Elsja Down Under

I’m So Happy September 28, 2008

Reasons to be happy…

1. FINALLY (after nearly a year) we found a patio table for our balcony. I thought we’d have to settle on something crap, but it’s not even ugly! We can now enjoy dinners by candlelight in the warm Sydney summer. All I need are some twinkle lights and I’ll be totally set. Although, I do think those might be a bit much. Maybe my green citronella mosquito repelling tea light candles will be sufficient.

2. Alexis is in Sydney!!! Although she’s not here to visit me or anything, it’s still great that there’s finally someone out here from the US. The phone rang today and it was a number I didn’t know. This is always a huge excitement because I pretty much only ever get calls from Andrew. I’m going to meet up with her tomorrow and probably Thursday as well. It’s so exciting to finally have people out here!!

3. I just went on to Itunes and saw something wonderful. Grey’s Anatomy started!! It was such a wonderful surprise to see it there, ready to download. And there’s TWO parts. SWEET. Downloading has commenced.

4. The 26th was the 1 year anniversary of the day I moved to Sydney. it’s kind of exciting that I’ve made it a year in a foreign country In a month I’ll be applying for residency and hopefully not too long after that, I’ll have my visa approved!

5. Saturday we did the Spit to Manly walk with Kris, Tess and Ben. It is 9.5 km (5.9 miles) along the beach and through trails. It’s not always easy (up rocky steps, down sandy hills) but it was a good workout (even though andrew doesn’t think so). You can follow our trail on the map. It is supposed to take 4 hours according to the posted sign but we did it in 2. We started at the orange star and followed the yellow, red, blue and green lines to the end at Manly where we had lunch.The next day, of all things on my body that could possibly be sore, my back hurt the worst. Who knew walking was good for your back???

5. Saturday night was great as well. We first started at wes’ house for an awesome BBQ and then headed to The Oaks for dual parties. We were there to celebrate the return of Sinead from her long trip overseas and ALSO to celebrate Stu’s birthday. Some of Andrew’s other pilot friends came to hang out as well so Andrew had three totally separate, large groups of friends there (luckily all hanging out in the same area). It was great to see everyone all at once. The DJ played great music that everyone was singing and dancing to and the drinks were flowing! I had tons of fun until the DJ started playing “time of your life” which is the surest way to tell that a bar is about to close. Here is a great shot of Kimbo attempting the dirty dancing “lift” as the song played (turned out to be more of a tackle). Oh and what exactly is going on in that second pic?? All of the rest of the pictures can be found HERE.

Grey’s anatomy is almost done downloading… peeing my pants with excitiment right about now!

This Doesn’t Happen in Australia September 24, 2008

In case you were wondering…

Remember the Snorkeling Day from Hell? September 22, 2008

Well… If any of you read THIS POST you might remember the snorkeling “adventure” day from hell that Andrew and I had while in Costa Rica. Well, one of the girls we met, Lindsey posted some pictures of the dreaded day so we stole some from her since our camera was broken (thanks Lindsey) and posted them for all to see. Now you can maybe get a tiny feel for our pain that day. All the pictures are HERE but I’ll just post one for dramatic effect.

These are our boats… leaving us… stranded on the miserable beach in the miserable rain. Goodbye boats!

If you didn’t read it before, then it’s worth a read now. I’ll just post the good part (and remember, this is the short version):

Hey all Leaving for Arenal in 10mins so just jumped online quickly. Thanks to everyone who replied, Ive read them but dont have a lot of time to reply to everyone individually. The point of this email is really just to quickly fill you in on what happened yesterday. Such a crazy story. In short, we went on a snorkelling trip to an island but when we got on the boats to come back, the sea was too rough the boat drivers (2 boats went) dropped us off at some random beach with ONE guide and left to drive the boats back themselves. Our guide then didnt tell anyone where he was going really, just mumbled something in spanish bout going to find the road and disappeared into the jungle. It was POURING tropical rain and very windy. There was about 17 of us and suddenly we were stranded on this beach in the rain with nothing. We trekked into the jungle for a bit and found a shack for shelter. It was starting to get dark by this point and we literally didnt know what was going on. A couple of the guys tried to find a path out but it was blocked by a swamp and we couldnt see any way through. There was a costa rican guy with us who told us there was crocodiles in there anyway so we shouldnt try to pass.  We went back to the shack and lit a fire with what dry wood we could find. Hadn’t stopped raining the whole time.

