Chaska in South America

Well, Costa Rica so far has been full of interesting developments.  First of all, we found out a few days ago that Matt’s “inflamed kidney”, according to the first doctor he went to see, is in fact hepatitis.  We found this out after leaving San Jose thinking that the doctor was right and Matt would feel better very soon.  We went to a place on the Carribean coast called Cahuita, which is a tiny little town that doesn’t even have a bank or pharmacy, let alone a hospital of any kind.  As I mentioned in my last post, I have been having some money problems.  My ATM card expired at the end of February and on the last day that I was able to get money out of the ATM, the machine in Brazil, didn’t give me my money but charged my account (I’ve disputed the charge…we’ll see what happens.)  Therefore, I have been without ANY money whatsoever for the past couple weeks.  My parents sent my new card to the main post office in San Jose, but as I mentioned before, it never arrived.  Having already borrowed way too much money from Matt, I had to have my parents wire me some money, but of course with my luck, not even that worked out!  The Western Union office in San Jose didn’t have any money both times I went on two different days (have you ever heard of a money wiring service not having money?)  So, since we already had tickets to Cahuita, where there is no Western Union office, poor sick Matt and broke Chaska went to Cahuita anyway. 

Soon after arriving, Matt felt worse than ever.  He got the worst pain in his stomach and just felt awful.  He decided he could make it through the night, but we decided that he should probably come to Limon with me the next morning.  Limon is the biggest town on the Carribean coast and, according to the internet, was where the nearest Western Union was and also where the nearest hospital was.  We got up really early in the morning and took the horrible, hot, bumpy bus ride to Limon with Matt just feeling terrible.  I was able to finally get my money from Western Union, but the hospital visit was not so easy and painless.  We arrived at the hospital before 10 in the morning and didn’t leave until after 10 at night.  After various tests and even an ultra sound to check out his liver, it was established that he in fact did have hepatitis…most likely hepatitis A.  He probably got it form something he ate or drank within the last month and a half, we have no way of knowing exactly what or where.  There is no treatment for hepatitis, just rest and time.  They gave him an IV for several hours because he was dehydrated and prescribed him some pills to treat some of his symptoms like nausea, but that’s all they could really do.  There is a pretty good chance that I could have hepatitis too because it can be passed from person to person, but so far I haven’t shown any of the symptoms (I’m REALLY hoping it stays that way!) 

So, after finding out that Matt has hepatitis, he had some serious decisions to make.  Many people said he should go home, but the truth is it doesn’t matter where he is as long as he rests, and making the arrangements to go home would be far more stressful and tiresome for him than just resting here.  We left Cahuita the day after the hospital for a town just a half hour away called Puerto Viejo de Talamanca and he mostly just stayed in bed all day.  After two nights there, we headed back to San Jose, where I had to do some more things about my money issues and where we had to decide what to do about Matt.  He decided that the best thing to do would be to check into a hotel and rest for the rest of the time we have in Costa Rica.  So, that’s what he’s doing now.  He’s in San Jose lying in bed and watching cable television while I travel on my own for this week we have left here.  I’m now in a place called Monte Verde, which is in the central highlands and has amazing cloud forrests surrounding it.  I went hiking in one of the reserves yesterday and it was absolutely beautiful.  Outside of San Jose, Costa Rica is incredibly beautiful…it’s just amazing how beautiful.  However, I feel like its beauty is somewhat spoiled by the amount of tourists.  It is beautiful though, and despite the money and illness issues, I’m enjoying my time here.  Here are just a few photos of the Carribean Coast and of Monte Verde. 

This is a photo in Cahuita.  The weather was pretty cloudy and rainy while we were there, but it was really a really cute town.  The Carribean coast is so different from the rest of Costa Rica.  It’s more like what I imagine Jamaica to be like.  There are a lof of people from African decsent. and they speak a Carribean style English or a Creole dialect that is imposible to understand.  Lots of rastafarians with dreads and lots of reggae music being played!

This is in the national reserve in Cahuita.  It’s a forrest right on the beach with dense trees and bushes just full of animals.  I took a walk through it on my own the morning of the day we left Cahuita, while Matt rested at the hostel. 

Monkeys!!!  This is the first time I’ve seen moneys in the wild, and they made me so happy.  Swinging from the branches, throwing the remains of the fruit they were eating at me, just having a great time being monkeys. 

 Just a couple other photos taken in the reserve.  It was just absoluely beautiful. 

This is in Puerto Viejo, the town we went to after Cahuita.  Puerto Viejo is a little bit bigger than Cahuita, but it also is really small and cute with a big rastafarian vibe.

This is Salsa Brava, the best surf break in Puerto Viejo.  As you can see, it wasn’t breaking very big this day, but there were still lots of surfers out every day we were there. 

