Elliot Lynde

THIS BLOG IS MOVING!

2010-02-09T21:42:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone. This blog is moving to elliotlynde.com

Huaraz

2010-01-14T19:31:00.000-08:00

I took an overnight bus last night to Huaraz. The bus ride was a little rough even though I got a semi-cama. It didn't help that they played two movies! I just wanted to sleep.

Huaraz is at an altitude of 3,031 meters (about 10,000 ft)! The interesting thing was that most of the bus ride was flat but the last couple of hours (the only ones during which I was sleeping) we did almost all of the ascent. When I woke up I really felt the altitude. I'm glad I took some decamethasone before leaving. It felt like something was holding back a more full-on altitude sickness.

Huaraz is actually quite a dirty city. I knew it wasn't going to be the most beautiful city ever since most of it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1970 but I was actually kind of suprised by how dirty it was. It's still pretty in its own way since it's nestled in the hills. I like it here. It kind of reminds me of Sarajevo, one of my favorite places of all time.

The river I'm NOT going to go rafting in!

Also, it's interesting to note that the people here speak Quechua (the indigenous lanuage) in addition to Spanish. About 45% of Peruvians are purely indigenous (Lonely Planet - Peru) which is very high compared with other countries in Latin America. About 13% of the population speaks Quechua (wikipedia).

This is a photo of a typical indigenous outfit (from wikipedia, I didn't want to hassle anyone for a photo of themself).

Leaving Huanchaco

2010-01-14T18:46:00.000-08:00

After a few days of resting in Huanchaco it was time to move on. It was sad because I don't think that I have ever liked a hostel so much nor have I stayed at a single one so long, around 6 nights.

Next I am planning to go to Huaraz, a small town in the Andes where you can go on treks through the Cordilleras Blancas

Here's some more shots of Huanchaco. It's such an awesome place

Update

2010-01-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

Lots of things have happened lately, I'm going to just briefly summarize them:

Getting sick

Something I ate made me incredibly sick. It was either the lunch at Otra Cosa or the fish that we ate that night (since I started to get sick late that night/early next morning). I don't think that fried fish and rice would make me sick so I'm guessing it was something in the food I got from Otra Cosa. Either way, to make a long story short it kept getting worse and worse until the point where I needed to see a doctor. I took a taxi from Huanchaco (small beach town we were at) to Trujillo (big city 20mins away) and went to see a doctor at the Clinica Peruano-Americano (Peruvian-American Clinic). Since I was vomiting pretty hard and losing water fast the doctor hooked me up to an IV to give me water and medicine and kept me there in a hospital room for two nights. Thanks to Sweeney for all of his help and for getting a picture of me passed out in the hospital bed (below)

Sweeney left

Chris had to fly back on the 9th so he left toward the end of my hospital stay. It was great to hang out with him and it was unfortunate that he spent a bunch of the time we had together taking care of me! He's a great friend.

Huanchaco

I went back to the hostel that I was at (Naylamp). I can't say enough good things about Hostal Naylamp. The lady in charge, Ivonne, helped me so much when I got sick. They also have a restaurant right there so while I was resting for a couple of days I just ate there. The food is great and I knew that it was clean so it was the perfect place to recover.

Here's the campground part of it we stayed at the first night

The vibe in the courtyard at Naylamp

Some of my buddies at Naylamp (Gene, don't know his name, Jaime, Paúl, Me, Milagros, Ivonne, Andy)

Waking up in Trujillo

2010-01-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

We woke up around 6:30am when the bus arrived in Trujillo. Despite the fact that I randomly woke up in the middle of the night with my mind racing (mostly about the awesome trip ahead of me!) for a couple of hours, the bus ride was perfect. I'm really exicted about being able to overnight so much of my travel here. In Europe, we would overnight trips like the bus ride to Prague or the train ride to Belgrade, both maybe six hours, practially upright or crunched in a train cabin. You would end up only getting a couple hours of sleep. It was pretty pretty much pulling an all-nighter which I don't like to do unless I have to. When you borrow sleep from your body you have to pay it back at a high rate of interest.

When we got into Trujillo we were starving so we went and ate breakfast...actually two breakfasts

Breakfast in Peru is quite light.

Next, we hopped in a taxi and went to Huanchaco. It's a small town about 20 minutes outside of Trujillo. Trujillo seemed all right, but Huanchacho sounded like a nicer beach town.

We checked into a place called Hostal Nylamp. They only spots left were for camping. Not ideal but they did provide the tent and it was cheap. The camping area was pretty nice

Next I went and took a swim at the awesome beach while Chris went for a run. It's a very nice beach and the water isn't too cold.

After swimming we walked around a little and ate some food at a place called Otra Cosa nearby. I mention it by name because it will be important later. Stay tuned. (These posts are backdated as usual).

Some Americans (the girls) we met who were volunteering in Peru with the Presbyterian church. They were just passing through before going back to the US. The other guy is Andy. He was also staying at Nylamp. Nice guy.

Next we went back to the beach to check out the awesome sunset, which I have to admit, is second to the ridiculous, fire-in-the-sky Arizona sunsets. I don't know if you can beat those.

We met a pretty cool guy at the beach named Bart who's also staying at Nylamp. He's an actor in Spain and so he came to get away for a month. I think that he might be kind of a big deal there and doesn't want to get bothered everywhere he goes. We took some pictures of the beach and then got some food.

Ghost picture! (Chris, Bart, Me)

While we were eating, we saw this cool parade-like thing in the street. It has something to do with the three wiseman and the week after Christmas...not totally sure. I didn't totally understand what the waiter was saying. I'll post the video once I find a really fast internet connection.

Day in Lima

2010-01-05T12:17:00.000-08:00

Chris and I got up a little late. I was pretty tired since I had to take an overnight bus to Chicago the night before leaving for my 8:30 flight out of Chicago.

We decided that we would head up to the north coast of Peru so after eating some lunch, we went to the bus station to book a ticket for Trujillo, the largest city on the coast.

Notice anything funny...look at how many milileters each is :)

We bummed around Lima for most of the day until it was time to take the bus (10pm overnight bus).

Lima

Plaza in Miraflores, Lima

The coast of Lima.

Getting some cerviche, a common Peruvian seafood dish

The bus we took (Cruz del Sur) was incredibly nice. Far nicer than anything that I've ever taken in the U.S. or Europe. Chris said that most buses in Peru are overnight buses since it's a pretty big country and if you're on a bus for a while you're going to be sleeping anyway.

The seats were semi-camas (semi-beds) and reclined most of the way.

Arriving in Peru!

