Costa Rica - Day 7 - Quetzels in the Clouds

The next morning we head to the official Monteverde National Cloud Forest and arranged to join a guided tour so we could learn as much as possible along our hike. It was the 3 of us, plus another couple with our guide and before we could even set off unto the path she spotted the famous quetzel and she set up her small telescope for us to take a closer look. The guide did her secret whistle and before we knew it we were surrounded by other guides and tourists trying to spot the infamous bird. I mean, the bird is pretty and all - but I didn't really get how big of a deal it was. I think we ended up seeing 5 during the hike that morning.


There were no big animal sightings (other than another coatimundi high up in the canopy), but even all of the little things that our guide pointed out were incredibly interesting. The cloud forest itself is just an amazing place to be and your neck starts to hurt after a while from looking upward and trying to take it all in.

We saw various small birds, more Strangler Fig Trees, and a particularly group of caterpillars that line up in a row so that all of them together gives the appearance of a snake to keep the pesky birds away.

The end of the tour brought us to the hummingbird garden and we saw countless fast flittering wings as the birds fed. The 2nd biggest hummingbird in the world is found in Costa Rica and is a brilliant blue color.

After grabbing a quick bite, the 3 of us set out to hike a bit and headed out on the Continental Divide Trail. We crossed over a pretty neat suspension bridge, but there were no big animal sightings along the way. The hike led us out to a viewpoint at the edge of one of the mountains and we got to look out over the cloud forest and see the alleged divide.

I easily could have hiked through the jungle all day, but we had to head back towards San Jose since our flight was early the next morning. We made plans with Pauline and her 2 friends to meet up at the same hostel that night in Heredia, a burb of San Jose.

We flew out early the next morning and gazed over the mountainous and volcanic terrain below. Adios for now Costa Rica! :(

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.

Costa Rica - Day 4 - Aqua Agua

Another early morning and we were on the road heading north...attempting to find the elusive Rio Celeste. We didn't have an exact location, just a small town pointed out to us by a local tour guide from Fortuna. The drive took us through rolling hill country, resemblant of Dr. Seuss' cartoon movie "The Lorax".

Following the map and the few road signs that existed we wound our way to a small town where we stopped and ate breakfast and attempted to ask for directions. She pointed us in the direction we had just come from and a several miles down the road AK spotted an elusive sign for a tour agency that offered tours to the mysterious river. We made a turn onto the nasty, rocky road, crossed the sketchiest bridge yet and headed through pineapple plantations in hopes that we were on the right track.

I spotted the shack of a tour agency on the side of the road and three of us got out of the car and hesitently knocked at the door - which swung open, revealing an empty room with a couple of touristy posters pinned up on the walls and nobody in sight. Great, now what? A local farmer across the way must have seen us and walked over to help and pointed us further up the horrible road...back in the car and on we drove. I mean, we had wanted an adventure.

At the top of a particulary nasty hill we found there was a sign which pointed at a small path and said "Arbol de la Paz" or tree of peace. We decided to check it out and walked into the thick vegetation and found the BIGGEST tree yet. I have yet to see Redwood trees, so I don't have a comparison but this tree stretched up to the heavens above and would have taken at least 8 people linking arms to reach around because of the gigantic root system.

Several miles further up the road we found the park entrance (a small barely labeled gate) to Parque Nacional Tenorio - the park where the infamous Rio Celeste was located. We negotiated for a tour guide (who only spoke Spanish) and the three of us + 2 others set off on a hike into the rainforest.

We were barely into the forest when the guide pointed out a humongous leaf cutter ant hill that supposidly extended like a 100 feet underground. We somehow learned (all of our Spanish skills are pretty weak) that their are quality control ants that sit at the entrances of the hill and only allow in leafs that are up to their standards...cute little engineer ants. :)

We hiked underneath the amazing canopy, on balance beam bridges over trickling streams, and made our way down to part of the river. Rio Celeste is famous because its waters turn the prettiest light blue due to the combining of a sulfurous river and another river that is rich in calcium carbonate. Because of the chemical content in the water it is not safe to swim in all areas, but we were allowed to swim in some of the more diluted parts.

