My Excursions

Well about 2 weeks ago the ladies and I decided to hit up Jaco again for Liz's b-day. She really wanted to go surfing. The trip started like this: I wake up to my phone ringing, "Kelsie, it's Paige, I'm in the taxi on the way to your place." "*!#@" I jumped out of bed and ran to Molly's room. She was still sleeping as well. She wouldn't listen to me so I run to my room and start shoving whatever I could find into my backpack. The time: 6:57. Our bus was leaving at 7:10 from San Jose. Paige comes up to our place and I put her in charge of getting Molly's ass out of bed. She succeeds and somehow we were out the door. Our cabbie, bless his heart, starts tearing through the streets trying to get us there on time. We hit traffic. "Everyone out! Start running!" I'm the first one out and I start booking it for the bus terminal about 3 blocks away. Everyone is staring at the crazy gringas and all I can do is laugh and keep on running! At one point I turned around to make sure they other two were coming. I hit the bus station just as I see a bus leaving. "Is that going to Jaco?!?!" I asked some guy standing there. YEP.  AGHHHH, I run towards the bus and get them to stop. I step on the bus to see Jen and Liz sitting comfortably in their seats. "Nice of you to make it," they say. Then, they get a glimpse of us and just laugh. (I may have left out the small detail that we didn't get home until 5:00 am that same morning. Darn those happy hours that never end!) So we made it to Jaco and had a lovely weekend of sun and surfing! (Surfing is used loosely here.)

Last weekend we had an extra day off for President's Day. To truly honor the dead white guys, Steph and I headed to  Nicaragua! We flew into Managua on Friday and took a taxi straight to Granada. The next morning we went in search of the bus to take us to Ometepe Island. It was a yellow school bus! Luckily the man in charge asked us where we were going because we never really thought about asking where we get off. We both assumed the bus would just stop there and we'd get off! So we get to one stop along the side of the road and some people get off. We stay. Then the guy comes to us and is like, "You need to get off here." "Yes, of course. Totally knew that."

We get there, make our ferry ride to the island and head to our hotel. The island is in the middle of the largest lake in Central America, Lago Nicaragua. It is made up of 2 volcanoes. We got to our hotel around 3 and decided to try and find something to do that afternoon. How about kayaking? The flyer looked neat. Note to self: Flyer may be misleading. While the kayakers in the flyer seemed to be gliding beautifully through the water, Steph and I couldn't even manage to go straight let alone glide anywhere! I blame the wind on the lake though! As we zigged and zagged through the water, I kept glancing at our guide. "How come he takes one stroke for every 3 of ours?" I asked Steph. The overall goal of kayaking was to make it to a river and see the wildlife there. I'm sure the wildlife is amazing, I'll never know. We couldn't make it; our arms were too tired! When we decided we wanted to turn around, neither of us wanted to say it to our guide so we just sat in the kayak, doing nothing, for about 5 minutes. Finally I said we wanted to go back and then I quickly looked the other way so he'd think Steph said it! I think he was really disappointed in us because he asked us about 4 times if we were sure cause, "We're really close to the river." Trust me, we were sure. If I really need to see the wildlife, next time I'll visit the zoo.

The next day we knew we needed to get back to Granada so we schedule the Hike from Hell at 6:00 am.  We were going to climb one of the volcanoes. One, Concepcion, is still active so you can only go so far up it. Being true 'adventurists,' we went for the other, Madera. 6km up, not too bad I thought. That's around 4 miles. Piece of cake...hahaha. We get to the Mirador, the viewpoint, and it's really pretty. That is where we should have turned around. At the point where Steph and I were talking about how exhausted we were, he told us we were at the 3km mark! Then we got to the part of the volcano labeled, "Exhausting." No joke. And it was! We felt like we were contestants on The Biggest Loser! We were dying and wanted to quit so badly! But we were worried about our reputations since we had quit kayaking early, we couldn't quit this too. By the grace of God we somehow made it to the top! Then we also went down into the crater and had lunch. Somehow we managed to drag our butts down the mountain and back to our hotel  to get our stuff and head  back on the ferry. Only to sit in front of a group who apparently has a hard time with rough water. Thank goodness they had good aim though and made it into their plastic bags!

We made it back to Granada and meet the strangest man ever! Long story short, he kept following us wherever we went and we eventually had to get a bartender to kick him out! Granada is a really pretty city. It had a fun little plaza area with a lot of vendors set up. Steph and I bought some rockin' t-shirts there. All the houses are full of color! I decided there must be a city law that you can't paint your house the same color as your neighbors. The streets are full of blue, orange, yellow, pink, red, and sadly, no purple that I saw.  We made it successfully back to San Jose on Monday.  By Thursday I could finally walk normally again. Apparently my legs were not adequately prepared to handle a 7 hour hike!