First Class Time

Reason #332 I'm gald to be traveling with Tara: I thought our bus left at 9:30am for San Jose from Puerto Viejo. Tara knew our bus left at 9:00am.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the biggest frustration of that bus ride. There were 4 stops in the first hour and 3 ticket checks. It was hot, slow, and cramped. But we made it and were off to some first class livin' at Ama Tierra.

We arrived and immediately took a yoga class at the Ama Tierra studio. This is an open air studio that overlooks a valley of green that I'd never quite seen before. Everything was green! Except of course for the Tucans flying about. They were all sorts of colors.

The sun set and it was dinner time. Wow. We had green papaya picadillo, sweet potato, and seared, fresh tuna. It was an amazing meal after a few nights of very good meals. Certainly better than the Whopper I munched on at LAX earlier that week. Anyhow, dinner was excellent and I passed out after watching a movie.

The next day was an Adam day. Tara had work to do for Ama Tierra so I tagged along with some of the hotel guests to the local park, Turrubari. This is an old park, formerly a mango grove for a huge grocer in Costa Rica. He sold out in 1984 but kept and converted these groves into a park with hundreds of species of indigenous vegitation.

I began with the walking tour where I learned that above info. We saw all sorts of stuff. The highlights were the 4 or 5 different fruits we sampled while just parousing the forrest and the crocodiles they were rehabbing. These are some freaky creatures and best observed from a safe distance.

Following the expansive buffet where the fruit juice tasted like smoothies, I was off to zip lining. My fellow Ama Tierra guests had left early. They had succum to the heat. I was now joined by a group of fellow gringos in from all over that states on a cross-cultural volunteer project. The group of families and teens were building a basketball court at a local town. Evidently the operation had been a great success.

The gringos were good company as we zipped through the forrest. It was quite an impressive outfit they had there. Our longest "ride" was 720m. It was very scenic and fast although I'm not very good at going straight on that thing and I kept twisting all about. I suppose it wasn't too big a deal.

From zip lining I returned to Ama Tierra with Popo, the Ruttenberg's trusty driver. He and I spoke spanish all the way back. We covered everything from car honking theory to the Governator. He treated me to a local snack called Idon'trememberbutitstartswithaG and it was delicious.

Dinner was once again delicious at Ama Tierra and we relaxed for the evenning.

The next day was a mellow one where we didn't do much. I taught Bob how to use the iPod I'd brought for them from the states and did some internet-ing. We were taking off for the beach that afternoon and the Ruttenbergs were tying up loose ends for the night.

My stay at Ama Tierra was amazing. The grounds were beautiful and peaceful and was only topped by the hospitality and kindness of Bob and Jill and Kenny and the rest of the Ama Tierra staff. Kenny set up my park tour and managed to swing me a significant discount. Bob and Jill were so kind to let me stay there. It's a truly beautiful place. I'll have pictures up later but for now here's a link: Ama Tierra.

Another thing worth noting about Ama Tierra was that it had internet access and I was able to get some Madness scores. I was pretty amped to see the Pac-10 playing well and it looked like there'd been some good games.

We headed to the beach that evenning and I was excited to see the sun setting into the Pacific Ocean once again.