Costa Rica - Day 5 - Heat Exhaustion & Angry Monkeys

So, even though the three of us had been going to bed pretty dang early, (when the sunsets at 6 pm and towns start to shut down, there isn't much left to do) I am rather talented at sleeping in no matter how much sleep I've gotten. Both of the boys were out of the tent before me and soon after I heard Adam say, "Alissa, there's an animal out here!" so of course I assumed he was trying to trick me to get up (I mean, he has done it before) so I make him describe it to me. "Its got a pointy nose and a a really long tail" says Adam. I jump out of bed almost immediately since I know that he sees a Coatimundi!

Coatis are animals in the raccoon family and they are omnivores. He was picking up some food from the ground and eventually after I took some rather blurry pictures he ran away chasing a rabbit.

We stuffed some food in our camel packs that were full with water and set forth on our 13K hike to Playa Naranjo. We had asked the park ranger about driving to the beach the day before, but he said that the road was so bad that we would have to sign a waiver to drive our car on out there - I know lots of people are daring with rental cars, but we decided to hike on out instead.

On the hike out we quickly saw that there was no way our car could have made it...the road was rocky, had huge holes in it, and was even hard to hike on sometimes. The hike on out to the beach was mostly down hill and since it was still early morning, it wasn't too hot out yet. We would stop and search the tree tops when we heard noise, trying to spot whatever jungle critters we could. The jungle in Santa Rosa National Park is a relatively dry jungle and part of the Gunacaste World Heritage area due to the great diversity of life in the area.

While hiking down a rather steep hill we heard a ton of noise in the trees to the left and there was our first and only monkey spotting of the trip! A white face capuchin monkey was in the tree right by the road and man was he not happy to see us! Behind him was a tree full of his family swinging from branch to branch and eating. The angry monky near the road hissed and looked like he was going to jump and attack, but of course I had to get at least a couple pictures first!

Eventually we made it down to the ranger station down at Playa Naranjo and were welcomed by tons of various species of iguanas - they were HUGE!

Now, since we hadn't seen anyone else on our long hike down to the beach we were kinda expecting a deserted beach. But, Playa Naranjo is a very well known surfing beach and surfers come from all over to ride its waves. The surfers don't get out to the beach the hard way either, they pay boats about $200 a day to transport them over to catch some waves. So, needless to say we weren't alone.

Out in the middle of the water is a gigantic rock, known as Witches Rock and it was out around there that we spotted the surfers hanging out and about 3 boats. Besides being known for its waves, I had wanted to hike out here to hopefully observe some deadly wildlife. There is a lagoon off the beach that is suppose to be teaming with huge crocodiles and angry bull sharks (responsible for the most shark related deaths and attacks).

We walked along the shores of the lagoon, keeping our distance since we didn't want to experience any large crocodiles by first hand attacks. Sadly, no deadly creatures were sighted. :(

Despite being terrified of the bull sharks, we took a quick swim in the water...warily staying inland from other swimmers.

On the hike out there, I had managed to finish off most of my camel pack of water. Thankfully, the nice park ranger allowed us to refill up our packs out of the filtered water they had out at the station. We ate a quick snack of our trail mix and started the long, long hike uphill.

Man, oh man was hiking significantly slower than the hike in. Not only was the hike uphill this time, but the temperature had gone up at least 20 degrees and the sun was bright overhead. The hike was a killer for me and I had to take a ton of water breaks and much more frequent sit down breaks (not sure if I took any on the way in). I started to get dizzy and it didn't seem to matter how much water I drank or food I ate, I was definitely getting weaker and weaker. It was pretty crazy, but I'm pretty sure I had at least minor heat exhaustion.

When we FINALLY made it back to the tent, Adam ran off and grabbed us some nice cold Gatorade at the cafeteria and I jumped into one of the showers with all of my clothes on to cool on down. I don't think I've ever been that close to fainting before, but after a bit of rest, electrolytes, and a cold shower I started to feel MUCH better. Why do I always do stupid things on my "vacations"?

