Rio Dulce 2.24

Josh and I are up early to a beautiful sunny day. Our plan is to get to the hot spring waterfalls that we had heard about so we go to the bar and get some breakfast and then take a boat into town. Town is pretty busy and we have some trouble finding the bus but after a bit we find it and head out of town. The road turns to dirt and there is massive construction on the road going on so we have to maneuver around tractors and heavy equipment. About 30 minutes later we arrive at a little resteraunt in the middle of nowhere and take a path through the jungle. There is a school along the river and a bunch of the kids see us and start running towards us. They all look very poor and are asking for money, I had a feeling if we gave them money the entire school would be all over us so we declined and kept walking.
Get to the end of the path and there is an amazing 30 foot waterfall flowing into a pool with steam coming off the water.

    I did not know stuff like this really existed, we climb down the rocks and jump in. The water below the falls is comfortably warm but when you get near the flowing water its almost scolding hot. We tried to swim underneath the waterfall but the hotness of the water was to much to bear. I swim around for a bit until I get bit on the back by a fish. It dident hurt so much as it surprised me and flinched my whole body really hard and tweaked my injured shoulder badly. I heard 2 pops and a grind and then the pain set in. Great I think I had just re-stretched my torn ligaments and reverced a lot of the healing that had taken place in the last month or so.
    We decided to go back into town so I could get some pain meds and get a sling because the weight of my arm was causing a lot of pain. We stopped at the restaurant on the way out to get some food and all the road construction workers were there eating as well.

    Sit down and everyone is looking at us all crazy. All the girls who worked there were grabbing their friends and peeking through the door at us and laughing and smiling constantly. Not sure what was going on there but we felt a little weird. They only served one meal so we got some soup and ground beef and ate in complete awkwardness as they tried to take pictures of us and continued to laugh.

    I had to break this awkwardness so I told one of them to come over and take a picture with me and she seemed very excited. After wards we catch the van into town and pick up literally every person on the side of the road. At one point there were 23 people inside of this little van made for 8. People were on the roof and hanging out the doors onto the side and sitting on laps, it was quite funny but I guess this is normal around here. Josh and I cruise around town and find a pharmacy and I get a sling and some random pain meds and then find a carnival down by the river and check it out for a bit. It started to get really windy so we called for our boat back to the swamp hotel and get a ride back for the night.