This idiotic tour company had literally dumped us on this beach cos they had no back up plan whatsoever if the seas turned bad and they couldnt drive us back in the boats. When I say the seas were bad, we’re talking up to 30ft swell and these boats were about 18ft long- it was so scary. The walls of the swells were towering above the boats. There was nothing to hold onto in the boats either. Really scary experience so before we realised the predicament we were in on the beach, we were actually glad to be back on land.

7 Wonders of My World- this week September 21, 2008

While some of these are obvious facts of life, they never cease to amaze me. Here’s a list of 7 wonders of my world from the last week.

1. Flowers. How does something so beautiful and fragrant turn into something that smells like a dead rotting carcass after only a week. I had some flowers in a vase and they weren’t even all dead yet, I was simply going to change the water. When I pulled them out of the vase, I gagged. The smell was so revolting that there would be no water changing that day! I had to just throw them out. I was really torn though, they weren’t dead. I could have at least another few days of their beauty if I just stuck them back in the vase! I couldn’t do it… I couldn’t handle the chance that I might walk by one day and get a whiff of that rotting pig farm stench. So what did I do? I took the bag of stank flowers down to the trash and then walked across the street and bought some more. Now I have beauty and sweet fragrance once again.

2. Cleaning. Last week I did a deep clean of the apartment. I cleaned everything from the fridge to the toilet to my drawers of clothes. I dusted the wood blinds and all the furniture, vacuumed, windexed. I scrubbed the shower doors with soap scum remover. I felt really happy. This place was sparkling…. for a day. I just don’t understand how something so clean can get dirty so quickly! I’m looking around at crumbs on the floor and dust on the TV stand and it’s so frustrating. All that hard work last week and now I’m about to go do it all again! Why can’t things just stay clean?

3. Shopping in Australia. Now I know this is a constant wonder and I’m sure it will never cease. Between the $3.00 limes last week and the $30 lavender plant that I saw (and didn’t buy, thank you very much), I am just bewildered. How do things here cost so much? (P.S. I did find a lavender plant for $12 so that was much better). As Andrew would say, “we just get screwed here.” I have to agree. We do. Our latest challenge is finding a small, cheap patio table. Just a little bistro table with a couple of chairs. There are thousands of apartments in this city with balconies, surely it should be easy to find such a table. But nope, it’s not. Not… At… All.. Our last resort is ikea. We’re hoping good ol’ Ikea will come through for us.

4. Cults. Yes, I said cults. I’m reading a book right now titled, “Not Without my Sister” and let me just remind you all how CRAZY and messed up some people can be. The story is told by 3 sisters who explain the years of abuse and neglect they faced as members of “The Family.” I can’t even believe I just found an official website for this crazy group of nutjobs when I did my google search. I feel so sad for the people who get sucked up into this nonsense. Why can’t they just join normal religious groups??

5. Cherry Vodka. This is a good wonder of my world. My amazement here stems from the fact that somehow, Skyy has managed to make vodka taste SO DAMN GOOD. How is it possible? My concoction of cherry vodka, lemonade and real lemonade was way too delish. For the Americans out there, I’ll translate- that is cherry vodka, sprite and crystal light lemonade.

6. Australian Idol. I’m just going to say it… Australian Idol sucks compared to American Idol. The people in the top 12 here wouldn’t even make it through the second round in the US. Do people just sing better in North America?

7. Andrew’s roster. Over the next 4 weeks, Andrew is scheduled to work as many hours as I work in one week (and remember, I don’t even work full time). I think he literally is scheduled for 7 days of work or something. So if he doesn’t get called in on his reserve days- he will have a WHOLE lot of free time on his hands!

I wonder what this week will bring?

Where do Babies Come from? September 20, 2008

No not those babies… A different baby species all together.  Let me tell you a little story about nature… get your barf bags ready.

Today I learned where maggots come from. Ok ok I already knew… they come from flies. Easy enough. People always get disgusted when flies land on food and stuff and while yes, it does gross me out… I don’t ever really freak out. Well now, I will be freaking.

I took a frozen chicken breast out of the freezer earlier today to defrost. It was wrapped up in it’s individual plastic bag and I set it in the sink as we always do. So 10 minutes ago I go into the kitchen to start chopping some veggies for dinner. I glance down in the sink at the chicken and see a fly on it. Eh, no biggy- it’s wrapped in plastic, the fly can do no harm. But then I saw something underneath the bag. Hmm I thought… is that nasty defrosted chicken juice oozing out of the bag? Could a fly actually eat through a plastic bag in order to get to the chicken? There was definitely something under there. And then it hit me…

That’s not chicken juice.

