2022-02-12 — One Last Adventure

Well, folks, we’ve come to the end.

Today was the last “fun” day of the trip. Tomorrow will be an all-day travel day, even more so than the first day, I think–dawn until will after dark.

I’m super tired right now–super tired.

It’s been an absolutely wonderful trip, packed with so many experiences, so many sites seen, a few fun stories. It has been just… fabulous; and today was no different.

We ate breakfast right when they opened (at 7). Then we checked out and headed to Viento Fresco, the last of the locations the woman at the dive shop recommended.

It’s something like a 3 kilometer trail with four waterfalls, each more impressive than the last (if you ask me, anyway). The third one is the one most people say they like the most, I guess, and it was super cool for sure, but my heart loves the last one the must. I’ll get pictures up at some point–probably on Facebook.

We took a bunch of pictures, climbing on boulders, up falls, into little caves, etc–great places for some fun pictures.

We tried to run the hike back up, but… my fitness level is… lacking. 🙃 I did ok, but I certainly couldn’t run. Even walking up the gazillion stairs was a good challenge..

As with every day on the trip, there were lots of great little moments, funny and otherwise. Those don’t really get related much here, as there’s not that much time in life to write about all that.

After the waterfall to 5, we headed to Monteverde, perhaps the most famous place in Costa Rica, famous for us cloud jungle canopy and the many ways tourists can explore it (e.g huge zip lines, rappelling, etc).

We thought it might be fun to do the more amusement park exploring. Not much to tell, story wise, but a fun experience.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), Reservations were all booked solid for the last run of the day, so it was a no go for us. They had a standby line, but we were too far down it to really matter.

No worries, though. I wasn’t really even disappointed. I was tired, mostly activitied out, ready for a good rest, and I’d like to hope I’ve gotten better at handing when things don’t quite go as planned/hoped.

From there, we went to a local soda (small cafe), where I coincidentally found they had a vegetarian section on the menu. While at the soda, i asked the waitress if she had any suggestions for what we could do in the area since everything was booked up. We had until about 6, as we wanted to be at our hotel in San Jose at a decent hour, and it was a nearly 3-hour drive.

The soda lady mentioned a lookout spot where we could look over the valley, the huge Lake Arenal, and the surrounding hills and mountains, so we went over to check it out.

It was beautiful. 🙂

After taking a bunch of pictures there all by our lonesomes, we headed back into town for a bit where John took some pictures, and i bought some food for the trip home.

After that, we headed back to the lookout to watch the sunset. By that time, the area had filled up with a gajillion people, but it was still good. We waited the last half hour for the sun to do down, got some hopefully good pictures, and… that… was pretty much it. With the going down of the sun, we basically bid goodbye to Costa Rica and to our adventures there.

Or so we thought. 🙃

During the trip, John has wanted to run into someone from the Netherlands, but it never happened. He did get to speak in Dutch to some people from Belgium. That was on our first adventure day in Costa Rica. And when we left the lookout spot to go back to town earlier tonight, i think a big part of it was in good John would find some people from the Netherlands, but it was a no go.

Then something rather strange happened, as we were driving back, I realized I hadn’t given away the machete, and i certainly wasn’t going to pay to bring it back to the states. I also realized that the pineapple I bought several days earlier was still hanging out in the car.

Well, on the drive home, we passed some prime who were broken down, and I asked John if he was good if we stopped and tried to help, despite the drive ahead of us and it already being late. John, of course, was good with it, and we pulled over to help. The first person i spoke with said that the lady had broken down but that she couldn’t understand her because she was speaking English. So i went over to talk to her, and guess what?

Yup!!!

She was from the Netherlands!!! 🙃😊🙃

That was super cool for John (and for her).

I helped in the arrangement for a tow truck, and John chatted with her in Dutch. I grabbed the pineapple and whacked it into slices for John, the lady from the Netherlands, and myself. I was a little worried the pineapple might have gone bad, but it was actually really good. Not only that, but I was able to give my machete to the lady who helped us get the tow truck ordered. 😊

Win, win, win, win. 😊

We followed the lady and tow truck back to her place to make sure she was good, she hugged us both, calling us her little angels, and we headed on our way to the Aloft hotel in San Jose.

Almost midnight. Gotta get up early. Gonna be a crazy day, and I’m just hoping it fm goes smoothly, that I’m not stuck in the US or Costa Rica with some issue or another.

Tube for bed. G’night!

Lift the World

~ stephen