Culturally Chaotic: A Super-Epic Weekend

Just on Sunday, I jumped in both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean on the same day.

But that's just the end of the weekend! Disclaimer: some of this post was written after a weekend of getting probably about 9 hours of sleep total, and 13 hours of travel. It might not make any sense.

Friday afternoon, Peligro and I headed to San Jose. We got there around dinner time and got lost around the city thanks to my amazing navigational skillz, but eventually found our way to the bus terminal, and then to my old friend, the Kabata Hostel. It didn't seem like it was going to be too epic of a night, but we ended up walking around and heard some awesome music. We decided to follow the sound, and stumbled upon a free ska concert featuring "Garbanzos" in this really neat little cultural center. It was like a city within a city, in this really cool old building with an open roof and tall concrete walls. We pretty much just spent the night rocking out with a bunch of Hispanic scenesters, went back to the hostel, and as we were crawling into our beds- Terremoto!!! We got shaken by a 4.6 magnitude earthquake. It was pretty sweet. We just kind of looked nervously at each other and then I quietly exclaimed "terremoto!!" because others in the room were asleep, and then we high-fived. I had never felt an eathquake before, and since nothing was destroyed but we got a really good shake, I have to say it was a pretty cool experience!

Saturday at literally the crack of dawn we took a bus to Cariari, a small town an hour and a half away from San Jose, to catch another bus to a water taxi that would bring us to our destination of choice: Torguero, located in the northeast region of Costa Rica, sitting right on the Atlantic Ocean, technically part of the Carribean Sea. We got to Cariari at about 7:30am and waited until 11:30 at the bus station. Luckily, we had the Fun Book of Awesome Games to keep us entertained!

So we eventually caught the bus, and after another hour long bus ride, some crazy adventuring began. The river that runs up to Tortuguero is considered by my travel guide book to be a "Mini-Amazon", and it totally looked like it! It was really, really cool, and I have pictures, sooo:

This was the bus that brought us from Cariari to La Pavona, where we caught the water taxis

This was the Rio! It was wicked cool.

Boating down the wild rioooo


An hour or so later, Tortuguero! It was rainy and shockingly cold, but also very beautiful.

Super psyched that we made it to the East Coast! So psyched you can barely see the tiredness!

The Atlantic Ocean/Mar Caribe :) Cold and lovely as usual.

Our ocean-front hostel... so cultural.

We stayed here!

We may or may not have found a secret entrance to the National Park...This is a very colorful part of the town of Tortuguero!We jumped in the ocean at 5am on Sunday through the rain and the cold, then jumped on a boat at 6am and got some sweet ponchos. It was worth it just for the ponchos.

This was the last of our zillion bus rides home- one of which was 1 hour, 3 hours of waiting time because of a mudslide, the second of which was a 5 hour route because of the mudslide, and the last of which was from San Jose to the Punt, 2 hours. We got back at 7pm, and then jumped in the Pacific! 13 hours of traveling for a pretty awesome end goal, I think.

So anyway, pretty good times. As for Kristin's previous post, I could not agree more with everything she said. I just don't really ever want to leave!