Arenal (Costa Rica)

Ola all!

How lucky are we to meet with good friends while travelling? We had to stop misbehaving as Nacho, Rosanna and Monty joined us for our for the next stage. Or maybe I should say we started misbehaving under their malevolent influence... Hum...


It's aparently rude for taxi drivers around Central America not to bombard freshly-arrived-visibly-confused-tourists with shouts of "-Taxi amigo?". It reminds me of that bubble blowing fishing tactic that dolphins use to suround schools of fish and confuse them. Try ignoring the taxi driver and they move on to shouting a string of possible locations in hope it will snape you out of your momentaneous disorientation and into the cab, without having time to consider your options. Here's and example of a tipical conversation:

Driver: Taxi amigo?

You: No, gracias.

D: Taxi, taxi amigo?

Y: No gracias.

D: San Jose, Tortuguero, Tamarindo, Arenal, Monteverde, Alajuela amigo?

Y: AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! ***** ******

So, when we picked up Nacho from the San Jose airport we obviously stalked him for a bit muttering "Taxi, amigo?!"

On the next day we travelled to La Fortuna, a now incredibly touristy village at the base of Volcano Arenal. The attraction is that the volcano is still active and we thought it was about time we tried our luck again (I'm joking, Mum and Annie, it was a totally safe experience)! With Rosanna and Monty having arrived the previous day and scouted the place, we just had to arrive and drop our stuff at the hotel, nice! For lunch we went to a traditional restaurant where we ate lavishingly while practicing our spanish. (I'm afraid to admit that Tom's portuguese has been contaminated by two months of travelling in Central America - I'll start the detox procedure once Nacho's nefast influence returns to London). Unfortunatly, we found out too late (ie when the bill came) that the specials in that lovely restaurant were around 20 pounds each, thus using our food budget for the week in one go (i'm joking again, Mum and Annie, we were not deprived of food at any stage of this trip although Tom sometimes finds it difficult to find good pizza places)!



Our first adventure together as The New Five (but still without a dog... sigh...) was a night climb to watch Arenal spewing lava. Of course it was cloudy, this is the rainy season after all, but we still managed to see some, hum, twenty red blobs coming out of the volcano! Not the most impressive lava show but at least this one was live and not on TV. Since all our photos of it are just perfectly black, here is instead a photo of us watching the volcano (I'm sorry but that's all we've got...). After getting soaking wet on our way down, we went for a highly appreciated swim in nearby natural hot water springs (well, a dingy place under a bridge, ahh). We returned to our hotel feeling relaxed and happy... until we met other tourists that told us we could have payed less and gone to a proper spa instead! Oh well...

After being done twice we decided we had enough of La Fortuna and moved on the next day. But before we made a quick visit to this sublime waterfall. I won't describe how nice it was to swim in it as I don't want to upset you too much...

Until the next post,

Vania

Tortuguero (Costa Rica)

Ola all!

After our beach bums days we moved on to chase a personal dream: to see a wild sea turtle! Fortunately Costa Rica is home to the largest nesting place for the green turtles, at a place appropriatelly called Tortuguero. It's a big reserve, encompassing 70 000 hectares of jungle and beach. The great part about it is that you can only reach it by boat, involving a two hour journey along a beautiful river. There is something particularly soothing reaching Tortuguero like this but that feeling was soon washed away by the buzzing village welcoming you at the end of the trip. The Tortuguero village is surrounded by the national park and so its expansion in terms of area is impossible. However, the demands of tourism have dictated that contruction in the village still proceeds at an alarming pace, leaving Tortuguero with this packed feeling that sharply contrasts the vastness of the jungle around it. We did however manage to find a great hostel, with very friendly Nicaraguan owners. The restaurant's menu was slightly unusual, with something lost in translation in the english version which offered "shredded hand grenade!" With Costa Rica very proud of the fact they haven't had an army since the 1950s, maybe they've resorted to eating their remaining weapons?!

There isn't much to do in Tortuguero if you're not a nature lover. And yes, getting up at 5.30am to do a boat tour around the rivers does qualify us as nature lovers, or insane! Actually we've been regularly getting up at earlier hours during this trip than we did for work in London. Odd, I know... The tour was nice but we didn't see that much wild life: as the tourists increase in numbers the animals regain their peace by retreating deeper into the jungle and thus away from the river. Still, we saw some howler monkeys (noisy little black spots up in a tree), caimans (blhagh) and tucans. The best was a Jesus Christ lizard (so called because it can run on water)!