2010-01-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

I got into Lima, Peru around 11:30 on 1/5 and met Chris in the airport. We grabbed a taxi and went to the hostel, which (I wish I had a better picture to show it) was pretty much just someone's house. Here's one picture (below). By the time we got out to find food it was pretty late...1 am or so and the only thing still open in Miraflores (the suburb of Lima we were staying in) was McDonalds! Oh well, McDonalds is better in other countries anyway...still trying to figure that one out. More to come...

Balaton and Pécs Trip: Day 3 (Pécs)

2009-04-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

Flea Market

The first place we went this morning was to a flea market that Sarah had heard was really cool. It was pretty awesome. I still can’t believe some of the things you could buy!

Quite an awesome place. I only bought one thing. It is a portable fork, spoon and knife set. This is nice for when you are traveling and you need utensils.

Lazy Day

Today was kind of a lazy day. We were still tired from the biking and just wanted to enjoy the nice weather. We grabbed some coffee from the McCafe at McDonalds and lay around in the city square. We eventually got up and walked around the rest of the city. Later, we just got ice cream and hung out outside until it was time to take the train back to Budapest.

An awesome weekend!

This weekend was a lot of fun. It was great to see the countryside and Hungary outside of Budapest. Lake Balaton is beautiful and Sarah and Elin are awesome girls who are always fun to be around!

Balaton and Pécs Trip: Day 2 (Hévíz and Keszthely)

2009-04-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

Jannick knows a lot about about bikes and this morning we were able to fix Elin’s bike tire. It has kind of weird road bike-like tires and it turns out that you are don’t take the tread off when replace the inner-tube.

Hévíz

Jannick and Tiffany brought bikes with them (they are planning on riding back part of the route we took down to Keszthely later today) so we all rode together to Hévíz, a thermal lake a couple of miles out of Keszthely. Hévíz was pretty cool. The lake isn’t hot but the water is comfortably warm. It did smell a little weird but I don’t think that it was because of being unclean or anything. Supposed the water is totally replaced every by the natural springs every 85 hours. Hévíz is also supposed to have medicinal benefits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hévíz_Spa

Back in Keszthely we picnicked again near Balaton.

Tiffany and Jannick had to leave to start biking so Elin, Sarah and I went and hung out down by the lake until our train left at 5.

Train to Pécs

The train ride to Pécs was really pretty.

Pécs

We got into Pécs around 10 and went to the hostel which was on one of the main streets (Kíraly Utca). It was a very fun and happening area with a lot of outdoor restaurants. Since it was kind of late we just went to get some food, took some pictures and then went back to the hostel.

Balaton and Pécs Trip: Day 1 (The Journey to Keszthely)

2009-04-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Missing the Train

Today started out with me missing the train. I got there as it was leaving. I rode after it on the path next to the tracks but was stopped by some guy working on the tracks and yelled at in Hungarian. I kept riding until a loudspeaker came out of nowhere and started yelling at me again in Hungarian. I went back to the station and got a ticket for an indirect train through Székesfehérvár that left in an hour and would get me to Balatonfüred one hour after Sarah and Elin.

I don’t have an excuse. I have a problem. I am sick of being late for everything. It’s not fair to everyone who is a victim of my tardiness. It’s personally embarrassing and obscures my better qualities from people who don’t know me well. I can’t tell you how stupid I felt watching the train leaving with Sarah and Elin and without me. So I am saying it here-this is the end. I’m done with my “show up late for things” lifestyle. It would be ridiculous to say that I will never ever be late for something again in my life. I know that it will happen. But I am done with being a “late person.” I know that I have said this before but I mean it this time. I’m actually a little glad I missed the train because I know that this will be the catalyst for a change in my life. Though Sarah and Elin weren’t really mad at me, I was furious at myself and was quite embarrassed. Seriously, it will be different from now on.

Biking to Keszthely

When I got in at 10 we started biking toward Keszthely. One of the early stops we made was in Tihany. The view there was beautiful.

At first the trail was pretty close to Lake Balaton but after a while it went way out into the country. It was a little hilly but not too bad. Plus the weather was great so we had a picnic.

Most of the day was spent just riding bike. It was a really long but fun ride and the countryside was absolutely gorgeous.

About 6 or 7 miles outside of Keszthely Elin’s front tire went flat. I tried fixing it but couldn’t get the tread off. Ya, I know, I wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders this weekend...maybe it is time for a little break from so much traveling (this being the 7th weekend in a row). Anyway, luckily there was a family nearby that had a truck and was able to fit the bike in it. They drove both Sarah and Elin’s bike to Keszthely. Very nice people! Elin and I rode to Keszthely and got in around sunset. After riding all over the whole town trying to find the hostel (and getting directions from several people pointing in several directions) we all met up again. Jannick and Tiffany took the train to Keszthely and met us at the hostel.

After cleaning up and relaxing a little (we probably rode around 45 miles or so) we went to an outdoor pizza/bar place. Lake Balaton is mainly a summer vacation place for Hungarians and Germans so there are a lot of outdoor areas to eat and drink. Also, many of the people who live there speak German because of all the German tourists in the summer. I think that, without really thinking too much about it, we came at the perfect time. It wasn’t that crowed since it was just April but the weather was still great (70-75 degrees).

Balaton and Pécs Trip: The Plan

2009-04-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

Here’s the plan for the weekend:

Friday

Train to Balatonfüred

Bring the bikes that we rented in Budapest.

Bike to Keszthely (spend the night there)

Saturday

Visit Hévíz (thermal lake near Keszthely
Take train to Pécs in afternoon (Spend the night there)

Sunday

Hang out in Pécs
Take train back to Budapest in the afternoon

The Netherlands: Day 4 (exploring)

2009-04-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

A Big Day

The Brazilians went to bed early last night since they had to catch the bus at 8 from Centraal Station to Eindhoven Airport. I decided that I would wake up at the same time and go see some other parts of the Netherlands, most specifically the tulip fields the guy had told me about at the hostel the day before. I went to bed early too but couldn’t fall asleep because I was so excited about the next day. I really love those days where you are always moving and see a bunch of things and I knew that today would be one.

The Plan

The plan for today was to take the train to Haarlem. The guy at Bob’s Hostel who told me about the flower fields said that from here I could take a bus to get out to the flower fields. However, someone else told me about renting a bike and riding there (maybe 15km). This is what I was planning on doing. After visiting the fields I was planning on riding back to Haarlem and maybe taking the train to Rotterdam (or some other Dutch city) to see what the Netherlands are like outside of Amsterdam.

Haarlem

After a large breakfast (how big days begin) I took the train to Haarlem (about 15 minutes from Amsterdam). I planned on just renting a bike in Haarlem and biking to the tulip fields but Haarlem was actually a really pretty town and I spent a while roaming around checking out some of the cool buildings and such.

Off to Lisse

The town that the Keukenhof Gardens are in/near is called Lisse so I started biking in that direction. Biking is really popular and easy in the Netherlands. There are a lot of bike lanes and people bike everywhere. Also, almost everyone speaks English (usually pretty well) and there are a lot of friendly people so it is easy to get directions.