The first part of the river we arrived at had several mini rapids and my first hot spring! I hung out on the bubbly hot water, slowly cooking myself while the boys once again spent some time playing around in the cold, blue stream waters.

As the group hiked further upstream, the cool waters became continuly more aqua in color and were a gorgeous contrast against the deep green of the jungle. We eventually came opon the spot where the two brown rivers mixed to form the brillant blue shade...sometimes chemistry can be kinda cool.

Along the hike, the guide pointed out interesting plants, identified bird calls, pointed out signs of larger life (like tusks marks in trees from boars) and just chatted. It always surprised me how much I can pick up and the 2 other members of our group would occasionally attempt to translate some of the knowledge when we were confused.

Coming upon some stairs on the extremely well maintained path we hiked up, and up, and up until we reached the viewpoint looking down over the valley of Tenorio National Park below. In the distance we could see Tenorio Volcano, which consists of a total of 4 volcanic peaks. It was a gorgeous, misty cloud & rainforest view!

We continued down the path and heard the rushing of the famous waterfall below us. The waterfall is not too significant in height, but it drops down into a pool of the light blue water AND its a perfect place to go swimming...I finally decided to jump on in the chilly water! Sometimes settings are so picturesque that they just don't seem real, and this was one of those places. The three of us soaked in the beauty as we played around in the waters, not wanting to hike on out of the park.

By this time the 3 of us were pretty starving, but decided to continue on to Santa Rosa National Park and stop at a local soda along the way...unfortunately, this was the one strip of road that we drove on the whole trip where the sodas were nonexistent. We tried to appease our stomachs with the most delicious pineapple ever and we ate so much that our mouths literally hurt from all of the acid.

We head west along the northernmost highway and we could occasionally see across the border and catch glimpses of Lago de Nicaragua. The northern highway is primarily a dirt road and we were stopped and questioned at several military checkpoints which I assume was because we were so close to the border.

By the time we reached Santa Rosa National Park we still had not passed any restaurants or stores and were really starting to wonder what we would do about a meal that night. We talked to the awesome ranger and he called up the kitchen that is located at the park for both park employees and researchers that are based there and thankfully they had prepared enough food that we could eat with everyone! They were even nice enough to offer a vegetarian meal for me...even though I was hugnry enough at this point that I would have eaten most anything!

Before dinner, we set up our tent in the campground and ran into a girl wearing a batdana!!! Ok, I'm kinda a caving dork at a TAG (Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia) caving festival they sell tie dyed bandanas with bats printed on them....and I know that they can't sell these just everywhere so I thought I had found a caver. The girl turned out not to be a caver, but a bat catcher which I suppose is almost as cool, and she was setting up a net to catch and identify bats in the area with. Of all the mammals in CR (and there are a ton of them!) over half of them are bats! So, this girl was down in Costa Rica working on a bat research project and as a caver I thought this was pretty cool!

By the time we were done eating dinner, the sun had already set and this meant both bugs and bats were out in force. We literally walked back to the tent not talking, squinting our eyes and swatting at what seemed to be a million bugs swarming around us. Rather than sit outside on the nice bench at our camping site, the 3 of us hopped in the tent, zipped it up as fast as possible, turned on our flashlights and started swatting at the bugs that had managed to make it in there. We stayed up for a while drinking in the tent, while listening to the night noises of the jungle and the hords of bats that kept ramming into our tent. It was pretty early when the three of us fell asleep in the muggy, but bug free tent all on top of our sleeping bags.

Costa Rica - Day 3 - Day of Fortuna

We woke up early and grabbed a typical Costa Rican breakfast of eggs, beans, toast, and of course delicious Costa Rican coffee. We found a local store that rented mountain bikes for ridiculously cheap and grabbed 3 of them and a sweet Costa Rica National Geographic Map (another one to add to my rather large map collection).


We asked for directions on how to bike to a local waterfall - La Fortuna Catarata and the three of us were off on the bikes, biking out of town. Of course we biked several miles past the turn off for the waterfall (there are conveniently zero road signs pointing us towards the big ass waterfall) and as conveniently these several extra miles were mostly uphill. Gravity was much appreciated on the ride back downhill and we managed to find the correct turnoff. Who would have guessed that this road was nearly vertical...yeah, my legs were not so prepared for the monstrous hills and I ended up walking up most of it. Lame.


