Best weekend!

 start of the walk to La Fortuna waterfall

 just walking across the bridge 

 La Fortuna

 the water was so beautiful and blue/green

 basically dying up the mass amount of stairs to get back up

 Arenal Volcano

 At the end of the canopy tour

 all of us at the end of the tour with faces of victory because we all did the Tarzan swing!

 yes we all did this...and it was terrifying 

 random kitty that ran into our room at Monteverde

 I DID IT!!!

 The end of a great weekend with some awesome friends(minus Crystal)

so in order it goes me, Jessica, Anisa, and Jane

 about to start the canopy tour

me rappelling

   I had an amazing weekend! I was able to do all of the the things I really wanted to do before I left Costa Rica. So on Friday Jessica, Anisa, Jane and I headed to Arenal. Our tour guide was this cute old man that is best friends with the Tico Viajero at our school that helps up plan lots of these trips.  Well his name is Edwin and he would just talk to us and tell us lots of interesting facts about Costa Rica and point out plants and different fruits growing on trees it was just very neat to get to know him.  Well we headed to Arenal which is a volcano here and it took about 3 1/2 hours to get there so one of the shorter trips I've taken. The drive there was just gorgeous...this country is just beautiful everywhere.  Edwin was super sweet and he even bought us some fruit on the way there that was very tasty. I forget the name of the fruit, but it is a crazy weird looking fruit it is red and has like these red soft spines coming out of it everywhere..I'll have to take a picture of one next time. Well anyways once we got to Arenal and checked it we got all ready and headed to these hot springs that are heated by the volcano. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting....I was expecting the hot springs to be like in the ground with rocks and stuff like that all natural, but the place we went was like in a resort so the pools were like hot tubs, but I guess the water was still all natural and was heated from the volcano, but it just wasn't what I expected. It was very relaxing though and a good way to spend the evening. After we hot springed it up the hotel had a restaurant buffet place where we ate dinner. Ohh boy was it tasty! We ate so much food that after we were done eating we started laughing and it hurt us really bad. I thought I was going to throw up my food it hurt so bad to laugh. It was a good night.

   The next day we woke up and had a tasty breakfast then Edwin drove us to the start of La Fortuna...which is a beautiful waterfall. It was a nice little hike/walk down and the waterfall was just incredible. After taking pictures(of course) we went down to where the waterfall falls. There were some rocks that we walked over to get to the water. The water was such a beautiful blue/green color it was incredible. So because the rocks were by the waterfall they were wet which makes them slippery so what happened? Of course I ate it hard right on my butt. And I look over and what is Jessica doing? Taking a picture of me on the ground. So after a while we started to follow the water down and explore the river. That was a lot of fun and we got to see a lot of nature and just enjoy ourselves as we were outside. After some good exploring time we headed back up to the car. Now this was the challenge. It was a good walk...i have a picture above of just one of the many staircases we had climb up to get back. After almost dying...it felt like...we made it back. By this time it was like 10:30 and we weren't going anywhere until 2:30. So we showered and chilled then we went to the store to get some lunch. I had a tasty cup of cup-o-noodles and some cookies. But after lunch we got kicked out of our hotel and so we just hung out by the pool and stuck out feet in and talked. Finally 2:30 rolled on by and we took a bus to the boat and the boat went across this lake to take us to the other mini bus to get to Monteverde. Little did I know this wasn't just a little drive it was like a 2 hour drive on a horribly bumpy tiny dirt road that half the time there was a massive cliff on one side. One time as the bus was going up yet again another stupid hill it started spinning out so we had to reverse down the hill for a while meanwhile Anisa and I are freaking out while Jessica and Jane are totally cool with the situation. So to stop freaking out Anisa and I just decided to pass out. And I probably would have slept the whole time but then I had to pee really bad(of course...I mean I am related to my mother and Andrew) so I really felt like my bladder was going to explode. And when we finally got to the hotel I think I peed for seriously like a whole minute...at least that's what it felt like. As we were chilling in our room the hotel kitty just followed us up and came into our room to relax with us. She was so stinkin cute. I loved her. And she was fun. That night we went to this tasty restaurant. The owner was from Boston but he was a Tico. What was funny was that when we first came in he talked to us in english with a pretty thick spanish accent, but then we would reply in spanish so he switched speaking to us in spanish also. But later we found out he grew up in Boston and the more he talked to us in english the less his spanish accent came out and the more you could hear his Boston accent. It was quite funny. 

     So Sunday was the day I was waiting for most. Zip line day! We woke up had another tasty breakfast and then got on a bus to the canopy tour. We got all suited up in our gear and this cute little tico gave us instructions about what to do and how to break and all that fun stuff. His name was Deiby and he has the cutest little accent hahah. Well then we started the tour. It was a blast. We were up high and could see all the nature. At one part we rappelled down. The guy controlled when we stopped so basically he made it seem like we were going to hit the ground then right at the last second he would pull it and we would stop so that was a lot of fun. Two of the last lines were about 1 km long and we started in the trees, but came out into like a big valley where we could see so much it was really cool.  Then we all decided to do the Tarzan swing. Oh ohh boy was I nervous. I have a picture of what it is and everything up above. But basically you walk out one by one on this suspension bridge that moves a good amount so that already scared me. They strap you in and you fall about 148 feet and then swing. The whole diameter of the swing is 295 feet. It was sooo sweet! I was terrified to do it, but so glad I did. But when they strap you in then the open this little gate and basically push you out. It is quite the experience. After that great time we got in our little car and headed back for San Jose and got in nice and early.  It was just the best weekend I've had so far here. I LOVED it! 

   Hope you all have a great week!