Due to me being sick, Semana Santa craziness, and generally being worn out, Ellen, Mark, and I decided to stay in San Jose the last few days of Semana Santa instead of going to Panama. We have just pushed back the trip to May. It's been so much fun hanging out around the area though and I am so glad we did. Thursday we went white water rafting in the Pacuare River. It was only about an hour and a half bus ride. The rapids got up to a level 4 and our guide was awesome! He spoke Spanish to us the whole time so we could practice. Lunch was served on the river bank on top of a flipped over raft. At the end of lunch we saw some local boys that looked very hungry. All of our left overs went to them and I could tell by the smiles on their faces they were very excited. It was strange, Ellen and I started to speak Spanish to them, but they wouldn't respond. We thought maybe they were just shy, but it turns out they only spoke the local dialect. We always get so frustrated with people who automatically come up to us and try to speak Englsih because they think we don't know Spanish and here we were going up to these little boys speaking Spanish because we automatically assumed they only spoke that. Interesting to say the least.
Friday we went to downtown San Jose to see the processionals and all of the celebrations.
Yesterday, we deiceded to make a day trip to the beach! Puntarenas is less than two hours away and is where all of the locals go. It's really cheap, but really crowded and a bit dirty. It was fine for a day trip though. It was nice to just lay out and relax. I have never seen the bus station so crowded though. Buses were leaving about every 20 minutes and every bus was packed. There was also alot of traffic coming back to San Jose as it took us 3 hours. I got a nice tan though. :)
Today is Easter Sunday, but in Central America that means very little. My mom looked at my strangely when I asked her what time the church service was today. There isn't a special service today, all of the Semana Santa services were Friday and Saturday. I am still feel terribly ill and have pretty much laid in bed all day. I am going to the doctors tomorrow and hopefully they will be able to tell me what is the matter.