to the beach.
About 20 minutes after sitting down in the hammock, Charlie walks up in lots of pain and blood flowing down his left foot. A sting ray had got him. He said it was quite painful. We brought him to the clinic where there were two other people getting treated for the same problem. The solution? Hot water mixed in with a green plant called 'Mother-in-law-tongue'. You mix them together, keep the water hot, and let the wound marinate for a good hour. Looked to be quite painful, apparently the pain runs up your leg.
Two days before leaving for their trip, Lisa managed to break her middle finger. Now Charlie got bit by a sting ray. On the way out of the clinic, Lisa full on runs her head into this diagonal staircase. I thought for sure that we were gonna have to turn right back around back into the clinic (by the way, the life guard clinic is a picnic bench at the back of a restaurant, really sophisticated stuff we are dealing with here). Luckily her head formed only a bump, no cut, I couldn't believe it. What a way to start a vacation.
It was Sunday, so Chelsea had to head back to San Jose for class. The rest of us were driving down to the Osa Peninsula. Chelsea and I had a great weekend together. It was the best Valentines Day I ever had. She was pretty sad when we had to say good bye and I felt quite bad about leaving her and having to make it back to San Jose by herself. She is a tough cookie though.
Charlie, Lisa and I took off around in the early afternoon for Osa. Its further south along the coast and is really out of the way to get to. This is good because its untouched. We were planning on going to Osa anyways, but our plans changed after Charlie's sting ray bite. Plans changed because the guy fixing Charlie up recommended that we go to a different part of Osa instead (we were originally headed to Bahia Drake). He said Matapalo on the very tip of the peninsula was untouched and what Costa Rica used to be like. They don't have electricity there. So we were now headed for Matapalo.
We had a long day and were running out of time and Lisa had the great point that we probably don't want to arrive in a town that doesn't have electricity after dark. Charlie and I agreed. So we crashed in Puerto Jiminez.
