Trip to Santa Cruz, Turtles, and Tuna on the Rocks

Leaving San Cristobal was very sad -  I'll miss the sea lions laying on the playground equipment, sidewalks, benches, rafts, and well everywhere.

Under the house are about three sea lions 

The actual act of leaving was the interesting part.
Starting my day at 2:43am waking up to a cricket on my face should have been a sign for things to come. By the time I finished liberating all the crickets from my room and packing, I made sure to double check all the closets - I was lucky in Quito and did not want to try it again.
It was definitely a new experience having your luggage looked through for anything organic - I was half afraid they'd find a cricket and think I was smuggling them to the mainland...... The part that was somewhat surprising was when the lady checking was bit by a baby sea lion who thought it should sleep under the checking station. How can something so cute be so violent?

When we finally got on the boat and left the dock it looked to be a great time to relax. Somehow mother nature and bad balancing placed me right in front of a continuous spray of water. By the end of the boat trip I looked like I dove into the ocean with my clothes on and took my sunglasses, ipod, and shoes with me. The dock was beautiful and the water was clear - it was the epitome of paradise in my book. I felt like I should be looking for a band playing on drums and dancing the salsa.

Once we got settled in, our guide, Whitman brought us to a group of sink holes that were roughly 100 meters deep. The craters were caused by the lava flow. A short bus ride later and we were at a lava tunnel. Previously he mentioned a bit about others collapsing, but I didn't really put two and two together until we were inside it and he said this one is collapsing too....... The tunnel reminded me of a natural version of the metro - size-wise and kind of the shaping. It was interesting, but I definitely maintained a sense of direction to where the exit was and took careful steps. 
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Next we saw the tortoises. Unfortunately my camera died and my video of the big guy eating is on my phone which is being very annoying when I tried to hook it up to the computer. However the pictures I have are enough to show the size of these guys. The downside, their "natural habitat" was more like a turtle farm or zoo and not "the wild." Then again what can we expect, shipping a bunch of tourists off into the wild? That's a law suit waiting to happen.  It doesn't detract from the chance we had to see them in a semi-natural habitat.


Dinner was a first, first time I've heard of Yellow Fin on the rocks and first time I ate off of a Lava rock. Unfortunately, my camera died and I don't have any pictures to show. I tried snagging a photo, but the internet access is not helping at all. Hopefully I can update this later with a picture. 

The funniest part of the day was when we were locked out of the bus. Took a few people to open it, but we did. :D

Only qualm: the need for fast internet connection seems to be something entirely American, even in Costa Rica the internet was iffy. However, I'll take the beaches and these experiences over quick internet.