Semana Santa

Hola!
I've just got back from a 10 day long adventure during Semana Santa! Semana Santa here is the Holy Week before Easter. Pretty much everyone uses it for vacation, so we did too! As soon as class got over last Friday we left for Puerto Viejo! It's a really cool little beach town on the Caribbean side. We went to this really beautiful beach and there weren't even that many people there! The town also had lots of cool (and cheap!) souvenir shops and a really amazing ice cream shop where they had pumpkin ice cream! We also went to Cahuita National Park where we got to snorkel! I thought it was fun but after Deanna saw a shark I was done! I didn't see it but I saw lots of cool fish! Unfortunatley, Holly's mom is the only one who took her camera on the boat and it later was either stolen or lost so I have no pictures of the adventure. We were in Puerto Viejo from Friday to Monday and Monday morning early we left for Tortuguero! We were told all the places we were going were beach towns so we were pleasantly surprised to find Tortuguero was more of a jungle adventure! I probably would have never decided to go there on my own (I'm sure it was expensive) but it was included in our holy week package! Tortuguero is an island and there are no roads, so we had to take a boat to get there and to get around while we were there. We stayed at a really nice resort called Evergreen and all our meals were included, and they were delicious! They also had a really cool turtle shaped pool with a waterfall but I didn't get to swim because the pool closed early and we didn't have time. Monday night we went to the turtle museum because Tortuguero is one of the main turtle nesting spots here, too bad nesting season is in July :( But we saw where they normally lay their eggs and a video on them. Tuesday morning we got up early and had a boat tour down the canals and saw lots of cool animals and plants. Then we had lunch and had a short (way too short!) walking tour of the jungle. It was really cool though because our guide took some amazing pictures for us, Yolanda and I went with the English guide because we wanted to learn and didn't think we'd catch it all in Spanish, and lucked out with a good photographer for our guide! After that we had a packed car ride back to San Jose where we spent the night in our home stays and left Wednesday morning for Manuel Antonio! The hotel there was also nice and had a pool that I actually swam in! There, Kathleen and I went to Manuel Antonio National Park and saw a bunch of monkeys and a snake that had just eaten a frog. We went to the beach too, but there were so many people we didn't stay long. They also had lots of souvenir shops there and Kathleen and I found these really cool indian wrap dresses that you can wear a billion different ways! Then, we left Manuel Antonio for Tamarindo, quite possibly our least favorite spot of the trip. We really didn't like our hotel there, it wasn't very clean and was infested with ants and lizards. The shower was so nasty we didn't use it. The pool was very nice though and we spent most of the day at it, then went to the beach to watch a beautiful sunset! We came back this morning and unfortunately both Holly and Kathleen woke up sick. They think it must have been the cookies they ate at Subway last night because that's the only thing they both ate, I felt really bad for them because they had to suffer though an almost six hour long car ride in the crazy heat with no air conditioning. Hopefully they'll feel better soon!
New pics are up, check them out!
Chelsey