By the time the three of us made it up the gargantuan hill (some of us much faster than others) we had all soaked through our shirts with sweat. We paid the entrance fee and hiked on down through the towering trees to the 75 meter tall waterfall. As hot as I had been from the bike ride, the water was freezing cold so rather than jump in I just stood close enough that I got pretty soaked by the mist spraying off of the waterfall.


Unlike me, the boys immediately stripped down and jumped on in. They managed to find the perfect diving rock and I caught some great shots of them jumping into the cold water. AK was also determined to swim as close to the waterfall as possible and I was positive he was going to get pushed under and drown in the crazy swirling undercurrents....yeah, swimming isn't really my thing. After the boys were done cooling off and playing around, we walked downstream and saw some really cool Costa Rican fish (yes, the fact that they are from CR makes them cooler).


The three of us jumped back on our bikes and joyfully rolled down the hill and back into downtown Fortuna. We returned the bikes, hopped in the car and began circumnavigating the Volcano. As we drove around it was interesting to see the volcano change from being covered in green vegetation to a dark black color with very apparent lava trails. The most recent significant eruption was in 1998, but the most destructive eruption was back in 1968 when the volcano completely destroyed the small town of Tabacon.


Although Arenal is probably the most famous of Costa Rica's volcanoes, it is very rare that one gets to actually see the top of the cone as it is normally shrouded in clouds. As we were circling the volcano, the clouds cleared away and we were given the full view of the volcano for probably 10 minutes, just enough time for us to all jump out of the car and get some photographic evidence of it.


On the opposite side of the volcano is Parque Nacional Volcan Arenal and we paid the entry fee and drove on up the dirt road into the park. Once in the park, we hiked along the trails toward prime volcano viewing. The path led us through areas of high risk (at least this is what the signs warned) and the amount of sharp Igneous rocks significantly increased as we neared the volcano. Standing amongst the black rocks which formed from the most recent eruption in '98 we heard the deep rumbling of Arenal and saw what we could only assume were at least car sized boulders rolling down the volcanic slope (we were at least a mile away from the top of the volcano, which is relatively close to one that active).


When we turned our back on the volcano, Lake Arenal was visible from our perch on the igneous rocks. The Lake is damned and used for hydroelectric power in the area. The whole scenery in the area is one of the most surreal that I have encountered in my travels so far.


We hiked back on a different trail, surrounded by gigantic trees, tarzan vines to play on, and countless species of plants that I have never seen before. The trees seem to reach up forever into the canopies high above, and the rhythmic noises of the jungle kept our heads turning with hopes to spot an interesting animal around every corner.


After an early dinner at what we are pretty sure was the best restaurant in town we all grabbed some ice cream and chilled in the local town square. The clouds decided to clear from the volcano again and the scenery was amazing as local families took advantage of the parks green space - allowing their children to run around, playing tag and wearing off their energy - likely in hopes of an earlier bedtime.


Later that night, we attempted to drive closer to the Volcano in hopes of observing glowing orange lava flows, but we didn't have as much "fortuna" as we had earlier in the day with the sighting of the entire Volcanic cone. The clouds wrapped the volcano like a blanket and only the occasional snoring of the sleeping volcano could be heard.

Puerto Rico - Day 8 - Out of the Jungle and Stuffing our Faces

Well, I would like to say that we woke up...but to be honest we hardly slept at all - between flashing our headlamps at low flying aircraft, freaking out because yet another huge bug was crawling on us, and discussing how on earth we were going to make it out of the jungle...very little sleep was had. I do remember having a couple of dreams about rescue being just over the top of the hill though and Dana had dreams of death and skulls all night...yep, that was comforting to hear. For breakfast we pigged out by splitting the other 1/2 of our cliff bar. My left arm was starting to itch like crazy and already had a fun rash on it...not to mention the dozens of bug bites. (pretty sure the rash came from a plant called Ortiga - supposidly worse than poison oak and ivy combined)

We made a plan of attack on how to get out of the jungle and began making our way slowly through the dense jungle - heading upstream. We made sure to stay within listening distance of the river at the bottom of the canyon and we tripped our way through the jungle. We were all definitely fatigued from the little sleep and even less food so we were creeping along. We kept our eyes peeled for any sign of a path and I continually peered up through the trees to try to spot another observatory watch tower across the canyon to keep our bearings and make sure we weren't heading too far upstream and missing the cave that we had to hike over to get to the other side.

