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Published: November 26th 2006
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After a long long journey through Chiquito´s huge banana plantations (think of us when you are next tucking into your bananas), we arrived in San Jose, to those of you who were no good at Geography at school, that´s the capital of Costa Rica.
After telling our cabbie which hostal we wanted to go to, he warned us how dangerous that area was by signing his throat being slit - what a nice introduction to Costa Rica. Turns out they just want to get commission from taking you to there own hostals, cheeky little things.
Well, we were a bit lazy in San Jose and just saw our hostal and a local shopping center where we went to the cinema. One of the joys about not being multi-linguistic is that we sat down to enjoy our film and low and behold it was one that I had seen before, whoopsee!
(Did you like that one Lynny?)
Our next stop was up to La Fortuna, the town closest to the Volcan (Volcano) Arenal that is famous for having hot lava flowing down it. We were very happy there as we managed to have a whole hostal to ourselves, complete
with kitchen, cable TV and pet kitten ´Garfield´- all for 10 bucks a night! Anyway bargains aside, we spent the day visiting a beautiful waterfall where I forgot to hold my stomach in - doh! At night we went on a tour where we did a jungle walk to the base of the volcano. Nick commented as we were walking through the jungle with the group of 12 people ´Look there´s a monkey´, following this everyone turned around to look in the tree and jumping around was a little squirrel, ha ha! We did see a sloth though but it didn´t do much and was just a hairy mass in the tree.
Our next stop was to view the volcano in the dark and see the lava flowing down the sides, that was pretty amazing as the lava rocks came down very fast. After all this hard work we visited some lush spa pools. There was a collection of 10 pools and we tried all of them; one pool looked particularly appealing as there was noone in it - our own private pool - we dashed in only to dash out again after getting 3rd degree burns, the water
was a scorching 155F, the hottest pool they had!
The next day we went to Monteverde, a town famous for its cloud forests. Visiting the latter (in the pee-ing rain), we came across two Americans, when I asked whether they had seen any birds, the chap replied ´No, we are looking for the high elevations species´ - well you are not going to see many of those Nick and I thought as we trundled off in the rain with the cloud covering the top of the trees! We did see some very beautiful humming birds at a little sanctuary nearby.
Our last few days in Costa Rica were spent in Montezuma and Tamarindo, beach resorts on the Pacific coast. We met up with a few Irish travellers in Montezuma that we had met before and spent a relaxing day at a waterfall and on the beach - as I have said before, life is tough here!
One last night was unforgettable, we spent it on a beach called Playa Grande where Leatherback turtles come to lay their eggs a few months out of each year. We waited until midnight to see the 1.5m long mother turtle and
Garfield
I wanted to pack him in my rucksack he was soooo cute, Nick fell for him aswell! watched her, from inches away, dig a hole using her back flippers and then lay about 70 eggs, it was a true ´David Attenborough´amazing experience as these turtles are huge and an endangered species, a real one off!
Anyway no more news to report. Hope you are all well and enjoying the English winter - ha ha! See you in December hopefully.
Love Sal and Nick
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Matt
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I am continually amazed at what you guys are getting up to! It looks and sounds awesome! So how close did you get to the lava flows? I hope Nick didn't try to show you 'his' turtle after you saw the Leatherbacks!