The Dutch countryside is beautiful. It is very green, which reminded me of Ireland.

Planning on just grabbing some food and leaving, I stopped in a restaurant Hillegom (a small town on the way to Lisse). The only people in the restaurant were the person working there (Tinakay...I don’t know about that spelling) and a guy who was sitting by the gambling machine named George who was either her husband, a regular or both. I never asked. They were really friendly. When I ordered a second coke (I couldn’t resist, it was from a glass bottle!) George bought it for me. I stayed and talked with them for a hour (or two? I don’t know; time flies). George told me some intersting things; one is the words in Dutch and German are the same (spelling and pronounciation) but have different meanings. Also, he told me that he thinks more Americans should learn foreign languages so that they can be more accomodating to tourists who visit. He said that in the Netherlands they learn English and try to accommodate for English-speaking visitors. In America they do not. I agree with him that it would be good for more Americans to learn foreign languages but not for that reason. The chance that you can use a foreign language other than Spanish in the U.S. is very low. It just doesn’t make sense to learn Dutch and sit around waiting for some Dutch tourists to come so you can use skills. Also, so much of the world speaks English and tourists who come to the U.S. will probably come speaking English. It’s rare that you will be walking down the street and hear a little Dutch and be able to jump in. Also, I think that George has a huge economic benefit in learning English and that this is probably the main reason he learned it. Either way, nice guy.

Keukenhof Tulip Gardens

The tulip gardens were really beautiful.

I don’t really know if it is worth it to pay the 13.50 or whatever it is to go in the gardens. Inside, it is just a bunch of different flowers. I was all about seeing the big rows of tulips (like you see above). These are outside of the gates so you don’t have to pay for this part. Inside is this kind of stuff:

Probably worth it for people who are really hardcore about flowers.

Rotterdam

When I got back to Haarlem it was maybe 7:30 and after I turned my bike in I went to the ticket counter at the train station. Rotterdam was about an hour away from Haarlem and a little more from Amsterdam. Going to Rotterdam would cost at least 15 more Euros and I would only be able to spend a couple of hours there if I wanted to come back at a reasonable hour, which I determined was 1am since I had to wake up early the next morning. I walked around and debated it for a few minutes but finally just said, “What the hell!” You only live once, right?

Rotterdam wasn’t that exciting and I only ended up staying for maybe an hour and a half.

Rotterdam is a very nice, new and modern city but the downtown was kind of dead. Either way I am glad that I went because it was totally different than Amsterdam. Actually, out of all of the places I have visited I think it felt the most like a U.S. city. I don’t know why but it just felt that way.

Two interesting things did happen:

-I met a Hungarian working at McDonald’s who, when I told him that I lived in the Astoria area of Budapest, said, “oh man, that isn’t such a great area.” He also said that he hasn’t been back in so long that he “doesn’t know his country anymore.” Wow, things must really change around here because I have to say Astoria is definitely considered a pretty decent area here. Nothing fancy but pretty fun and safe. It’s interesting because it kind of reminded me that we are living in an area of the world that is still rapidly changing. It couldn’t have been that long ago that he was here since he didn’t look very much older than maybe 25 or 30 and he grew up in Hungary.

-I met some Greek girls by the statues in the above picture. They were studying abroad in Rotterdam and asked where I was from. I told them to guess. I gave it to them after four guesses because they were getting close with Great Britain. I still can’t believe the guesses they made:

1) The Netherlands
2) Germany
3) Sweden
4) The UK

For a guy who always sticks out as American this was pretty funny :)

Back to the Hostel

Tired and ready to get a goodnight sleep. As I am about to get ready for bed, one of the three Spanish guys staying in the room asked me what kind of music I like. I told I really like just about everything except really dramatic, middle-schoolish R&B. He then randomly asked me, “do you listen to the Killers?” This was the end of my chances of getting to bed early. These three Spanish guys were obsessed with the Killers and we spent almost an hour and a half talking about exclusively about the Killers (we talked about Green Day for a couple of minutes). They went to a Killers concert in Spain and showed me some video of it. Too bad they are playing in the U.S. right now and will be in Europe when I am back in the U.S.

The Netherlands: Day 3 (last day in Amsterdam)

2009-04-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

Leaving Bob’s Hostel

We woke up today at about 9:30 so I ended up getting around 9 and half hours of sleep! Wow do I feel great!

There was a Mexican guy staying in our room who was pretty cool and he told me about a place with some awesome tulip fields. He said that him and his girlfriend (she’s Italian but they both are currenlty living in Spain) went there and it was pretty nice. He told me basically how to get there and I think that maybe tomorrow, when all the others fly back, I will go there.

At breakfast I talked with a German guy and he seemed surprised when I said I think it is interesting how Europe is such an old place but Germany is kind of new as a country (have been fragmented until the late 1800s). He said that he thought that Americans don’t know anything about history (or anything for that matter). Sure there are some Americans who don’t know anything about history and such. Is that sad? Sure it is. It’s almost as sad as when someone from Europe thinks that the American tourists they meet and the actors they see on t.v. are what all 300 million of us are like. Seriously, there are so many great people in America. How come more of them don’t go and visit Europe?

We had to check out of Bob’s Hostel because we had a place booked for tonight. I didn’t want to leave. That bed was amazingly comfortable and more importantly, warm! Supposedly we were supposed to leave our mark in our room:

Shelter City Hostel

Next we made our way to Shelter City, which was one stop out of the city center on the subway. It looks like a pretty nice hostel. Here’s a view out of the window:

Another hot shower...finally...I am warm!

I need to find the name of this park

Next we went to a big park in Amsterdam that some people told us was cool. It was a pretty large park and so we just walked around for a while and relaxed.

Nemo Science Museum

We then walked through the Waterloo District (people told us this was supposed to be cool but actually it didn’t seem so special) to Nemo Science Museum.

It was pretty cool but it was mainly a kids museum. I wouldn’t pay 15 Euros or whatever to go there.

More Pictures

We walked around for a few more hours taking pictures. Here are some of the best:

The Netherlands: Day 2 (more Amsterdam)

2009-04-04T03:16:00.000-07:00

A long night

Last night was awful. Though the day was really warm, the night cooled off very quickly. Outside of the city where we were was even colder. We weren’t really prepared to camp, we just saw the weather was supposed to be warm and that we were going to sleep in a hut-like thing and figured we would be fine. Man, were we wrong. Here is what are beds were like:

No blankets...also there was no heater in the hut. The insulation wasn’t very good either because it was pretty much the same temperature as the outside...which probably got down to 40 or 50 degrees. I ended up sleeping (or at least trying to) with two t-shirts, a long-sleeved jean shirt, a polo and my fleece curled up in a ball. We didn’t bring coats because it was supposed to be warm! I know this is all our fault but man, it was pretty rough.

