June 3, 2011

        Today I did the Off-Road Adventure. I think I actually did more off-roading the day before when we were going through the forest to get to the tubing place. It was still a lot of fun because we were able to go up into the mountains to this place where a tourbus wouldn’t be able to go. The vehicle that we used was a 6 wheel drive vehicle. It used to be a US military vehicle. Costa Rica hasn’t had an army for over 60 years so they didn’t have any military vehicles that could be bought and used. The people that started this company first started with a Russian Missle Launcher, which they bought from this collector of old vehicles. We met at the bus around 7:15AM but it was more like 7:45 by the time we actually left. That’s okay though. We then went up into the mountains and while we were up there we got out of the truck. We walked down the hill a little ways to see what wildlife we could find, and then we got back in the truck. While we were walking around we saw quite a few poisonous dart frogs, and some cool spiders, but nothing larger.
        After we got back in the truck we went to a banana plantation. The plantation wasn’t operating today because they only operate on days that ships come in, and there wasn’t a ship today. We had a “picnic” around 10AM, which consisted of pineapple, watermelon, these chip things, and some sauce (I don’t remember what they were called), soft drinks, and some people had cocktails!! I thought “way to start early!” Most of the people on this trip were still hung over from the night before so I don’t really know how they could keep drinking. This was very puzzling to me.
        Once we picked up our stuff from the “picnic” we got back in the truck and were going to head back to the ship. Our guide asked us if we wanted to stop at the river on our way back to the ship, so we did. It was disappointing though because they hadn’t told us to bring our bathing suits, and I wasn’t about to go in the water with all of my clothes on. I put my feet in and the water was really warm. It was really clear and blue too. Our tour guide said that sometimes the water is so clean that you can actually drink it, but it was rainy so it was a bit dirty from all of the runoff.
        After stopping at the river, we got back in the bus and headed towards the ship. At this point it was still only 12PM so I had time to get lunch on the ship. After lunch I tried to find people to go out into the town with, but everyone was either headed to the beach or people had just come back from the town, and since there wasn’t too much there they didn’t want to go back there. So I braved the city and decided to venture out by myself. It was broad daylight, and there were a lot of people around and I knew I would find people that I knew. The city also felt pretty safe compared to where we were in Panama especially.
        I decided to go the internet café that was about 2 blocks from the port. It was really nice to have high speed internet again. While we are on the boat we are limited in our internet use, and when we do go on the internet it is SOOO slow. They said that it is about ½ the speed of dialup internet. This means that we aren’t allowed to video chat or even instant message because it would use up all of our internet time very quickly. While I was at the internet café I was able to skype with my dad and my (not so) little cousins, and through google voice I was able to call my mom too. This was really nice being able to talk to my parents. I was also able to check my facebook for once.
        After the internet café I was headed back to the ship and then I found some of my friends, and they were headed to the park to eat fresh mangoes that they had bought. We then walked to the park and had the mangoes. They were almost a little too ripe. They were really sweet. After we had eaten 2 of the mangoes, we found worms in one of the mangoes. This was very reassuring because we had already eaten some of them. At least of we did eat them, it was just a little extra protein.
        I then came back to the ship relatively early and then didn’t do anything too exciting. I played a game with a friend, and then later we had conversation circles where some people get together and just talk about their time in port. Those are really interesting just to hear what people have to say about what they did in port.