mas mas mas

Hola!
After another very eventful couple of days, Rebecca and I are in Monteverde, a GORGEOUS town in the middle of the cloud forest.
A group of 6 of us left Matapalo Friday afternoon and went to Quepos and stayed in a great hostel. The girls got a private room with a hot shower. fabulous.
We went out and had a wild time in the bars there (I practiced my salsa dancing with a short, sweaty Costa Rican salsa teacher--Nate you have nothing to worry about! ha.) and needless to say, we felt pretty rough when we woke up early in the morning to go to Manuel Antonio. Only 3 of us were able to power through the walk through the park and to the beach but it was SO worth it.
We saw sloths close up in the guide´s telescope and they are SO crazy looking. Like little smiling Chewbaccas. (I will upload pics soon) We also saw ¨Jesus Christ Lizards¨ (the name alone is great) and a crocodile type thing and some giant rat type animal. BUT...no GD monkeys!! There were even signs on the beach saying ¨dont feed the monkeys¨because they creep up and steal bags of food while people are in the water. All we saw were raccoons doing that. One got away with a giant bag of chips. Ha.
The beach was so amazing--one of the prettiest I think I have been to--and we swam and slept for a bit and then headed back to meet up with the rest of the group. Some people had to head back to Matapalo and Allie had to head back to San Jose to catch her flight back home. Unfortunately she missed the bus, but after some emotional planning, she got a flight the next morning to San Jose. (We hope the plane ride was fun and you made it home okay Allie!!)
The 3 of us had a wonderful dinner and a fun, laid back night and then Allie left in the morning.

And then there were two....
I dont have to be back to Matapalo for school until Thursday evening and Rebecca is done with the project now so we spontaneously decided to head to Monteverde. Let the adventure continue!
We got a bus to Puntarenas (a non-touristy transportation hub thats a little dodgy) and since we were so spontaneous, we found out no more buses were running that day. So we set out to find the hotel in my book and when we asked a nice old man to help us, he offered to drive us there. so nice.
We got to the hotel, got a double room for 14 bucks each and to our delight---it had a TV! Yay. So we sat in the room and watched movies. It was so nice!
The next day we woke up to catch the 7am bus to Monteverde. But.. it was September 15th--Costa Rican indepence day. Which means no morning bus. So.....we had 6 hours to wait till the afternoon bus. Awesome. It ended up being great though because we got to see the independence day parade and watch tons of people. Finally we got on the bus and were all settled and a man walked by us and dropped a bunch of money and made a big commotion about us helping to pick it up. He was hitting my leg to make me move and I didnt realize until after he had gotten off the bus that he was trying to distract us to steal our things. Luckily we had our bags in our hands. I was so pissed and shocked and then we realized that they had taken Rebecca´s bag that was in the overhead thing. Luckily that f&%$er only got her toiletry bag, but still---we were so pissed. But we were thankful they didnt get our money or anything important and tried to take it as a lesson. All part of the adventure?? Ugh.
The bus ride to Monteverde was INSANE. Up a mountain on an unpaved road surrounded by steep, beautiful green hills. We couldnt imagine that there would be a town up there. We finally got here, found a room, had a great dinner and today we are going on a coffee plantation tour and tomorrow we might hit up a canopy-zip line tour. Good times. Hopefully I will see some monkeys!
Okay, this was officially the longest post ever and next time I wont bore anyone details and just upload the pics!
I hope everyone is doing great.
hug´s and k´s!