That evening we went to watch green turtles laying eggs. The park has a really great conservation program to allow us to see the turtles with the least possible interference. Park rangers on the beach radio tourist guides where there is a turtle laying eggs so that the tourists can go straight to the spot, thus avoiding big groups of people trailling along on the beach. Only the guide has lights so the turtles coming to the beach don't get scared away. For the same reason we're only allowed to approach a turtle once it starts laying, as a hormone is then released into its blood flow that puts it into a trance. A kind of an epidural for turtles, obviously necessary if you're laying 200 eggs in an hour. They are beautiful creatures, increadibly strong and at the same time so helpless when they come to the beach. The turtle further endeared itself to us by showering the pushy German woman (who had shoved her way to the front of the group) in sand when it was burying the eggs! On a good night three hundred green turtles show up to lay eggs, talk about rush hour on the beach! And what an effort it is to crawl from the sea, lay the eggs, cover the eggs and then return to the sea! I wanted to give one of them a push but wasn't allowed......

The next day we just lulled in our hostel's hamocks as we decided to give ourselves a day off from this manic life of travellers. Can you see how much we needed it?...

Bye for now,

Vania

Tamarindo (Costa Rica)

After a very confused and stressful border crossing into Costa Rica, we consoled ourselves with a few days on the beach at Tamarindo. Now I know looking at the picture you're not going to have any sympathy for us whatsoever, but I can assure you the border crossing was an absolute nightmare. At least Vania is able to speak Spanish, otherwise I think we'd still be there!

We arrived at the border with enough Nicaraguan Cordobas to get us through, however having been unceremoniously unloaded of cordobas by Customs, we were them told we could only pay in Costa Rican Colones on the other side. With the only ATM down and the bank staff spectacularly unhelpful, we had to use one of the numerous touts to change money. We then queued at Immigration only to discover they only accept US Dollars. Another money exchange later (being ripped off) left us about $0.25 short of the money we needed! We ended up scrabbling around in our bags for an extra coin and finally were allowed through. Except then the border has a wilderness area between the two countries, with nobody telling us we actually had to walk about half a mile to Costa Rica. Once there, we had to queue up again for an hour for the pleasure to pay more to enter Costa Rica. Our last border crossing which I am very happy about!

Costa Rica has an amazing biodiversity, which results in some extreme wildlife. On our first day in the country we met a squirrel at our hotel which was so hard it was hammering away at a coconut, whilst whacking another one with its tail! Then during the night the howler monkeys didn't shut up, accompanied by the monster-sized lizards scuttled across the roof!

Again, the people are very friendly although Vania is having some difficulty explaining where Portugal is. So far, people have mistaken it for a region of Spain, a newly formed country and a Baltic state! With each time this happens, she gets progressively more annoyed!

Tamarindo is getting very developed, the Americans have arrived in numbers to build their 500 bed resort complexes with conference centres, golf courses and onsite heliports. This was a bit of a shock after the rest of Central America. We passed our few days in Tamarindo on the beach and I took the opportunity to get some surfing in. This was quite challenging with the waves being big on the Pacific coast this time of year and the rip currents strong.

After a few days lulling around on the beach, we decided to take a trip across to the Caribbean coast and visit Tortuguero.

More news soon!

Tom

Granada and Ometepe (Nicaragua)

Ola all!

Yes, I know, we are very good at dodging hurricanes, muahaha! This time we tricked Felix, it hit Utila after we had left. We haven't heard anything on the news about casualties and damages but we now that the islands were evacuated. We hope everyone is OK there, they were still recovering from hurricane Mitch which hit them in the early 90's...

We left Utila straight into Nicaragua. We are by now quite used to chicken buses and weirdly enough, have grown to love them. Well, at least I have since I always get offered a seat (Tom had to travel standing in a couple of occasions...). We crossed Managua which is a truly horrible place: everyone we know that has been there got robbed! Only stayed for long enough to change buses and a couple of hours later we arrived in Granada. Ah, Granada: it is a beautiful colonial city, where the houses are massive, with pretty inner gardens and colourful facades. It's definitely worth a visit!

The following day we carried on to the island of Ometepe (still on an island theme, I'm afraid...). It rests in the middle of Lake Nicaragua (which is only 170Km of length per 60Km of width, you can cross it lengthwise in a mere 12h boat journey...). The island is composed of not one but two volcanoes: after having escaped two hurricanes, we figured that we are lucky enough to risk a visit there :-) The lava flowing from the two volcanoes eventually connected their cones, forming Ometepe. Only the biggest volcano, Concepcion, is still active so we decided to do a trek up that one. Don't worry, the "beast"is permanently monitored and now, for instance, it is expelling gases so it is officially forbidden to climb it all the way to the crater.

