My week in a nutshell

Another week has gone by...wow! Last week was pretty uneventful, just school and...actually that's it. The power outages have continued, but now we know why. Costa Rica's electricity is powered by water, and the largest dam is in Arenal. Since it has not rained in so long, the water is down very far, and this is what caused the nationwide power outage. Now, to conserve power, the government is shutting off the power in different parts of the country every day for three hours a day. That means that, at some point during the day, we lose power. And, to make it more frustrating, it's different every day, so you never know when you will lose power. This will continue until the rainy season starts, which is in about two weeks, more or less.

This weekend we went to Manuel Antonio, a national park on the beach. It was absolutely beautiful and so relaxing! We just got up Saturday, ate breakfast, and walked to the national park, then sat on the beach all day. As a typical gringa, I forgot how close we were to the sun and, even though I used sunscreen, I am thoroughly burnt and in pain. I should have stayed in the shade a little more. But we did have so much fun! There are a lot of artisan stands outside of the park, so we got to walk up and down the street looking at their cool jewelry and clothes. The most fun thing about this is bartering with the vendors and getting something really cool for ridiculously cheap. Yesterday I went ocean kayaking, which was so fun but hard work! We kayaked to a beach, stayed there for a while, then kayaked back. On the way back I got seasick from the waves so it was definitely a long trip back, having to row through waves while feeling sick. But I'm still glad I did it!! I've posted some pictures of the beach below...

This is the view from the beach in the national park. I like the palm tree shadow.

A monkey stealing trash from the trashcan on the beach. There were four or five of them and they weren't scared of us at all...I'm sure they're used to it!

A crocodile we saw in a river on the way to the beach...there were a ton of them but this was the only one out of the water.

This is not from the beach, this is me and my host brother stuyding in the dark after we lost power on Thursday night. They had all the Christmas candles out and we had enough light to sit at the dining room table and do our homework...it was pretty funny. We had to order takeout for dinner, and as we were cleaning up, my Tico dad opened the refridgerator to put something away, and the fridge was on, which means we had power. I'm not sure how long we had sat there with candles while having power, but we thought it was pretty funny that we'd been using candles when we had electricity!