I'm pretty sure when Dana spotted the orange flagging it was one of the happiest moments of all of our lives and we made sure to thoroughly celebrate the moment by splitting our other granola bar! :) We managed to follow the very sparse orange tagging until we reached the dirt road that led to the house in the middle of nowhere (this was actually on our map!) We were a little confused where to pick up the other path that head back across the river even though we had been on it the previous day so I asked the farmer in my broken Spanish pointing at his casa on the map. He pointed us on our way and we happily followed the path across the river and after another hour or so of hiking we made it back to the Observatory. We decided that it was time for a "We found our way out of the jungle" celebration picture and we posed in front of the warning sign that we had laughed at the day before.


We continued back to the car and made sure to pick up all of the fallen grapefruit that we found on the walk back. Our car was just where we had left it - parked randomly on the side of the road. We opened it up and raided the car for all of our food supplies and promptly ate everything in site.

We got in the car and started on our way to San Juan where we would stay the night before flying out the next morning. I called my mom and asked if she would find us a cheap hotel room for the night...we had all decided that we had had enough of camping for the trip. :) When you take the northern highway, it only takes about an hour to drive across all of Puerto Rico. We arrived in San Juan and promptly looked for a place to eat because we were all still starving...I guess getting lost in the jungle takes a lot out of a person. We managed to find an all you can eat buffet and we gorged ourselves with heaping plates and flowing beers.

My mom called back and gave us directions to the double tree that she had booked us at. I think us walking into the fancy hotel, covered in mud, smelly and destroyed made most of the employees days and we were more than happpy with the complimentery cookies they handed to us. It took several trips for us to unload the car and we laid everything out to repack it for our flights home the next day. The three of us headed down the street to pick up some snacks, cerveza, and a couple handles each of Don Q to bring home with us. Dana passed out after a beer, so Adam and I headed down to the hot tub alone...and even though it wasn't working - it was the perfect end to a great vacation. :)

Puerto Rico - Day 7 - Lost in the Jungle!

We woke up early and got a move on the day because we knew that we had to make it to the river rather early in order to fit in our full day of cave tubing. Following Tom's directions, we easily found the parking lot near the Arecibo Observatory that is located on the gorge above the Rio Tanama.

Using Tom's hand drawn map we hiked along a winding jungly path for a good 30 minutes before realizing that we weren't circling around the satellite like in the picture....after back tracking we found the right path and were soon hiking along a huge fence and looking down on the satellite dish. Before continuing on the path we passed a sign that said "Warning: The Tanama River is Dangerous. Inexperienced Persons should not go Alone". We kind of laughed at the sign before heading along the path, I mean Dana & I are experienced cavers and we had Tom's great advice to help us out....everything would be fine.

The hike through the jungle took us over the top of Cave #1 without us even realizing it as the cave is pretty massive. Following the path is the only easy way to get down to the river bed as the river is at the bottom of a good 200-300 foot gorge. The trail was relatively well marked with orange flagging on trees and all in all it took about another 2 hours to make it down to the river bed.


Once down at the river, we had to forge across 3 times in order to avoid a couple of waterfalls before making it to the entrance of Cave #1, the one that we had previously hiked over the top of. Tom had advised us that we should have to walk through half of the first cave before actually sitting down in our tubes and floating down river, but the water level was so elevated that we could easily put in ahead of the cave. According to Tom, if the water level was at this height we should not attempt to go through the 3rd and final cave because the water level would be too high.


