Music: Lily Allen - Knock 'Em Out
Day 2 of our last IFSA excursion. We were up at 6:00 this morning to leave early for Isla Tortuga... we were supposed to leave by 7, we left at 7:30. I often wonder why we're made to get up so early when they KNOW we'll ALWAYS be running late...
Anyway, at least we can say that they split us into 2 boats today. The ride from Isla Venado to Isla Tortuga was about an hour and a half long, and I fell asleep twice. That's right, I can sleep ANYWHERE. We got there around 9:00, and it was easily the most beautiful beach I've seen in Costa Rica. The beach chairs for rent and the volleyball net made it feel a bit tourist-y, but considering that aside from that and the one shop there was nothing else at all on the island, it wasn't too spoiled. In fact, a bunch of people ended up getting a volleyball and playing, so hey, it was all good. I sun-tanned, attempted to explore a cave and gave up because there was so much coral on the ocean floor, and watched Kelsey, Kate, Katie, and Ashley screw around with a giant log that they found floating in the waves. Mostly I just took pictures, because that's what I do. I did get some nice color (which later turned into a horrendous burn... I'll be peeling again by Tuesday, sigh).
After we ate some delicious fruit on the beach, we all piled back into the boats and hopped over to Isla San Lucas. Although the island is now a nature preserve, it used to be a penitentiary. A maximum-security prison built in the 1800's, San Lucas was used to house only the most dangerous criminals, like the man who stole the Virgen de los Angeles from her temple in Cartago... (No, seriously.) The ruins of the prison are still there (even though it was still in use up until 1989, somehow it's now ruins...). We were informed that some of the drawings on the wall were done with human blood. Supposedly, the bikini on one of the images was the blood of a nurse from the prison hospital, who was captured by the prisoners and then raped and killed on the beach... I don't know if I believe it. Sorry for the vivid imagery, I just found it interesting. Moving on. They also had this giant hole in the ground in the center of the main courtyard, where they apparently tossed poorly-behaved prisoners or the really violent offenders. They told us that they just left them there, either until they burned up from the heat, starved to death, or killed each other; nobody ever lasted more than eight days.
And I cuddled with a kitty. Just to lighten the mood a bit.
We left San Lucas around 1:30 and headed back to Venado. We had plenty of time for showering and relaxing when we got there, and I did homework until dinner to make up for what I didn't get done last night. After dinner, we went out to the bar to watch Costa Rica play the tie-breaker against Uruguay for the World Cup (of course, la Sele lost 1-0). It was still fun, though, because Steph L. has an "island lover" who told her he loved her within five minutes of meeting her, and now he wants to go back to the States with her. Steph F. danced with a creepy old dude, and Lauren kept fending off this wanna-be cowboy. Apparently on the island there's some kind of law that doesn't let the locals fish for two months, so we've developed this theory that they're all drunk (or at least the creepy old men are) for the entirety of said two months. This one guy was so drunk that we were sure he was going to lose it all over his table, but remarkably he got up and stumbled home (Jen later informed me that some other drunk guy fell out of his chair).
Now I'm in bed, and we're getting up early tomorrow for community service. Trash pickup in the sun really doesn't appeal to me... Sigh. Oh well, anything for the community.
Pura Vida,
Sarah
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