In Giro in Costa Rica, the last couple of Months

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HI Everyone,

I am writing this from about 20,000 feet well above the city of Managua in Nicaragua. It feels kinda weird to be writing a blog entry up here but anyways hopefully I can make you feel like you are up in the air with me.

At the moment we are passing over Lago Nicaragua, which is surrounded by a myriad of Volcano’s and then on the other side of the Volcano’s is lots and lots of savannah and farmland.

Why am I up in the air high over Nicaragua you ask? Well I am flying back from a wonderful four-day stay in Guatemala, at Lake Atitilan, which is about 2 hours out of Guatemala City. When one of my mates suggested I venture up for a few days to race in the Guatemalan Hobie Nationals of course I found it very difficult to refuse.

I had such a fabulous time, reuniting with so many old friends including Pamela Noriega and her family, Javier, Milo, and the Maegli family. We were treated to four days of amazing “ideal” hobie conditions, with the wonderful Volcano’s as our backdrop and an awesome off the water program that kept us in good shape for those hard days on the water.

The sailing was wonderful, I was a bit hesitant after such a long break and my recent back problems but I jumped back on the boat with my 51 year old crew “Nino” and had such a lovely time sailing in the most picturesque place I have ever been.

As usual I had a hard fought battle with Pamela and it was awesome to be there and be really one the pace with some of the top guys in Central and South America. I have a big trophy of a hobie on a lump of volcano that we got after finishing seventh place overall that is going to sit alongside Cara and I’s European trophy in my flat in London.

Off the water the Maegli hospitality was absolutely amazing as well as our daily recovery routine which goes something like this; relaxing sessions in the Indian Hot House talking over the days results whilst applying face & foot scrub, to the refreshing dive straight into the lake bringing us an interesting body shock straight after baking ourselves for 25 minutes in the hot house, followed then by a run back up to the hot Jacuzzi to further soothe our aching muscles, sipping a rum or two while listening to the sounds of Shakira, watching the fireflies and enjoying fabulous company and lots of local Guatemalan food was something dreams were made of particularly after sharing a shower with 20 people, and such a regimented life on Raleigh. (thanks again Chapis, Juan & Alexia… & and friends!).

In Guatemala I also made some lovely new friends in particular Cristy and Andrea two young female sailors that have a very bright future ahead of them. Cristy gave up her morning this morning to take me around Guatemala City to the local markets so that I could buy some lovely souvenirs to add to all of the others that I will frame or put up around my house one day when I sit still long enough and settle down.

So all in all the short time in Guatemala was awesome (Doctor and Andrea we missed you…. Xx)

Last week before hitting Guatemala Andy came to visit in Costa Rica and we a holiday together there after I wrapped things up with Raleigh.

We started off our holiday in San Jose for one night, we had a lovely dinner at a nice hotel and then decided to meet up with the recently let loose Raleigh participants (who mind you were on their second night out after being with Raleigh for three months and could not drink), so after a massive night with some of the guys and girls we stumbled in to the hotel at 5.30am, to then have to face the 2 hour windy road back to Turrialba, both with a massive hangover. I can tell you that first night on the drink after almost four months with no drink hurt like hell the next day. Hmm I only had about 5 drinks and I had probably the worst hangover ever - go figure!

Wrapping up Raleigh was pretty hectic so once we got back to Turrialba we joined all of the other staff on the bus to Cahuita for our well earned staff party on the Caribbean Coast. We relaxed on the beautiful beach for a few hours, took in a walk in the town, tried to get to the butterfly farm (to no avail as it was closed, again the curse of the blue morpho butterfly and not being able to photograph it got to me again!).

That night we had a lovely dinner with the rest of the staff team, and still feeling slightly hung over from our jaunt in San Jose a couple of nights earlier and perhaps knowing we faced a 9 hour bus ride then next morning at 7am we took it pretty easy and had an early night after saying goodbye to everyone on the Raleigh staff team. It was a nice feeling saying see you later, well and truly ready to get back into the real world and have my freedom back after three months without a lot of it.

Andy and I started our trip in Volcan Arenal, which is an active Volcano about 4 hours north of San Jose. We only really had a day and two nights there so we packed in so much stuff to really make the most out of our stay.