We all woke up still shivering and exhausted since we barely slept. We then all took warm showers which interestingly enough you had to buy special coins to use! Ya, I know what luck...otherwise I would have stayed in there for hours.

Finding another hostel

We got up early not just because we couldn’t really sleep but also because we needed to find a hostel for the next night since every place we checked beforehand for Saturday night was either full or full for reservations (but had a little space left for walk-ins). We were planning on asking the if the Bostel had open spaces but changed our minds based on how the previous night went! Once we were downtown again, we went straight to Bob’s Youth Hostel since we called them a few days before to put in a reservation there but they were full except for some places for walk-ins. We were able to get five spots. They were in three different rooms but didn’t matter to us all...we were just glad to find a warm bed! I then took another shower...a long, hot one! It was great because afterward I was so warm that I started wearing only two shirts and a fleece!

Marijuana Museum

Gabriel and I went to the Marijuana Museum (the others didn’t want to go). I don’t really know much about drugs so it was pretty interesting. They had a display about smuggling that was pretty cool. It showed some of the things that people have done to smuggle drugs (and probably still do). Here are some pictures of their methods!

There was also stuff about medical marijuana and drug policy (mainly comparing the Netherlands with the U.S.) which I found the most interesting.

I don’t know if these stats are legit but they are disturbing!

One thing that was really confusing was this:

I’m not really sure how you tax something that is illegal...

They also had marijuana growing in the back. After long and hard consideration I decided to not put the picture of me standing in front of the glass outside the room (you couldn’t go in but could take pictures). I thought about putting a disclaimer on the picture that said, “THIS PHOTO IS FROM THE MARIJUANA MUSEUM IN AMSTERDAM” but decided that not much good can come from a picture of me standing in front of a room full of weed being on the internet.

Walking around/Taking pictures

We all met up back at the hostel and then walked through the red light district. I don’t have pictures of what this is like (out of respect for the prostitutes they ask you to not take pictures) but it is quite a different experience. The girls work behind a door with a glass window facing the street wearing only a bra and panties. They are sometimes dancing and winking at guys who walk by. When a man is interested, he simply walks up to the door and the girl opens it. They talk for a little bit. The guy steps in. The girl closes the curtains and ya... Seeing this is just kind of crazy. Prostitution is so taboo in the U.S. so it was interesting to see it happening right in front of you! It was also interesting to be with four Brazilians because prostitution is much more accepted (and some cases encouraged) in Brazil though it is still illegal.

Next, Victor and Gabriel went to the Heineken Museum. I wasn’t really interested...part of the cost was for the two drinks you got with admission and I wasn’t feeling so great. Drinking was the last thing that I wanted to do. Also, I already saw the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

Samir, Maurício and I walked around and took pictures. We all really like taking pictures so this was fun for us. Amsterdam is a really beautiful city.

We went over to check out the Nemo Science Museum but it was closed. Luckily, we found out it was FREE tomorrow (instead of 15 Euros or so) so we will probably go then.

Red Light District tour

We were all pretty tired so we went back to the hostel to take a nap. I’m not sure what happened but somehow my alarm on my phone got turned off and I woke up at 8pm. That wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that I had a tour of the red light district booked for 8pm! I jumped out of bed and ran there. Luckily, I was able to find the tour group down the street and didn’t really miss anything.

The tour was really interesting. It was expensive (21 Euros) so no one else wanted to go on it. I went because I was interested in learning about how all of this worked. Here were some of the things that I learned:

No safety rules (concerning condoms, kissing, etc...). This is all up to the prostitute.
Prostitutes can rent one of the windows for around 150 Euros for an 8-12 hour shift

Along with this rental fee comes security services from the landlord. The prostitutes have a panic button that sets off an alarm on the street in front of the window.

The going rate is about 50 Euros for 15 minutes

Part of the tour was visiting a Red Light district visitor center run by a former prostitute who answered our questions and such.

After the tour we all met up back at the hostel. Gabriel, Victor and Maurício went out but Samir and I were tired so we both went to bed.

The Netherlands: Day 1 (Amsterdam)

2009-04-03T03:08:00.000-07:00

Me in Amsterdam

This morning at 10am we flew from Budapest to Eindhoven, Netherlands. I pretty much just fell asleep right after the plane took off and woke up in Eindhoven. I was pretty tired. Last night someone ended up convincing me to go to a bar instead of going to bed early. Oh well, it was a lot of fun and I’m glad I went but I really need to start getting a little more consistent sleep. This is my six weekend in a row of traveling and almost every one of these weekends I have pulled at least one almost all-nighter with less than four hours of sleep.

When we got into Eindhoven we immediately got on the AirExpress bus to Amsterdam (about 40 Euros for round trip). This was around a two hour ride. I sleep a little more during this ride.

When we first got into Amsterdam (around 3 or so) we were all very hungry so we stopped at McDonald’s. Not my choice but it seems that people outside America aren’t as disgusted with American fast food as us Americans are. McDonald’s is pretty interesting in other countries though...

Ya, I also have no idea what a “bitterballen” is...google translate says they are “croquette balls” and the dictionary says that croquette is like mashed potatoes and minced meat and stuff....interesting!

After grabbing some food we headed to the hostel. It was called the Bostel Amsterdamse Bos Youth Hostel. It was about 30 minutes outside of Amsterdam. It was hard to find a place that we could get a reservation for five only a couple of days beforehand. We stayed in a bungalow...more about this later!

We pretty much just dropped our stuff off at the hostel and then headed back downtown. We grabbed some food at this really cheap pasta place. It’s called Spagi in case you go to Amsterdam.

We spent most of the night just walking around looking into stuff to do the next day and checking out some shops and stuff in town.
We headed back to the hostel pretty early to get a good night of sleep because we all were tired.

Last Day in Prague

2009-03-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Since had to leave tonight at 10:30pm we had to check out of the hostel by 10 in the morning. We were a little tired because of going out the night before but not that bad.

We went out for breakfast. One nice thing about Prague being filled with more tourists than Disney World is that you can get eggs and bacon for breakfast! Try going out for breakfast in Budapest...I hope you like McDonalds!

Tour

Samir and I went on a sightseeing bus tour. The other guys didn’t want to and so they went and looked at this church that had a Brazilian saint in it.

We kind of wanted to know a little bit more about the things we were looking at around town. It was about 10 Euros which is a pretty decent price (it was 1hr and 15 mins). They just drove you around and a recording played that told you about the things you were seeing. They had it recorded in 20-some languages! This was cool because this way Samir could listen to it in Portuguese (his first language) which was probably a lot easier. Unfortunately, it was Portugal Portuguese and he kept debating whether it was easier to understand the English or the Portugal Portuguese!