We excitedly hopped on our rafts, turned on our caving lights and headed downstream. The current was fast flowing and entering the cave; it was hard to decide whether to look up at the tall ceiling of the cave with countless bats flying and making a commotion or to fearfully face upstream as our tubes flew through the Class III-IV rapids. I have been whitewater rafting several times before and knew that the first rule of rafting is to keep your feet up and float if you fall in such that you avoid trapping a foot in between rocks. Unfortunately, in the situation of tubing through a fast flowing stream in a dark cave with only an inflatable tube...the opposite instinct took hold whenever I fell off the raft. Luckily, my feet never got caught on the rocky river bed and I was able to hop back onto my tube each time. The experience was one of the most exhilarating of my life so far and stupid in many ways, but I'm sure that was half the fun.
So, after successfully making it through cave #1, we took a few minutes to be silly and do some handstands. Cave #2 was almost right downstream of #1 and according to our "map" there was a trail going over the top of #2 that we would be using to hike back out to the cars after crossing through it. We were disappointed that we weren't going to be able to go through the 3rd cave, but since we were caving in another country we were taking all of the precautions that we could.

So, the water in between the caves had surprisingly dropped from the fast flowing currents in Cave #1 to a dead halt. Once we paddled our way over to the caves entrance we discovered why. Cave #2 was completely clogged with dead trees, debris, and what smelled like some decomposing animals...the smell was horrible! We searched the rock wall in front of the cave for a way to climb over the cave and up to the path, but there was no safe way to climb up to the top of the cave - we were going to have to go through.

We spent a good 30 minutes on top of our tubes trying to slowly break through the clogged debris, but the going was so slow that we realized that we were going to have to crawl over the top of the floating mess. Holding onto our tubes for flotation we slowly moved across the debris...I could manage to stand on top of some of the bigger trees for several seconds before they would sink too deep. Occasionally, the floating debris would break apart and I would sink through the fragments and this was more than terrifying...I did have at least one major freak out moment when I sunk through the the logs started to move back around me. After that I just crawled over the debris as fast as humanely possible and the three of us made it out ok. This was actually much, MUCH more terrifying than tubing through Cave #1 and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I was out. Dana and I ordered Adam to turn around, and we were quick to strip off our clothes and dive back into the water to wash away all of the disgusting wood chips and whatever else had managed to stick to us and make its way into our clothing.


So, this is where things got even more interesting for us. The map that Tom drew for us showed a path that went up and over Cave #2, so we crawled up and attempted to find something that looked remotely like a path....um, if anybody thinks that the most wicked compilation of roots with giant gnarly holes that I fell into (twice) = a path...then we might have found it. The jungle was so thick on top of the cave that there was no way that we could pass through it.

We made what we thought was an educated decision and followed the river downstream until we could easily crawl up and out of the gorge. Most of it was a cliff so we walked a ways downstream before literally crawling up through the jungle on the right side of the river. Going up to the right was the opposite side from the cars, but since this was the most climbable side we decided that it was best. We made it to the top of the climb, literally crawling up the mountainside through thick jungle, and began weaving our way upstream. We always tried to remain within hearing distance of the rushing water below, but far enough away that we wouldn't have the possibility of falling down the gorge.

Well, we hiked and hiked and hiked, found an ancient wall in the middle of the thick jungle and hiked some more. We were getting incredibly thirsty and hungry, but were doing our best to save all of the water and food we had with us since this situation was beginning to look more dire by the minute. All of the earlier adventures had taken longer than expected and now with the brutal hike we were getting really worried about making it back to the car. We were moving pretty dang slowly through the jungle as every couple steps one of us would uninvitedly trip or occasionally slip and have to grab onto trees to keep from sliding down the steep slope (that was me) and we were literally crawling up and down - trying to remain far enough from the cliff, but close enough that we would notice a path. We figured that the worst thing that could possibly happen would be for one of us to get injured, so going slow was how we were going to be ok. It was taking forever to cover even a little bit of ground so we started logically making a plan for what we would do if we had to sleep there...

Well, as we continued rambling through the denseness I began picking fiddleheads (the curly cues that are ferns, before the ferns uncurl) because Bear Grillz taught me that I could eat them and we were starting to get pretty shaky from the amount of activity and little consumption of food.