The first morning we got up at the crack of dawn and walked to Cerro Chato Laguna, which is a massive Volcano crater. It was a pretty difficult walk through the jungle and then even more difficult towards the end when all the tracks were washed away down the final 200m to the Laguna. We met a couple of Dutch girls and two Israeli guys along the way, we all stuck together and helped each other out and all of us survived without any major damage to our already scratched up bodies.

The walk was so worth it when we swam in the Laguna, (all the way to the other side mind you) and enjoyed some snacks before making the journey back to the hotel.

That evening we took a tour of the Volcan Arenal area where we were treated to a magical jungle tour on dusk where we saw howler and spider monkeys and also some amazing varieties of trees and other jungle life. Following that we went to view a real life Volcano Eruption - yes guys I am not lying we watched lava flow down an active volcano…was absolutely amazing.

Following this we spent the rest of the evening at the Baldi hot springs to soothe our sore bodies after such a vigorous day on trek. We enjoyed some lovely cocktails and a variety of different thermal pools heated to varying temperatures depending on how we were feeling at the time. Another nice luxury, just the fresh towels were pretty amazing, after using the same small handkerchief sized trekking towel for four months!

The following day we took on a massive mission to head down to the Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica our destination was to be the hippy town of Montezuma. We were really excited as we were going to have three days of beach time together and time to do lots of exciting tours, jungle walks, waterfalls etc.

Let me tell you the experiences in Montezuma were wide and varied, the trip over from Punta Arenas by small ferry for 1.5 hours on sunset was amazing (as you can see from the pics), we plugged in the IPOD, listened to some of our favourite tracks and snuck in a couple of Imperials whilst enjoying the tranquillity of being on the sea again (well for me after so long being away from the sea).

We were excited, as I had thought I had booked us a lovely hotel. Well the first night was fine no problems, the location of the hotel was right smack bang on the beach, with its own private gardens and rock pool, all making for what is supposed to be a romantic amazing and tranquil place, so what eventuated was completely unexpected.

Waking up with some sort of disgusting rash in the morning-started things off for me. That day we decided to relax in hammocks and read books, swim a bit etc. This was lovely and very relaxing. That evening Andy decided to go and buy us some nice dinner so we could have a romantic dinner on the beach accompanied by the gorgeous bottle of Rose he had hand picked and carried all the way from Provence.

After a nice swim on dusk with our rose in the rock pool, the rain started coming down, pouring, bucketing, whilst all was ok undercover for us watching the beautiful electrical storm a couple of hours later a quick check in our room revealed that the whole of the bathroom was completely flooded and so was most of our room. In addition, I also thought perhaps I should check on my valuables ie my laptop and camera gear etc that was kept in the office of the hotel, and there was a massive pool of water on the floor stopping about 10cm’s from where my bag was - man I thanked god for my lucky stars that night.

We snuggled up in bed, listened to the rain and smelt the stench of a flooded bathroom (for all who know about the bathroom procedures in Costa Rica you would know where the smell all came from) and drifted off to sleep finally.

The next morning we woke up bright and early to escape our room as quickly as possible as by this stage the stench was really not flash hot and made our way with the help of a trusty guide to the Montezuma waterfalls which were really spectacular.

Lucky we had our guide, as I did mention the big rain the night before so most of the paths got washed away and lucky our local mate (who incidently wore thongs the whole way) helped us navigate through the rushing water up to finally reach the waterfalls after some serious (Jeremy Clarkson Grade 6 trekking….) where at some stages one slip and you were gone trekking (perhaps that should be Coast to Coast trek conditions!).

Once up there we enjoyed an awesome rope swing, and a refreshing float around the waterfalls. The view over the Pacific Ocean at the top was pretty awesome too.

No rest for the wicked it was 9am by this stage after a two hour visit to the waterfalls it was time to bolt back down the mountain and meet our boat for the Isla Tortuga tour. This was an awesome day, we took a nice speed boat for 1.5 hours down the peninsula back towards Punta Arenas for a day of snorkelling, sun baking and beer drinking on the beautiful isola. It was such a lovely day, we saw so much wildlife on the way to the Isola and during our lovely snorkelling session where Andy and I spent most of the time high footing it down about 6-10 metres to look at what was going on beneath the surface.

That night we returned to the hotel and decided to enjoy a lovely dinner Restaurant Ale from Raleigh recommended called Playa Los Artistas which was situated right on the beach, each day a new menu is written and you sit and listen to the waves crash in front of you whilst enjoying your dinner and a good glass of vino.

