SURFING!!!!!!

Considering that I like to write these blog posts going in order of what happened each day, it's going to be really hard for me to contain my excitement until I get to the afternoon. We all woke up this morning and got ready to get on the bus again to go to another beach, Cahuita, which was composed of a white sand beach and a black sand beach. It took my 2 roommates (Eric and Brandon... the same 2 roommates that I had in Playa del Coco) a little longer to get ready today because our room is so small! It has 3 twin sized beds and they are almost touching each other, so there is hardly any room for our suitcases. We'll get used to it eventually. After we ate a quick breakfast, all of our study abroad group plus Dr. Brannstrom hopped on our bus. The same bus driver that drove us to Limon, Heiner (pronounced HAYner), stayed the night at the hotel with us and drove us on our tourist bus. The beach was about an hour away from our hotel, but it was really cool! The city was still very Afro-Caribbean and it felt like we were in Jamaica at some points because of all of the dreadlocks and accents.

As soon as we got there, we all went to the white sand beach, and before we had even got in the water, we found a monkey in the tree that was right over our bags! I guess the monkey was used to being around humans because it came down right next to us. One of the girls had a bananna that they fed it, and the monkey just took it out of her hands and ate it all! It was so cool to be that close to one, but it got a little scary when another monkey came and they started growling at each other. That's when most of us got in the water. The beach was nice and the water was pretty clear. We had a lot of fun body-surfing again and playing frisbee. We also found tons of whole sand dollars! The water was full of them. After a few hours of swimming there, most of the group left to go on a snorkeling tour. I had every intention to go with them, but when we were walking to the plaza where we were supposed to meet, I walked past a sign that said "Surfboard and bicycle for rent".

THIS IS WHERE I GET SUPER EXCITED!!!!!!!! Obviously I walked into the store... which was a restaurant. I saw a black guy with dreads who was wearing a tank top and board shorts, so I figured he was the guy that I needed to talk to... even though he was also making a smoothie for a customer. I ended up asking him about the surfboards, and sure enough he was the right guy. He totally had a Jamaican accent and kept saying "yea mon" and things like that. It was perfect. I rented a surfboard from him for only $5 an hour! He told me that he also gives lessons, so I'm guessing the 4 boards that were outside were all his and he just rented them out to people for extra money. I ended up getting a long surfboard (probably about 10 feet) because they are easier to use. Kaili ended up coming with me which I was happy about since everyone else wanted to go snorkeling. Really guys, I can't believe everyone chose snorkeling over surfing!

So Kaili and I walked to the black-sand beach (conveniently called Playa Negra) where we were told has the best surfing in the area. It was a much longer walk than we thought, especially carrying the huge surfboard which I could barely fit my arm around. But we got there and it was so worth it. The beach was GORGEOUS. The dark sand, semi-clear skies, and the never ending ocean... and we had it all to ourselves! Nobody else was on the beach and it went on for miles. I hope Kaili got a picture of the beach because I didn't have my camera with me. I had "surfed" once before in Galveston, but that's not much of surfing. It was a little difficult to get the hang of at first and was super tiring, but once I got the hang of it I had so much fun. The waves were really big! There would be times when a series of about 10 waves would crash one right after the other, so we had to really struggle to get out to a good spot without being wiped away. Trying to not let the waves crash over us was probably the most tiring thing. I got really good at catching a wave as the afternoon progressed! It got to the point where I could ride one every time that I paddled out. I had a blast and I'm glad Kaili was there too. She tried to do it quite a bit and got so close to standing up. She ended up knee-boarding on it more and had fun doing that. Trey also ended up coming out there to swim with us. It made me really wish that I lived on/near a beach. Just sitting on the board, looking out into the miles of open ocean with nobody else in sight was the best feeling ever. There were no worries, no distractions... just me enjoying the perfect day in the middle of the ocean. I can't really describe the feeling, but it made me so happy to be out there. It was one of my favorite parts of this whole trip.

Sadly I returned the board and we headed back to our hotel. I ended up getting super sunburnt all over and I'm in quite a bit of pain right now. The rest of the day we walked around the city a little and Eric, Jessica, and I grabbed dinner and had the worst service ever. They didn't even have/know what we were ordering, even though it was straight from the menu. We ended up all liking our food though so it worked out. Another side note... I haven't done laundry since we left the Soltis Center. So basically since the 16th ish? Which is a pretty long time considering we are in our 4th city now. I guess I'm just going to try to hold off and not do laundry until I get home! Hopefully I can last that long haha

I'll have pictures up soon as soon as I get them from Kaili's camera! Hopefully my sunburn doesn't hurt too much when I try to go to sleep. Oh how did I almost forget... Dr. Brannstrom took away 2 of our assignments!!!! That relieved so much stress from all of us. We are all so behind on our work because we just play all day long. Thank goodness he realized that. Ok I'm done... Goodnight!