A Little Flash of Adrenaline in Sarapiquí

With our cute little guide Luís
Margel, our tour guide, and Mikel, one of the workers at La Baula Lodge
Loving the rafting!!!!
Um, we were guideless, and didn´t know it!!!!
Mom was the life of the party!

June 26 Tortuguero to Sarapiquí…a little flash of Adrenaline

An early rise, and a goodbye to the incredible staff at La Baula Lodge started off our day of adventure. There is definitely a water theme here in Costa Rica, as we took the water taxi from our hotel through the canals, and were dropped off again near the Nicaraguan border to catch our tourbus again. We drove for seveal hours, stopping for a bathroom break in Guapiles, and then on to Sarapiquí (otherwise known as Puerto Viejo). Upon arrival here to the Ara Ambigua Lodge, of course ATE, and then hung around exploring the grounds of the lodge until departure time for white water rafting. Overall, this country´s flora and fauna is incomparable to any other place I have been. The exotic flowers even here at the lodge coupled with the animals make for spectacular scenery. At any rate, we boarded the bus after hitting up the ATM and headed for an adventure!!! It was not included in the original itinerary, but was mentioned yesterday, and the students seemed interested, so we headed off toward the Río Puerto Viejo. We picked up a guide (a Chilean) from the Aventuras de Sarapiquí company, and he briefed us on our adventure before hitting the water. After gearing up with fashionable helmets and life vests, we split into groups of six, each with our guide, and were ready to brave the rapids.

I fell in love with our little 20 year old guide Luís, who spoke very little English, but had a gorgeous smile J. Lucky for me, and for him because of his broken English, I got to sit next to him in the rear of the raft. After informing him that I was the students´Spanish teacher, instead of saying the commands in English, he said them in Spanish, so they could all learn. I must say, we got good at ¨Lean In¨ ,because that means to get off the side of the boat, crouch down, stick your paddle in the air, and say a prayer that you make it through the rough patch. Toward the end of the ride, once Luís didn´t hate us because we sucked at paddling, he was fearfully calling ¨Lean In¨ when it wasn´t necessary, just so he could laugh at us.

As fearful as I was that I signed my life away for the five minors, who needed a Guardian´s signature, my fears increased after two minutes into the trip, I looked up after the first rapids to the guide in the boat in front of us laughing and pointing at us. After some confusion, we realized that we were guideless in our raft…Luís was overboard!!!!!! After that, and getting stuck on two rocks, I was questioning his trustworthiness. However, his smile and great nature made up for that!!! At one point, he even allowed us to all hop out of the raft and swim around a bit to cool off. After the students begged me to join, I looked up to see my Mom tipping backward off her end of the raft, wide eyed! Lauren, the sneaky one that she is, had pulled her off! After that, it was a splashing war between us and the other rafts, and between us and Luís. I gave him full permission to play any tricks on my Mom that he wanted, and she was definitely the life of the party, navigating her way around our conversation with her little Spanish, and yelling ¨Puta Vida¨(woops) instead of ¨Pura Vida¨with the rest of us (the ¨t¨adds a different meaning…a bad one J). A pineapple and watermelon break preceeded the last 40 minutes of the trip, which left us with some great laughs, and lasting memories. My favorite part was seeing the smiles on all of my students´faces, and hearing how much they enjoyed the activity. Can hardly wait for tomorrow…zip lining!!!