Hello, my lovelies. 😊
Happy Monday. 😊
Such a beautiful day today!
Let’s see, starting at the beginning… I tossed and turned last night. That’s fairly normal; but what isn’t normal is having someone in another bed only a few feet away. That’s significant because I’m such a light sleeper myself that I sometimes forget that other people sleep right through tossing and turning noises because I don’t. Every little noise, or even a tiny bit of light, and I’m awake.
This, not wanting to wake John up, I would change positions crazy slowly so as not to make almost any noise.
Of course, that kind of effort keeps me wide awake as well. 🙃
Anyway, after tossing and turning, and after waking up a bit sweaty during the night, I finally turned on the AC and also my white noise rain app.
That helped me immensely, as I felt liberated to actually move normally 😁. So that was good.
I was reminded, today though, that John is a pretty heavy sleeper and doesn’t really notice those sounds. So… double win.
John is, however, a hot sleeper, so my AC froze him out. I woke up sweaty and turned it up. He woke up cold and turned it off. 🙃
So… I packed him in pillows, and I’m in a pair of shorts with not even a sheet at the moment, though I’ll probably use the sheet just because i like have something to cover me
John got up first and did some exercise. I got up pretty much in time to head to breakfast. My vegan ways are a bit on hold for this trip, I think. The hotel breakfast had mostly vegan unfriendly foods, and with things being a bit crazy here, and knowing I was going to be stressing my body with the various activities, I decided to just eat all the food I could, whatever it was, to do my best to stave off going over the edge with my hydration/nutrition/migraine/whatever issue.
After breakfast, we got John a swimming suit and me some tighty whities and done baby powder (as I’d already started chafing even before I got to Costa Rica. Only ever happens to me when i go on big trips like this, and this time it started a day before I left.
?🤷?
Go figure.
That said, the tighty-whitey-baby-powder treatment combination was… fabulous. 😁 Worked like a charm.
From there, we went over to the volcanic national park and hiked the trail.
(side note: it’s been rather odd traveling the way I have been lately, staying in hotels, going to the tourist attractions, etc, instead of being the hitchhiking backpacker who just sort of roams and goes where the locals are and go.
Very different vacation style, and a lot more expensive, but still quite enjoyable. And that today was very much that–very enjoyable. 😊)
We immediately left the main trail and followed a side trail a little ways. It just doubled back to the start, but it was fun as well. We say saw leaf cutter ants busily running their ant roads carrying chunks of leaf they’d cut off.
We saw some different lizards, gorgeous views of the volcanic mountain (cone shaped), beautiful views of the mountain jungles, and a large lake at the door of a bunch of different mountains (think Appalachian in shape maybe but jungle not deciduous).
We ran into some people from Belgium, so John got to practice his Dutch, which sounded great, but what do I know. 🙃
John taught me the alphabet and all the letter pronunciations did Dutch. It was fun. We would speak in Spanish to each other as he taught me Dutch. 😁
I love languages. 😊
After that beautiful trip through the jungle and around the lava rock fields (huge 1968 eruption), then we grabbed some lunch and went to another big tourist attraction, La Fortuna waterfall, which falls (quite powerfully) about 200 feet to a deep pool below that you can swim in. You hike down quite a ways from the parking area to the falls, and it’s just gorgeous–shear canyon walls on probably about 150 to 180 degrees of the surroundings, then the river going off down the canyon. Being jungle, the shear cliffs are still green with vegetation. So beautiful.
We stayed there for a good while before hiking back–so so beautiful.
Having a car was actually a bit restricting this time. My normal travel style would be to either hike up the falls and up the jungle, up, up, and up and see where it goes, or the same thing following it down, but I didn’t want to leave the car sitting there in a private place for hours upon hours with no idea where we’d be headed.
Far fewer adventurous experiences and the resulting fun stories to tell with this type of traveling, but still enjoyable. 🙂
From there, it was to the mineral hot spring baths that are within the compounds of our hotel area. I really like this hotel style, little bungalows all about.
And as I relax in bed writing this, the rain is pounding down.
Love. It. 😊
Well, I’ll call it a night. Love to you all.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 