The three of us hopped in the car with plans to drive to Monteverde, but it started downpouring like crazy. We had been really lucky so far since we were traveling to Costa Rica during its rainy season and hadn't seen a drop so far. We grabbed a bite to eat in Liberia and hoped that the weather would clear, but it continued to pour so we decided to stay in town for the night at our swankiest hotel of the trip.

A Lazy Savannah Weekend

Thank goodness for long weekends! AK & I decided to spend a weekend in Savannah since we both had work off (thank you MLK) on Monday.

Early on Saturday morning we first headed down to Macon since my girls (my prep-ops that I coach) had their first gymnastics meet of the season. I was super excited because this was my first gymnastics meet as a coach rather than a gymnast! I will never know how AK survived sitting through that meet (he might have had a book to help him out a little), but my girls did well! We grabbed a bite to eat before heading down I-16 to Savannah.

Back in the day (lol, a couple of years ago) I use to co-op for Gulfstream in Savannah, so I know the city well and thankfully have a bunch of good friends in the city still. We stayed at my friend Travis' apartment downtown Savannah - such a good location since it was walking distance to everything! After a couple drinks at his house (Natty Light and plastic bottled vodka - Travis keeps it real), we walked downtown and hit up a couple of Bars - including Savannah Smiles, a dueling piano bar and one of my favorites!

The next day, AK and I visited the Bonaventure Cemetery - a truely creepy looking place with the huge oak trees covered in droopy Spanish moss and located right on the Savannah river. We got out our mountain bikes and biked up and down every dirt road in the cemetery. Thankfully we got a bit of biking in, because the rain thwarted our plans to bike out to Tybee Island. We decided to drive out to the beach anyway - and then it started to pour. We decided that it was a good day for a movie and ended up going to see Benjamin Buttons.

We drove back into downtown and ate outside under the heat lamps at Tubby's on river street. The live music went along with our delicious seafood perfectly. The rest of the night was much more low key than the first since Travis did have to work the following day.

We got to sleep in on Monday (man, I love getting paid to be lazy) and then we had plans to hit up Mrs. Wilkes' Dining room - the most amazing southern food I have ever eaten and they usually have a line that goes down the block of people waiting to get seated. Unfortunately, Mrs. Wilkes' Dining room was closed, not just for the day....but for January. But our desire for a really good lunch need not fear, because Soho South Cafe was there to save us with their amazing tomato bisque, grilled cheese sandwiches, and mediterranean wraps. mmmmm

Sadly, good & lazy weekends need to end and it was back to Atlanta we went.

My weekend in LA!

So, you would think after my exhausting week in Puerto Rico I might want to take some time to relax, sleep, and just in general not be lost in the jungle - but Adam invited me to come out to LA with him...3 days after we got back from the island. Adam works for SpaceX and they were having their Christmas party out in LA and I was lucky enough to be Adam's date!

Adam picked me up at LAX with a coffee in hand and we immediately headed down to meet up with some of his coworkers at Manhattan Beach. Drinking on a companies dime is always fun, and a big group of us hopped from bar to bar. We got pretty hungry around 2 in the morning and head to a local restaurant for some grub before crashing back at the hotel.

Early the next morning...around 6 something...after only a couple hours of sleep I got woken up by Adam. I know that I personally have a ton of energy for a person, but Adam has an infinite store of it. We grabbed some coffee and head to Griffith Park for an early morning hike. Griffith Park has plenty of dusty trails going up and down the hills and is apparently a really popular place to fitness walk - you know what I'm talking about - people in their fancy workout clothes with their arms pumping, fast walking, and essential dog. It seems that from most every hill there is another breathtaking view of the LA skyline with the ocean in the distance and you can even get relatively close to the famous Hollywood sign.