Last Sunday we met our guide Horacio (deeply advised by us to anyone going there) at 7am for what we thought was a nice walk up a volcano. How we were wrong! The trek takes 3 hours up and 2h down, via a barely existent path through thick forest. Our legs still hurt today! On our way we met several groups of howler monkeys which, with hindsight, were not howling but laughing at the two silly tourists still blessfuly unaware of what they got themselves into. We also met a few venomous spiders (but fortunately no coral snakes), loads of butterflies, urracas (these amazing blue magpies) and vultures (checking us out for lunch at the top of the volcano, that's how alive we looked then). And loads of trees and bushes, like the cactus that produces dragon fruits (aka pitaias): we didn't actually see the fruits as the monkeys get top them quickly but we believed in Horacio. Oh, and we learned that apparently, the best coffee is the one that the monkeys eat and then poo, but I can explain it better if you are a coffee aficionado like myself. Yummy! The volcano is 1600m tall, 900m of which are covered by forest. Due to the gases, it's only safe to go up to 1000m right know, but that still is equivalent to an overall 13 Km hike up and down hill. Our legs were shaking by the time we reached the top! Needless is to say the only thing we did for the rest of the day was hammocking while watching this beautiful sunset...

The next day we invaded Costa Rica but just that crossing is a long story on its own...

Bye for now,

Vania

Utila (Honduras)

We spent a week on Utila, one of the Bay Islands off the Honduras coast. What with recent boat trips, we were pleased to discover that this time a reassuringly large boat awaited us. However our hopes of a calm ride were dashed by the speed at which sick bags were handed out. It was another rough ride but fortunately well worth it.

Utila is a very relaxed backpacker island, and with the coral reef extending down from Belize, it offers some great diving. We decided to do our Open Water scuba diving qualification here, which involved four days of classes and practicing various odd manoeuvres underwater. Vania even invented her own one, a ¨backside first emergency ascent¨ - coming to a scuba diving school near you soon! I ended up laughing so much I flooded my mask, but then provided some entertainment of my own with my attempted cross legged controlled hovering ended up looking more like I'd sat on a rocket! The test wasn't particularly difficult although its the first one either of us has sat with dogs chasing chickens around you, sand flies biting chunks out of your legs, heavy construction work next door and a parrot mimicking a baby crying (just in case your powers of concentration could shut out all the rest)! The practical work was much more fun, we saw garden eels, loads of different fish and coral with great visibility and a water temperature of over 80 oF! Thanks in particular to our instructors Kate, Saar and Megan who did a great job preparing us so well. Although we could have done without the emergency boat engine failure drill though! On the way to our second dive, the boat's gear jammed and they couldn't stop it or put it into reverse. So we were left going round and round in circles and trying to avoid crashing into the reef, with Vania and I thinking we must have skipped the part in th course about boat repairs.


Back on land, life on Utila is extremely chilled out and largely untouched by the scourges of modern living - no fast food places, no banks, no cars. The preferred mode of transport is the golf buggy, which was the case in Belize too. I can only assume there is a serious problem with disappearing golf buggies in the US, either that or when some old duffer drives one into a lake it gets deemed unroadworthy and shipped out to Central America to cart tourists around on! A bit like the legendary "chicken buses" (which Vania refered to in an earlier posting), the iconic ex-US bright yellow school buses which get their name from one of their most frequent passengers. Luckily we haven't had to sit next to any chickens yet, and the buses are actually ok. The only disturbing part is that their age is sometimes revealed by the name on the front "Rosewood School Centenary Year - 1958" or something equally reassuring!



We spent several evenings on Utila in the Treetanic bar, which had a series of walkways amongst the trees (perhaps not such a good idea for a bar but it looked great). On our way to Honduras we met the two lively future social anthropologists on the photo, Verena and Muriel. They had plenty of stories from their travels in central America, with which to amuse us in between cocktails! They also suggested us the place where we ended up staing in Utila, a really nice hostel called Ruby's. See, we initially got free accomodation with our dive course, but this proved to be something of a let-down. As I was getting into bed on the first evening, I noticed a dark patch between the sheets, which on closer inspection turned out to be a moving dark patch between the sheets. A large cockroach had beaten us to bed and was scuttling around sandwiched between the sheets! Having removed this one before Vania could pack her bags, and then two more in the bathroom, we decided to check out in the morning and decline the generous offer of this $3 a night accomodation!

Tom
Utila, Honduras


(I have some photos but sadly as yet not an internet cafe where I can upload)

Tobacco Caye (Belize)

Ola again!

We are on a roll of postings now!

