Day 17: Dead Snakes and Cold Water

Today we went bush.
Jorge, Jose and I left home at 7:30, yes I did skip school, and headed off to Jorge's sisters farm in the San Ramon region. I never really know what I'm in for before things happen, so preparing for stuff can be a little hard at times. But all I knew was that we were going to be going for a walk.
It took about an hour before we were on gravel/dirt roads with pot holes and rocks everywhere. After about another 30 minutes, the road ended and we were at our destination, at a house in the middle of nowhere. The property of his sister had big electrified iron gates around it, and inside the main gate, there were many other areas fenced off with barbed wire. It still makes me a little nervous seeing all this protection. When we first arrived there was a guy with a horse waiting outside the property too, he seemed from the area, we were to meet him again later.
Walking up to the house, Jorge's sister pointed out a little snake that one of her two big scary Rottweiler's had killed just yesterday. I didn't like the reminder that there are snakes in Costa Rica.
Also present at the house was Lucy, Jorge's niece, and Jorge's mum. Before we set of on our walk, that I was now told was going to take about 2 hours each way, we had some food to eat, the women seemed to be worried that we weren't going to have enough energy.
Out there in the middle of the bush, the air was so fresh and cool, and a drastically different to the dirty, smelly air of the cities.
At about 10:30 we set off across a little bit of farmland before into partial bush. I did not like having the grass brushing past my ankles, and kept reapplying insect repellent, I only wished there was a snake repellent too. There was a lot of mist around since we were in a small valley and it was actually quite eerie.
Before long, we went through a gate, and by gate I mean a moveable post in the barbed wire fence, and stepped out on to a clay/mud road. We then met up with the horse guy again and he gave us a key that we would be needing later on. We set off down the muddy road into the mist, we could hardly see more than 150m.
Along our journey we all froze on the spot at one point and just listened. There was a monkey, and it was somewhere close, but we couldn't see it, only hear it's quite calls. We spent about 5 minutes looking for it, but when it's calls became more distant we moved on.
A little while after, it started to rain, making the surface even more slippery, so slippery that, yes, I did take a slip, getting mud on and in my shoes, it was very pleasant...
We kept trudging on, passing through multiple gates before changing from mud track, to narrow forest/bush/jungle track between the trees. I have to admit, at this point it was not the most enjoyable of experiences, not being able to see any views, mud everywhere, and rain drizzling too.
We kept going and encountered some colourful little centipedes and I encountered some spider webs with my face, being the tallest of the group, even though I was at the back, I still was the one who hit all of them.
Finally we reached our destination, an awesome barely known waterfall called Catarata Ladanta.
Because you only live once, and I can't have any regrets here, I jumped in and had a swim. The water was quite cold initially, but soon it wasn't that bad at all. I wasn't in for long. I hoped out, had a quick bite to eat before we set off. Just as we started our return trip, the clouds parted and the sun broke through. We could now see amazing views of the surrounding area, multiple mountains and volcanoes, it was just spectacular. Also, Jorge showed me a spider that was probably the size of an Oreo biscuit, I was very quickly moving away as quick as possible.
The way back felt a lot shorter, I think just because it was more pleasant, and the ground had dried up significantly making it less slippery and easier to walk on.
We passed the horse guy, who had now ditched his horse for a ride on the back of a quad bike and we also saw a purple butterfly that was the size of a sandwich.
After arriving back at the house of Jorge's sister, we ate and ate and ate, suffice to say I was quite famished after the walk. We then hung around there for a while, taking a walk to a little stream for another swim, I didn't have a swim at this place.
We left there at about 5:30, and headed home. As per usual, we got stuck in traffic, saw one or two car accidents and hear all too many car horns.
We got home just before 8.
It was a very nice day to get away from the noise of the city and have a day of school, even though I had to get up earlier than usual.


It was quite tall

P.S. I have just made a change to my Day 9 post, where it said we saw 'Jose's dad walking his dog' it now reads 'Jorge's dad'.

P.P.S. As of late I have been a bit slack at doing the blog entries, I'm sorry. I am trying to catch up today.