This is about the time that I nearly upchucked my lunch.

According to some websites (that I now wish I hadn’t visited), fly eggs can hatch within 24 hours if laid in a warm, damp place. Or, about  5 minutes if laid in Elsja’s sink next to our future dinner. I’ll spare you the pictures (of course I took some to show Andrew), but you can only imagine what I saw when I lifted that bag of chicken from the sink. 24 hours to hatch??? Yeah ok. The chicken had only been sitting there a max of 3 hours! I mean come on, the fly was still sitting there with all her squirmy babies just chillin. Don’t flies usually dump those things and fly off to their next unsuspecting victim?

Dinner just doesn’t sound as good anymore. I’ve inspected the chicken… there were no actual traces of anything foul on the bag, just beneath it in the sink. But it still somehow doesn’t sound that appetizing.

Google Searching September 19, 2008

So all my blogging friends always have these great stories of how people find their sites. With our traffic trackers, we are able to see what people type into google before they click on the links to our pages. Until today, no one has ever typed ANYTHING interesting into google to find my site. The most common search term that leads people to me is Arnold Schwarzenegger… all due to a photo I used of him in one of my “sweaty men at the gym are gross” posts… go figure. But today, there was a real winner!

Someone googled: “Lesbian toilet slave stories”

Seriously… what is wrong with people??? Naturally, I was very curious as to how that search actually lead them to my site. I mean, I don’t really remember writing any lesbian toilet slave stories recently.

Well leave it up to good ol’ SPAM commenting to bring me readers. I used to get really annoyed with these bullshit comments. I’ve spent hours upon hours deleting them left and right and there’s just no way to make them stop. But now I’ve realized something…Spam comments on my blog like “black girls deep throat” and “women flashing their panties” are actually bringing traffic to my site!! Probably not the type of people I want reading my blog, but traffic nonetheless.

Maybe I’ll leave a few of those random comments up from time to time. Never know what kind of freaks they will attract!

Checking Items off the List September 17, 2008

So while in CA I was able to check two more items off my 101 list!

#45. Add 3 new board games to our collection:

1. The newest addition of Cranium. I’ve never actually played this game, but I always hear about it and to be honest, the packaging won me over. I definitely did “judge a book by its cover.” Or in this instance, a game by its box.

2. Buzz Word. This looked like another game along the lines of outburst which is always pretty fun. And I definitely think we could modify this into a drinking game. Basically the premise is that you have a word- “Ball” for instance, and then it gives you all types of clues for types of balls. (On top of spaghetti… meatball; inflatable sand toy… beach ball; Halle Berry won an oscar for it… Monster’s Ball). Then obviously your team has to guess as many as possible. Easy enough!

3. Electronic Catch phrase. I played this at our Christmas in July party and it was super fun. It’s like hot potato and you pass around this thing that spits out words at you and you have to give clues to try to get your teammates to say the word. Then when they do, you pass the thing to the next person. Since it’s like hot potato… it has one of those annoying countdown clocks that gets faster and faster towards the end- totally stressing you out.

Fun times ahead!

Another thing I did while in CA that I can check off my list is #23 – Get In touch with someone I haven’t talked to in years.

Well, at the beginning of my trip I was able to go to lunch with my old friends Jodee, Kristin and Harmony. I did hang out with Jodee several years back but I hadn’t seen Harmony or Krisitn in close to 10 years. Harmony was one of my best friends in high school so it was really great to see her again (as well as the other girls too:) ) Andrew and I also went to a BBQ at Harmony and Ryan’s house the day we were leaving to come back to Sydney. It was great to catch up with some old friends and of course BBQs in warm sunny weather ALWAYS make me happy!

So yeah… two more things checked off my list. I still have a long ways to go, but at least I’m still putting in the effort! I do have to modify a few of my goals after finding out some of them aren’t even legally possible for me here in Australia. I’ll think about it later.

It’s Getting Warmer September 15, 2008

Thank goodness for the sun! While I don’t want to speak too soon, I think spring (and even summer) is coming! Today I planted my new little mini garden. Just the typical herbs- basil and cilantro (coriander). I think I’m even prepared for the bugs this time… I know they will come. Bring on the caterpillars and aphids. I’ve got my arsenal of soapy water spray and natural bacteria to kill you all! I also threw some lavender into a pot for some springtime color. Now all I need is a new little patio table and chairs and soon enough Andrew and I will be enjoying our dinner on the balcony in the warm Spring weather.

