Playing catch up

Hello to all! I have to catch up on everything we did this weekend and explain some of the photos I posted. This whole adventure is quite different than Europe, since I actually live here. The days fly by, but it feels like I’ve been here forever too. Alright… let’s recap—Friday after school I went to the beach at Caldera. It’s the same place I went with the surfer group on my second day here. The taxi ride is about 15 minutes. It was so beautiful, and really nice day there. I went with Agata, Derek, Josh (film student from Toledo) and Stephanie (from Ohio also). We all had so much fun swimming, taking pictures, and exploring a little. There are these really bright colored crabs with bluish claws. If you get close they run in holes that are all over the sand. I will try to get close enough for a picture one of these days. It started pouring (about the same time as before) and walking back to the taxi we were attacked by mosquitoes. I could feel them on me, but didn’t really have any bites when we got back. Stephanie got it the worst, her back was covered in bites! We walked around later that night after a shower, and Lauren and I found a dead puffer fish on the sand. It was pretty cool to see. The picture is kinda blurry, but I’ll probably post it.
On Saturday we went on our first group field trip. It was to Turu-bari park and a crocodile tour on the Tarcoles river. We were split into groups of about 10 and we went down into the park in same compartments (see pics of them and the views). Our guide spoke English to us, which helped me and Josh (we seemed to be the only beginners in our group). We went to see the iguanas (which are still eaten in parts of CR) and then the butterfly garden. Oh, along the way, our guide was showing us plants, and he broke off a branch of this bush and he gave it me to look at. I touched it and the sap which he kept pointing to and then passed it on. About 3 of us had touched it when he told us that the sap was poison! Then we asked what it was called—oleander! Had he told me that in the beginning, I wouldn’t have touched it! I tried to keep my hands away from my face all day. The butterfly garden was cool, we met a coatimundi that was eating butterflies named Willy. He was just a baby and so cute. We found out that he is very tame. Outside the garden, Willy followed us and we met Big Willy, the adult version. They followed us on our whole tour. I was excited about seeing the wildlife, but thought it would be more wild! The guide also caught a raccoon going through the trash, he was pretty tame too. We saw so many cool plants and walked through the most beautiful forest. I tried to take many plant/flower pictures for you nature lovers out there. In the middle of the park we had lunch- a huge, delicious buffet. When we left the park, we went to the Tarcoles river for a boat tour from The Crocodile Man. They pointed out many birds and of course, crocodiles. The guide would get out of the boat and play with the crocodiles, they would snap at him and he even rode one. It was pretty interesting. The only bad part of the day was during the boat ride it started raining, and I was sitting on the side that got soaked.
That was it for Saturday.
Sunday, I was going to meet a bunch of people to go to Montezuma (over the gulf and on the pacific side) but in the morning I didn’t see anyone buying tickets for the ferry. I decided to go anyway and ran into 2 USAC kids, TC and Brady. We traveled on the ferry for an hour and a bus for 2. It was SO worth it. We ate pizza quickly in town, and walked up to some waterfalls I had read about in my guide book. Just look at the pictures- I can’t begin to describe how beautiful it was there. The water was cool and felt so clean compared to the salty ocean water. There were three falls, I didn’t really get a picture of the middle ones, except for Brady jumping into them. We wanted to stay longer, but had to come back for class.
That was about it. It is truly amazing here and I may actually be getting used to the heat. I’m able to blow dry my hair in the morning which is a big step forward!
Gotta run. I’ll write more later.

Love ya!