Onward

On day four (five? Again, my folder with all of the relevant information is very far away) of our trip, we left San Jose and all of its comfort for a small town called Sierpe. It was here where I took my last naked shower and had my last mattress for a week. It was also here where I learned about of the most insanely fun (read: insane) games I have ever played, spectacularly called Ninja. While I had to hone my skills over the next few weeks, it was clear that one of my classfriends (Yup, just coined that word) named Laura Dushkin is either a martial arts grandmaster or was, in fact, a ninja in one of her past lives. 

Anyways, the game forces you to make ridiculous poses while you try to slap everyone else's hands. When both of your hands are whacked, you're out. Of course we weren't playing this game inside of our rooms, we were playing in the middle of the street outside of our hotel, in the middle of the night. I have no doubt in my mind that the Ticos who passed by our game added 'crazy' to the other words that they associate with Americans.

The next day, after a quick breakfast, we were jammed on boats for a two hour ride out to our next destination, Corcovado National park. The waters were choppy as hell and our driver was insane, so once our moist, (ha!) tired bodies reached the beach, we were ecstatic. It also helps that the beach looked like this.

Photo credit: Erin Newman

Of course, whenever you get to a new destination, you have to go explore everything, right? After setting up our tents, we ran off, going right for the tide pools. Within five minutes, we discovered a goddamn two foot long croco-fucking-dile. Like the intelligent people that we were, we looked at it from a safe distance, and we  never had any chance of being harmed.

No, wait, we didn't do that, we made a tight circle around it and started poking it, going so far as to tug the guy a few times.While this particular specimen tolerated our abuses for a few minutes, it eventually made a beeline right for the ocean, obviously right between one of my friend's legs. The crocodiles sudden movement not only made everyone jump backwards ten feet, but it also allowed me to discover that my tent mate, Jake O'Connor, isn't all that masculine after all, considering the high pitched yelp that exited his mouth.

Today's Special: Dumb college students' fingers
Also, photo credit: Heather Reichert

I think this crocodile told his mom about those terrible humans that bullied him, because for the next few days, we saw a 10 foot crocodile chilling around 200 meters off shore.

I'm no expert in reading crocodile facial expressions, but I'm pretty sure that look means, "I dare you to touch my kid again." Photo credit: Hannat Minify

And with that, its time for me to get off and try to memorize fifty species of plants. Yay.