Over the ocean and through the rainforest to Santa Teresa we go...

As most of you know, I am in Costa Rica to celebrate my 30th birthday and kicking cancer's a** with Leana. I don't have a cord to download photos so those will come later but there are too many good stories to not update with.

I left my apartment at 7pm Tuesday evening for our 1am redeye flight out of Denver International Airport. Wanting to save money, I booked a flight with a layover in Charlotte....so we flew from Denver to Charlotte, got in at 6am and then had a 6 hour layover until we left for San Jose. Next time I think I will pay the money for a direct flight. We did manage to keep ourself entertained by doing all of our activities (eating breakfast, perusing bookstores, and going to Starbucks) throughout the six hours. And, fortunately, I managed to fall asleep before take-off on both flights and slept through half of each with the aide of Ambien (Flight 1) and a sport psychology hypnotic CD (Flight 2: Greatest sleep aid I have found to date, shuts my brain off and out I go).

When we got to San Jose, we thought we had another 4 hour trip out to Santa Teresa. It is located on the Nicoyan Pennisula on the Pacific ocean. Then we thought we really scored because there was a new toll road so it should only take 3 hours....well, we left San Jose at 2:45 pm and arrived in Santa Teresa at 10pm. Our trusty little Peugot 06 (I named him "El Muchi Torro") was good to us but the drive was long. It started on winding little roads, then I made a wrong turn down a one way "street" thinking I was merging onto the highway, than traffic jams, then we missed the ferry and had to wait for the next ferry and then the nice paved roads turned into paved roads with monster-sized potholes (they put MI potholes to shame) which then turned into washboard dirt roads...with pavement when the hill was too steep for dirt.

But we eventually made it and were able to Santa Teresa. We heard it was an untouched surf town and that is no joke. The town is not really a town, just some random restaurants and surf shops down the road. The beach is great, miles of sand and forest. No businesses or hotels are built up on the beach. The waves are awesome. We took surfing lessons today and I got up most of the time and had my longest rides to date. Even learning how to turn the board now. And the food is amazing. I think it is primarily surfers from countries all over the world that come here to surf and they make a living by cooking food. That is pretty much all you can do here: eat and surf...well and lay out on the beach; although, it is SO STINKING HOT it is hard to do that for very long. I am literally drenched in sweat all day long and the ocean is as warm as bath water. We learned laying at at noon is a REALLY BAD idea so we have been getting up early and going out later.

Other interesting notes are the spider monkies which are all over in the trees...and the giant iguanas (2 feet long)...and the locusts which are going all day and night. I am in charge of driving since we have a manual car and I have gotten really good at dodging ATVs and people and bikes and dogs and passing randomly...kind of learning to drive like a local. I am also learning some spanish, like "Reduction" means "Speedbump" and "Ceda" means "Merge."

Tomorrow is our last day in Santa Teresa and we are going to Isle Tortuga for a day of snorkeling. Then we head to La Fortuna on Sunday.