CUWinds Costa Rica

It is half past six in the morning and I have been awake since quarter to 4 with unbelievable amounts of energy.  This has been almost a daily ritual since the night we left for Costa Rica and fortunately for me I have yet to feel the aftermath of little sleep.

Day 1: Back in elementary school, if you sat at the front of the bus you were considered a nerd.  Being one of the last ones on the bus, I didn’t have a choice, but I discovered several hours later that it offered me a surprisingly interesting view.  Around 4, maybe half an hour or so before we arrived in Newark I stood up, turned around, and looked at the fifty or so dozing faces behind me.  Some casually let their heads fall on the shoulders of their neighbors, while most other pairs seemed like they were trying to maximize the space between themselves.  It’s not surprising.  For all the time we spend with each other, we don’t know each other at all.  How could we possibly be comfortable enough to relax as we try to sleep on a bus?  I remember hoping that by the end of the trip people would form strong enough friendships that they needn’t feel so awkward around each other.

I myself did not sleep a wink that night.  I was too busy developing a new friendship with my own neighbor.

Day 2: I woke up with a very strong urge to use the bathroom at 4 or so in the morning.  I tiptoed in the dark to the bathroom where I stepped on a very soaked towel hugging the base of the toilet.  I opted to wait three hours until someone woke up so I could use their bathroom, instead of causing another deluge.

Unfortunately the urge was too strong to sleep so I lay in bed for two hours thinking about what to blog.  I got tired of waiting and the birds were squawking as if they were never to squawk again, so I grabbed a blanket and my copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray and curled up in a chair outside to watch the world wake up.

I mean there isn’t that much to write about really.  I saw a squirrel (not a marsupial) with a thin body and the face of a lemur, several ugly looking birds with beautiful voices (Susan Boyle style), and an older gentlemen who refused to speak with me in Spanish.  He kindly pointed me to an open bathroom I could have used two hours earlier had I known about it.  I watched as a couple of people arose and sauntered off to the pool to read.  I saw Ritchie and Wyatt both wake up from their beds, rubbing their eyes and looking at me as if I were a ghost.  And, like any successful ghost, I scared the living daylights out of Kenny as he opened his door and saw me bundled up right there at his doorstep.

Day 3: I got 6 hours of sleep.  There’s nothing interesting in that.

Day 4 (today!): I woke up at 3:45 to the sounds of snores and very loud cars or motorcycles driving undoubtedly recklessly on the highway.  I was a little overheated, so I kicked off my sheet and switched on my ipod.  Two hours later I was not getting anywhere in the sleep department so I, resisting the urge to run, went exploring around the grounds of the hotel.  Most of the staff was already awake by this point (around 6) and were friendlier than ever.  I found an American family with two little children running around – they must have just arrived.  In fact half an hour ago the father was sitting here clearly waiting to use the computer.  He has long since left.

They actually turn off the waterfalls here overnight which is very disappointing.  I feel as if there is enough beauty in Costa Rica; there is no need to artificially add more.  Yesterday a bunch of us set out in hunt of a “pulperia” and ended up walking a few miles.  That is probably the best way to see this country, in my opinion.  The coffee plantations, the people, the fallen trees, the trucks that teeter and totter on the windy roads, the construction workers that unfortunately are not used to seeing a woman’s legs, the grandmothers that give you directions in Spanish nice and slowly…that’s the way to do it.

-Iona Machado

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.