I can't believe myself! Just when things get uber interesting and I have oggles to post, I slack off. I Slacked!
Well, We got to California just fine, nothing really broken. My dad drove up in the tundra and then I rode back down with him and all of our stuff. Tyler stayed with my Grandma Judy for about two weeks to finish up his summer classes. Luckily we still fly for free on Delta until the 14th of July so I flew up to UT for a few days while we were apart. Neatness: While my dad and I were driving through San Marcos he decided to turn around and check the price of a storage unit we passed. Good thing because it turned out to be MUCH cheaper than the one I'd found. This of course is crazy because I spent aprox three days on the phone trying to fine the cheapest storage unit in the San Diego vicinity.
About three days after Tyler got to CA we decided to take what turned out to be one of the coolest trips I have ever been on in my ENTIRE LIFE! COSTA RICA! We left San Diego at about 10:30pm and flew to Atlanta, where we had a four hour layover. Atlanta is a cold airport in the middle of the night. Then from Atlanta to COSTA RICA. I slept a lot on our second flight so I was feeling totally rejuvenated by the time we landed in San Jose. Shop keepers in Tijuana can't hold a candle to the Taxi drivers in San Jose. The instant you step out the doors of the terminal they are in your face, SCREAMING that there is NO BUS to downtown. They are (like any raging lunatic) wrong. We took a bus down town, exchanged some of our dollars for
colones and stopped at a nearby
soda for a lunch of rice and beans. After lunch it was time to take another bus for the four hour trip to the town of Cahuita on the Caribbean coast.
Cahuita is an extremely small town, with the ocean on one side and a rainforest/national park on the other. None of the streets are paved, but I did see one that was cobbled. Our first night there we stayed at
Cabinas Jenny, it was dark when we got there but the view in the morning was AMAZING!!! I don't know how else to describe it. The ocean was right outside our door. Before I forget: everywhere we stayed was cheap and had a private bathroom. I learned that in Latin America you don't flush your toilet paper, just throw it away, I felt bad for whoever has to empty the garbage.
Cabinas Jenny had windows with shutters but no screens or glass, I loved it. Dinner that night was beans, rice and coconut chicken. The next morning we walked up to
Playa Negra, a black sand beach, and hung out there for a while. Then down thru town and into the coastal rainforest/national park. We saw a bunch of monkeys, an enormous butterfly (15 cm wingspan and electric blue), a spider the size of my hand (when all of my fingers are spread apart), thousands of leaf cutter ants and hundreds of odd looking-clear colored crabs. But my personal favorite was the SLOTH!! I was not leaving that place until we found one and we did! It honestly didn't look like much, hairy, mossy and curled up in a ball sleeping, but I saw it and it wasn't in a zoo (honestly-the monkeys were much more fun to watch). The beach here-
Playa Blanca- was white sand and just as beautiful as
Playa Negra. There was this crazy mist coming out of the rainforest then add that to the mist from the waves breaking, it really made me feel like I was IN a jungle (plus I actually was).
That night we stayed in a different place called Cabinas Seaside, which I liked even more than the first place b/c: 1.We were just as close to the beach as we had been the night before 2. It was bright and beautiful with colored tiles everywhere and a bright mural of Costa Rica in our room 3. There were a bunch of hammocks outside overlooking the ocean! The next day we woke up early and caught the bus back to San Jose, where we walked around down town a little bit and visited the market (where I picked up some fun new shoes!). The market was much smaller and subdued than I was expecting, but apparently that just the way they are in Costa Rica. Back at the airport we had didn't have much trouble catching a flight back to the states except for an OUTRAGEOUS departure tax! SHEESH! Once in Atlanta we caught a flight to Seattle, stayed the night with Tyler's parents and then few the next day down to San Diego. Yes- It was crazy.We didn't get much time to relax...about three days after we got back from Costa Rica, Tyler and I flew to Cleveland, OH to meet up with my family a few days into their 'Church History Trip'. Given the fact that my blog is already long and this second trip involved relatively few cultural differences I will be brief in my description. In short, we saw Kirtland, the Morley farm (I'm a direct descendant aparently), the Johnson Farm, Lake Erie, Palmayra, Fayette, the Smith Farm, the Sacred Grove, Hill Cumorah and Niagra Falls (Canadian side). My folks also -dadadaaaa- picked up an adorable Blood Hound puppy named Sweet Georgia Maple (Georgia May) along the way. ADORABLE! As usual I could say so much more! but I won't. I will however, PROMISE to update more regularly.