After our brisk morning stroll through the park (haha!) we drove down to Venice Beach! On my previous trip to LA, I managed to get hit by a bus on my drive down to Venice beach and as a result never made it there. I was excited to finally get to fulfill my silly dream of rollerblading along the beach - Adam, who grew up out in LA didn't share my same awesome dream and he rented a skateboard to look like less of a tool than me and we had a great time rolling down the beach. I was definitely a little shaky at first and I'm not quite sure how I didn't run into anybody on the crowded strip. We went all the way down to Santa Monica pier and I removed my blades so we could walk around for a while.

After my rollerblading fix, we met up with some of his coworkers at Club Sushi out at Hermosa Beach. We walked along the boardwalk near where Adam use to lifeguard back in High School before heading to yet another beach in Palos Verdes. The beach in PV was super rocky and apparently a popular place to go spear fishing...the water is so cold that I don't get how anybody goes in - even if they have a wetsuit on. PV is where Adam grew up and where his mom still lives so we head to his house to get ready for the work party.

The party was fun with its open bar, dinnertime comedic ballet, and the coolest photo booth ever with a treasure chest of costumes and a Mars backdrop. You can bet we took full advantage of that! After our extremely full day...we went to bed relatively early.

We woke up not too ridiculously early and went and grabbed brunch down at one of the beaches (I can't keep them straight...) before I head to catch my flight back home and back to reality. :P

Puerto Rico - Day 6 - Cave Mapping & Canal Tubing

Well, if you couldn't tell...we might have had a wee bit to drink for our "New Years" celebrations and woke up with plans to meet up with Caver Tom and his wife for some caving. Somehow with the confusion of the night before and the high tide....Dana had managed to misplace the keys. We searched the beach up and down, managing to find Dana's missing flip flop...but the keys were nowhere in sight. Assuming that they had been washed away to Poseidon we gave Tom a call and explained that we would be a bit late in meeting them and then called the rental car company to come drop off a set of keys. Dana decided that she would take a nap in the car and wait for the keys to arrive and Adam and I went to grab some breakfast.

Adam and my timing was perfect and the keys were dropped minutes after we made it back to the car. Right as we were about to pull away, an older Puerto Rican walked up holding....our missing set of keys. We have NO idea where he could have possibly found them since we were positive that we had searched every inch of beach, but our lost keys had returned.

We met Tom and his wife at a small town right outside of Guajataca National Park and followed them up the mountain to park on the side of the road. We all grabbed our caving and tubing gear and hiked into the jungle. The National Park services had recently published a new map of the park which included the location of Effrain Lopez Cave - which Tom was very opposed to because of vandalism in other more touristy caves in the area. He had taken it upon himself to hide the trail to the cave and was more than happy that the three of us just walked right on past the "trail". Once pointed in the right direction we walked down to the decent sized mouth of the short, horizontal cave. Tom got out his surveying gear and I was put in charge of the laser pointer that would help measure the size of the cave. The cave is relatively small, but very interesting since the ceilings are full of pockets that have been slowly worn away by the bats that reside within.

After the survey was complete, the 5 of us hiked back through the jungle and down to a canal that had been built to supply water to the town of Isabela on the north of the island. We blew up our inflatable tubes and the 2 Puerto Ricans donned their wetsuits before we set out floating down the canal that ran literally through the middle of the beautiful jungle. I got the fortunate position in the front and as we floated through the tunnels and underneath the bridges this put me in charge of unintentionally clearing the spiders out of the way for everyone else....lucky me. Some of the tunnels were especially long and curvy so you couldn't even see the exit - these were significantly more fun and terrifying to ride through with our lights off....and slightly reminiscent of a Willy Wonka boat ride.

Because of Tom and his wife's generousness for showing us around the jungle and even offering up their grass for us to pitch our tent that night - we offered to take them out to dinner. We ate at a local fast food type restaurant that they insisted had some of the best Mofongo - fried yuca or plaintains mushed together.

After dinner we followed them back to their house and Tom patiently drew us a map for our cave tubing excursion that we were planning for the next day down the Rio Tanama.

Sorry, lack of pictures due to the water activities....