Unless it starts to get shitty and cold and rainy again. Let’s hope most of that crap is behind us!

Summer weather makes me happy. When I am happy, I get motivated. I plan. I DO STUFF! Rather than sitting around thinking about all the stuff I miss in CA, I actually think about the things I’d like to do here. Here’s a little story to illustrate that:

Andrew and I had wanted to move out of this place into somewhere closer to the shops and restaurants we often go to. But I think we’re probably going to stay afterall. While there are annoying things about this location, we really do like the apartment and I doubt we could find something as good for nearly the same price in the location we are after. Sooo…  I had an epiphany the other day. In exchange for living at the bottom of a hill, I decided I want a moped. I just want to be able to get to places in the town without always having a 20 minute walk to accompany my journey. Walking is fine sometimes, but sometimes I’m just not in the mood. So… since I’m lazy, I just end up sitting inside every day, hence I feel sad and bored. If I had a scooter I could get out and do stuff with my newfound motivation in the nice sunny weather!

Why not a car you ask? Well, A. cars are more expensive, and B. there’s no parking in this country so even if I could drive somewhere, I wouldn’t be able to park so it defeats the purpose. If I had a moped I could ride up to the gym and to the grocery store with ease. It would cut 20-30 minutes off of travel time to the city because I could just ride up to the bus stop, park my scooter and hop on the bus. The only problem is… I have to get a motorcycle license to legally ride a scooter. I have absolutely NO desire to learn to ride a motorcycle or to take a class on how to ride a motorcycle (which is required here). Why must there always be a dilema? Maybe I should just get a Segway. Look how cool this guy looks riding one!

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Back Down Under September 9, 2008

We arrived safely back in Sydney on Monday, my birthday. It’s kinda cool that my birthday officially started while we crossed the International Date Line somewhere over the Pacific! Our flight was pretty easy… probably one of the best ever. I slept more than I ever have on one of those flights- nearly 9 hours if I had to guess!! I suppose I was tired from going out the night before for my bday (and sleeping pills always help). I must say… jet lag, unpacking, cleaning, fighting sickness and saying goodbye to all my family and friends are not ideal factors for having a fabulous birthday. But there is one thing that kinda makes up for it… Thai Intra. YUM. Andrew took me to dinner the night we got back and I was in Heaven. If there is one (and only one) thing I miss every time I leave this city, it’s Thai food! The Tom Yum soup has to be one of the best creations God ever put on this earth. So is my bed. I love bed and going to sleep at 8:30 is totally wonderful when you are SUPER tired from transitioning into a new timezone overnight.

When we landed on Monday, I was pleasantly surprised to see the sun shining and blue skies! YAY. It had evidently been raining a bunch on the weekend so it was great to see the sun! When we stepped outside the airport however, I was in for a rude reminder that sun does not always equal warm. After coming from California and Costa Rica where the weather had been warm/hot and beautiful, it wasn’t very nice stepping out into the chilly (a.k.a. freezing) cold Sydney morning weather. I can only hope that it gets better and better each day because after my brief taste of summer this last month, I’m ready more than ever to start wearing tank tops and shorts again!

I’m also ready for the prices in this city to go down. Ok, wishful thinking I know since this is one of the most expensive places on earth to live… but seriously- it has reached an all time ridiculous high in the overpriced produce department! Andrew bought 2 limes yesterday. 2 measly little limes. These same limes in California can sometimes be purchased for great deals. 5 for a dollar, sometimes even 10 for a dollar! Not here. Not in this little city of ours. Oh no. Here they are almost $6 bucks for 2 limes. Yes that’s right, nearly $3.00 EACH.

W.

T.

F.

???

!!!

I just don’t understand.

I also don’t understand how the price of gas in the US dropped almost a dollar in the last 2 months and in this city it is still going UP! Oil prices are down, airlines are lifting fuel surcharges for passengers… but good ol’ Sydney is still buttraping all its residents by overcharging up the ass for fuel.

In happier Australian news, I will be applying for my visa soon!! I have my medical appointment next Tuesday (so they can be sure I’m not bringing strange diseases into this country so I can feed off their government healthcare) and then hopefully we’ll be going to our interview by the end of the month. Still waiting on Andrew’s roster before we can make the appointment but I’m SO ready for this all to be turned in and off my plate. The preparation has been a whole lot easier than I thought. Don’t get me wrong- it’s NOT easy, but it hasn’t been excruciating.

