Uvita!

Day 266, El Sabado 6 de abril 2013 19:25

Uvita!

My school helps me so much making my exchange year the best year of my life. It is a nice school where I can be myself, I have a lot of friends, I can be lazy as shit and of course the school trips. This time it was time to go to Uvita, Bahía Ballena; the Whale bay.

First on Wednesday, I got the disappointing news that I had to go to immigration in San José on the day we were leaving for the trip. After some googling and some calling I fixed myself a ride there with a public bus later on the day. Getting the visa was just some signatures a photo and done, I got some kind of ID-card which is pretty cool.

I got to the busstation around 4:30 so I had to wait 2 hours which isn’t that much or bad, I just waited, waiting more as 30 minutes for a train or bus in The Netherlands is NOT done. On the way with the bus there was a pretty bad accident with a car and a tourist rental car, the bus passed before the police and everybody arrived so it was all very fresh. Some people got out to see if they can help or just to see the accident. I’ve never heard some screaming like that, so helpless, hopeless so, hollow. Seeing the smashed cars wasn’t that bad but hearing the screams of the people who are trapped in sight in probably in pain; that took away the color from my face. The bus went on and I realized that this is probably a tourist, who was going to have a nice holiday, and now her life is marked forever. Some people in the bus kept so cold under situation they were like: ‘hey I gotta go to work’, maybe they are already used to the accidents.

Now the adventure starts. The bus stopped at a highway restaurant near Uvita to stop for dinner, this was about 10 in the evening. I got off here since it was a direct bus and it wouldn’t stop any closer to Uvita. I walked about 1 kilometer to Uvita, while is walking I called 2 teachers who were supposed to pick me up, but they didn’t answer the phone; neither any of my classmates, I figured out that there must be no signal at the camping. So I had to look for the camping myself. After asking some people I took a half dark dirt road which leads to Uvita center and from there on I should ‘get there easily’. This half dark road was about 2,5 kilometers long and took my past a school bus which made me think I already arrived but it turned out not to be ours. In Uvita center I took another dirt road which I saw as my only option. While walking there I heard a bus stopping back in the center so I ran back to ask about the camping. They told me that there are various camping’s so I figured out my school is probably camping at the national park itself; so I asked where the national park is. They told me 2 kilometers that so I walked 2 kilometers more. By this time my classmate Hernan finally picked up the phone and described an entrance of the camping exactly the as I was looking at, I thought I arrived; wrong, very wrong. It turned out that there are 2 gentrances; I was at the wrong one. The fastest and safest way was to walk 4 kilometers over the beach to arrive at the camping. I had 8% battery left so using the flashlight had only little time so I walked very fast to arrive quicker. I passed a sign saying: ‘Watch out for crocodiles.’ A dog followed me all the way to keep me company; this is a big and easy noticeable change of me: I like animals better as before. I pretty much hated dogs I didn’t know, and now I am one of these persons petting unknown dogs.  A few classmates went to meet me on the way and when I finally met them I was pretty relieved. I put all my stuff in the tent one tried to sleep, but how I tired I was after walking around 8 kilometers I couldn’t sleep of the heat. After I drank some water I finally fell asleep; around 1.

The next day I woke up at 6:15, I showered etc. and we prepared our cereal breakfast. When everybody was ready we did some volunteering cleaning up the forest which borders the beach. After that we played soccer and latter we made lunch. It was nice to be on a trip like this with just Ticos again, it all felt so natural. Cooking lunch went ‘Tico-style’ we cooked rice and ate it with tuna. When the people don’t feel like cooking they always eat rice with tuna, which is pretty nice but food of the lazy; apparently.

In the afternoon we walked to the main thingy, to tail of the whale. It is a weird form of the beach coming together and that way forming a beach in the shape of a whale’s tail. The cool effect is that you walk over the beach and there is water coming from 2 sides. We found a dead turtle there, the turtle was pretty big, but too bad also pretty dead. It chocked on a plastic string, real proof of direct consequences of pollution. Later we got to some a bit and I as always went deep into the sea with the big waves. Since to Ticos are scared of pretty much everything I was pretty lonely so I went back to the group the play with them in the tiny baby-waves, no just kidding but yeah nobody went with me so I stuck more in the back with the group.

In the evening we walked to the supermarket which was like half an hour away over another dark dirt-road but we had to buy our food. On the way back I told some nice ghost-stories about demon monkeys. Something which was pretty scary was seeing a sign: ‘beware of thieves’, the road light going off and a car coming out of nowhere. This was all a coincidence, but the guys in the car did ask if we could sell them weed, but we couldn’t so we quickly walked on. Later in the evening we told more ghost stories on the beach and we moved to a big tent later when to sea was coming up. We stayed up until around 3, chilling and talking and we woke up at 5.

Today, we had a tour with a small boat into the sea to see some island and to spot whales and dolphins. We got to see a lot of dolphins which is always cool, but it wasn’t whale season. We also did some snorkeling, I thought about the fact that a turists do tours like this

And that this is already my 4-5^th time on a boat like this, life is beautiful.

Now I am very very sleepy, I probably won’t post photo’s but check my facebook, there they are!