Day 8: Dia de Independencia, Hike to Arenal

This morning we slept in a little and went down to the town square for a little Independence Day festivities.  I love stuff like this…this is why I love staying in hostels, we never would’ve seen this stuff it we stayed at an all inclusive.  They had all the school children from around the area parading around the streets and holding flags singing and cheering.  It was definitely a cool thing to see!  We stayed around a watched the show before we went back and grabbed some food.

We booked a hiking trip for 3:00 through the hostel that was farely inexpensive, considering it was a drive to get to Arenal.  But it started to rain around noon and it made me nervous, it didn’t stop either.  We were picked up and joined by two other young couples from Germany (whoot).  They seemed very unprepared to be out in the rain, let alone hike around!  One was wearing a cotton sweater, and the other wearing jeans and indoor soccer shoes.  Im sure they were miserable!

This was the first (and really only thing) that was ruined by the rain.  It was pretty miserable outside, but there was really nothing we could do about it, so we made the best of it.  I wasn’t too wet because I had my rain jacket and Chacos on.  The tour guide was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to hike in them, but he quickly ate his words when I was walking in streams and generally had no problem with the rain when it concerned my feet.  Everyone else was trying to avoid the water, while I was trampling straight through it!  Im glad I brought my Chacos!  It started to thunder and lightning pretty bad, so we cut the hike short…we were a little bummed but were excited to get out of the downpour, and eh for $28 bucks I couldn't complain.

 We went back to Super Christian got more ice and brought some food back to the hostel.  We forgot drinks so Jeremy just decided to get two cokes from the restaurant the hostel had, big mistake because they were $4!  Ugh.  Oh well it was our fault, but we just knew we wouldn’t do that again.  It really didn’t bother us, but what bothered me was that all of a sudden the exchange rate went up temporarily!  We gave US Dollars and were expecting a couple bucks back, but when he handed us some change we looked at him a little weird.  So the rate isn’t 500:1 anymore?  Evidently it almost doubled for that two minutes we were standing in  front of him.  When we brought it up to him what the exchange rate was, he shrugged his shoulders and left.  In reality it was only about a dollar we were shorted but it was more annoying then anything else.  We didn’t eat there the whole time we stayed there after that.