Some unsavoury characters but lots of turtles!

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Ok so after thinking our luck was in by meeting the guy who had originally taken us to Puerto Viejo frm the border and him telling us about how to get to Tortuguero, we found out some alternative news. We got on the bus to limon which was a prettyu rough place to be fair and definitely not somewhere where we wanted to be staying. The bus driver knew that we wanted to get to tortuguero and actually stopped a for us a bit before the main terminal in Limon. We were picked up by the bus drivers brother who was a liscenced cab driver and very friendly. He took us to Moin from where we needed to get the boat to Tortuguero but he told us some information that we did not like to hear really. He said that apparently the character frm the hostel in Puerto viejo was not actually as nice as he had made out and was basically trying to scam us and was organinsing for us to basically get mugged! Great! Anyway, it is all a huge learning curve and we have certaily learnt to keep opur wits about us! The nice taxi driver gave us tickets for the boat he knew and he told us to tell any one who asked that we were from a nice hotel in Limon, not a hostel in peurto viejo...a lucky escape i feel!

The boat ride wasn't till 3pm so we had an hour or so to kill...i don't think any of us quite realised how long the journey was going to take! 3 hours later, it is clear to say that your bum aches a lot after sitting on a not very comfortable plastic seat but the views were spectacular and when the sun started setting, the experience was pretty wicked! Plus we saw our first crocodile!! Score!

Tortuguero is a tiny place, the town comprises of basically one strip with restaurants, shops, boat companies and hostels along it. We stayed in a cute little place called cabinas tortuguero where the guy definitely reminded me of Dustin Hoffman in in Meet the Fockers! He was very accomodating and all three of us managed to share a double room which saved the mula a bit!

We had booked to go on the canoe tour around the national park for 5.30am the next morning so needless to say we werwe pretty gutted when we got up at 5am only to find out the tour guide wasn't ready to take up oput till 6.30am. Nevertheless, it was a good trip, we probably didn't see quite so much wildlife as we wantered to but we saw about 3 caymans, numerous different species of birds, monkeys, river otters, the famour red frog that took a little trip with us in the boat for a while!

We sat down to a well needed breakfast when we got back at 10am and had another of our many frequent 'shut eyes'...this travelling malarchy makes you very sleepy! haha

We took our selves off to do the hike along the nature trail...we probably didn't see quite so much wildlife as wanted again but it was a nice walk. The highlight of our time in tortuguero has to be the turtle watching that night. However, we 3 had very mixed views over the whole situation with reagrds to their attempt at ecotourism. Our thoughts were that we would be watching the turtles from a fair distance away however we ended up literally standing over these gigantic graceful creatures whilst they were laying their one batch of eggs a year! The process of their egg laying is a 7 stage one and we pretty much saw all the stages. The fact that we were so close though and noise was abundant due to the large groups of people watching made us feel slightly uneasy with the whole situation. These animals are magnificant and very endagered, apparently only 1/2% of the eggs laid actually survive so this proves the problem faced! Anyway, I am glad that igot to watch this awe inspiring experience but don't think i will ever do it again at that close a distance!

Anyway, we have decided that we are going to head staright up to Nicaragua and miss out Monteverde in costa rica as this country is expensive! We are in San Jose at the moment for a stop over but I have to say, I am not keen on these huge cities in these less develpoed countries...they are not the most safest of places o feel but am thoroughjly looking forward to our next stop...The Corn Islands in Nicaragua where we will be doing oodles of diving and soaking up the blissful sun hopefully!

Adios for now!

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