The last 4 weeks...

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May the 10th eventually had to come round and it was time for us to go our separate ways. Soph was heading home and I was going south firstly to Costa Rica and then down to South America.

After an awful goodbye at Vancouver airport I headed to Huston for a three hour stop over. According to all the people I spoke to I did what everyone does in Huston and sat in George Bush airport for a few hours waiting to leave. Eventually my plain came and it was of to CR....

I arrived to blazing heat (compared to Vancouver) and the finl of the playoffs in the football league. The guy driving me to the hostel clearly wasnt happy about missing the game and was caning it through the streets of San Jose! The next day I was up at 5am to catch the bus to Dominical where I´d be spending the first week and a bit of the trip.... it took 8 hours and was pretty painful in places (the country is the same size as Wales so we took a really round about route an there were some pretty awful mud tracks!).

So the idea in Dominical was to learn Spanish and learn to surf. I´m not really sure which one I did best at, but I can now was where the toilets are and I can stand up on what was described as a huge battleship style (very stable) surf board!

Now armed wiht my new Spanish I met my Mum and our practicing sessions in the evening that we planned were pretty non-existant. I won´t go in to details about what we got up to in the 10 days we were together as there is to be another guest writer on the blog- my mum (Barbara).All I will say is that we had an awesome time and lots of fun.

So after leaving my mum, I headed to Tortugeuro (basically translates to Turtle town) on a very sketch 14 seat passanger plane (thanks mum!) that you could see out of the front windscreen of, which made landing very exciting! I spent 3 days walking on the beach, seeing all manner of monkeys, crocodiles, birds, and going to turtle museums, but didn´t see one bloody turtle! Even so it was a really relaxing place to be with amazing Carribean style food.

So, after another very sketchy flight back I was treated to a night with Xenia, a trip to Floranova CR (Manager of the CR branch of the company my Dad used to work for), a trip up Volcan Irrazu and lunch on the company(!) and some great food, hospitaity and bed. Thanks so much Xenia!

The next morning it was time to hit Peru. The flight was standard and the taxi driver on the way into Lima laughed at my lack of Spanish, and I made it to the Hostal Roma (thanks Soph) in one piece. I sorted a taxi to take me to the bus station in the morning amd later found out that i got ryally ripped off (3 times usual price) but arrived in good time for my super luxury bus ride (air con, aeroplane style business class seats, food served, lots of movies!!!) to Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanc.

Huaraz is stunning and up at 3000m (why the chickpeas I tried to cook took 5 hours!) its surrounded by huge mountains 6000m+. After an acclimitization trek iset out to organise the trek i wanted to do. After many problems and trying to decide what to do, I ended up booking a 9 day trek with two guides, two ponies and me! And this is where I am now.... Just getting packed up to head off into the hills for 9 days.... I can´t wait! Hope all is well with everyone and sorry about the rambling chat!

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