 This is here in Monte Verde yesterday when I went to the Santa Elena Cloud Forrest Reserve.  It was amazing…so green, lush, and beautiful.  I didn’t see any animals except for a few bugs and birds, but I was completely alone on my three hour walk through the forrest and it was a really cool feeling to be in the middle of a forrest like this.

 Well, that’s it for now.  Needless to say, this part of our trip has been a little different than the rest…having to deal with hospitals, illness, money problems, and what not.  As my dad said to me though, just some more stories to add to the hundreds we already have from this trip so far.  I’m heading over to the Pacific coast today and will be over there until Thursday.  Then I’ll return to San Jose and see how Matt’s doing.  We will fly to Guatamala on Friday and if Matt’s feeling well enough, we’ll continue as planned.  Otherwise, we’ll see what we do.  I’ll keep you updated.  I hope you’re all doing really well.  I can’t believe I have just a month left of this trip! 

It’s only been a little over a week since I last wrote, but I’ve done so much that it seems like much much longer! Matt and I left Paraty on the last day of Carnaval and took a bus to Sao Paulo, where we were scheduled to leave from to go to Venezuela. We had a full day in Sao Paulo in which we basically just walked around and tried to see some of the city. Sao Paulo is enormous–the third biggest city in the world. Despite being so large though, there really didn’t seem to be that many cool things to see as a tourist. We took the metro and saw some different areas, but mostly we just walked around and sat around trying to pass the time. I think it’s a city that you really need to know someone who can show you around and take you to the cool spots. We were scheduled to leave from the airport on Thursday at 6am, which meant that we had to be at the airport by 3am. A taxi to the airport was really expensive, and the metro and airport bus shuttle only ran until midnight, so we decided to take the metro and just stay up all night at the airport.
So, we arrived to Caracas, Venezuela on Thusday afternoon not having slept hardly at all for over 24 hours. We felt SO out of it upon arriving, and Caracas is not exactly the kind of city where being “out of it” is such a great thing! Several months ago, Matt talked to some Australians in Lima who had just come form Caracas and kept describing it as “heaps dodgy”, and they were right.  Upon leaving customs and going out into the airport, we were immediately bombarded by people from all sides yelling at us trying to get us to change money, hire a taxi, book a trip, etc.  We managed to get through them, but being the ultra organized travellers that Matt and I are, we had no set plan for what we were going to do once arriving to Caracas.  We knew we wanted to go to a place called Merida as soon as we could, but we had no plane or bus reservations.  We walked over to the domestic terminal and inquired about plane ticket prices for that day or the next, but they were much more expensive than we were willing to pay. So, we took our chances and decided to get a taxi to the bus station and hoped to get tickets for a bus that night.  Getting into central Caracas wasn’t such an easy feat though.  A couple months ago, the highway going from the airport into Caracas partially collapsed into the ground or something like that, and now what used to take 45 minutes to get into Caracas was taking up to 3 or 4 hours.  We talked to a couple taxi drivers and were told that there was an alternative route, but it would cost us a lot more.  We decided to pay to take the alternative route, and I’m really glad that we did.  It was a really cool drive over a mountain and had spectacular views of the ocean, which the airport is literally directly next to. The surrounding scenery on the mountain was just beautiful…very tropical. We also went through several “barrios”, or shanty towns, and found an interesting trend. Even though most of the houses were made from scrap metal and other materials and often didn’t have proper doors or windows, they almost all had a Direct TV satelite dish sticking off the side. Although, we didn’t go into any “villas” in Argentina, we were told that it’s the same there. Another thing that was very evident while on the drive to the bus station was the military presence. Every couple hundred feet or so, there was a checkpoint with several military men just standing around with enormous guns. We were only stopped once by one of these check points, and the officer just looked in at Matt and I and asked how we were and then allowed the taxi to keep going. Our taxi driver was incredibly friendly and talked to us a lot about the current political situation and told us how he felt about the current president Hugo Chavez. Although he admitted that he’s a little crazy and excessive at times, he told us that he’s been an excellent president and has done some really good things for the “pueblo” or common people of Venezuela. It was really interesting to talk to him about all this. Oh, one other thing that was really evident as soon as we stepped out of the airport were the size of the cars in Venezuela.  They are all huge!  I hadn’t seen so many huge SUV’s and trucks since leaving the U.S.  The over abundance of oil that Venezuela possesses is definitely evident, and you won’t believe how cheap gas is.  It literally is cheaper than water there–97bolivares cents for a liter (about 5 cents a liter, which would be about 20 CENTS A GALLON!!!)  Once arriving to the bus station, we once more had to fight through tons of really sketchy looking people yelling things at us, and were luckily able to get a bus ticket for a bus that left just an hour and a half later. Once on the bus and on our way, we felt a lot better…a couple hours was enough of Caracas for us.
We spent almost 14 hours on the bus to get to Merida and didn’t sleep hardly at all. The buses in Venezuela are absolutely FREEZING because they keep the air on at full blast. Later we found that there was a warning about this in our guide book and then were warned by several Venezuelans to always have a blanket or big jacket when riding the buses. Once in Merida we booked into a hostel right away and slept a good part of the day. Merida is a nice town up in the Andes Mountains. It is absolutely nothing like Caracas! The area surrounding Merida is absolutely beautiful, and outdoor activities are the thing to do while there, which we did tons of.

