Big Orange Backpack

Here are some photos... okay, more than a few..

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319720&l=ebbe1&id=8818340
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319816&l=878ee&id=8818340
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319843&l=80d06&id=8818340
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319879&l=f1e46&id=8818340
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319885&l=2f3a4&id=8818340
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319895&l=9cbf2&id=8818340
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2319973&l=f0a63&id=8818340

They're in chronological order. Enjoy.

So Michelle and I are currently waiting in the San Jose airport and have been doing so for a number of hours. We took an early bus from Manuel Antonio to be to be safe and now we're tired and bored. We had a hasty goodbye with Roie and Vanessa on the bus. I feel happy that she's travelling with him for the next two weeks in Costa Rica and he's coming to the States after doing South America so we'll all have a reunion in September. Strange how this trip is over. It feels like we've been here forever and for no time at all. I'll always have my poncho.

Last night I had my first meal since Wednesday morning before the fall. I´ve been feeling really ill since that night, I´m not sure if it was due to the fall, a parasite, or my intolerance of the antibiotics.. But whatever it was, I feel better now, and that´s all that I care about.

We arrived in Costa Rica last night, and we´re staying in Manuel Antonio. It´s a very touristy town, and unlike anywhere we´ve stayed so far. We have a great hostel with four beds, a hot water shower for only $10 a person. We´ve been traveling with Roie, a really cool Israeli guy that´s been teaching me Hebrew. Much better than Edna.. :P He´s travelling with Vanessa for another two weeks in Costa Rica before she returns to the states. It makes me feel better that we´re leaving her in capable hands when we depart on Wednesday. Today we´re going to the beach, and I´m going to attempt to put my hand into the ocean (perhaps with tragic results) and tomorrow we´re going to hike around the national park here. I´m going to ace bandage my knee up, and hopefully it´ll be okay. I leave on Wednesday at 2:30 and arrive back in New Jersey at midnight on Wednesday. I can´t believe real life is starting so soon..

This morning I awoke to the discovery that I still have a right knee cap. I haven't seen it in days. My knee is still purple and I still can't bend my toes on my right foot, but they're baby steps.

Shabbat dinner last night was great. Tomorrow I think we'll head to the Costa Rica border, now that I can walk across it. Today will be spent relaxing and reading. I'm feeling much better about this trip today. I'm starting to get very excited about the move down to DC and future plans. I feel like I'm really figuring some stuff out while I'm here.

On the bright side my knee is now only the size of a grapefruit but it seems to be getting more purple. We met a really nice Israeli guy and we're having a shabbat dinner of sorts tonight. On the downside I think I either can't stomach the
anti biotics, I have food poisoning or, the most likely senario, I have a parasite. I feel really ill and I'm kind of looking forward to that trip on US airways on Wednesday more and more.

I´ll begin from the unfortuate incident, and then go backwards, and then a bit forwards.

I got in a major bicycle accident yesterday. We rented bikes from our hostel in Isla de Ometepe to go up to see the petroglifs. I didn´t exactly know how much of a bitch of a ride it was, or that the petroglifs were actually just barely visable markings into stones. So we went uphill to these carvings in little stones, and felt pretty pissed about all the effort we put into getting there. We felt thankful, however, because the way back was mostly downhill. This, as it turned out, was not a good thing. I was going down a really big hill, and I was riding my breaks the whole time, but I was still going a lot faster than Michelle or Vanessa. I hit a stone or something, and next thing I knew, I was doing flips down the rest of the hill. I landed with the bike on top of me, and I was laying on the ground, not quite out of shock yet. Vanessa saw it and ran over and asked if I was okay, and I said apparently pretty calmly (I don´t remember) ¨You know, Vanesssa, I think I really hurt myself. Did I break anything?¨ I crashed next to a little store, and before I knew it a man was carrying me over to it, and I just kept muttering ¨muchos gracias senor!¨ I was sobbing by the time they sat me down, but through the tears I was still able to demand a photo be taken. My knee was already the size of a cantalope by the time I was put down in the chair at the store, a matter of a minute or two after the crash. As it turns out, I´m pretty sure I didn´t break anything. An hour later I was at the clinic, and a woman was getting all the dirt out of the big cuts on my right toes, right knee, and left hand. When she was cleaning out the one on my hand I was screaming and sobbing more than I think even my 5 month old niece Abigail can pull off on her best days. That pretty much sums up the incident.

The day before, our first full day in Ometepe we took a walk down the Ojo de Agua (the eye of the water) where there is a natural kind of pool that was quite fun to splash around in for a few hours. Today we took the ferry back to the mainland, and while it almost capsized in the rough waters, we are here and alive. We took a taxi to the beach very close to the border of Costa Rica, in San Juan del Sur - our current location. I can walk, or hobble, a bit now, but I need another day or two before my knee stops looking like a melon. I think we´ll head to Costa Rica on Saturday or Sunday and spend a few days in Miguel Antonio before catching our flight a week from yesterday..

It´s been quite the few days. It could have been a lot worse, I could´ve really injured myself, or broken bones or something. But right now, I would really rather be on the beach than finding new cuts everytime I change clothes.

Yesterday was great fun. We started out by climbing a steaming volcano, and then climbing its inactive brother. We were told when we signed up for the tour that we would be going to a bat cave. But with all the Batman jokes, none of us seemed to realise that there would be actual bats there. I was freaking out a wee bit, thankfully I had my poncho to protect me. We climbed through another cave, which was deep and quite scary. We then went down to look at the lava of the first volcano, but from afar. The trip was from 5-8pm and by the time we ate dinner and got back to the hostel, we passed out at 9:30, because we´re little old ladies. Today we´re going swimming in the lowest point in Central America in a crater before taking a boat, which I will most certainly vomit on, to Isla de Ometepe, which is an island in the middle of the Lake of Nicaragua which was formed by two volcanos, which are still active. There´s loads of swimming, hiking, and general amusement there, and it should be a blast. I can´t believe we leave in little over a week! Bah!

