Isla Tortuga and Volcan Poas

Hola!
This weekend we had our first two official (planned for us) CEA excursions! On Saturday we went to Isla Tortuga (Turtle Island). We had to be at the CEA office to leave at 5:50 AM! When we got there we were pleasantly surprised to find a charter bus waiting on us! It had air conditioning and comfortable seats and even a movie on the way home! We were super excited because we were expecting the Tico Viajero Expresso (the travel agency on campus) van that we took throughout Holy Week that has no air conditioning and I have to sit in the backwards facing seat every time with Deanna because we're the only two that don't get carsick facing backwards. Anyway, then the bus picked up a lot of other people and we went to a place and ate a yummy breakfast, then rode the bus for about 2 hours and then got on a boat! The boat ride to the island was about 2 hours as well but it was a big boat and had chairs out on deck we sat in and we got to see dolphins! We got to the island and swam and laid on the beach, had a wonderful lunch, and then took the boat and the bus back to San Jose and got to see the sunset on the boat.
This morning, we had to be there at seven and rode for an hour and a half to Volcan Poas (Poas Volcano) stopping at a coffee plantation for 20 minutes along the way. I was super excited to see my first volcano, but my excitement came to an end when it started raining. By the time we got to the volcano it was so cloudy all you could see was a wall of white. It literally looked like you could just walk into nothingness. They said there was also a lagoon at the park, which we hiked uphill forever to and turns out, we couldn't see it either! The park was pretty though, I just really wanted to see the volcano! The little coffee shop did have an amazing donut that I got though! And the gift shop had Harley Davidson t-shirts, I thought that was weird but they were all huge and cost $51, needless to say Dad didn't get one! After the volcano, we went to Colinas de Poas Canopy Tour (Hills of Poas Zipline!) We got to do another zip lining tour and it was amazing! Although it was misting rain the whole time, it was a lot of fun! The other zip line we went to in Monteverde was more adventure like because it had the tarzan swing and the rappel and a swinging bride and the superman style but this one was a lot more calm and there was a 79-year-old lady in our group who did the entire thing! When you zipline you wear gloves and there's a leather piece on your dominant hand that allows you to stop yourself, at Monteverde we had to stop ourselves on every line but here they had automatic stoppers that you hit and stopped you but you still sometimes had to slow yourself down a bit. Since the lines were wet, my glove was not working at all to slow me down so thank goodness they had the stoppers! After zip lining we had an amazing lunch, and then returned home!
All in all, it was a pretty good weekend and I really don't want to go back to classes tomorrow!
Hasta luego,
Chelsey