Our week in Merida was full of really cool activities. There are tons and tons of travel offices offering trips to a bunch of different places around Merida. We really wanted to do a 2 or 3 day trip, but we ended up staying in Merida the whole time and just did a different activity everyday. One of the big things in Merida is the the “teleferico” (cable car). It’s the longest cable car in the world and takes you 12.5 kilometers and takes you up to almost 5,000 meters.  There are four stations and takes about 2 hours to get to the top.  The change from the bottom to the top is pretty incredible.  It starts off in a really green cloud forrest where it’s really warm and then changes to a really arid mountainous landscape, and finally at the top it’s FREEZING and just rock.  After the teleferico we went to another one of Merida’s claims to fame.  Merida has an icecream shop that is in the Guiness Book of World Records for having the most flavors–over 800.  The man who owns it is an older man from Portugal, and he was the one that served us while we were there which was really cool.  He has the craziest flavors, including spaghetti and meatballs, ham and cheese, shrimp, onion and a bunch of other discusting flavors.  He also had normal flavors, which we ordered…not till after he made us try the ham and cheese flavor though.  The place was really cool…like a museum.  
The day after our teleferico ride and icecream shop, we ended up talking to a guy in our hostel who had wanted to do the same 2 day trip as we did through a tour agency.  Not enough people signed up, so we couldn’t do the trip, but the guy at the agency suggested going to a small town about an hour away and then hiking down to another town.  We decided to do the hike with the guy at our hostel, Olaf. Then in the morning, just before leaving, two others asked if they could come.  The towns were really cute, and the two hour walk was in scenery that was absolutely beautiful, but our day was more or less completely ruined because of one of the guys that came with us.  He was an Australian guy that Matt and I hadn’t met before going on the hike, but we had heard him talking to others, and we knew that it was going to be awful to have hime come with us.  Having him along was FAR worse than I ever could imagine it could be.  I can honestly say that he is the most abrasive, offensive, and just downright obnoxious person I have ever met.  Matt and I got really close to just punching him in the face a couple times because he was so bad.  I’ve never felt that annoyed by anyone in my life!  Here are some photos from our hike that day…it was so beautiful, it’s too bad we had that guy with us!!

 This is the church in the main square of the tiny little town of Jaji, where we started our hike.

 Here are the guys walking through the beautiful green scenery.  The guy on the far left is the horribly annoying guy, John.  The others were Claudio from Italy and Olaf from Germany.

The day after our too long day with John, Matt and I signed up for a day long trip called the Mixed Tour.  It consisted of 4x4ing (which was really just the ride to the place in a jeep), mountain biking, and horseback riding.  There were 7 people that went and two guides, and after our previous day with the most annoying person in the world, this day was wonderful.  Everyone in the group was really cool and we all got along really well.  We actually went back the same area we had been the day before on our hike to do some of the mountain biking, so this time we could enjoy it without being annoyed.  We did about 5km of flat and downhill biking and then we stopped at one point and were told that the following 4km were straight uphill.  The guides told us that we had the option of putting our bikes on top of the jeep and riding up if we felt we couldn’t do it.  Despite feeling really out of shape on the previous 5km, I decided to at least attempt the uphill.  I surprised myself and I think everyone else by being the third to the top.  Dad, you would have been so proud of me. I didn’t get off and walk my bike once the entire way!  After getting to the top of the hill, we put our bikes on top ot the jeep and drove a pretty long ways higher up the mountain.  Then, we got out and got back on the bikes and had over 15km of straight downhill riding, which took us less than half the time of the 4km uphill.  What an adreniline rush!  After our downhill ride, we rode over to a restaurant and had lunch and then got back in the jeep and drove about an hour and half to a little village, where we started our horseback ride.  The weather at this point turned really bad and we ended up getting poured on and hurrying back to the village as soon as possible.  What a great day though, I got to mountain bike and horseback ride in one day…two of my favorite things to do.  Here a couple photos from our day.

Here are the seven of us about to start our uphill ride.  From the left, Catarina and Fausto (Italy), Camilla (Denmark), me, Morten (Denmark), Matt, and Sonny (Switzerland.)

Here we are just after our uphill ride, everyone looking all sweaty and flushed.