Given our busy social schedule (ie, we are meeting Nacho, Rosanna and Monty in Costa Rica in early September), we couldn't explore Guatemala further. We kept an eye on Dean, having found out that the Weather Channel did frequent updates on the hurricane's progress (so frequent in fact thath the hurricane didn't have time to move that much in between them...). At that time it looked like it would miss Belize altogether, so we made our way down to another island (yes, another island...) called Tobacco Caye. We took the express again and 3h and -$10 later we arrived at the outskirts of Belmopan, the capital of Belize. We were dropped off by the express in a bus stop in the middle of nowhere and told to catch any bus going in a given direction. Hum... Interesting... In fairness to the belizean way of travelling, a bus came 15 min and about 10 mosquito bites later. This time it was the normal public bus, reffered to by tourists as "chicken buses", given the occasional chicken travelling with its owner. Actually they are old american school buses and we have since found them across the whole of Central America. Travelling in these buses remindes me of that crazy bus in one off the Harry Potter books: I swear chicken buses go through roads and curves where it would be physically impossible for them to pass without some sort of sorcery...

Still we arrived safelly to Dangriga, where we spent the night in a lovely B&B which was unfortunately for its owner (Louise) clearly located in the wrong city: there isn't much to do or see there. The Weather Channel told us Dean was about to hit Puerto Rico and that it could head anywhere from Mexico down to Nicaragua. We started wondering whether we should head inland to Guatemala but then Louise told us that her brother run an hotel in Tobacco Caye and that the moment she was worried about the hurricane, she'd evacuate her mum and brother from the island. Actually, the government evacuates the islands and costal places when there's a hurricane coming. Feeling reassured, we made a very bumpy ride into the island in a very small boat. Although painful, it was worth it - Tobacco Caye is a pretty little island, in the middle of the reef, with five small hotels and one beach bar. It has white sands lined with palm trees, just as you would picture a little island to be like. It's perfect for relaxing as there's not much else to do beyond snorkeling, swiming, hammocking and tanning. Nice!

In the evening all the inhabitants from the island (about ten plus the tourists) gathered at the bar for an update on the hurricane and a drink, of course. The radio was on and every so often there was an update on Dean's coordinates, which the fishermen translated for us as "far, far away". Besides Louise's mum was still on the island so we were confident we were safe :-) And we can tell you that the sky over Tobacco Caye has more stars than in any other place we've been! Nice by day and by night!

Nevertheless, the wiser part of us told us not to push our luck and the following morning, with much regret, we took the boat back to the mainland. The same day Dean hit Jamaica and changed its course slightly south, putting northern Belize in its path. The Government ordered the evacuation of the northern islands, including our first stop, Caye Caulker. Fortunately most damage was material and the last time we checked only 12 people died, which is very low for a force 5 hurricane.

Bye for now,

Vania

Flores and Tikal (Guatemala)

Ola again,

Feeling refreshed after a few days in Paradise we decided to do something cultural for a change and visit the ruins of Tikal, in Guatemala. From Belize City, we took an express bus as we thought it would be easier to cross countries as part of a bigger group. Three hours later we reached the border, where we were unceremoniously relieved of $15 each to leave Belize and another $3 each to enter Guatemala (how we appreciated the easiness of traveling within the EU then!). We headed for the beautiful little town of Flores, an island in lake Peten Itza (do you see a pattern surfacing here)? The village is very lively, with the small houses painted in bright colours matching the clothes worn by the locals. And Guatemalans are just so nice and always helpful! We dined at a local restaurant, overlooking the lake at sunset. And I tried a local fish, called "Blanco" ("White"), hummm...

The next day we took an one hour ride to the Tikal reserve. I now regret us not getting a guide there as there is so much to see. Basically Tikal encompasses some 20 sets of ruins (whose name should be changed since they are in particularly good condition) in the middle of a vast protected area of florest. The site was rediscovered in the 1850's and there are so many pyramids that some are still being recovered now. It was great to wonder in the forest and every so often bump into a magestic pyramid! Absolutely worth a visit (btw, thanks for the tip Alon!). We also got a glimpse of the wildlife: we were resting under a tree when something it our heads - a monkey was having fruit for lunch high above us and practicing its aim by spitting the pips at us. We still haven't seen the rare jaguar though, so we have to content ourselves with the plentiful leaf cutter ants. Not the same kind of scale I know, but still very impressive in numbers, strength and tenacity!

Due to time contraints we left Guatemala in the next day, and made our way back to Belize.
At this time Dean had become a serious threat and we kept a close eye on its movements. But that will be in our next posting...

Bye for now,

Vania