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Well it´s been a while since I´ve written. Apologies but I´ve barely had time for computers with all this running around!
I believe I left off in Antigua just after Semana Santa and I was on my way to catch a plane to meet Lorna in Costa Rica. Well, that´s what I did and there she was waiting for me at the airport with a BIGGER BAG THAN MINE!!! And she was only staying 2 weeks!! After all the hugs and cheers and jumping up and down with excitement, we decided to ignore all the taxi drivers who had swarmed over us like flies, and try to come up with a plan for our trip. Of course we´d had 4 months in London prior to that moment to come up with a plan, but were too lazy (I mean busy) to meet up and think of one. So there we were wasting the day discussing where to go and decided on Tortuguerro as our first stop. Tortuguerro is on the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica - it´s a Garifuna town that lies on a thin patch of land wedged between the sea and the mighty Tortuguerro river, and is
only accessible by boat or plane. It´s in the middle of the jungle, literally in the middle of nowhere. Leatherback turtles lay their eggs annually on these beaches and there are tours where you can watch this happen as well as volunteer programmes to protect the eggs from poachers and jaguars. Initially Lorna and I had planned on joining the volunteer programme but decided we needed a holiday instead so were keen to simply watch them (again, laziness takes hold...)! But when we got there we were told that turtle season was running late this year and to come back in a month! A MONTH?! So we went all the way to Tortuguerro and only caught a split second glimpse of a turtle, and that was in the river.
Nevermind... it was still an amazing trip. The journey to get there was difficult and took a whole day from San Jose, which is why not many people get to see that part of the country, but the scenery was breathtaking. We left San Jose the next morning at 5am (I´m really getting good at waking up early these days) and took a bus to Cariari, which is a bit
of a manky little town despite its quirky name. From there we caught a local bus which took us through one of the most rural parts of Costa Rica: tiny villages along dirt roads surrounded by dense banana plantations and beautiful tropical flowers growing wild all around. At one point we all had to get off the bus and run our shoes through antiseptic before boarding again - I guess to protect the plantations from disease. All the children on our bus wore school uniform and somehow looked immaculate, which puzzled Lorna and I who were sitting there sweating our sweaty arses off feeling not so immaculate.
At the end of the line the bus dropped us off by a river (a tributary of the Tortuguerro) where a boat was waiting for us. There were 4 other Gringos with us and we got chatting to a lovely dutch couple who we ended up spending much of our time with. The boat ride took about 2 hours through dense jungle and croc-infested waters. It was quite the thrill! On the way we picked up school children and dropped them off at various villages along the river. It was pretty crazy
to see life without cars. The first thing that struck us about the town of Tortuguerro was the lack of cars and roads! The air felt clean. We finally arrived about 12 hours after our San Jose departure but it was well worth it. After a lovely Caribbean fish meal at Miss Julie´s, we decided to skip the nightlife and catch some early zzzzzs.
All in all we spent 2 nights in Tortuguerro which was enough to see most of it. The next morning we took a guided canoe ride with the dutch couple along the river through the Tortuguerro National Park. We paddled for about 3 hours and saw a ton of wildlife: 3 types of monkeys monkeying around (Capuchinas, Spiders and Howlers), a 3-toed Sloth hanging high up in a tree, toucans with great big yellow beaks, crocodiles including a bunch of lovely little croc babies (all I could hear was Steve Irwin´s voice in my head saying, "you little ripper!"), iguanas, Jesus Lizards, and loads of rare and beautiful birds. In the afternoon Lorna and I hit the beach but were only able to stay an hour before we became dizzy with dehydration due to the
intense heat. In any case it´s forbidden to swim in the sea at Tortuguerro due to strong currents, so we left and spent the rest of the day chilling in our hotel hammocks. After dinner we made the dutch couple come with us to the beach to see if we could spot any turtles (Lorna and I admitted we were too scared to go on our own at night as the men in the town weren´t exactly er...gentlemanly!). Because we weren´t allowed to use our torches on the beach, as this interrupts the egg-laying process, and there was no moon to provide light, we couldn´t see a damned thing! Even if there were turtles all around us we wouldn´t have known it! So we gave up and went to bed.
We left Tortuguerro the next morning by the tiniest plane I´ve ever been in (we had decided not to do the return 12 hour journey by boat/bus again!). A boat man took us to the airport in his water taxi. The funniest thing is that the boat man was also the travel agent with whom we had booked our plane tickets the previous day, AND he was also the
airport check-in guy, AND the air traffic controller!! He simply changed his clothes or put on a different sash with each different roll he adopted! It was hilarious! I was half expecting him to put on a fake moustache and glasses at some point.
Anyway, we got in the plane and were told to sit right behind the pilots, and I mean RIGHT behind the pilots, so close that we could see out their front window and all the buttons they were pressing (including the ´Right-Fuel Empty´button that started to flash during the flight!). The scariest thing is that main pilot was in training so they were flying with a check list. For some reason before take-off I turned around to a Spanish guy who was on the plane with us and said "good luck", with a worried face. The other 2 guys on the plane started shouting at me saying, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN ´GOOD LUCK´?? IT ISN´T SCARY!". Lorna was in hysterics and the poor Spaniard didn´t know what to say. We made 2 stops: one in the middle of the jungle up near the Nicaraguan boarder to drop those 2 guys off, then on to San
Jose. We ended up loving the flights as the views from the air were spectacular (and I guess there was still fuel in the left engine).
From San Jose we caught a local bus to Tamarindo, a surf town on the Pacific coast, and were pretty chuffed that we had managed to see both the Caribbean sea and Pacific ocean in one day! But Tamarindo is for the next chapter...
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