Oh and the US dollar went up! WOOHOO This is good news for me. Not good news for Andrew who owes me some money from our trip. It’s like I got a giant raise over the last few weeks. I hope it stays this way

Costa Rica September 4, 2008

So we’re back… we have been a few days! It was SUCH a great time, some interesting, unplanned events… but still was really fun. Unfortunately our camera broke after a few days of the trip so we don’t have many pictures. For the few that we do have- click HERE. So since I’m lazy, I’m just posting some emails andrew sent during our trip… it’s much easier than re-typing all the details. Yeah, it’s long… but you only need to read it if you actually care about trip  Email # 2 is the most interesting if you want to hear about the most exciting of our adventures! We are supposed to get some other pictures sent to us by people we met with functioning cameras, so hopefully we get those and we can post some more!!EMAIL 1

got a bit more time now but this keyboard is a mac keyboard and thus, it sucks. Went to the waterfalls here this morning. Was a pretty crazy trek through the rainforest, elsja pretty much got heat stroke cos she’s soft. haha..it was pretty hard work so we’re lucky that we’re in pretty good shape. Some dude called Carlos (a local) met up with us on the first little bit so suddenly we had a tour guide. He was 29 but about 4′5 and very funny…spoke fairly good English but the german girl we had met spoke both English and Spanish so that was cool. Lucky we met this guy cos he took us to the upper falls that we would NEVER have found without him. We paid him 18,000 for his trouble in the end. I also jumped off a 50 metre waterfall much to Elsja’s grief. I dont think it sounds as high as it looks hey. Was pretty nervy. The guide assured me the landing was 10m deep so I went for it. Felt like I was falling for ages…which I guess I was. More on the first night – we came out of the airport and were late (cos the airlines here suck as much as at home) so our transfer had left. So we were left to get a taxi and it was basically a battle of the taxi drivers for our business. Some guy lead us into the carpark cos he said he’d do it for 20USD…until he pulled up in the car. It was like an old datsun, unmarked, no colour…nothing. I told him to get bent and tried to walk off and he cracked it. There was police nearby luckily so we kinda raced over to where they were and went for another taxi. We got in and he raced off…no seatbelt, doing 130km/h and driving like a MANIAC! Swerving, overtaking, honking, flashing his lights…then he decided to make a left and took us through the worst, bum looking ghetto streets ive ever seen…left, right, left, left, right…going deeper and deeper into this shithole jungle. Elsja and I by now thought we were going to be robbed for sure. Now it was 11pm and there was noone around except these junkies laying on the streets. We kept asking him how far but he kinda ignored us…We just couldnt see how the mainstreet Best Western was so far off the main road. My adrenalin was pumping cos I really thought I was going to have to take this guy on at some point…Elsja has been here before so I thought she might say ‘no this is normal’ but she thoroughly agreed with me. So here I am planning to grab this guy around the neck whilst he’s driving, we had only had 4 hours sleep in 2 days and I was pretty wired anyway. Wasnt very nice..suddenly we see this crappy little ‘best western’ sign and we kinda pulled in. Couldnt believe it…the only thing he said to us when we got out was ’stay inside, very dangerous’ in Spanish (elsja could understand).  So we spent the night there, didnt get much sleep, and then went back to the airport the next day to get a flight to Tambor and then got an hour taxi ride to Montezuma where we are now. When I say an hour, Im talking prob 15km but the roads are SO bad it takes that long. There are dogs running amuck, and we saw monkeys too…wild monkeys!! This place is awesome though…complete opposite of San Jose. It’s kinda like how Byron Bay wouldve been 20 years ago. Very hippy and laid back and the food is amaznig and very cheap. I ordered Calamari last night and it came with a huge plate of spanish potatoes, rice, veges for about $4 AU. Ive been ordering vege burgers for lunch cos theyre packed wtih salad and I can dump the local hot sauce all over it to get my fix. The local beer here which is awesome is about $AU1.50 for a bottle when you order it in a bar. You’re allowed to just walk around the streets drinking them so we’re just buying beer and cruising along. Met quite a few other people from the US, Germany, England and a few other countries not worth mentioning. I think I’m the only Aussie here cos everyone is very surprised that there is one here. I guess its just so far to come for us. We’re here til Tuesday then gotta figure out how to get to Arenal whcih is where the volcano is. Its about a 7 hours bus ride which is going to suck but we have no option. Staying there for a bit then I cant remember. I just ask Elsja and give her money when she says we have to pay for something.EMAIL 2  Hey all Leaving for Arenal in 10mins so just jumped online quickly. Thanks to everyone who replied, Ive read them but dont have a lot of time to reply to everyone individually. The point of this email is really just to quickly fill you in on what happened yesterday. Such a crazy story. In short, we went on a snorkelling trip to an island but when we got on the boats to come back, the sea was too rough…the boat drivers (2 boats went) dropped us off at some random beach with ONE guide and left to drive the boats back themselves. Our guide then didnt tell anyone where he was going really, just mumbled something in spanish bout going to find the road and disappeared into the jungle. It was POURING tropical rain and very windy. There was about 17 of us and suddenly we were stranded on this beach in the rain with nothing. We trekked into the jungle for a bit and found a shack for shelter. It was starting to get dark by this point and we literally didnt know what was going on. A couple of the guys tried to find a path out but it was blocked by a swamp and we couldnt see any way through. There was a costa rican guy with us who told us there was crocodiles in there anyway so we shouldnt try to pass.We went back to the shack and lit a fire with what dry wood we could find. Hadn’t stopped raining the whole time. This idiotic tour company had literally dumped us on this beach cos they had no back up plan whatsoever if the seas turned bad and they couldnt drive us back in the boats. When I say the seas were bad, we’re talking up to 30ft swell and these boats were about 18ft long…it was so scary. The walls of the swells were towering above the boats. There was nothing to hold onto in the boats either. Really scary experience so before we realised the predicament we were in on the beach, we were actually glad to be back on land. So we built a fire and started planning to spend the night there (im not joking). We started to think aobut food – there were coconuts and lime trees near by but the sound of the monkeys was getting pretty eerie to go out and start looking for anything else. The girls were getting a bit distressed by this point because we were literally preparing to spend the night…it was exactly like Lost. There were about 4 americans, the token aussie, some french, brazlians and mexicans and the costa rican family.Finally about 3 hour laters and dark – our tour guide came back in bare feet and no shirt. He said he had walked through dense jungle in his bare feet and found a road and followed it. A couple of people had phones but they couldnt really get a signal. We ended up having to walk another 20 mins along the beach, through more jungle and cross a river that was up to my waist (now I wish I’d had a hepatitis A shot) and get to some other dirty shack in the end that was worse than the first…we then had to wait another hour for a bus (mini bus, no 4wd). Finally got out of there but we were overloaded by 7 people in a bus that was not made for muddy, pissing rain terrain. Was nuts. Aboslutely nuts. This is the short version. We got back to the city we’re staying about 4 hours late and it turns out the tour company hadnt even known what had happened until an hour after we were due back…the boat drivers had thought they could solve the problem by themselves and screwed up majorly. We got all our money back for the day but it wasnt really worth it. I will tell the story in more detail but wanted to pass the basics on. gotta run, the bus is here…..now its 7 hours of hell to get to the volcano.
The adventure continues… EMAIL 3 Hey all Just a quick update before we go blow 20,000 ( i love that 20g´s here is only about $35) on dinner.

