Wow.

Kristin and I are probably the luckiest people in the entire world.

This past week we did some really awesome traveling. It's hard to put it all into words, and I WOULD add pictures, but well, you know...

So I guess I'll start from the top!

Saturday morning, bright and early at 6am we got on the bus in front of USAC and left for Nicaragua. My eyes were closed for most of the trip, but we got to the border 3 or 4 hours later and spent just as long waiting in a very unruly, restless line. It was kind of funny, and definitely worth the wait! When we finally got our passports stamped, we crossed over to Nicaragua! We stopped at the border stores and got some cheap stuff, then went to Granada, which was about 2 hours away.

Granada is absolutely gorgeous. It's a city, but it doesn't give off the overwhelming city feeling that San Jose or any other city does. The buildings are all very well maintained and they are painted beautiful, bright colors. Our hotel was located on the outskirts of a little cultural center where a poetry festival was going on. Pretty amazing! We spent the night eating pizza from an incredibly delicious restaurant, and then walked around and shopped for a while.

We went on a tour of the city the next morning by horses, but luckily we didn't have to be ON the horses... just in a carriage. We saw a lot of really cool buildings and learned a little bit about the history of Nicaragua. We climbed a clock tower in a church, at the top of which you can see the whole city all 360 degrees, all the way to the giant lake in the middle of the country. The view was incredible- Kristin got some very amazing pictures!

I'm pretty sure that we spent the afternoon in tiny little fishing boats touring some islands that has gorgeous yurt-like houses on them. They were selling some. If I don't come home, you'll know where to find me...

The trip blurs together a lot due to an excessive lack of sleep, but I'm pretty sure that the next day, the first thing we did was go to Volcan Masaya. COOLEST. VOLCANO. EVER. Once again, it's hard to describe, and even the pictures might not do it justice, but it was so amazing. There was just this enormous hole in the earth, and red-orange sand, and a giant cliff drop thing... words aren't really helping me out here, but just trust me, it was amazing. I'll ask Kristin to post pictures!

After that, we spent the afternoon at the Masaya market place and shopped forever. It was a really, really overwhelming little marketplace, but Kristin got some really cool gifts, and I got a shirt for someone! The coolest part is that is was so, so colorful. There were SO MANY bags, and hammocks, and other really cool stuff!

We went out to dinner at a really nice little restaurant back in Granada, and we dined like kings. That night, since Danger and Kristin and I somehow ended up with a huuuuge VIP suite-like lounge room, we had a little wine gala, which was really fun, and then we went out on the town and danced for a little bit at a neat little salsa club.

The next morning, we left for San Juan del Sur, a town close to the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It is a really scenic little place! It's basically located inside of a cove, surrounded by cliffs on each side, with the Pacific rolling in on the half-circle shore. On the top of the right side of the mountain, there was an enormous statue of Jesus himself. It really shows the Christian influence on the country! Here is where we met the craziest monkey lady ever.

We wandered around until 2, got some lunch, and then went on a boat tour to a very remote, secluded beach. The boat ride over was really fun, and definitely interesting- they were fishing boats, and the guides were actually fishing. They caught 8 on ours, and they were pretty big fish. It was kind of gross, we watched them hold them in the guts and they got all oozy, then we had to hear them fight for life under the boat floorboards until there was silence. The fishermen loved it though! We spent the afternoon playing frisbee and just hanging out at the secluded beach, I think it was called Playa Blanco, and it was really nice to be there. We rode back to San Juan del Sur in the sunset. There have not been very many times where I've felt so relaxed.

That night we went out to dinner pretty late, and it was delicious. Some people even got lobster! I went back to the hotel pretty much right after dinner with Kristin and Danger and we went to bed early because Danger, Zak, and I decided to wake up early and run to Jesus the next morning! We got up a little after 6 and ran through the sunrise to the summit of Jesus where we were promptly shunned and turned away. Silly us for not thinking of the possibility that a sleepy Nicaraguan man might live inside of Jesus with a guard dog and not like visitors when the gate is closed at 6:30am... woops. Still though, the view from the top was incredible! We were just on this hill looking over the whole cove, and could see trails on the other side, and houses on the hillside, and the ocean, and the lights but also the sun, and it was just really amazing.

After the trek down from Jesus, we jumped in the ocean and swam for a little. It was great.

After leaving San Juan del Sur, we went to the border and only waited for an hour and a half this time. We went on to an amazing little lodge in Rincon, Northern Costa Rica, called Buena Vista. It was way up in the mountains and and we were basically just living in the jungle. It was a really, really incredible establishment. It was a resort with a hot springs spa, way too many horses, ziplines, canopy walk bridges, tons of cute little wooden rooms, fields, lakes, and a giant waterslide. That night we got some free time since we arrived too late for the zipline, and I honestly can't even remember what we did. We probably just hung out by the pool.

The next day we woke up early for the hot springs! We took horses (scariest experience of my life) to the springs, and first went into the hottest steam room ever, then covered ourselves in exfoliating mud, then hosed off and relaxed in a mix of hot tubs and pools for a few hours. I'm almost 100% certain that the devil sent my return horse straight from hell, and I pathetically rode back in the shame wagon after being incapable of actually staying on my horse.

Then we ziplined!!! This zipline was extremely tame in comparison to the last one I did, so it wasn't scary at all, and I had a blast! Everyone loved it, for the most part, and it gave us a great adrenaline rush. At night, we borrowed our bus driver's guitar and listened to/played music at the restaurant/bar thing for a few hours. It was such a nice night! How can it get better than being completely exhausted from traveling and ziplining, and then just spending the night hanging out with your friends in a tropical paradise listening to a live Spanish musician and trying to sing along? I just don't think it can.

So we left the next morning- some people did the water slide, but Kristin and I decided to lay out by the pool instead. We took off after lunch and got back to the Punt around 5, as expected, then planned our next adventure for this weekend- Volcan Arenal!

We're leaving in about an hour, so I should go, but we will try to post some pictures soon! Overall, everything was incredible and it was a pretty awesome trip.