Puerto Rico - Day 5 - "Surfing" Day

We woke up early and headed off to the beach in Rincon - a small surfers paradise on the western coast of the island. Upon arriving in town (and after a scary encounter going the wrong way on a one way road), we ate breakfast at a small cafe in town. From there, we drove down to the beach strip and found a surf shop to rent a board for the day. Dana had decided that she wanted a lazy day of drinking and relaxing on the beach, but Adam and I were going to surf. Well...at least I was going to attempt to surf. Even though it was early in the morning, the beach was crowded and there was at least one pro surfer catching some waves. I let Adam take the board out first well Dana and I strung up a clothes line to let our clothes air out a bit....nothing like the smell of caving clothes.


After a while Adam came back into shore and it was my turn to "surf". I had never been surfing before and the decent sized waves and the fact that there was a reef that I would be surfing over was more than enough to freak me out a bit. Adam decided that he would come float out there with me in one of our River Rat tubes so the two of us starting swimming out pass the break. About 4 falls off the board later (Adam had neglected to tell me to duck under the waves) I finally made it out past the break. Adam had explained how to pop up on the board, but I was definitely nervous! Adam was looking for the perfect wave for me to catch when all of a sudden one decided to catch me instead. The wave propelled me forward in the water at a MUCH faster speed than I had anticipated and by the time I was ready to stand up...I realized that I was directly over the reef and there was NO way that it was going to happen. I rode the wave all the way into shore and called it a day. It would be drinking and relaxing on the beach with Dana for me that day. :)


Dana was already a bit toasty so I joined in on the rum punch drinking and watched the surfers do their thing. After a while Adam was done for the day and joined in on the festivities. Since our New Years Eve Celebrations had been a little on the tame side, we decided that this would be our party night. :)


We decided that the beach equaled fancy dinner time, so we hit up a great seafood restaurant followed by my favorite drinking shack in the world. A tiny shack right along the beach strip with about 6 bar stools, no refrigerator, $3 rum punches, and a scary guard dog named Princess was perfect for a couple rounds of drinks. After our drinks we went to scope out a premium camping spot on the beach and we broke out our bottle of champagne that had been purchased earlier that day. The drinks caught up to me fast and I was the first to crawl into the tent, but not too long after Dana and Adam just laid back on the beach and fell to sleep. An hour or so later I was woken up by Dana frantically yelling at me to wake up. Confused and sleepy I poke my head out of the tent only to see another wave crash right near the tent and over the top of Dana and Adam. Apparently the beach did not have any non tide portion, so after much confused arguing we eventually moved the tent up to a small dirt road that went down from the parking lot....and went back to sleep.

Puerto Rico - Day 3 - The green road, pinas con pina colada, y the lamest New Years Eve ever!

We woke up with the sun, and admired our awesome camp spot as we packed up our stuff. We caught a muy inexpensive cab ride across the island in order to make it on the early morning ferry back to the mainland. It had been a hard debate whether to stay one more night in what was paradise if you could overlook the extreme tourism of the place.

We had made our plan the night before - we would stop at Wal-mart (yes, they are everywhere) to pick up some food & supplies before driving as far as we felt like it on the green road that runs right through the middle of PR, before heading down to Ponce - the 2nd biggest city on the island to spend our New Years Eve.

The green road turned out to be the most beautiful and dangerous road that I had ever been on. The winding roads that went up and down the mountainous land had hairpin turns where you would often be met nearly head on with somebody winding their way down or up the mountain. We slowly accustomed ourselves to the near collisions around every bend, and enjoyed the scenery.


After deciding that we had been traveling on the green road for long enough, we made our way south and came upon a lively small town that were already in full swing of their New Years Eve celebration mid-day. We joined in on the fun for a little bit, enjoying our gigantic pina coladas con pina with sprinkles, umbrellas, and a couple cherries on top!


We explored a couple of beach towns along our way to Ponce - all of which were near deserted. We arrived in Ponce around duck, and started driving around to explore the town only to discover that Ponce was very much so deserted as well! The only place we found in the city that was jumping - was the local Hilton casino that was SOLD OUT for the night. Feeling sad that our NYE plans were falling through we decided to start driving in the direction of Bosque De Guajataca where we were planning on heading the next day.

