Longest blog post evah!

Wow, it's been a while since we updated so this could be a longen, I'll try to keep it short. After our radical surfing manouevers of SJDS we headed over to Isle Ometepe with an American traveller friend called Chris who we met in SJDS. We happened across a parade in honor of Santo Domingo where there was a massive effigy being carried down the street and everyone dancing about with twigs. As our bus needed to go down the same road it took us 6 hours to do the 3 hour journey. We got to our hostel which was out in the sticks but very nice. Becky went to bed and I went for some beers in the hostel with Chris and we ended up talking to a Sandista Commandante who was in the place because of some 'unrest' in the north due to the elections. The man was what could only be described as a soldier philosopher, having been shoot three times since the revolution in the 80's. He'd been educated in the U.S., Russia and Cuba and would randomly quote Plato whilst drinking at least one bottle of Johnny Walker Black with us and a group of very young American tourists (one of which he took quite the fancy to ...). He had two body guards that in addition to hovering over me every time I accidently put my hands under the table and scaring off a middle aged Canadian dad, would also fetch ice from a mystery location for his scotch. It was such a random surreal experience!



We somehow managed to cross the boarder into Costa Rica after Ometepe. We ended up in a parking lot between the two countries filled with Semi's and no clue where to go next at one point. With no signs and no boarder police to help we eventually found our way and headed off on a bus only to have to stop for a french couple who had to run back as they totally missed the Costa Rican entry point and didn't get their passports stamped.



Crossing into Costa Rica from Nicaragua was like night and day from the rest of Central America. Costa Rica has a lot more money than its northern neighbours and it's very apparent. Instead of getting asked if I wanted to buy some Chicken and Cloeslaw in a bag or a blinking key chain by random people trying to make a few cents, the first guy who hit me up in CR was trying to hawk a pair of Nike Air's. We stayed in Liberia for a day and got out as soon as possible. It didn't have any of the charm that most of Central America had had and we legged it to Tamarindo on the Pacific coast...hence to be called Tamagringo due to its over abundance with American and European super resorts.




Chris is having a nap now so I'll try to add some more. In Tamagringo we took another surfing lesson (in the rain!) and progressed much further - Chris even got upgraded to a proper board while I at least learned to "jump" up on the Fisher Price My First Surfboard I was using. Then we caught an early bus back to Liberia and then on to Santa Elena, near Monteverde. This is a highland area with some of the only cloud forest left in the world, and the main attraction is "canopy tours" so we signed up. It involved going down a network of ziplines (the longest was a cool 660m) and jumping off a high platform for a Tarzan swing. Then we walked around the cloud forest over a series of Indiana Jones-style hanging bridges. It was great fun, we have some photos which I haven't uploaded yet. Central american internet tends to be rather slow and it takes an hour to upload 20 photos so I'm a bit behind! After a couple of days we moved on to La Fortuna also known as Arenal, which is a heavily touristed area due to the active volcano. With our new Canadian friend Leanna and some other people from the Hostel, we went on a tour which included a hike in the rainforest at dusk before going to a viewpoint to try to see the lava. Apparently at least half the visitors to Volcan Arenal never see the live action of the volcano so we were lucky to see a small quantity of lava (solid rocks rather than the runny stuff you'd imagine) on the distant volcano. However we were so far away that despite the whooping of the tour guides, it might as well have been a guy with a red torch messing around.

Then we went on to the best bit of the tour - the Hot Springs. The volcano heats a couple of local springs and one has been made into a plush resort hotel which we were granted entry into. We felt a bit out of place among all the rich people enjoying themselves at the swim-up bar, but we'd smuggled some beer in so we all sat in a natural hot pool next to a waterfall and among all the rocks and plants drinking it. It was great. Then we felt even more out of place when we went for the buffet dinner which was included - you could definitely spot us backpackers getting our money's worth of the food while all the grownups picked at a salad.

The following day, we and Leanna were booked to go white water rafting, finishing up at Puerto Viejo on the carribbean coast of Costa Rica with the intention of eventually heading over to Bocas Del Toro in Panama. This seemed a good place to celebrate Chris's birthday with a few cocktails in some reggae bars. However, our rafting trip was first moved to another river and then cancelled completely because the rivers were too high and dangerous. So we planned a bus journey to Puerto Viejo which involved changing buses four times in random non-tourist locations but would get us there that night. However, the third bus was turned back due to a river having burst its banks and we ended up getting a bus to San Jose, the capital, since it was the only place we could even get to. The following day we went into Panama (yay, another day on the bus) to the city of David thinking that we could go to the pacific beaches somewhere from there. But it was raining like crazy so we just hung out there for a couple of days. The heavy rain eventually caused a national emergency around the carribean coast of Panama and Costa Rica. The hostel in David was full of people who'd been in Bocas Del Toro and had been flooded out, had their buses stopped or overturned by landslides, had to sleep under derelict buildings and walk miles in the mud. If we hadn't missed a bus connection on the way to Puerto Viejo that could have been us! We were staying in the most insane hostel. Chris hated it. It was called the purple house and (duh) the whole house was painted purple, inside and out. All the plates and towels and sheets and ornaments were purple and the cleaning lady even wore a purple tabard. It could have been such a great hostel but it was full of weird control-freakery notices and rules. Not the best location for Chris's birthday but we met some very nice people and had some beers with them. Oh, and we managed to get Chris a haircut - "no muy corto".

It seems churlish to complain about lack of fun things to do in Panama when they are having a national emergency! We then headed back into San Jose and spent a few days just hanging out, buying crappy tourist T-shirts and waiting for our flight to Ecuador.