Castle (again)

We went back to the castle to go in the Cathedral. Really cool cathedral.

Church

We ended up going to the church that they went to while we did the sightseeing tour. It was a really pretty little church.

Going home

We took the overnight (10:30pm - 6:00am) bus home. I like overnighting the travel because it saves time. The bus ride was a little bumpy but we were all able to get at least a couple of hours of decent sleep.

Impressions of Prague

Don’t get me wrong-Prague is a cool place. It is cool to see a city that has never been destroyed by war. With this being said, Prague didn’t even come close to meeting my expectations. Prague has been hyped to the point where I was expecting to see one of the coolest and prettiest places in the world. I don’t think that it is. Also, it is overflowing with tourists. I’m not one of those people who are against touristy places. I just don’t like it when there are so many people that you can’t even get a good picture or see somethings because of the huge crowds. I also go to other countries to experience and learn about the culture. This is impossible in Prague. It is likely that the only Czechs that you’ll meet will be the ones selling you souvenirs on every corner.

To be fair, we did have some crappy weather which can take away from the beauty of a place. My conclusion on Prague would be this: go there for a day if it is a nice day and you really like pretty old buildings. Don’t go to experience Czech or Eastern European culture and don’t expect it to be “breathtaking.”

First day in Prague

2009-03-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

More sightseeing

Today we went to the old town square and saw the clock tower. The clock tower was really cool and the view from it is very good

It was, again, hard to get good pictures because there were just so many people.

Next, we went to go see the castle. It was a really cool castle with another great view.

Unfortunately the cathedral was closed so we will go back tomorrow to see it.

Dinner

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in town. Good food. You are probably thinking, “ok, cool Elliot. Why is that worth mentioning?” It is worth mentioning because it was the first time in my life I did something: not leave a tip. This waiter was a jerk. First thing he did was downright lie to us about the size of the pizza saying it was really small (using his hands to show us the size) and only for one person. We later saw the pizzas. They were quite large and definitely shareable. He must have just wanted to sell us more expensive things. Next he wouldn’t fill up my glass with water. He said that I would have to buy a bottle. And here was the last straw...I was over talking to this group of Irish girls at the table next to us and he comes up and asks me, “Would you like to buy some drinks for these ladies?” I knew exactly what he was doing-trying to put me on the spot in front of them where it would be harder to say no. Kind of like those guys who try to sell roses to guys sitting with their girlfriend at a restaurant. Not going to happen. I just told him, “no thanks, we’re good.” He seemed surprised and stood there for a second and looked at me. He then ignored our table for the rest of time that we were there. We gave his tip to the Italian guitar player who was awesome.

Going out

We went out to a club (Karlovy Lazne) with the Corvinus kids. It is supposedly the biggest club in Central Europe (it is five stories with dance floors on each). It was all right. Definitely a step above the places I have been here in Budapest (not counting the Spa Party I went to) but definitely a step below that club we went to in Serbia (on the 8th floor of an office building in Belgrade).

I thought that while I was here I might as well try absinthe. I actually tried it twice. A French kid from Corvinus bought a bottle and had it at the hostel. I tried a taste of it and it wasn’t really a big deal. A little strong but nothing crazy. The lady who sold it to him said that “here’s the fake stuff I sell to tourists and here is some real (and more expensive) stuff that I’ll sell to you.” That poor kid actually fell for it. The next time I tried absinthe was at the club. This absinthe was entirely different. It was probably the strongest alcohol that I have ever tasted. It burned up into my face. It was so strong. Unlike what most people think it doesn’t really make you hallucinate. It is just a strong, hard alcohol and a couple of shots of it will make you so drunk you can’t count to four.

The Journey to Prague

2009-03-13T09:38:00.000-07:00

Getting to Prague

Today we (Samir, Danilo, Victor and I) left for Prague. We are all pretty tired because the bus left at 7am. I am really tired because I didn’t go to bed until like 2 and got up at 5:30. I really need to fix this sleep schedule. Speaking of being tired...I accidentally had booked our tickets to Prague for one week later (March 20th). Whoops. Luckily I was able to change us to be on this bus for 2,000 forints (about 8 dollars)! Our tickets for the way back were fine because we had booked two one-ways (Budapest-Prague on OrangeWays and Prague-Budapest on Volanbusz) and I didn’t book our return tickets incorrectly.

The bus was pretty nice. It’s kind of funny-they played Wedding Crashers dubbed in Hungarian with English subtitles. Great movie but I slept most of the time. The bus only made one stop (in Bratislava, Slovakia) so it made pretty good time (though we left a little late).

There were a bunch of exchange kids from Corvinus (another school here in Budapest) on the bus. Funny enough, I already knew one of them. A couple of Mondays ago at Morrisons (the bar all the exchange kids go to on Monday nights), my roommate was hanging out with all the other Brazilians and this pretty girl walks by him. He shouts out loud “GOSTOSA!” (Portuguese slang for “really hot girl”). The girl gave him a funny look and so hey said to the other Brazilians, “hey, she’s looking at me weird...” She then turned around, looked right at him and said “I’m from Brazil; I speak Portuguese!” Wow, was he embarrassed.

When we got into Prague (around 2pm) we asked the attendant at the bus station about what times the buses left for Český Krumlov. Both Kerry (the girl working at the hostel in Belgrade) and Yusuke (the Japanese kid that we met in Slovenia) highly recommended it. Supposedly it is a cool little town that has a good castle. Unfortunately, the lady working at the ticket booth told us that this was “impossible” on that day because the bus left earlier in the day. She was really mean and cranky. The people who work at the ticket booths at the Budapest train stations are really rude too so we were kind of used to this kind of behavior. I was thinking that we could spend Friday (since we only had part of a day there anyway in Český). The Brazilians didn’t seem like they really wanted to go there anyway but were willing to follow me there.

Since we didn’t know where we were going to stay we just followed the Corvinus kids to the hostel at which they had reservations. They had an open four-person room which was nice. It was called Hostel Downtown.

After finding and checking into the hostel we went to go look for some food. The Brazilians didn’t want to go to the Czech restaurant that the guy working at the hostel suggested because it was a little expensive. We ended up going to KFC. Awful decision. I felt sick and couldn’t seem to get rid of the KFC smell after washing my face and brushing my teeth. I don’t usually eat KFC in the U.S. just because it is really unhealthy but I will admit it is good. Not here though. It was like a McDonalds with chicken. It had a very simple menu (like most of the fast food restaurants here in Eastern Europe) and was chicken burgers and fries. No mashed potatoes and stuff like that.

