Isla Tortuga

I’m sorry that I’m so far behind on writing! I’m going to try and use this week to catch myself up, but we’ll see. I seem to be unable to stop experiencing long enough here to write it all down.

When I got home from Montezuma, I was thoroughly exhausted and accidentally fell asleep within an hour of making it home without setting my alarm. The early hours of the morning rolled around all too soon as I was awoken by my host mom knocking on my door. My thought process went, “we didn’t wake up early enough to hike to the waterfall yesterday so my friends are trying to get me up this morning by knocking,” as I rolled over to ignore them and fall back into my dream. Then, “Tortuga! Tortuga!” was being yelled and the door was no longer being knocked upon as much as it was being pounded. I realized that I was, in fact, entirely disoriented, no longer in Montezuma, and quickly became aware of my surroundings. I shot out of bed and walked over to look at my clock-I was supposed to be at USAC in 10 minutes to make our way to our private boat to Tortuga.

I threw on some shorts and opened the door for my host mom with a look of pure panic in my eyes as she shoved a plate of fruit and my toothbrush into my hands. My host dad proceeded to fling me into the passenger seat of his car to get me to school on time. He couldn’t stop laughing the whole way as I hastily shoveled banana into my mouth and then proceeded to brush my teeth in the parking lot of USAC. I had made it, quite flustered, and with a minute or two to spare. Thank goodness for my host parents.

Right before we got on the boat, someone pointed out that a similarly sized boat had capsized in Nicaragua a few days prior-lovely. The ocean had a life of its own during both our morning and afternoon rides to and from the island. Everyone on the edges of the boat looked like they had taken a shower by the time we got to land, and Martha let out more than one blood curdling scream that had the whole boat looking back to our corner. She had a death grip on my arm as our boat tossed from side to side, and we alternated between abject fear and laughter to everyone’s reactions.

When we reached Tortuga we were divided into two groups for snorkeling, and my group had some much needed relaxation time on a beach that can only be described as paradise. Because the island does not have any hotels and, thus, can only be a day trip, the island was almost entirely ours for the first half our day as we took full advantage of its white sand and completely clear water-we definitely were not in Puntarenas anymore. My group was made up of many of the individuals who had been in Montezuma the night before and we all promptly passed out in the sunshine before the boat came to pick us up for snorkeling.

I’ll admit that I was a little nervous for snorkeling as the last experience I had (when I was 8) ended with me crying and having to be escorted back to our ship because I was so scared to be in open water. I am glad to report that I am no longer an 8 year old, and had a wonderfully rewarding experience. One of our tour guides kept diving down to bring us living starfish and sea urchins from the oceans floor-we must have held 7 or 8 different kinds. The first starfish was black with spikey projections coming of all of its legs as it crawled down our arms and hands. When I went to hand the starfish back to Martha, all of its legs fell off one by one as every female within 10 feet shrieked and Martha through its body into the air. The man who handed it to us in the first place was laughing as we all stared into the ocean where the starfish had landed with wide eyes and open mouths. Apparently that is a very common defense mechanism and all of its legs will grow back in time.

When all of our bodies became too tired to tread water any longer we swam back to the boat and headed back onto land for lunch where we learned about our other classmate’s near death experience. Earlier in the day, a few guys had swum out to a cove in the distance and had reported that though it was definitely a workout, it had been a doable and rewarding experience. While we were gone, some other students decided to do that same without realizing that high tide was coming in. They soon realized that they were extremely far out and that when they swam they seemed to not be covering any remarkable distance. As their legs tired they realized that they couldn’t swim themselves in and that they needed to start looking for help. They were eventually able to flag down a boat to bring them to shore. They looked beat, but were thankful they were able to get down help.

Later we saw a pina colada stand and couldn’t help but indulge in one each as we laid on the beach basking in the sun. Promptly after we finshed our pina coladas, which I would describe as, “muy fuerte,” or very strong, a banana boat pulled up to take us on a ride. We all hopped on and, needless to say, did not stay upright very long-it was a blast, and I think we thoroughly entertained the boat drivers with our antics.

All in all Isla Tortuga was another side of Costa Rica, pure beauty and relaxation, that I was more than glad to soak in along with some rays. Next post: that one time $30,000 worth of our merchandise was stolen AKA Grand Theft Backpack.