Friday, December 12, 2008
Can't wait!!!
I have been all "I can't wait to go back to Costa Rica!" lately, about every 10 minutes. Seriously...
The other day I was at the grocery store and was trying to pick out some flowers.. Did you know that daisies, the old-school white ones, not the flashy gerberas, last, like, forever? Chris gets gerber daisies usually and they start falling apart soon after they get home and are in the trash within a week. The lilies, same thing. But this $4 bunch of daisies just kept lasting and lasting... After 2+ weeks, a few of the flowers started to wilt, but they still looked pretty good. And the water didn't get all gross either.
Anyway, original point was that they had bunches of hydrangeas there, and I was hit by a wave of nostalgia looking at them. Nostalgic for... Costa Rica! There were hydrageas everywhere up in the mountains. None anywhere else, but they were everywhere up there when we went to Monteverde.
Flower:
You can see the bushes here in the pic of our hotel up there:
Whenever I think of Costa Rica, I get so.. I dunno. I just loved it there, I guess you could say. It was quiet and beautiful and there were these surprises everywhere, e.g.:
(Bats hanging from the ceiling of one of the restaurants by Parque Manuel Antonio)
(Birds flitting around the feeder outside the same restaurant)
Then there was the whole thing where you had to be mindful of what was in the tress above you - was it a bird? A squirrel monkey? A sloth? What kind of sloth?
It's hard to explain, really. I think it's kinda like describing what it's like to be home, in Wisconsin. I am comfortable there. I know I'm home. It just feels good and right. I feel like going back to Costa Rica will feel a lot like that, only with a significantly larger amount of delight in my surroundings swirling about.
So I can't wait to go back to Costa Rica. :) Other places I wish I could go back:
- Bahamas. Particularly that one night. We were on the boat and decided to sleep at the dive site where we had been diving earlier. I can only describe it as magical. It was completely dark out - the sky was so clear and the stars so bright there. We were the only ones around.. We sat up on the front of the boat and just felt the rocking and watched the stars for a while. We could hear things swimming in the water, fish breaking the surface of the water around our boat... There were little glowing sea creatures everywhere in the water. We were hanging off the side of the boat with lights to try to get a better look at them. That whole thing.. It was like being a kid again, just amazed and in disbelief at what you were seeing. I mean, who expects to see something new at age 28 or whatever? It was just perfect. Thankfully we didn't know what would be happening at about 4 a.m. - the seas were about to get really, really rough which made for a really, really hard ride home. But the night before that ride? Blissful.
Oh yeah, this is the place:
- Galapagos. Off of Wolf Island.. or was it Darwin?
Something like this:
There were birds flying overhead the entire time. Something that this South Florida girl can only describe like as landfill-like. And the rocks there ahead of me? We were anchored far away from the rock, but if you looked at it, you could see dolphins everywhere. Jumping out of the water right next to the rock, making perfect circles. Like, we'd just be sitting there and talking and you would look over your friend's shoulder and there were dolphins! And it was like it was nothing. Weird. So this is the same place we were one morning.. I was sick so couldn't go diving. Everyone else was suiting up to go for a dive and I was on the top deck. The sun was rising, painting the sky, we were surrounded by water and close to this huge island. And it was if God just all of a sudden cued the dolphins. The water between the boat and the rock - a big stretch - was just alive. There were hundreds of them, jumping out and dipping back into the water in their little circles. It is one of those moments that will stay with me forever. That sounds cheesy to say, but it's truer than I can explain.
Also, hanging off the panga after our night dive and sticking my face in the water over and over so I could wave my hand and see the phosphoresence everywhere in front of me, like the night sky was six inches from my face.
Amazing stuff. And only, um, less than three months until I get to go back to Costa Rica. See little monkeys crossing the road in front of us. Eat papaya on the beach. Wish that I lived there. ¶ 12:17 AM
The other day I was at the grocery store and was trying to pick out some flowers.. Did you know that daisies, the old-school white ones, not the flashy gerberas, last, like, forever? Chris gets gerber daisies usually and they start falling apart soon after they get home and are in the trash within a week. The lilies, same thing. But this $4 bunch of daisies just kept lasting and lasting... After 2+ weeks, a few of the flowers started to wilt, but they still looked pretty good. And the water didn't get all gross either.
Anyway, original point was that they had bunches of hydrangeas there, and I was hit by a wave of nostalgia looking at them. Nostalgic for... Costa Rica! There were hydrageas everywhere up in the mountains. None anywhere else, but they were everywhere up there when we went to Monteverde.
Flower:
You can see the bushes here in the pic of our hotel up there:
Whenever I think of Costa Rica, I get so.. I dunno. I just loved it there, I guess you could say. It was quiet and beautiful and there were these surprises everywhere, e.g.:
(Bats hanging from the ceiling of one of the restaurants by Parque Manuel Antonio)
(Birds flitting around the feeder outside the same restaurant)
Then there was the whole thing where you had to be mindful of what was in the tress above you - was it a bird? A squirrel monkey? A sloth? What kind of sloth?
It's hard to explain, really. I think it's kinda like describing what it's like to be home, in Wisconsin. I am comfortable there. I know I'm home. It just feels good and right. I feel like going back to Costa Rica will feel a lot like that, only with a significantly larger amount of delight in my surroundings swirling about.
So I can't wait to go back to Costa Rica. :) Other places I wish I could go back:
- Bahamas. Particularly that one night. We were on the boat and decided to sleep at the dive site where we had been diving earlier. I can only describe it as magical. It was completely dark out - the sky was so clear and the stars so bright there. We were the only ones around.. We sat up on the front of the boat and just felt the rocking and watched the stars for a while. We could hear things swimming in the water, fish breaking the surface of the water around our boat... There were little glowing sea creatures everywhere in the water. We were hanging off the side of the boat with lights to try to get a better look at them. That whole thing.. It was like being a kid again, just amazed and in disbelief at what you were seeing. I mean, who expects to see something new at age 28 or whatever? It was just perfect. Thankfully we didn't know what would be happening at about 4 a.m. - the seas were about to get really, really rough which made for a really, really hard ride home. But the night before that ride? Blissful.
Oh yeah, this is the place:
- Galapagos. Off of Wolf Island.. or was it Darwin?
Something like this:
There were birds flying overhead the entire time. Something that this South Florida girl can only describe like as landfill-like. And the rocks there ahead of me? We were anchored far away from the rock, but if you looked at it, you could see dolphins everywhere. Jumping out of the water right next to the rock, making perfect circles. Like, we'd just be sitting there and talking and you would look over your friend's shoulder and there were dolphins! And it was like it was nothing. Weird. So this is the same place we were one morning.. I was sick so couldn't go diving. Everyone else was suiting up to go for a dive and I was on the top deck. The sun was rising, painting the sky, we were surrounded by water and close to this huge island. And it was if God just all of a sudden cued the dolphins. The water between the boat and the rock - a big stretch - was just alive. There were hundreds of them, jumping out and dipping back into the water in their little circles. It is one of those moments that will stay with me forever. That sounds cheesy to say, but it's truer than I can explain.
Also, hanging off the panga after our night dive and sticking my face in the water over and over so I could wave my hand and see the phosphoresence everywhere in front of me, like the night sky was six inches from my face.
Amazing stuff. And only, um, less than three months until I get to go back to Costa Rica. See little monkeys crossing the road in front of us. Eat papaya on the beach. Wish that I lived there. ¶ 12:17 AM