Sightseeing

After the KFC we went sightseeing. We went to see the famous Charles Bridge since it was near the hostel. It really is a beautiful bridge but it is kind of hard to appreciate it because it is swamped with people. It’s really hard to even get a lot of good pictures while you are on it because there are really just so many people.

We then went and climbed up a hill to get a better view of the city. Unfortunately this hill was covered with trees so you really couldn’t see much. There was a mini-eiffel tower thing on the hill but it looked closed so we didn’t go up it. From things that I heard later it probably wasn’t but whatever.

We took a nap when we got back (we were still exhausted from the early bus ride) and then got some food. We were too tired to go out so we just hung around at the hostel with the Corvinus kids for a while.

I have been really bad about keeping my blog up-to date. I am going to try to be better about it. This entry (along with many others) are written after the date they happened.

Budapest

2009-02-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

Budapest is a beautiful city.

Here are some more pictures

My Birthday

I have been craving Mexican food really badly so for my birthday we found a Mexican restaurant and went there for dinner. It was actually pretty good!

Hungary

2009-02-18T16:24:00.000-08:00

Trip

Things are going well here so far (I've been here since February 3rd). The trip here was a little crazy. I was stuck in London for a day because every flight was canceled due to snow. Then they couldn't find my bag for five days...after about five or six days in the same clothes (because I didn't have my bag while stuck in London either) I ended up buying some clothes because my mom was worried about me not being able to make new friends when I was wearing the same clothes everyday. The clothes were in general pretty cheap but the weird thing is that every article of clothing cost about the same (1000-2000 forints or $4-8 dollars). That is cheap for pants. It is quite expensive for boxers!

Not much to see from London. I spent most of my time in the airport and when outside of the airport it seemed pretty much like an expensive version of the U.S. where people talk funny.

It's interesting though that British Airways serves wine on the flights (for free). This Italian kid who sat next to me, Andrea, chugged two (maybe it was even three) of these little wine things...some people are just built to drink. I realized after about a half bottle that I am not one of them. I just wanted some water!

Hostel

I stayed in the Hostel (Hotel Ventura) for the first eight nights. It wasn't a bad place but after a while you are pretty ready to get out! It was cramped and living out of a suitcase makes it hard to stay organized (as you can see in the picture). It was also a long way away from everything. We were glad to get an apartment.
Apartment

Here's what my apartment looks like

I was living with a kid from UW, Brett and a guy from Turkey named John.

Unfortunately, John had to go back to Turkey because of some class scheduling conflicts that would delay his graduation back home. It's too bad because he became a good friend while living here (him, Brett and I were also in the same room in the hostel). Brett and I hope that we can go visit him in Turkey sometime this semester.

A guy from Brazil, Mauricio, took John's spot when he left. He's a cool guy too and we're good friends.

I didn't know Brett before studying abroad here but he's a good guy. He goes to UW but is from the Boston area.

Friends

Everyone here is pretty nice. There are seven of us from UW. Many of them are friends from back home so they hang out together a lot. I hang out with them sometimes but not all of the time.

Since this is a technology-orientied school mostly everyone is in engineering or architecture. I think that this gets a pretty good group of kids because anyone who is going to study abroad is somewhat social and engineers who have people skills are often very fun people. Just ask Lisa, she loves engineering boys! (We'll see if she's reading this!)

I play soccer with the Brazilian guys once and a while. It's a lot of fun. In the U.S. soccer is really rough and dangerous (lots of knee injuries). When they play it's almost more like basketball where passing is more important than just kicking it really hard.

Language

Hungarian

The Hungarian Language is kind of crazy. It isn't related much to any other language in the world only distantly to Finnish and Estonian. Only newer words like szenvics (sandwich) which is pronounced "send-veech" are anything like English. Also, multiple words are sometimes concatenated so if you see a word you don't know, it can be very hard to look it up in the dictionary. Either way, I'm trying to learn a little bit of the language. I feel like it is rude to go somewhere and not at least learn to say "Hello" and "Thank you" in their language.

Spanish

There are some Spanish kids here so I get to use my Spanish while talking to them. Spanish is an awesome language. It just flows so nicely. I really wish I could have studied abroad in a Spanish-speaking country but it just didn't work out with my summer plans.

Portuguese

My Brazilian friends have been trying to teach me a little Portuguese. I don't know if you have ever heard Portuguese but it is a really cool language. It sounds like a smoother and softer version of Spanish. I would say Spanish makes English sound ugly and Portuguese makes Spanish sound ugly. If you know Spanish you can read some Portuguese (a decent number of words are spelled similar their Spanish counterparts) but when spoken it is much different. It is not "the same thing as Spanish" as many people say. The pronounciation is quite difficult because like English (and unlike Spanish) the same letters don't always make the same sound. Also, at least in Brazilian Portuguese, many words can be pronounced a few different ways.

What I've been up to this last semester

2009-02-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! A lot has happened in the last few months and I haven't talked to some of you who live far away in quite a while. Here's a little update:

I'm studying abroad in Hungary!

Why Hungary?

It actually wasn't too much of a choice. Since I am studying abroad as a second-semester senior, I will be in school an extra semester (now I'll graduate in December 2009). Since I'm going to be in school another semester, I also get another summer break. Unfortunately, many schools in other countries have school schedules that go much later into the summer than schools in the U.S. I decided that at as awesome as study abroad sounds, doing a summer internship (see "This Summer" below) has also been a great experience and that I should fit study abroad around that. Mexico and Hungary were the two places I considered. UW-Madison has an engineering study abroad program with a similar school schedule in both of these countires. Mexico would be cool because I could use my Spanish and Hungary would be cool because I would be in Europe and could travel around to other places in Europe. Eventually I decided that I wanted to go to Hungary.

This Summer

I am going to intern at Facebook. I guess this means I have to get better at responding to wall posts!

I'm really sad to leave Intuit. The people that I have met there the last two summers (maybe you who is reading this) were so much more than my co-workers. They are great friends and they also often felt like family away from home. I'll still be in the Valley this summer and so I will still get to hang out with all my old friends. Even the ones who now work at Google. I won't mention any names!

I bought a mac!

When Apple came out with the new MacBook Pro I bought one of the old ones (because of the several hundred dollar price drop). It has taken a little while to get used to but it's pretty awesome.

One of the best features the mac has is that it comes with a program Apple created specifically for easily and efficiently downloading Firefox. It's called Safari!

I hope that all of you are doing well and that you are now up to date with my life! If you have a blog or personal website make sure you put a comment with a link (or e-mail me it). I'm in the Chicago airport right now so I will write more when I get to Hungary!

Jacó

2008-08-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

We took a boat from Montezuma to Jacó this morning. It was a cool boat ride. I packed my camera away in my bag because I didn't want to get it wet. (It got wet in La Fortuna and didn't work until the next day). They had us put all of our bags in plastic garbage bags so I figure we would be getting wet. I was wrong. I should have kept it out since it was a really cool ride. We saw a big turtle swimming in the middle of the ocean!