Yesterday we went on a volcano tour which basically gave us some history, a walk in the rainforest (apparently it was a hike but i break more sweat walking from my car into work), sitting and watching the lava come out of the volcano and then going to the hot springs that are heated naturally by the volcano. It was basically a whole system of jacuzzis that u sit in and chill out, order drinks and do whatever. Then we had dinner there which was included in the tour. It was a pretty amazing 3 course meal that we didnt expect for what we paid. The whole place was surreal cos we were sitting in these volcanic heated rock pools, it was raining and there were thunderstorms around and they were blasting corny 80s rock music. Very weird. Oh yea I also ate live termites straight off a tree in the rainforest. The guide said they were edible so him and I dug in whilst the girls nearly threw up. They kinda tastes tangy, like lemon. Whatever. Today we went on a rainforest canopy tour. This included doing 9 zip lines which are awesome fun for those who haven’t done it. They let us do a couple upside down so here we are, hooning through the rainforest canopy dangling upside down from a cable a couple of hundred feet above the ground. Then we got to abseil down a cliff and then rode horses back up to the top. This arvo we just hung out. Had beers and lunch etc and just hung out. Happy hour is very happy here…4 cocktails for $7.00…cant complain about that. The pool is great, theres a jacuzzi where we can just sit and drink cocktails and watch the smoke and stuff spew out of the volcano. Loving it.  Ok, off to dinner. Adios!