Costa Rica

Today we have another one of my super awesome IRL friends guest posting for me. Tami of Friday Morning Buzz was one of my sorority sisters in college, and she absolutely cracks me up. She’s gorgeous, she’s a news anchor and you will love her, so be sure to check out her blog. Take it away, my friend!

Hi, I’m Tami. I’m here to tell you about a travel experience I hope is absolutely, positively, completely opposite of the one MacKensie is having as we speak.

During our senior year in college, a group of my girlfriends and I wanted to do something really outside the box for our spring break. Everyone we knew was going to Key West, and we didn’t want to see the same old people we saw every night at our usual bars. So we got a group together, found a ridiculous house online and hopped on a plane to Tamarindo, Costa Rica. We managed to have the most incredible streak of bad tourist luck I’ve pretty much ever heard of, ever.

8 girls, one truck.

The first night we were in town, somebody pulled a Chuck Norris and kicked in the doors of our vacation house. They went through our stuff, ransacked the house and made off with a whole bunch of our cash/cameras/phones/electronics. Not only was this completely terrifying, but it also meant the whole time we were there, only two of us had cameras (my camera was one of the ones stolen, hence the lack pictures!).

Look at those innocent faces

About the second or third day of the trip, a group of us was napping on the beach and my friend Annie had her entire backpack stolen from right behind her head. As in, it was laying six inches away from her body and nobody even heard the guy sneak up and take it. Inside of it was all the money and credit cards she’d brought along for the trip. (thank the Lord almighty she’d left her passport back at the house)

A different night of the trip, another one of our friends decided to take a romantic moonlit stroll on the beach with a cute spring breaker she’d met on the trip. Fun, right? It was like everything our mothers ever told us not to do while in a foreign country, for a reason. She and the guy were mugged at knifepoint. They lost all their money, but thankfully were both left without a scratch.

I believe this was the night of the mugging. Geez!

That’s enough misadventures, right? Riiight. By the end of the trip and all this burglary/stealing/mugging, I was one of the only ones left with a debit card or cash. The night before we were set to fly home, an ATM machine near the bars ATE MY DEBIT CARD as I tried to take out cash. Like, it took the card in to read it and never spit it back out. Of course by this point we were all basket cases, and without the cash I was taking out we had about $20 left between all of us.

Cut to us staying up all night, waiting outside the bank for hours for it to finally open at 8 am (our flight was at 10), and trying to explain to the manager in broken Spanish what happened with my card to get it back.We ended up just making it to the airport with just enough cash to cover our exit taxes (wait… we have to pay to leave???) and somehow making it back to the States in one piece.

Remember this hairdo? The classic George Washington.

So in conclusion, Costa Rica was a blast and brought us lots of great memories. However if you’re going there, lock your doors. Lock your suitcases. Don’t go on the beach with handsome strangers at night. And buy one of those ridiculous tourist fanny-packs designed specifically to thwart off pickpockets, because you might need it.