I hate the way they look at us, I hate the sounds that they make, and I hate that we know exactly what they´re thinking as we walk past.

We didn´t end up going to the volcano tour today in order to give Michelle more time to recover from the big D (otherwise known as Dengue Fever). We´re going tomorrow, and then heading to Isla de Ometepe on Monday afternoon. We´re running very ahead of schedule and decided to sneak in a destination in Costa Rica while we´re at it, Manuel Antonio, which is a beach and nature preserve on the Pacific side. I can´t believe we´re leaving a week from Wednesday. But in other news, the shower at our hostel isn´t freezing, and we got our laundry done! We smell a little less then we did when we arrived...

It´s been a great relaxing day in Granada. We walked around the city for a few hours, stumbling into a market, buying myself some obnoxiously large sunglasses, and going into the main church that was holding a service for local school kids. We went down to the lake and met a guy who told us about a baseball game that´s happening tonight about 20 minutes away. I am so excited to go to a game in a country where everyone is so passionate about it. Tomorrow from 3-8pm we´re doing a volcano tour which includes going to a local artisans market, going to a cave with bats, and seeing the lake at sunset, and then going to the active volcano to check out the lava at night. I heart Nicaragua. Honduras, eat my shorts.

I am so glad to be out of Honduras. We´ve been traveling for what feels like ever, but really has only been 3 days. This morning we all woke up at 4:30, because that´s what we´ve been used to. When we got out of Honduras all I could do was sigh in relief. We got to the capital city, Tegucipalpa, or however you spell it, and I don´t really want to talk about the hotel we stayed in or pretty much any part of our stay there. It was so bad that we didn´t take any funny pictures of ¨hey look how miserable we are here¨ because we were really that miserable, it´ll never be funny.
Now we´re in Granada, and very thankful. It seems like a cool city and we´re staying at a very cool hostel called the Bearded Monkey. The internet here is free, and it´s a chill place. We´ve got a few days here, and even though our room is the size of a closet in the States, we´re happy to have it and to explore Granada and its surroundings.

I'm not sure why we're all so cranky about Honduras, but we've hated it pretty much since we set foot in it. The border was shadier than the others, and we felt like we were getting really dicked over. We got here, and while tired, we figured we'd visit the ruins today and get it over with, and go straight on to the capital tomorrow early, and maybe even get ourselves to Managua in Nicaragua and skip Honduras pretty much completely. We are very glad for that decision now. The ruins at Copan were completely unimpressive, and felt as though we were on a mini golf course in comparision to the wonder of Tikal and the jungle surrounding it. We forgot bug spray and got eaten alive the whole time we were there. We took a nature trail hike on the way back and got totally turned around. We came to a fork in the road, and I stupidly suggested we listen to Beyonce and go "to the left, to the left". We got lost in the woods and got eaten alive by mozzies. We ended up having to walk through mud and most likely manure in order to get back to the trail and the exit. We just had lunch, which was not as good as any food we had in Guatemala, and we're sending out some more post cards before going back to shower. Our room has its own shower, which is pretty amazing, and we look forward to not smelling like Honduras in a few hours. Until then, we're going to wander this city with men following you, asking if you need a hotel every 10 seconds.

We're just a little cranky.

My new nickname is Ponchie, because I bought a poncho. Its the colours of the rainbow and I love it. Im going to wear it everywhere when I get home.

So what is a Bethany summer trip without having a life and death moment? Or more than one, hell, I'm not picky. Last night I found myself saying this to myself: "Let's recap: I´m in an outhouse, wearing a poncho, in a Japanese restaurant, in the middle of the jungle in Guatemala." We walked to the restaurant through the jungle and it was really quite scary with barking dogs and without any light.. So perhaps we didn't almost die there, but it wasn't the safest I've ever felt.

Today we took the bus back to Antigua. We wound our way through the mountains again, only this time downhill during downpours that was once Tropical Storm Arthur. I kept having visions of us hydroplaning and going off the cliff in the mini-bus, but thankfully, I'm here in one piece safe and sound. We're going to go to Honduras in the morning, at 4am our bus leaves for the Copan ruins on the border. As for now, we're going to post some postcards and waste time given that it will not stop raining.

It´s been quite the wonderful stay in paradise, but it´s getting to be time to move on. Today is our last full day here, we leave tomorrow around 10am. I´m excited to return to Antigua to do laundry and have a real shower. I´ve only had one while we´ve been in San Marcos because there is no water pressure, and while that bath in the lake was refreshing a few days ago, it was also completely frigid. I think the things I like the most about San Marcos are the smells and the sounds. It always smells like fresh rain, and there are flowers everywhere. The sounds are usually birds and the sounds of Mayan people in the hills singing, and it travels down here. There are these petrol explosions, we don´t really understand what they are, but the occur about 6x a day, and it sounds like there are bombs going off. Other than those, it´s been wonderful. I´m starting to miss home a bit, and it´s strange to realise that all the things I´m missing I´ll never have back, given that I´m not going back to Rutgers. I´m excited to start this new chapter in my life when I get back, but for now, I´m really enjoying this backpacker lifestyle. I don´t know how people do it for months and years, however.

Monday night we will spend in Antigua, and at 4am on Tuesday morning we will take a bus to the Copan Ruins, on the Honduras side of the border. We will then move on, and see where the wind blows us. We´ve scheduled a lot of time in Granada and in Isla de Omtempe, and we´re getting the feeling that it might be too much time.

Lori - as for tropical storm Arthur, it´s disintegrated into just rain now, and it seems as though we´re ahead of it, so no worries.