Unfortunately the sun sets around 6 pm...hahaha, yeah...so, even though we had our headlamps on there was no way with how clutzy we were being in the day that we were going to do any night hiking. So, well rolling out our flat river rat tubes and laid them onto the jungle floor and Dana accidentally dropped hers and it went rolling down the hill and dropped into the river gorge below. Yeah, this little bit of flat ground was a great place to sleep...we decided to sleep with our helmets on. For dinner the 3 of us split 1/2 of a cliff bar and some of the fiddleheads - tasty! Dana was starting to shiver a ton, so without question we put her in the middle and formed a 3 person spoon...even though we were on the nice tropical island, we had not dried out from our swimming and tubing earlier in the day and when the temperature dropped to about 60 - that was definitely cold enough. Dana was actually starting to get pretty shaky so we all cuddled up tight and talked about how we would make our way our in the morning.

In the distance we could see the red flashing light of one of the three control towers surrounding the Arecibo Observatory, so using this light we gained an idea of which way we would need to hike and approximately how far. We also discussed every worst case scenario situation and I tried to impose whatever "wilderness" survival knowledge I had to make the two of them more comfortable even though I was pretty fricken scared myself. As we were talking we would occasionally hear a low flying airplane over the top of us and even though we were under the tree cover we would all turn on our headlamps to flash mode, just in case there was even a possibility of attracting them.

We all decided it would be good to attempt to get a little bit of sleep so we all tried to sleep and I maybe got an hour or two (realize there was darkness from 6 pm to 6 am) between having to rotate spoon positions every 45 minutes or so because I really only worked as the little spoon and Dana had to be in the middle to stay unhypothermic. Occasionally we would hear another airplane and turn on our lights again and we turned them on even more frequently after freaking out about another LARGE insect crawling on top of us. Needless to say, it was a very sleepless night.....

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 4 - Cave Day!

We woke up early from our uber exciting New Years. Having gotten directions to several caves from Caver Tom who is a Professor of Geology at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez over the phone, we set out Bosque De Guajataca to see what we could find.

Driving into the park, the roads approached a new degree of terrifying...dirt roads with cliff drop offs on one side made for maybe 1 1/2 cars to be able to safely drive down them. Our 1st cave of the trip, we named "Car Cave" as we were able to drive our rental car partway into it. The cave was rather insignificant in size, but entertaining enough when you drove into it.


We found parking next to the visitor's center that is under construction and got into our caving gear and ready for our couple mile hike to Cueva Viento. Along the path Adam found a small cave on the left side of the trail and Dana and I followed him down the small hole into an interesting small caves with a ton of formations for such a small space. We found another much larger entrance to the cave which exited into the thick jungle.


Cueva Viento turned out to be a very well traveled cave with a circular staircase going down into the cave that would have originally been a good 50 foot rappel. The cave was mostly just one big room, but the most interesting part was our 1st siting of a Gordo - a huge spider, scorpion looking insect about the size of a softball. Not sure if they are poisonous or not, but certainly wasn't going to tempt it.


We hiked back along the trail to our car and headed out of the park to find Infierno - another cave that Caver Tom had recommended. Infierno was a great cave with a great skinny muddy passage off to the left that was blocked by a crab - the gatekeeper of that section of cave. We ended up knee deep in mud in some sections and had a ton of fun in the less traveled cave.

After our fun caving adventure we grabbed a delicious dinner of ham and cheese sandwiches (mine just cheese) and set up camp in Guajataca just up a small dirt road from the visitors center that was still under construction. Now, we weren't technically suppose to camp here...but we had a great time drinking our Don Q and juice drinks and making sure to turn off our headlamps whenever we heard cars driving along the crazy dirt road.

Puerto Rico - Day 1 - Midnight hikes, coquis, and our tin tent!

Dana and I, best friends from Georgia Tech, had been looking for an exciting adventure to fill part of our first christmas vacation post starting "real" jobs. I found airfare deals to Puerto Rico and emailed Dana, within a couple hours she had replied with a simple, "I'm in!" email and I booked our tickets. Dana made a call to our good friend Adam, and he was in for an adventure as well! December 29th - January 6th the three of us were going to have a helluva time!

