Day 5: Tuesday

Tuesday morning we woke up really early to be ready to leave by 6:15 (we didn't eat breakfast at the hotel this morning). We walked to the lobby and got straight on a bus for our tour. We drove for around an hour and a half while our tour guide Carlos from Calypso Cruises explained some stuff about our day. We arrived to the Shrimp Shack for a breakfast (hmmm I WONDER what we could have eaten for breakfast...............just in case you didn't read any of my other posts yet, we ate gallo pinto with eggs and fruit, with some sort of fruit juice as well) and then after breakfast we put on a ton of sunscreen and boarded the catamaran. Wow, it was SO COOL! We spent most of our trip to Tortuga Island sitting with our feet in one of two little pools on the boat.

 

There were also two nets hanging about the water that you could sit/lay on.

 The crew were all very nice and brought drinks, watermelon and pineapple to the guests. It took around and hour and 45 minutes to get to the island.

Mrs. Monroe, Mrs. Tann, and Ariana

Ariana chilling with the crew

About to arrive on the island

Our gorgeous beach view

After getting off the catamaran, the crew set up their own kitchen on Tortuga Island. Isn't that neat? Our guide from earlier, Carlos, did a little welcome speech, we reserved a table for lunch later, and then headed out to try snorkeling.

The waves were pretty choppy, so they only let us out on the water for a little while. We could see the bottom in a few places, and some fish, but not too much. After we got back to the island, we were served lunch in courses. The appetizer, called ceviche, was a sort of seafood salsa with tortilla chips. It was very interesting, but good. Then we had salads. There were three types: regular salad, pasta salad, and a cucumber salad. I tried the second two. They were also interesting but I really liked them. For the main course, we had a typical Costa Rican barbecue which consisted of chicken, papaya sauce, rice, bread, and vegetables. The chicken was amazing! For dessert we had lemon cake.

After lunch we played in the water for a while, then went banana boating.

By that time most of us were already burnt on our shoulders/arms/backs. We applied so much sunscreen over the course of the week, but getting burnt in Costa Rica is kind of inevitable. It's pretty close to the equator so the sun is much stronger than in Ohio. Ariana said that if you're not from Costa Rica, you're bound to get a sunburn while you're there. Somehow the other days I had worn enough sunscreen to not get a burn or even a tan, but not Tuesday.

Anyways, after riding the banana boat, we went back to the beach for a while, then we all went and sat in hammocks in the shade.

Heaven on earth

After a little bit, they told it was almost time to re-board the catamaran, so we reluctantly got up to get our stuff ready to go.

The view right after boarding

Most of the ride back to the mainland, I sat on the net above the water. The sun wasn't as hot and there was a nice breeze.

Towards the end of the ride, Mrs. Monroe joined me, and the other girls followed soon.

The sun began to set as we neared the end of our journey, and we all got some cool pictures.

I took this one right as we stepped off the catamaran

We docked at the restaurant, got off the catamaran, and boarded our bus back to the hotel. We had a nice view of the dusk from our windows, but after it got dark, most of us fell right asleep. After we got back to the hotel, we went straight to dinner. The hotel was serving a chicken and rice meal that was almost as good as the beach BBQ, but not quite. We ate pretty quickly, returned to our rooms, pack most of our things, and went to bed. We were all exhausted from our day, but it was so much fun and even though we got burnt, we had a blast!

#burnsquad