You know how when people go on fabulous vacations to sunny and exotic places, and they come back and they’re all “it was a-maz-ing and so gor-geous and I’m all tan and glow-y from the rays of the sun!”

And it’s really freaking annoying because everyone else has just been doing the same ‘ol, sittin at their desk, looking at that freaking motivational poster of a cat “hanging in there”, and kind of wish the cat was hanging ITSELF because at least then you could laugh about something- I mean, not that hanging kittens are funny, but hey, it WANTED to go, and it’s really much more fitting with the office atmosphere?

Or something.

Anyhoo, I’ve decided that instead of a JOYful CHEERful OHEMGEE look what I did while you were toiling away at your desk jobs! post, I’m going to take a slightly different direction with it, and tell you all about every last thing that went terribly, horribly wrong.

You see how I love you?

Let’s do this.

1. Thursday, we arrived in Costa Rica at midnight, and grabbed a taxi to a hotel nearby… only to find that it didn’t exist. Our driver took us to the exact address… and it was a cemetary. $75 dollars down the drain later, we gave up and stayed at the stupid Hilton.
2. We bussed up it to Arenal Volcano and hot springs the next day, where we hiked up an enormous and treacherous mountain to NOT see lava at dusk… and then hiked back down in pitch black darkness. Believe me when I tell you it’s a miracle no one lost a limb.
3. While lying in said hot springs, I slowly realized the jacuzzi-esque water felt like it was scalding me… which turned out to be a side effect of the INCREDIBLE sunburn I had already obtained on our FIRST day that covered 75% of my front. Somehow, my knees were 8 shades pinker than anything else. ??????

Finally, we made it to the beach, where we planned to stay for a week of glorious sunshine. Surely things would be relaxing and easy here on out, right?

By mid-week, I had the following afflictions…

1. A NEW sunburn, this time on my entire back side
2. Approximately 53 gigantic bug bites covering my legs and arms, that were about 1,000 times itchier than your average bite, and therefore I was constantly scratching them open because the PAIN FELT BETTER
3. A “sun rash” of tiny red dots on my arms and neck
4. The beginnings of a very unsexy cold. At the beach. In 85 degree weather. AT THE BEACH.

At least one day when we were body surfing, I took a quart of sea water up my nose, which pretty much cleared my sinuses out.

It rained our last two days at the beach, and after a zillion hours of traveling, we finally caught a cab home at Reagan, only to discover the driver had just let out the world’s stankiest, rankiest assplosion of a fart. It smelled like the farts of someone who’d used an entire bottle of Sex Panther. He should’ve knock 2 bucks off the rate for that shiz. BUT, we got to home sweet home in one piece.

So, yeah… all in all?

It absolutely couldn’t have been any better, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I have approximately a kajillion pictures… this is pared down from almost 500. So I apologize, but have at it, hoss…

Costa Effin Rica

Update: I just realized you guys can COMMENT on the pictures. Dum dum dum……

Mama said share.

So, I will admit that I was a little disappointed that on our trip, we did not see A WHOLE SHIT TON OF MONKEYS. I really, really wanted to play with monkeys. And, you know, braid each other’s hair, pick bugs off one another, throw our poop at each other- all the stuff monkey bffs normally do at their slumber parties.

Sadly, the only monkeys we saw preferred to dance out of reach in the canopies of the rain forest, wholeheartedly spurning my advances and anguished declarations of love. Devastated, I buried myself in a dark hole of Imperial beer and Chilean sauvignon blanc, and pronounced the entire trip a bust unless a monkey threw a crusty turd at me before we left the country.

It was our last day in Costa Rica. Slowly making our way back to San Jose after white water rafting the Pacuare river, (which has been declared one of the top five most beautiful rivers in the world- no big deal), we drove up to the peak of the Irazú Volcano (the highest active volcano in Costa Rica). And yeah, it was pretty damn cool (both literally and figuratively- we watched the car’s thermometer drop from 28 degrees celsius to 14 at the top).

So, yeah, the principal crater (above) is apparently 1,000 meters wide and 300 meters deep, or in layman’s terms, pretty freaking amazing. Which makes it all the more sad when I tell you that this did not impress me nearly as much as the OTHER thing we found at the top…

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!! I have absolutely no idea what these things are, and I don’t care. They look like a cross between a retarded badger and a kinkajou, but B and I quickly dubbed them “Volcano Monkeys.” Mostly so that I would stop pouting about the lack of feces in my hair, I suppose.

These things were as friendly as a purebred (i.e. inbred) puppy, dancing and weaving in and out of the smitten Asian tourists, greedily nibbling the jalepeno corn chips from the fingers of adults and children alike. It’s like when asshole tourists come to D.C. and feed the pigeons, but I couldn’t help it. I mean, you just try and resist this face:

Maybe we chased them all over the top of the volcano, squealing every time we got them to break out in a reluctant trot, their ridiculously oversized behinds swaying endearingly behind them. I’m not saying we did, I’m not saying we didn’t. You can’t prove it.

Mama said share.