-not only is it totally acceptable to eat rice and beans at every meal, it's pretty much expected. had i known this earlier, i would have shunned smoothies, yogurt and oatmeal ages ago. rice + beans = HEAVEN (actually, it equals casado, but that's another story).
-there is a reason they call it the rainforest. because IT RAINS. a lot. and in rainy season, that means pretty much every single day. however, just because it's raining (and i'm talking like the second flooding of the holy land kind of raining) doesn't mean that costa ricans will call off any sort of outdoor activities. including ziplining. apparently, being soaked to the bone and strapped into a 20 pound harness while hiking half a mile up a mountain is not out of the ordinary for them. i also learned that it takes me a solid 20 minutes of misery to get over myself, embrace the suck, and actually enjoy something i was previously complaining about. this is how one ends up hanging upside down from a cable hooked to a tree 30 feet above the ground in the pouring rain. only in central america. i highly recommend that everyone do this at least once, though. despite the rain and the bird sized mosquitos, it is a rather thrilling experience.
-wild monkeys cannot be trusted. don't ask me why, just take my word for it. and never let them know that you have bananas. it's all downhill from there.
-costa rica is apparently where laptops go to commit hard drive suicide. so that slide show you worked on for over a week to show your parents on their 40th anniversary? GONE. your entire itunes library? GONE. every photo you've taken in the last 5 years? GONE. which brings me to another lesson that i learned while in costa rica: BACK YOUR SHIT UP. (ok, i'm being dramatic, i didn't lose EVERYTHING, but i lost enough to feel it where it really hurts, and the fools at the mac store are all like, "oh we don't do file extraction, you have to take it to a specialist for that kind of data recovery." HELLO, YOU are the specialists, are you not? clearly, they don't really mean that "genius" part of "genius bar." fools.)
-when you are ten latitidunal degrees north of the equator, tanning does not work the same way it does back home. you know why it's hotter down there? BECAUSE YOU'RE CLOSER TO THE SUN. so, laying out with no sunscreen on because you want to "get a little color" on your legs is really only going to lead to sunpoisioning (my mother can attest to that). i may be the only person in history to come back from a week in costa rica no tanner than when i arrived. i like my skin and i want to keep it. that means putting sunscreen on. more than once a day. and wear a hat while you're at it.
-no amount of bug repellant will protect you. we literally had about 20 lbs worth of mosquito repelling supplies between the 4 of us and i still look like i have the chicken pox. but that's because i'm the person who gets bitten while everyone else around me is like "what bugs??" my mother has always said the bugs are attracted to me because i'm so sweet but i'm calling her bluff. i think they just know how much it pisses me off. those mosquitos...they're organized. i expect a coup any moment now.
-costa rica is an amazing country with beautiful, friendly people, delicious food (when you leave your hotel), bizarre looking wildlife (like that raccoon looking thing that niki let kiss her in the ear), and very tiny horses. they aren't so much into paving their roads or putting their dogs on leashes. oh and also, one must watch out for niki from now on. she went and got herself ordained as a minister (that's "The Rev" to you!), and i'm a little fearful that one day i'm going to fall asleep around her and i'll wake up married.
