Sunday, November 21, 2010

Happy Birthday: Costa Rican Style

Thank you all who sent Birthday wishes on Facebook or email. It´s really wonderful to hear from all of you and feel the long distance hugs while here in Costa Rica. I can´t wait to see all of you when I get home and sing some songs and have a partay!

Hope your November has been as great as mine. :)

As for birthday´s here...

Last night I went dancing with some folks from the hostel. A brother and sister from Holland (what? You´re kidding! People from Holland in Costa Rica! Never!) And a gal from Germany.
We rolled by taxi to Liquid, hopped out and danced for a few hours. Within about 20 seconds it was clear that there were not going to be a lot of ladies at the bar this night, and I´m 100 percent sure the fellas there were not upset about this fact. :) The music was good, and the tank tops and mustaches (think 70´s porn) were fun as well. It was a good night.

Today, it was off on a Canyoning trip. We call it Canyoneering in the states. Not really sure why it´s different back home... probably because we like to name things differently for the heck of it. I went with a gal named Petra, who stayed at the hostel before and lives here. Good thing she wanted to go, since they wouldn´t do a tour for just one person.

At first i was dissapointed because I thought we were doing this crazy 7 waterfall rappel trip, but was informed they don´t do that anymore and we´re doing one with 4 or 5 rappels and a natural slide and stuff. It´s an 80 buck tour, so I felt like I´d returned to Bolivia where they pretty much just tell you whatever you want to hear and then do whatever they were going to do in the first place... but then I thought that I´ve never rappeled down a waterfall anyway, so lets go!

The ride there was rough and wild, 4x4 to the max. Muddy. Jungle. Rainforest. Up and down, hills rivers green green. Bamboo 50 feet tall. Took an hour and a half to get there. My hypoglycemia was being all weird, so I downed 2 balance bars and then a bunch of peanuts I bought from this little roadside shack. That got me back to normal and fun was to be had.

2 rappels down a cliff. A natural waterslide that was pretty rough and wild. And then the gonzo, 120 foot waterfall rappel, right along the side of this raging waterfall. Was really wild and fun. Swim in the pool at the bottom and hike up a narrow trail to this suspension bridge that´s 140 feet off the pool below...

And this was made of metal ladders, aircraft cable, and netting. It bounced and shook and was pretty surreal to walk along. It stretched 400 feet accross the gorge. It seemed pretty unstable. So naturally we had to rappel off the sucker!

So hanging off the side, we swing into space and descend to the water below. It was pretty wild. I tried to video it, but I don´t think it shows how cool it really was.

I wanted to go again, and again, and again... but for some reason it doesn´t work like that. Still, they did let us do the waterfall one more time since it was my birthday! Yahoo, birthday cupcakes come for free in the states, here you get to rappel a fricking waterfall.

sweet.

Tonight... who knows? Dance party at the hostel? Chill and chat?
It´s been a great birthday so far. And all the wishes have made it all the better.
I was even able to call my dad and Devin (who´s birthday is tomorrow, that scrappy youngster... he´s 1 day younger than me), thanks to the magic of free internet phone calls. (ahhh, the future).

I want to write an email about the observations of costa rica and panama and such, but I guess that´ll wait until the final adventure that awaits...

stay tuned!

And thanks again!
Hugs to all of you.

Craigo

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