That night, after our full day of bike riding and horseback riding, we were really tired, but we had had such a great time with all the people we were with, that a few of us decided to meet up that night.  We ended up staying out almost all night and had the best time together.  The next day two of the guys we had gone out with, Sonny and Morten (Swiss and Danish) and Matt and I took a bus ride out to some nearby thermal baths.  We were all sore from our previous day and tired from our night out, so it was just perfect.  Matt and I got along so well with these two guys and we spent over two hours at lunch that day just cracking up at different stories they each had.  Morten and his two friends left that night, so we took him out for a goodbye drink and then Matt and I went to dinner with Sonny, who was wonderful and treated us to dinner because we would be leaving the next day.  After meeting such a horrible person on Monday, it was SO nice to meet such great people! 

On the day that Matt and I left Merida, I did by the far the most extreme thing I have ever done.  The latest craze in Merida at all the tour offices is this activity called canyoning.  It consists of doing some steep downhill climbing, repelling down waterfalls, jumping off huge rocks into the river, and going through small rapids.  Our Danish friends Morten and Camilla had done it the day before we met them and couldn’t stop talking about it.  Sonny, who is definitely the extreme sport type (he gashed his leg open kite surfing just a couple weeks prior) really wanted to go and tried to convince Matt and I to come along.  Matt decided he really would rather not, but despite being terrified, it sounded incredible to me and I really wanted to do it.  So, the morning of the day that Matt and I were scheduled to leave Sonny and I went canyoning with two guides.  It was by far one of the biggest highlights of my entire trip in South America.  I was scared out of my mind at times, but I did everything!  I had honestly never felt so much adreniline or felt so frightened and excited at the same time…it was awesome.  The scenery of where we were was the most beautiful you can imagine too.  We were in a river with amazing waterfalls, with trees with tarzan looking vines hanging down all around, and with beautiful buttrflies and birds flying around.  The guides had a water safe box they took with them and I was able to take my camera along so they could take pictures of me.  Most of them didn’t turn out that well, but here are a few potos.

 Here we are, starting our hike down to the river.  Sonny is next to me and one of our guides Eduardo is next to him. 

 Here I am being trained on repelling….just before our first waterfall.  The first waterfall was the smallest we did, but in some ways the most difficult because we repelled right through the water.  It was an incredible feeling, having water just crash down on you as you repel down the side of a rock.  Yes, I was more scared than I ever have been.

 That thing with the yellow helmet is me!!!  This is the second waterfall we did.  It took me a while to work up the courage to do this one because when you looked down from the top you couldn’t see the bottom because of a huge rock that stuck out.  At one point, I was going to go down with one of the guides, but then I did on my own.   

 This is a really bad photo because of the spray of the water, but here I am hanging down at the bottom unsure of what to do next.  The thing is once you reach the bottom, you find yourself in the water in a really strong current…you have to be realy careful.

 Sonny and I after our second waterfall.  Look at the water splash at th bottom of the fall behind us!

 We stopped for lunch in the middle of the river.  It was so beautiful all around.  The one in the helmet is our guide Hector, who was also one of our mountain biking guides.  The one cutting bread is our other guide Eduardo, and Sonny is sitting over to the right.

This is Sonny at the bottom of our third and last waterfall.  I tried to take pictues of the whole waterfall, but it was so big it wouldn’t fit and the splash of the water was so strong that I couldn’t get a good one.  We were told that this waterfall is about 30 meters high, and it definitely was the most dangerous one.  I cannot believe that I actually did it! 

Canyoning was so much fun, and I’m so glad that I did it.  I felt so good about myself afterwards…those of you that know me well, know that I’m not the most athletic or brave person when it comes to this kind of stuff.  After getting back from canyoning, Matt and I left on an overnight bus to go back to Caracas.  The next morning, when arriving to Caracas, I found that I could barely move.  My entire body was sore, from my legs all the way up fo my neck and shoulders.  Matt had to help me with getting my backpack on and off that entire day!  After arriving at the bus station in Caracas, we immediately got a bus to the airport and left for San Jose, Costa Rica, where we are now.  We’ve been in San Jose for two nights.  I have some major money problems at the moment.  A really long story, but my ATM card expired and I was supposed to have my new one waiting for me at the post office here in San Jose.  Matt has been absolutely wonderful and has been acting as my personal bank the past week.  The card’s not here, so I’m going to have to come back to San Jose in a few days and figure out what to do. Matt has been feeling horrible the past few days.  Last night was the worst and he thought he might have a kidney infection. He got up early this morning and went to the doctor and was told that his kidney is probably just inflamed, and that there’s not much to be done.  We are going to head over to the Carribean coast today because we can’t stand being in San Jose any longer…I really hope Matt starts to feel better soon though!  Costa Rica so far has been my least favorite country.  It’s SO Americanized here in San Jose, it’s kind of disgusting.  I know that the coast will be A LOT nicer…I’m looking forward to being there.  I hope you are well, and I will write again soon!