McDougall Adventure in Costa Rica, Day 7 - the funcrunch files

On the final full day of our McDougall Adventure trip, we arose early to bus to Buena Vista lodge. I had stayed up late processing photos and still not finished, so brought the laptop along and kept going until the battery ran out. I was tired from little sleep, but wanted to get the photos to Dr. McD that evening as he was taking everyone's photos to make a CD.

We arrived at the lodge and mounted horses for a 45 minute or so ride to the hot springs. I think I had ridden a horse before once in my life, on a friend's farm when I was maybe 12. I was reluctant to do it but figured if I wasn't going to do the zipline or river rafting I would at least go outside of my comfort zone for this. My horse was gentle but I felt like I had to pay attention constantly to steer - though they knew the way, I was trying to stay away from the steep sides of the road - and couldn't enjoy the scenery as much as I would have liked. It was not a comfortable ride, but I am glad that I did it.

Upon arrival at the hot springs we were rewarded with a sauna, mud bath, and soak. The mud was not really a bath, but a pot which we dipped our hands into and spread the mud over our bodies. We had brought along the camcorder for the ride, so got some low-quality photos; I took some better ones with my real camera later. Showering in cold water to get the mud off was not pleasant, but they had no electricity. The guy hosing me off with a garden hose when he said I didn't get all the mud off was not too fun either. After that, the hot springs felt very good, though only one of the several pools was really warm.

I didn't want to ride the horse back to the lodge, so along with several others in our group opted for the tractor-pulled wagon. I told boyziggy I didn't mind if he took the horse back, but he wanted to stay with me. He really, really hated the wagon ride, but I didn't think it was nearly that bad. When we arrived back at the lodge we had a good lunch. The food was supposedly all lowfat vegan, but the mashed potatoes and plantain chips sure tasted like they had some oil in them. We also had very tasty sweet juice - tamarind I think - which was better than anything we'd gotten at the resort.

I dozed a little on the bus going back to the resort, then frantically tried to finish processing the photos before the McDougall lecture. I copied about 270 of the over 600 photos I'd taken to a compact flash card. I arrived halfway through the final lecture, which was about fish. I gave Dr. McD my CF card - we'll see which if any of my photos end up on the CD and/or web site. I was going to separate the better ones to put on my pro site but I just didn't have the energy; I'd want to work on them more at home with Photoshop first anyway, as I only have Lightroom on my laptop right now.

Current Location: San José, Costa Rica