The Osa Peninsula

On Sunday we travelled all day (for about 8 or 9 hours on a cramped tour bus) to get to the Osa Peninsula which is in the southern part of the country. The trip was pretty eventful, as the highways to get there are roads made of rocks and dirt. If the roads were actually paved all the way there, it probably would have cut our travel time in half. But, it was still nice to be able to enjoy the scenery going through extremely small towns. After about 5 hours of driving, we ran into some trouble: one of the bridges was out! We had no idea what was going to happen because we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere. After asking a few of the townspeople, we turned around and found a different road to get to our destination. But this had some problems too. One of the bridges that we had to go over was pretty shaky and thin. We all had to get out of the bus so that the bridge wouldn't collapse underneath us, and the driver had to take 30 minutes to maneuver the bus down the steep slope before the bridge and come out on the other side. We had to recruit a bunch of the townspeople to help out, and eventually all of the guys got behind the bus and pushed so that the back end didn't hit the ground. If the bus had been 6 inches longer, we definitely would not have made it! After that ordeal, we had to travel on a dirt road through a field of palm tress that stretched on for miles. After another hour, we finally reached a paved road and took that to a town on a river that continued on to the ocean. We all boarded some large motorboats and sped off to the river delta and into the ocean. The views were gorgeous throughout the whole ride, which took about two hours. We ended up in a remote little town and had to wade from the boats in the water onto the beach where jeeps were waiting to take us up into the hills to our "hotel." The place we stayed was unlike anywhere I have ever been! Our rooms were platforms with tents on top of them that looked out over the ocean. It was like camping, except we had a working toilet and shower (with no hot water of course) and actual beds with headboards and everything. The main building was a gorgeous open room with wood floors and couches. This is where we ate breakfast and dinner, and hung out all day when we had nothing to do. We had to take our shoes off when we walked in because everything outside was so muddy, which was fun because its not very often that I walk around nice places barefoot. The first night we hung out in the main lodge and played cards. We saw plenty of huge bugs and even a frog hanging out by the stereo.

The trees that we went through on our boat ride in the river. All of their roots are above ground and they are only located in the river, not on its shore.

The beach we ended up at.

The view from the lodge.

Jon, Julianna, Marty, and Carmen hanging out in the lodge.

The next morning we took the boats out and travelled along the shore to the Corcovado Reserve, which is a large area of preserved rainforest. We set out on our first hike which was very exciting. We got to see howler monkeys up in the trees, macaws (which are huge red, yellow, and blue birds), leaf cutter ants, agoutis, and tons of other fun things in the rainforest. We walked along the beach for part of it, and i even learned how to break open a coconut. All together, we hiked for about 3 hours, and by the time we got back the tide was so high that we had to wade with our clothes above our heads through one of the streams that feeds into the ocean. We came back to the main uilding at the reserve and ate a delicious lunch, and spent about 30 minutes at the beach. Then we set off on a 30 minute hike out to a waterfall deep in the rainforest. The hike their was awesome, as we hide to rough it over and under trees, through streams, and up and down steep hills. The waterfall was gorgeous and we all got to jump off one of the ledges into the pool at the bottom. It was so much fun to be in the middle of pure nature.

The next morning we set off on the boats for about an hour to Cano Island to go snorkeling. Despite the rain we sped over huge waves and by the time we got their it had stopped raining, even though it was still pretty cloudy. Snorkeling was amazing, and I saw tons of really cool fish and coral. We got to dive down to the bottom and see everything up close, and I even followed a huge school of fish around the area. After snorkeling, we ate lunch on the beach and played with the hundreds of little crabs running around on the shore. By the time we left the island, the sun had come out, and on the boat ride back to our hotel we got to see dolphins swimming at the top of the water! They dove in and out of the water in their search for food, and I was so excited to see dolphins out in the wild. That night back at the hotel, we drank at the main lodge with the owner, Fernando, who is definitely one of my favorite Ticos that I have met so far on this trip. He was so fun and got us all up and doing the salsa and merengue. I learned how to play the card game hearts which I was horrible at first but Im getting decent at it now. We all had a blast that night and were all pretty tired from the long day. We left for San Jose the next morning, and on the boat ride back we got to see a crocodile up close on the bank of the river. The views from the ocean and the river were absolutely gorgeous; everywhere around us was paradise.