Jacó isn't very nice. It is very Americanized and kind of dirty. We knew it was going to be like this but we needed to cross over from the Nicoya peninsula (see picture in last post) to get back to San José.

We are probably going to just surf a little this afternoon and then go to bed. I am tired and ready to be back in the US.

I miss all you guys and I miss Madison. See you soon!

-Elliot

Last couple of days

2008-08-24T12:31:00.001-07:00

Saturday

Bus

We took the public bus to Montezuma this morning. It took a little while to get there because we had to transfer buses in Cobanó. I think that backpacking is more "adventure" than "vacation."

Once we got to Montezuma we started looking for a hotel. We wanted one that was cheap so we looked in our Fodor's travel book about Costa Rica (thanks mom!) and found a place called "Hotel Lucy" that was supposed to be cheap and clean (our two criterion...in order of importance). They had one room left (good news) but with only "una cama" (one bed...bad news). We thought we might as well take a look at it (maybe it would be a really big bed). It wasn't. It also had a silk tent thing hanging over it from the ceiling. I like Chris a lot but not that much.

Most places were booked but we found another "hostel" type place that was cheap but had two beds. It wasn't very nice. At all. The kind of place where you don't know if showering will make you cleaner. (Sorry mom!)

The beach in Montezuma is pretty. There aren't good waves for surfing (it is in sort of a bay, look at the picture I drew on the map). Here's the beach:

Waterfalls

After getting to our hotel and eating, we went running to go find the waterfalls. We didn't take a tour or anything and it took us a while to find where to go. Once we did, we ended up taking a way that was a lot more work than it had to be but it was fun (and steep) hiking through the forest. I really wish that I had brought my camera but we didn't since we were running. We thought that the waterfalls would be close enough that we could just go back there later or the next morning with a camera before we left. Unfortunately, we didn't have time. While we were walking there, we saw a squirrel monkey in the trees on the side of the road! That was really cool. Again, since we didn't have a camera, I don't have a picture (sorry Lauren!).

The water falls were really cool. The first one was cool because you could walk behind it. If you have never been behind a waterfall, try to do it sometime. It is really cool. The water was hitting the pond underneath so hard that there was a mist of water flying up through the air. It was really bizarre to see water flying up!

After seeing the first waterfall, we hiked along a trail to the second water fall. It was above the first one. (It fell into a pool and the water from The second waterfall was the one that, supposedly, you can jump off of. Well, I guess you can jump off of either but supposedly the second one is the one that you can jump of an maybe live.

This should give you a clearer picture:

This was a little later in the afternoon, maybe three or four, and not many people were there. We didn't see anyone jump off the second one or the first (but I think that is kind of implied). A local guy showed up and said that he had jumped off of the second one several times but he wasn't doing it that day. There was no way that I would even consider doing something like this without seeing it be done. Neither of us did it.

Back at our hostel, there were some guys from Argentina and I guess one or two of them had done it. They were there earlier in the day when there were a bunch of people doing it.

Later

It is funny how small this country is. We often see people we met several days earlier in a different town. We saw a Diogo, a Portugese guy from the hostel in Monteverde, and a couple that we had seen on the shuttle from two days earlier. The next morning, we actually saw Jeff and Grant, two guys from SoCal (what my California friends call "Southern California") that we met in La Fortuna. Unfortunately, we didn't really have much time to hang out with any of these people again since we've been bouncing around so much.

There were some girls staying next door from Europe (two from Germany, one from Switzerland) who were pretty cool. We spent most of the night talking with them and the Argentineans . Around 10 or so they were all going to go to Chico's, a bar that was supposedly the happening place at night in Montezuma according to numerous sources including Diogo and some guys from West Virginia that we met in town. Those German (and Swiss) girls were hardcore. They had to catch a 6am public bus the next day. I asked them if they were going out and one of them just said "we'll sleep on the bus tomorrow." Unlike Sámara, I made the smart decision and didn't go out. I needed to get some sleep to get over this cold and, due to the cold, didn't really have the energy to be much of a party animal. If you know me well, you are probably asking, is this a more mature and grown up Elliot that doesn't give up his health and much needed sleep to hang out with beautiful women? I don't know if I would read into it too much since I really just want to get rid of this cold but maybe I have grown up a little this trip. Hopefully not too much. I don't want to grow up yet.

The Argentineans did try very hard to persuade us to come along with them and the girls (hmm...I wonder why).

When they all got back (I don't know what time, I didn't even get out of bed) the Argentineans were all really loud and drunk. (Maybe the German girls were too but we couldn't hear much over the Argentineans). That didn't really bother me that much; they had fun and I kind of expected to wake up. What was frustrating, however, was that they decided to pound, on our door as loud as possible for quite a while. I really have no idea why and I didn't feel like getting out of bed. It was funny because the next morning we were talking a little loud and they "ssshhh-ed" us (there was an open ceiling connecting the rooms). We didn't really think that they had the right to "ssshhh" us after pounding on our door during the night. So maybe it wasn't them pounding on our door. That means it was the German girls...we're just telling ourselves now that is what happened. :)

Friday

We really wish we didn't go to that party...it really didn't end very well and wasn't that much fun. We got up around 7 to eat breakfast and then get on the shuttle to Malpaís. Some German guys we met in Sámara (Mo and Felix) said that the surfing there was really good.

The shuttle was really a taxi to Nicoya (since we were the only ones signed up from Sámara) and then a shuttle from there to Malpaís. In true "tico time" fashion, it was an hour late! We were the only ones on the shuttle going to Malpaís - the others were going to Montezuma (nearby) and we split once we were closer to the two cities. The ride was really bumpy on some pretty bad roads. There were huge potholes everywhere and we drove through some huge water puddles a foot or two deep.

In Malpaís, we grabbed some lunch and then found the hostel that the Germans in Sámara had stayed at and said was nice.

Malpaís is a little sketch. We went looking to rent a surfboard but a lot of places weren't open in the late afternoon and one wanted an $800 deposit ($400 for each board)! No thanks. Finally, we found a guy who would rent us boards without an outrageous deposit as long as we promised to bring them back (our IDs were back at our hotel and this town seems like the kind of place where someone might not bring back a board). He also needed them by 5:30 because he had to go somewhere.

The surfing was pretty tough. The waves were huge, frequent and powerful. Even to just paddle out a decent ways took all of the energy I had. A wave would knock you back a ways and by the time you got ready to paddle out farther, another wave was there ready to knock you back a again. We also tried a shortboard for the first time which is a little more difficult to stand up on but was a little easier to paddle out on. It was fun but hard. I don't know if I have ever seen waves that big.

