A recap of the fabulous vacay.
12 of us pitched in and rented a villa on the ocean in Nosara, Costa Rica, for one week. The villa was literally on the ocean, and came w/ a pool, a cook, and a house cleaner. Along w/ a lot of the local wildlife, as we came to discover.
After surviving a night of drama that only open bars and dating in NY can provide, we made it to the airport at 4AM and got two of our still drunk friends through Customs (god knows how) and let them wander the airport for an hour searching for hash browns. After a five hour plane ride, we made it to San Jose and took a shuttle bus to Nosara on the west side of Costa Rica - a small surfing, yoga community. Our villa was adorable and the rest of our friends were already there to greet us in swim suits and sun screen. Costa Rica is beautiful - it's one of the most ecologically friendy countries in the world and they are purposely not over developing the land. It's not a third world county, but it's not first world either. We all had to adjust to life w/out our cell phones, and I must admit it was tough to be separated from iBob, but I ended up loving our lack of communication to the outside world.
We played in the ocean, surfed, boogie boarded, walked to "town" to eat more food and buy souvenirs. We had the beach completely to ourselves as far as the eye could see. There was a thunderstorm one night and we lost all power for several hours - which turned out to be a blast. Some of our friends went on a deep sea fishing trip, got to see dolphins playing and caught a 35 lb fish that starts w/ a W and we all ate it for dinner that night. The rest of us were satisfied w/ the amount of animals/sea life around our villa. There were little geckos all over the ceiling/roof and bats would fly around all night, eating the bugs for us. We saw a couple monkeys in the trees nearby and more crabs than we knew what to do with. We soon learned to keep our bedroom doors closed and appointed people to crab patrol - these orange and purple guys loved the pool as much as we did. There were iguanas and birds and a local cow always nearby - it was a bit overwhelming at first, but we quickly learned to coexist and would cheer on the geckos to eat more of the bugs so they would stop eating us.
We did go on a canopy tour - a zip line - that was an adventure. We got picked up in a truck that I'm pretty sure is usually used to move cattle and endured a bumpy road to get harnessed up and then an even bumpier road that ended w/ a steep hike due to the rain from the day before making the road impassable. Once we got to the 22 mile zip line, which is seperated into 8 parts, we learned how we would be hooked onto a cable and how we would careen above the valleys and trees. I can't describe it - only that it has to be on everyone's list of things to accomplish in their life. Usually there is also a waterfall that we all get to play in, but due to the rain, it was disgustingly dirty water, and we had to pass that up. The guides amused themselves by playing practical jokes - pushing us so we would go faster, jumping out and trying to scare us as we stopped, flirting in Spanish, and making the wires bounce us up and down. I felt like my dad was w/ us, minus the flirting in Spanish :-) We did see at the end the owner of the Canopy was adding on last cable wire to the trek - that will land on his currently halfway built hotel roof so people can end the tour on the roof and enjoy a drink after the fun times. Fantastic business plan, if you ask me.
It was a week of relaxing and playing in the ocean and remembering the NY pace of life is not the only speed one can go. I also slept so much it scared my friends - apparently I was catching up on about a 4 months worth of late nights. I didn't want to come back and have reinstated that my next city to live in will definitely be somewhere like Costa Rica - relaxing under palm trees - how can a girl turn that down?
We made it back to city at 3AM, some of us drove home, others went straight to work, and I went back to open bars and NY dating drama, refreshed and w/ a very nice tan.
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