Recovering from the travel was essential, and we took our time in doing that. By Tuesday, we were ready to venture out to nearby beaches and explore our own little bay.
The problem was, by Tuesday, we hadn't realized that it began raining every day mid-morning. Once we showered and were ready to hit Playa Rojada, which was a few miles away, the sky was threatening rain. Immediately upon arrival, a downpour began, and though we abandoned efforts of beach-bumming it.
I wanted some cereal for breakfast, so we drove the 35-40 minutes to La Cruz, the nearest tiny town with one paved road, to find a grocery store. We stocked up on Fruit Loops, Pringles, and Fanta (a main reason I love Latin America--they always have Fanta).
Another guest at the hotel suggested we take a short hike up a jungle-covered small mountain next to our beach, so we decided, once it stopped raining in the late afternoon to try it out. Still a little leary of the numerous bugs in tropical climates, I was not thrilled about hiking through a jungle. But Kyle's sense of adventure yet again persuaded me to suck it up and join in the fun (what was fun for him, anyway). To get to the "trail" up this mountain, you had to cross an extremely dilapidated bridge in a mangrove thicket that went over a small stream draining into the bay. Very picturesque.
Kyle went first, naturally, and jumped because he thought he saw a tarantula-sized spider. Upon our return hike, we found it was a crab, but his reaction started off our journey with high apprehension. How many more HUGE spiders or insects or rodents would we encounter? He was hoping to see monkeys, but alas, they too proved elusive.
The views of the surrounding mountains (north--Nicaragua; south--more Costa Rica) from the look out points on this dense hike were awesome. This was the first we were seeing of the great beauty of Costa Rica, and even on cloud-covered afternoon, we could tell this place was splendid. The sun started setting on our way down, and considering we were inside a small jungle, it became very dark on the slippery, muddy roots and rocks that we had to tread upon. Twilight is one of the worst times of day for my poor vision, and I began panicking that I'd fall and break a leg. I couldn't imagine Kyle carrying me out of there.
As we cleaned up for dinner at the hotel restaurant (a place we'd become very familiar with), I noticed a growing number of large ants all over the room. Since all the doors had about a quarter-inch gap between the floor and the wood, I figured some bugs would live with us, but thiswas more than just "some". I investigated near the bed and saw the wall behind it swarming; I pushed the mattress at an angle to the box springs and found, to my horror, fifteen ants in a few inches of space: in the sheets, between the mattresses, even under the bed on the floor.
You must understand, dear reader, how much I detest bugs. As a child, I sang a song called, "I Hate Bugs" often, giving concerts on the hearth to my mom as she made dinner in the kitchen with my red and yellow and blue Sony tape player with mic. For the second time that day, it was getting hard for me to breathe and I tried to explain to Kyle that I couldn't sleep here anymore. If we stayed, I would not sleep at all; I'd feel these ants crawling all over all night long. After investigating and killing about 30, himself, he agreed that we couldn't stay in the room any longer. We requested, and were graciously given, a new room after dinner.
Dinner that evening proved another learning experience for us on two levels. 1) The rainy season = lots of bugs. 2) Never order any meat rare-ish in a foreign country. The open-air restaurant, which was lovely during the day, was full of mosuitoes. I counted 20 bites when we settled into our new room. Kyle ordered a steak, of sorts, medium-rare, and we found it so raw even he could not eat it.
Our Tuesday ended with us packing for our inland excursion, to last two days. We planned to visit Volcan Arenal and some hot springs, as well as zipline-it through the Monteverde Cloud Forest. With the alarm set for 6:15am, we hit the hay early in our very clean, very ant-free new room.
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