Extremely hungry, we pulled off at Guayanilla where we had dinner at the fabulous El Dragon - Chinese food complete with french fries.


We discovered a small hotel at the exit and since it was getting pretty late we decided that we might as well hole up for the night and except our defeat of our hoped for NYE extravaganza. We did our best to celebrate with some delicious Modelo, Don Q (of course), and our new set of PR playing cards.

Puerto Rico - Day 2 - Day on Vieques - an island off THE island

Ahhh, what a refreshing night of sleep in our humid as hell tin tent! We woke up feeling particularly sticky and already ready for a shower when it would still be a couple days until we got a chance.

We headed back down the mountain in our tent, stopping at lookouts along the way to check out the gorgeous view which I actually have a picture of from Adam's camera!



Our plan was to head back into town to pick up the permits that are required to camp nearly anywhere in Puerto Rico. Once we made it back into San Juan we caught a quick breakfast (we made complete fools of ourselves trying to get in because you apparently have to ring a doorbell to get into fast food restaurants around there....crime rate maybe high?) well waiting for the park office to open. Hah! Apparently the park office is closed for a very extended holiday for all of December and January. Oh, well for legal camping...

Since the bioluminescent bays are best to see on nights when the moon is nearly gone from the sky, we planned on heading over to the small island of Vieques and spending the night there. Knowing that the island was on the east side of PR, Dana managed to find a small dotted line on our PR map that had a little ferry symbol - to Vieques! Sweet! We headed to our departure city - Fajardo on the east coast of Puerto Rico.

We spotted this HUGE iguana right downtown Fajardo!


The ride over on the ferry was gorgeous and we arrived at Isabel Segunda on the Northern coast of the island. We found a small surf shop where we got the scoop on the best company to use for seeing the biobays - the tour happened to set out from Esperanza which is located on the southern coast of the island. Now, Vieques being an island and all seems to distort the islanders reality of distance - they made Esperanza seem like it was a days drive away when in fact it was a short 5 mile walk across the island.

After a delicious lunch, we began our hike across the island and within a mile of hiking we were already picked up on the side of the road by local who just happened to work for the exact company that we had scheduled our biobay tour with!

We arrived in Esperanza, a beautiful touristy town with a row of tour shops and restaurants on the street opposite the beach. We walked around the small town, watched an amazing sunset, and caught a late dinner before we met up with our tour company. The three of us, plus a couple of families were driven out on a bumpy dirt road in a van where our kayaks were waiting for us. Dana and I were in the same kayak, well Adam got stuck with the tour guide - who bet that I couldn't get a good picture of the biobay because it was near impossible.

We kayaked out and started to notice the blueish glow that started to surround our paddles as we navigated through the water. If you scooped your hand through the water it looked like blue glitter would trickle over your hand and the fish that darted through the water looked like shooting stars! We got to an area that was deep enough to swim around in without touching the bays murky bottom and we spent about 20 minutes swimming around in the bay. It was a surreal experience! But, it turns out that my waterproof camera was not so appreciative of the biobays as it malfunctioned and would not take pictures for the rest of the trip! Grrrr the tour guide won the bet!

After the tour, the three of us wandered down the strip of sand away from the crowded tourist section to find a secluded section of sand to pitch our tent on. We found a perfect spot right in between two bays and set up camp. We passed around our bottle of Don Q Anejo (definitely not as good as silver!) with our newly discovered favorite mixer - Carrot Orange juice.

The temperature continued to drop as we drank our rum on the beach and we spent the night in our tent attempting to sleep through the chilly, chilly night WITHOUT our sleeping bags. We had neglected to bring them to Vieques so we wouldn't have to carry them around everywhere with us (oh, and Adam had neglected to bring one to Puerto Rico period!). We got a very sparse amount of sleep in one of the most amazing camp spots ever!