Before this dinner I decided to have a bit of a kip and wanted to have a shower but there was a blackout for the second time in two days. The whole time I was feeling a bit restless and felt like something was crawling all over me. After the rash, the flood and just escaping a wood block that was thrown down from the roof of the hotel just cm’s away from my hammock I kinda had enough. (You know we had more luxury on Raleigh!!)

I was in the loo and there I saw a culprit a small crab crawling on the floor in front of me. Andy was outside so I kinda got him in and said “angel this bastard was crawling all over me, how can we ever sleep in here again with these f….&&@$% crabs rampant in our room.

I went and sat outside the room whilst Andy and the security guards removed seven crabs some the length of dollar bills and the girth of about the same from our room. All I could hear him say was “this is disgusting, and how in the hell do you expect us to sleep in here we are moving out”.

We chatted to the owner who said “ this is common here” and even 5 star hotels have crabs in their rooms. We said look guys it is just not good enough move us or we are leaving, so they moved us to the first floor and sure enough the crabs find it difficult to walk up the stairs right, so after our lovely dinner we had a nice nights sleep, and questioning one of our new mates we met there was no crabs in the five star hotel rooms, even none in the $10 per night accommodation, oh and did I mention they did not get flooded either.

The next morning we got up and ventured down on a bus through about a grade 3 road(Ian your rating system is coming in useful!!) down to Cabo Blanco national park. This was a cool place, the oldest national park in Costa Rica. We saw Bambi (yes there are Bambi’s in Costa Rica), the always elusive Blue Morpho butterfly that don’t stop ever teasing me and a bunch of other stuff, accompanied by a beautiful tropical rainforest.

That afternoon we returned to San Jose, for our last night together before we were both leaving, a long bus ride later and we were both absolutely ready to wave “hasta luego” to Costa Rica.

So going back in time a bit thought I would finish off with my last two months of Raleigh. Have to say these times were interesting, I went through some lovely highs but some damn awful lows.

Ill start with the highs, after being out and about in Phase 1 I kinda had more time at field base in Phase 2 to put together the magazine and do some comm’s and PR stuff. This was kind a nice as every day I went to the local pool and swam a couple of km’s in order to get fit enough to do the trek.

I did get one awesome “Thelma & Louise” road trip in with my mate Danielle we had a great time, two hot chicks navigating around the back country (some grade 3&4 driving) in the Landrover.

Before we even made it to the back country Dani and I were sitting in San Jose just about to leave for our first trekking food drop destination when Dani said to me “I cant wait to see Ray and sleep beside him tonight in a tent and bring him and Alpha 2 trekking group their food supply for the next week”, followed by “Oh shit I forgot to pack the food”. Consequences of this slight problem, we were faced with a two hour drive back to field base to get the food, or an overnight stay in San Jose and then our boss bring the food the next day. Well you know what decision we took!

So after finally getting on the road a day late, and making it to the Alpha 2 food drop materially late and Dani feeling so bad about it we were ready to take on the rest of the adventure.

We learnt navigation Costa Rican style, as the maps were shit, so here are some rules in navigating 101.

1. Where Tico time (x2) and Tico distance (x3) metrics were applied to all decisions.
2. The best way to navigate is to look at busses, they say where they have come from in Costa Rica, pretty cool when you are trying to see if you are on the right road when there is no signs.
3. Balance of probabilities, ask at least five different people if you need directions, mostly middle aged men, with cool hats or cowboy boots or even better on horseback, children and women forget it they have no clue how to get anywhere. If two + guys had the same opinion go that way if not wait until 3 people agreed. It costs you big time, time wise when you go the wrong way on these roads.

After our first food drop, which Danielle decided to leave her sleeping bag with Ray, as “he does not have one”, we were off to Jardin high up at 3000metres to meet the Alpha 3 trekking group. I had been to this place in Phase 1 and knew it was a bit cold. Dani and I pulled the tent out just before dark had some dinner and then crawled into bed after looking at the stars for a bit. Dani managed to scam a blanket from the nice old guy but it was not enough in the freezing temperatures at the top so in the middle of the night I get this “Bella are you awake” “I need to share your sleeping bag”, needless to say we both woke up with colds the next morning and feeling exhausted.

Anyways it was back on the road, both of us exhausted from lack of sleep via San Jose to Barva Volcano perched 3000metres up behind San Jose. We decided to stop at our perennial favourite Bagelmans for a decent coffee and some breakfast before making the hike up to Barva.

