Jeep Boat Jeep

Bright and early, we arose to pick up laundry, make final travel arrangements and check on my camera, for this was our final day in La Fortuna....and about time! Arenal is gorgeous; the hikes are fantastic; the food is great; the people are pleasant; the hot springs are amazing...all that said, it was definitely time to move on. Four nights anywhere is really too much when you only have a short vacay.

After a quick breakfast, we reserved our jeep-boat-jeep trip to Monteverde and made hostel reservations. This process was fairly amusing. By this point in time, Yselia hated us. Between my camera and Nicole monopolizing the phone line to make calls to hostels looking for reservations, Yselia was eager to see the back of us. As soon as Nicole got on the phone to reserve our room in Montezuma, Yselia turned to music up full blast. Passive aggression truly does transcend culture.

While Nicole went off to pick up the laundry, I trudged along to the Gray Line office where I would either recover my precious or would have the last dregs of hope squeezed from my heart. Alas, it was to be the latter. No camera. Our shuttle between San Jose and La Fortuna had both a driver and a ride-along driver, which is very rare. Lucky me. Both drivers were claiming that the other had my camera and the company had no way to discern which of the two was lying, though they hinted that Albarro was most likely innocent. Offers of a reward were to no avail. That was that. Finite. In a way, it was a relief to finally be able to stop hoping. Actually, when I first realized that I didn't have my camera, I knew that it was gone forever. It was only the absurd reassurances offered by the staff at the hostel that led me to believe that actually, I was sure to get it back. I really wish that they had not tried to cushion the blow by offering false hope. They delayed the inevitable grieving process and waiting for a final answer was agonizing. Not to mention that we would have left a day earlier if not for wanting to stick around for final word from the Gray Line office.

That was that. I went back to the hostel to check out, have a swim in the pool and to lounge in the hammock until our 2:30pm pickup for the jeep-boat-jeep ride out to Monteverde. By taking this trip, we shaved 3 hours off the public bus route that goes around the man-made Lake Arenal, created in the late '70s as part of a large hydroelectric project. We were actually fairly excited about it until we saw our "jeep" which was actually a minivan. Oh well, the boat was actually a boat and we had some amazing views crossing the lake. On the other side, we were picked up by another minivan for an hour and a half journey through the mountains up to Santa Elena, which is a town right next to Monteverde and in which one may find the Monteverde Backpackers hostel rather than the Santa Elena Backpackers. Odd.

Now, for those following the timeline of this blog, you might have noticed that we arrived in Monteverde (or Santa Elena) on New Year's Eve. The entire shuttle full of people was talking about it and making plans to meet up at the biggest party to be had in Santa Elena. I was actually less than enthused because I don't usually celebrate New Year's and I had consumed more alcohol in the last week than I normally do in three months. However, I was planning on at least making an appearance. Then, we arrived in Santa Elena. It was raining. It was raining and was about 50 degrees out. NOOOOOOO! We had dinner - yummy pizza and more heart of palm salad - and went back to the hostel. In the end, Nicole decided that she wanted to get up early the next day to go on a coffee plantation tour and then to try the ziplines there in Monteverde (where ziplining was created as an adventure sport) and I decided to turn in early to get up and have a hike and whatever else the whim moved me to do.

I stayed up blogging 'til 11ish and then went outside to watch some fireworks, but I just couldn't make it to midnight. Oh well. After all, midnight here is only 10pm at home, so which midnight should I celebrate? The birth of the new year in San Francisco is surely more significant to my life and I definitely would not be up 'til 2am. Also, I've been weaning myself from the Western compartamentalization of time for quite some time and wouldn't want to backslide by accidentally celebrating the beginning of another artificial unit of measurement. :)

Feliz año nuevo para todos!