Puerto Viejo Shit Show

I just had a weekend for the history books.

It all started when we arrived in Puerto Viejo which is the main tourist town on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. Immediately, I really loved it there. Thank the lord we were there and not any other place, because if my weekend were not set in a pristine tropical environment, the events which occurred probably would have resulted in my death. Anyway, we got into our hotel room which was a double bed in one room and 4 beds in another. We went out on Friday night and it was really fun. We walked around town with people from all over Europe and Costa Rica trying to find a fun bar. Ultimately, we didn't end up finding one, so we just went to the hostel across town where the rest of the people in our group were staying. Eventually we walked back and went to sleep. The next morning we were woken up by our guide who informed us it was time to snorkel. Given the fact we had gone out the night before, snorkeling did not sound like the best activity. I was really disappointed they didn't tell us before hand that we were going to be snorkeling because I would have loved to go, I was just too tired at the time. So, that happened, then Jen and I decided to get away from the group and lounge on the beach all day. We had a nice time lounging around, I went for a run through the town which was sweltering hot and extremely humid, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

On Saturday evening, things started going rapidly downhill. I had a fun beginning to my night, people came to our room and played a drinking game, then we walked back to the hostel they were staying at (which had a bar and a ton of places to hang out). We hung out there for a while, but I started to notice that people were getting more and more drunk. Normally, I would let people do their own thing, but we had a delicate room key situation because there is a gate at the front of the hotel which can only be opened by the keys. If someone got stuck outside of the gate, they wouldn't be able to get in the hotel at all. Also, our other 2 friends payed us to stay in our two free beds. That left 2 keys for six people. So, I went into planning mode because no one else was paying attention. Jen left the hostel earlier so I decided to rally people to walk into town with me (because I'm a female and it's very dangerous for me to walk alone at night). While I was in the process of gathering all the troops, I noticed that many of the Wisconsin people were getting ridiculously drunk. One girl (who we were sharing a room with) couldn't walk and couldn't open her eyes. Lassoing drunk people turns out to be one of my least favorite pass-times. After about an hour of trying to get a decent number of people we departed from the hostel and made our way into town.

 This is the distinct point where my weekend went sour. It was a group of about 8 of us and only a few others would have been sober enough to make it on our own. So we had one Wisconsin girl being carried by another extremely drunk Wisconsin girl, followed by another EXTREMELY drunk Coloradoan (?). While they were walking I started to get pretty worried about our Wisconsin friend who couldn't walk, then I looked behind me and saw the guy from Vegas in our group carrying her drink. Somehow, she was coherent enough to reach over for it and asked him to hand it to her. At that point, I got extremely angry. I told him he was an idiot for holding her drink and asked him why the hell he hadn't pored it out and kept exclaiming how ridiculous the situation was. Normally I don't have outbursts like that, but he was extremely attentive. In fact, the look on his face was somewhat like a young child who just found a monster under his bed. He promptly pored the drink out. The people in our group who were walking were also extremely loud. They kept yelling things like "I'm so fucking wasted" while we were walking past houses/ other hostels and generally being obnoxious. Not to mention the girls were hitting on every guy who walked past (great idea because the Costa Rican men are so timid, they'd never get any ideas). Then we kept walking and found Jen in the bar. I had to deploy my problem solving skills and think of a game plan for the keys. It was about 1 am by this time and I decided everyone was way too drunk to be any fun so I took my other male friend (who continually fell asleep every time he sat down) and his friend back to the room, I handed the other friend who was leaving the keys and told him to find Jen before he left the bar. SO after that complication was over, I called Matt and told him I was having a really bad night. Little did I know, the night's events were only beginning. At about 2 a.m all the drunkards pored in the room. One extremely loud girl ran in and JUMPED ON ME WHILE I WAS FAST ASLEEP, DO YOU KNOW HOW ANNOYING THAT IS?? I swore at her and told her to go back to her hostel. Then I heard even more people from our group who weren't staying in our hotel room, in our hotel room. They're voices were so loud and they turned the light on in the room. Then when Jen came back she asked them to be quiet and they responded with "why?". Why... that's a great question. I don't know why I would want to be quiet when other people are trying to sleep. Finally, after about 40 minutes they started to calm down and I started to fall asleep. THEN, Colorado jumped on me AGAIN. I didn't even respond. She left and I shed a few tears of frustration because this type of situation was not only my worst nightmare about traveling with these people, but the biggest pet peeve in general.

So I woke up to find a total of 8 people sleeping in our hotel room, 3 of whom were sharing a twin bed. In addition, there was a faint smell of urination lingering in the air. I bolted to go find a nice, quiet restaurant to find breakfast on my own. I ate delicious plate of french toast and tipped the waiter 20% (you don't tip in Costa Rica) just because I was so happy she wasn't a belligerently drunk college student. Then I went back to the room to find that my earlier suspicion had been correct. Wisconsin peed in the bed while she was sleeping. So I promptly left again to go for a long run and decompress. When I returned I showered and got ready to check out of the hotel. It turned out that the Wisconsinites had the checkout time confused and weren't back. This meant all the pee soaked clothes needed to be taken care of. By me.

Okay so fast forward 4.5 hours later, it's 5:30 (right when it starts to get dark) and I realized I left my keys in my backpack which Jen took when she decided to stay and extra night because her bags didn't fit in the lockers at the hostel she decided to stay at. Sooooo I am at the front door of my house, faced with a few issues:
-I am completely alone
-Every thing's closed
-My host mom is gone
-I have no keys
-My pay as you go phone is out of money

Once again, my problem solving skills snapped into action. I threw two of my bags over the fence (before I realized there was a large duffel bag, which I had to remove select heavy items from and remove one by one) and proceeded to climb the 8 foot tall fence. While I was going through this process, our neighbor across the street was watching me while watering his lawn. He looked away every time I looked over at him. Furthermore, our 22 year old Tica neighbor walked by me and I said "hey you're my neighbor" (in Spanish) and she walked past her house and completely ignored me. Then about 2 minutes later, she walked back up to her house and I tried to get her attention again and she walked past me the other direction. I'm almost positive she saw the books I had to throw over along with the peanut butter and jelly and shoes sprawled about the yard and determined I was crazy. Once I got in the front garden I had access to the wifi so I turned the wifi on my iphone, skyped Kelsey, Kelsey called my program leader, and my program leader came to my house. During this time my neighbor entered her house after seeing I was safely enclosed in the front yard. Then, my program leader and I deduced that my host mom was at Church. I remember her mentioning which church she went to, so my program leader and I decided I should check there. I climbed back over the fence, endured a few battle wounds, and got in her car. We stopped at the church, which was in the middle of a service, and I pranced in wearing shorts (it's unacceptable in general to wear shorts in Costa Rica, so I'm sure I committed an awful form of blasphemy). I looked around for a few seconds, felt too awkward to step more than a foot inside the building, and headed out. Then, I went to the CEA dorms, where I am located to this very moment.

I'm sure there are a lot of spelling errors in this post.