Once we woke up we had a lovely trip up there and on the way we stopped and took pictures and snuck in the gate to a lovely flower farm batching up oriental lilies and gerbera’s for export to the USA. We got to have a lovely look around and bought an awesome bunch of flowers for a couple of bucks to take up to Becky and Ben and the young people working away on tracks up at Barva.

We had a lovely time up there with the team, right in time for a tribal party, and some hilarious pranks Ben and James Jackson Stops were playing on each other, in addition a scare tactic used by Ben and Bernie who had us all believing we were all about to be murdered by a loonie on the loose in the national park, who had apparently cut the wires to the house and was throwing rocks on to the roof whilst we were all slightly having our own panic attacks (well half of us who were not in on the joke!).

So that was about Phase 2, Phase 3 I was really excited about as I was going with Becky and Jorge to be a Project Manager of the Rio Macho trek which was going to see us walk for 17 days across Costa Rica with about 20kg’s on our back.

The first few days were awesome, it felt so good to be active, walking a lot, carrying weight and helping the group through their ups and downs. However from there it was all down hill for me. For those of you that have been through all of my back problems with me in the early 2000’s well my L4 disc chose a shit time to bulge didn’t it. Not only that but sunstroke, D&V, Giardia (parasite infection) all hit me at once. I have to say this was the worst I have felt in my whole life. So much so that one day I was in and out of it that some of my own participants had to carry me on a door for about 500m and then I was put to bed for about 15 hours, on some serious drugs. The next day I woke up feeling a bit out of it but a bit better and was keen to go on, however the gods were against me and basically I collapsed going up a massive hill and ended up having to be MEDIVAC out of a trek that I was supposedly leading.

This was really hard for me because I am generally so fit and healthy and was extremely disappointed that I got hit with all of this stuff and just could not physically even walk 100metres. You know it is bad when it is like that. The guys from field base came to get me and I think I threw up every 15 minutes on the 1-hour journey back to field base. Before Annabel our doctor put me to bed I had my first shower in six days, with her waiting outside the bathroom to make sure I did not pass out in the shower.

What did I learn, well gosh that no matter how fit and healthy you are that when a whole bunch of stuff hits you like that you have no chance!

So I spent another 2.5 weeks at field base doing very little, feeling like shit and wishing my body did not let me down. Anyways I guess you get that sometimes!

I have to say I was well and truly ready to wrap up Raleigh, although I got a lot out of the experience I was ready for it to be finished, It was full on, very little down time or privacy and living on top of people 24/7 really takes its toll.

I had an awesome time and it was really good to be a part of the great work we did in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Due to the work of our PM’s and participants we built a community centre in the very remote Burika Peninsula near Panama, brought water to 25 peoples homes for the first time, built schools in remote Nicaragua, and built trails and a ranger station as well as protecting a parcel of overdeveloped Coast in Costa Rica from ever being developed and turned into a campground.

The most rewarding thing though was seeing the growth and development of our young people and seeing people who I thought were not very strong walk every last step on their trek and make it to the beach 17 days later. In addition, making some new friends for life was also really rewarding.

So after my holiday with Andy and my time in Guatemala last week I am off to the Galapagos and Ecuador for the next two weeks, which I am really looking forward to. I am spending this time with a lovely friend from the US Terri who has flown down from California to join me on a photographic mission through Ecuador.

For those of you that don’t know I have decided to move back to Europe this summer, the lure of my boyfriend, another euro summer sailing and spending time with new friends was just to much to turn down for a drowsy winter in Sydney.

Thanks to my mate Claire who did an awesome job of introducing me to Nestle in the UK I will be starting there on the 21st of May in brand strategy doing some new entry work and an exit strategy. It is a three-month contract, which is exactly what I wanted and am really looking forward to putting my brain to use again.

So if anyone is planning to come to Europe over the summer please look me up(already Nomes and Hannah are definates and Tacker planning too along with Becky & Ben, and Alex from Jersey making for some nice company). I will be living in London (firstly with Jorgan for a week or two) and then my own place. Most weekends will be spent exploring my favourite Euro cities, visiting family, friends and some new places including Valencia for the cup and of course hanging around the French Riviera with Andy.

Soon I will have contact numbers and addresses etc etc.

Anyways ciao a presto

Bella xx

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