Day 2: Juayua Food Festival

     We woke up early today, wanting to visit Los Chorros first thing and hopefully before all the (other) tourists got there. We got directions from the hostel and started walking, a local woman pointing us in the right direction at one point when we were a little unsure which way to go. The walk took about half an hour and it was a lot steeper and more difficult than either of us had expected. But it was well worth twice the walk. When we arrived, we saw gushing waterfalls, spread out and pouring over a huge area of rock wall. There was moss growing on some of the rocks and tropical plants all around. We kept walking and reached another waterfall, this one with a crystal clear pool at the bottom. I was tempted to go swimming and actually walked down to the waterfalls dressed in my swim clothes, but after touching the freezing water, I decided I'd only dip my toes in instead. Austin and I then spent some time stretching and doing yoga in front of this exquisite and peaceful background. It was incredibly relaxing. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera! I was very tempted to go back to the hostel, get it, and come right back just to take pictures. The sights were so beautiful. But I was in a bit of a hurry and decided that a better idea was to come back the next morning if I decided I wanted them.

     We then walked back to the hostel, changed out of our swimming clothes and walked into town to check out the food festival. It was awesome! And far more than just food! There were vendors all over selling everything from bracelets to umbrellas to jade knives and of course so much food! We wandered for well over an hour through all of the food stalls until we decided on what we wanted. We started with a plate of rabbit meat. Neither of us had eaten rabbit before but I loved it! There was also on the plate thick tortilla pieces (almost like pita bread), beans, rice, avocado, and tomatoes. Enough to make yourself little delicious quesadillas. The meal was fantastic and Austin couldn't wait to try out next dish, but I needed some time to let the food settle. I was very full. So we walked around, admiring all of the clothing, purses, jewelry, and other souvenirs that were for sale. One wonderful thing about the vendors is that they weren't pushy at all. You could walk past and look and they were attentive and would answer any questions you had but they didn't try to force their products on you as I've had other street vendors do.

     Eventually, I decided my stomach could fit a little bit more food in it so we went down to our other food stall, this time buying a surf and turf plate. The steak was delicious and seasoned really well. The surf part was prawns. I didn't know what those were at first but I learned. They're enormous shrimp. Colossal. They have distinct faces. But they were delicious. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of that plate but it was fantastic. We finished out our food festival with a piece of Tres Leches cake. Also wonderful. But before we went back to the hostel, there was one more thing we wanted to do: The Reptile Museum. We found it pretty easily and walked in, a teenage boy meeting us at the entrance to collect the admission fee. We went in and saw iguanas, snakes, fish, lizards, spiders and all sorts of animals. What was really incredible though was how enormous some of his snakes were. I doubt they could be fed anything smaller than rabbits. If you wanted, you could, for a dollar, take a picture with his biggest snake. I did. I held this snake on my shoulders and felt it slowly coiling around me. It was a little bit scary and very exciting.

     When we finished the reptile museum we walked back to our hostel and I showered, wanting to get all the snake germs off of me. We packed up our bags and then stayed up for a while, meeting some of the other people in our hostel and trying to figure out where we were going to stay tomorrow. It looked like our best prospect is the hotel right above the Tica office. Hopefully they’ll have rooms. We’ll see tomorrow.