We would like to stay here and surf another day but it's not going to work out. Our flight leaves Monday afternoon at 2:30pm and we can catch a bus from Jacó to San José that morning that would leave early in the morning and get us to San José plenty early. To get to Jacó, we would need to take a boat from Montezuma, which only is in the morning. Which means we have to take a public bus or private shuttle from Malpaís to Montezuma. The public buses are much cheaper so we take those when we can. The public bus from Malpaís to Montezuma are in the morning and afternoon. We want to see the waterfalls in Montezuma so we are going to take the morning bus.

Here is the plan to get out of Costa Rica by Monday afternoon:

Thursday

We got up a little later today (around 9) and by the time we ate breakfast and such the waves weren't good for surfing so we just swam. Also, by the time the waves were breaking far enough out again to surf, it started to storm. Bummer.

We met a girl from Slovakia who was living in Baltimore and visiting with her friends from there. They all seemed pretty cool. We were all going to meet up later at some reggae party that a bar on the beach there was having that night.

I really should have gone to bed instead of go to the party but I went to the party anyways. It didn't end so well with some local guy getting mad at us (long story) and us leaving.

Wednesday

Sámara

Like I said before, we are now in Sámara, a small beach town on the Pacific Coast. After a day and half or two in Monteverde, we decided that we were sick of really touristy spots and wanted to mainly surf and swim in the ocean the rest of the trip. It rained a bunch in Monteverde and was actually somewhat cold during the night. After a night or two of being cold and wet I started to get a cold. This made me want to leave Monteverde even more.

Here in Sámara, we are staying at a pretty nice hotel called Hotel Belvedere. It is run by some German people who moved to Costa Rica. It has air conditioning and free breakfast but is definitely the most expensive hotel we have stayed at so far ($65/night). It is nice to get some good sleep though to get over the cold.

We been surfing a little here in the unbelievably warm water and have been swimming a bunch too. The waves are big and the beach is beautiful.

Tons of things!

2008-08-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

This is from a couple of days ago, I guess I didn't press "publish":

Here´s what we have been doing lately...

Wednesday

Sámara

We are in Sámara now. It is a really cool little (pretty much two streets) town. The beach is really beautiful and the waves are huge! The water is almost hot! The warmest water we have felt all trip (including showers) is the ocean here. It is truly amazing.

More pictures (and words) to come. Make sure you check out the video of the rope swing that I added to the last post.

Tuesday

Hostel

We stayed in a cool hostel last night with a bunch of people from all around the world. It was also really cheap (only $6 for each of us). We shared a room and bathroom with four other people. Three of them are from L.A. and we didn´t meet the other guy...I think they said he was from Japan but we didn´t see him. We went out to a bar with some of the other people who were staying at the hostel last night and the girl who works there. One of the girls staying there was from Israel and knew how to Salsa dance (I guess that used to be popular in Israel) and she taught us some moves. We were pretty tired and headed back around 11:00, which really isn´t that early since most things happen in the morning (since it rains in the afternoons).

Zip lines

We did the zip line canopy tour. It was pretty cool but not nearly as cool as the rappelling.

Bridges

We also did the canopy bridge walk thing...it was ok. You just walk on some bridges through the rainforest and look around.

Monteverde

We don´t really like it here that much. Maybe it is all of the tourists or just that it isn´t as fun as La Fortuna/Arenal. We want to swim and surf in the ocean so we are going to take a shuttle tomorrow to Sámara, a beach on the Pacific coast. We were going to go to Tamarindo but changed our mind. A bunch of people said that Tamarindo is really dirty and is a bunch of tourists and that Sámara is better, or "tranquilo" as they described it.

I have a lot to say but it looks like it cleared up and there is an hour left to surf...I´ll write more tomorrow

More fun stuff!

2008-08-18T19:55:00.000-07:00

The last two days have been really busy!

Monday

Rapelling

This morning, we went rapelling (falling with harness) down some waterfalls with the same tour guide company as the volcano tour. This was a lot of fun. There were a few different waterfalls and we hiked through the rainforest from one to another. At the end, we had some really good homemade food they made for us.

Rope swing

While we were on the ride back from rapelling, we spotted a place where some locals were swinging from a rope into a pool of water at the end of a small waterfall. When we got back, we booked our ride to Monteverde (where I am now) and then walked over to the rope swing. There were some other tourists there (who had a local as a private guide who showed them the spot). It was one of the most fun things that I have every done! Also, it was totally free. You just had to walk over.

Jeep-Taxi-Jeep

Once we got back from the rope swing, we started took the Jeep-Taxi-Jeep thing to Monteverde. It was a van ride and then a boat ride and then another van ride. It was through the same tour company (the roads from La Fortuna to Monteverde were incredibly dicey). We are in Monteverde now and I better go because I'm not suposed to be on the internet very long (to give others a turn).

Note: the connection here is incredibly slow. If you e-mailed me I will get back to you in a day or two. Also, the connection is not good enough to upload a whole photo so I will do that when I next get a chance.

Sunday

Bus

After flying in Satuday, we woke up and took one of the public buses from San José to La Fortuna, where the Arenal Volcano is. It was about a four and half hour ride and we slept a lot of the way (it left at 6:15am). The roads were really sketch and all but a few of us on the bus were locals (no inglés). It was a pretty cool experience.

Volcano Tour

Our bus got in aroundWe bummed around La Fortuna for a little while and then signed up for a volcano tour. We could see the volcano pretty clearly early in the day (before noon) but by the time our tour left, it was raining. We took a walk through the rainforest and then they drove to the side where you can sometimes see lava. We didn't however, since it was too cloudy. No big deal; it was a lot of fun.

Hot springs

One of the cool parts about Arenal being an active volcano is the natural hot springs that it creates. They are pretty much natural hot tubs! Our volcano tour took us to them for a couple of hours and we just hung out there.

Kap's Place

2008-08-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

Not much to say about today.

Very tired (pretty much all of our sleep was on the plane rides).
San José is ok but not the coolest place ever. Supposedly it is ok during the day but after "las diez" (10 pm) it is full of "ladrones" (theives), "putas" and "travestias" according to our taxi driver. I'll let you translate the last two yourself...
We are staying at Kap's Place. It's a pretty cool hotel.

Barely anyone speaks more than a little English. I must say I was expecting a bunch of English-speaking people (since so many Americans visit here). I hear that more people speak English in the more touristy areas (San José is not one). Either way, I enjoy practicing (ok, more like resuscitating) my Spanish. I'm glad that I know even as much as I do.
It's the rainy season.

We're here!

2008-08-16T14:46:00.000-07:00

We're here! It is really exciting to be in another country (this is my first time)! That's all for now...time to go out in San José while it is still safe!

I'm starting a blog

2008-08-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Costa Rica and so I thought that this might be any easy way to tell about it!