Happy Birthday Ryan!

Jim Beam, Sling Shot, 4 Lighters, Cigar, and American Flag Air Fresher

Happy Birthday!! Today is Ryan’s birthday. We started off the day by waking up early and making breakfast: eggs, bacon, rice and beans, a typical Central America breakfast. After we were done Henrik, Emil, Pierre (the Swedish) and Erik (Norwegian) sang Ryan “Happy Birthday” in Swedish and gave him birthday presents. A bottle of Jim Bean, four lighters, a cigar, a sling-shot (inside joke) and an air freshener for the van. Craig bought him a pair of board shorts, a bottle of rum and a key chain for the van. Very generous of all of them and Ryan is very thankful.

Ryan's Birthday Presents

After breakfast we all got ready for our white water rafting tour. The bus picked us up at 8:30 AM with 5 other people on it. It was an hourish drive to the river with one stop at a souvenir shop surrounded by 200+ iguanas. Our tour guide on the bus is a local Costa Rican, Tico. He is also a professional kayak rafter whom traveled around the United States for 5 years competing. Back on the bus, before we got to the river, he told us all about this river “Toro Rio” or “Bull River” which was suppose to be class 3-4 rapids. When we got to the drop point on the river he suited up for his kayak while we met with three other rafting guides. A kayaker went ahead of our rafts to check out the rapids and give direction to the rafting guides.

Getting Ready for Rafting

Anyways we all suited up; 3 rafts in total and headed out. Ryan, Craig, me and other guy were in one raft while the other 4 guys were in another. Within 20 minutes we could tell our guide was the best of the three. He liked doing tricks like 180 spins around boulders, surfing the back currents, hitting all the big rapids and 360s. Half way through the white water rafting we took a break for fresh pineapple, watermelon and oranges. The pineapple is by far my favorite. Two and half hours on the river and we finally came to the end of our rafting trip.

White Water Rafting on Toro Rio

Unanimously….Tons of FUN!! After a hot lunch and cold beers, provided by the tour, we were all excited, exhausted, really wet, happy and fat. We got back to the hostel and relaxed for a while before drinking more beers, Whiskey and coke and going out to a bar to continue celebrating Ryan‘s birthday. At the end of the night Ryan said “This has been one of the best Birthdays, Who would have thought!”.

written by

ryan & debbrial on November 6, 2009 from Fortuna, Costa Rica

from the travel blog: Us Discovering the Latin Americas

Send a Compliment

in case i screwed up first message. Happy Birthday Ryan from chris sprecco and family. Hi mrs. Rodgers and dude. p.s. dont know why myname is red underlined. have fun

written by

junkndatrunk on November 6, 2009

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