Dana drove down to Atlanta from Nashville the night before, we spent our time making sure our "essential pack" was equipped with the tent, first aid kit, headlights, inflatable tubes (yes, 100% essential!), trail mix, and any other spare ends and odds that we deemed necessary. All packed, we caught a couple hours of sleep before our early flight out in the morning. Adam would be meeting us in Puerto Rico as he was flying out from LAX.

Dana and I got a LOT of funny looks walking through the Atlanta airport in our hiking boots (mine were actually still wet & smelly from a caving trip the previous weekend) and helmets on our head (if we attached them to our huge backpacking packs they managed to swing and hit people). Everyone wanted to know where we were flying off to and we more than amused security! Our flight to our connection in Miami went without a hitch, and I found it amusing that when purchasing lunch in Miami and trying to switch to better seats for our next flight we were already met with a language barrier. Miami is still technically in the US, right? Oh, well a good chance to try to practice my limited Spanish.

Adam met us at our gate in Puerto Rico and we went off to collect our luggage. We spent a good hour panicked, thinking that our "essential pack" had not made it to the island. No pack = no place to sleep! Thankfully, the pack arrived and we hopped into our small rental car that was ours for the week of exploring!

It was too late by this time to try to get permits for camping in El Yunque National Forest - a real Rainforest, so we headed down to Old San Juan to explore for the couple hours left of daylight. After finding a parking spot, we wandered away from the port area that was filled to the brink with tourists. We wandered along the city walls until we saw Castillo San Felipe on top of a lush green hill. The three of us kinda think alike, and before we knew it we were all on top of the hill and exploring what we could of the fort.

Seeing a creepy looking cemetery - Cementerio Maria Magdalena, we decide that a closer look at the creepiness is a reason to walk outside of the city walls. I mean, my opinion is that the closer to the water...the nicer the houses....apparently going outside the city walls in Old San Juan = sketchiness! After walking outside the walls and feeling like every man, women, child, and pet staring at us like we more than out of place and unwelcome...the whole time only walking further, and futher from the only entrance point back into the city walls (thinking we could find another way back into the walls if we walked just a little further....) we finally turned around & made it back inside.

Dinner was overpriced, but tasty at Mira Bueno in downtown Old San Juan.

We decided that we didn't want to waste money on a hotel and the word hostel is pretty much nonexistent in Puerto Rico...so we headed in our car to El Yunque Rainforest even though we knew you were suppose to have permits to camp...we couldn't think of a better option than a bunch of wilderness to make us feel right at home for sleeping. We picked up the necessary and amazing Don Q (most delicious rum ever!) at a gas station on our way to the rainforest.

Getting into the forest, we rolled down our windows even though it was raining to let the sounds of the forest surround us (primarily Coquis!) as we wound up and down the mountains. The sign at the entry to El Yunque clearly said that it was closed after dark, but then again the gate was wide open, so we drove right in! About halfway up, we were passed by a police officer who immediately stopped and had us roll down our window to talk to him. Trying in my very broken Spanish to explain that we were camping by literally charading a roof over my head (yes, I now know its acampar) and that el permitio officio esta cerrado (hah!), I think he finally got so frustrated he just waved us onwards.

Finally arriving where we deemed would be a good place to sleep (in our tin tent) we decided that we donned our head lamps and went for a midnight hike in the rain. Stepping out of the car, I nearly squished a gigantic snail....talking HUGE by American standards of snails! Adam went behind the locked bathrooms to pee, and immediately yelled at us to come there....questionly we went behind the bathrooms to see our first and only Coqui of the trip right in the corner where Adam was about to pee! Trust me, you will hear them the ENTIRE time you are in Puerto Rico, but rarely will you get the chance to see one!

The three of us slowly walked down the winding rainforest path with headlamps on, trying to avoid the many snails and we managed to spot a large rainforest crab in the process! After about an hour of wandering, and not wanting to use up our luck just yet by continuing to wander off into the darkness...we headed back to the car. A little Don Q and juice was a great nightcap before a very humid attempted night of sleep in the our tin tent! :)

All of the beautiful pictures from this part of the trip have vanished due to my camera malfunctioning in the bioluminescent bay (Day 2).