Hotel La Isla Inn Puerto Viejo

... The entrance fee was a whopping $25 (Costa Rica, baby), though I did have quite a nice time there. I had seen sloths previously in the Bolivian pampas, but only as an indistinct blob at the top of a very tall tree. This gave me the opportunity to view some up close and personal, and by God are they cute (photographic evidence of such to follow at some stage), which I wasn't really expecting. And yes, they do move incredibly sloooooooowly, its quite comical. On the ...

... people from the mountains who were trapped in the landslides and underground. This is just the way it is when you live in a country like Costa Rica. We appeal to other countries' hearts for special help. Even ...

... there are some events in one's own life that we will always remember with "bright colors". In Puerto Viejo I left my Costa Rican mum and her big family, 150 children and their contagious vitality, my new tropical friends, the ocean and its lullaby...and then I left geckos, cute sloths, little iguanas and peaceful alley dogs...catty bugs ...

... termed "polychronic time," meaning if you're not late, they won't be ready for you. OK, so maybe I don't want to live here. But it's been a great visit all the same. When we got back to the home base, the new batch of volunteers had arrived. There are four men and four women, all from a software company in Toronto, and they're only staying a week. Most of them seem pretty nice, but there's definitely a difference between doing something like this of your own ...

... jocote today. Jocote is a dimpled fruit about the size of a cocktail wiener, with a thin but tough skin that ranges in color from deep green when it's young to red and yellow when it's ripe. The flesh of the green fruit is firm and extremely tart; you're supposed to eat it with salt, while the ripe fruit is sweet and mealy and a bit like mango. It's not my favorite new fruit, but I've had worse. I had thought about staying home this weekend, because I needed a ...

... a little girl how to play frisbee. She certainly learnt more about frisbee in the two minutes I was teaching her than Rachael has learnt in her whole lifetime judging by how she can now throw a frisbee and it was nice to have a game of frisbee where one person isn´t always running to fetch a dodgy throw! The day was rounded off with an Italian meal where most of us ate huge pizzas and then we whiled the night away drinking and playing cards.

... y en a pas beaucoup. On a essayé de les pêcher une nuit et on s´est trouvé avec 3 miserables petits crevettes, la taille de mon petit doigt. Il y a 2 autres volontaires qui travaillent ici avec moi, David et Patricia. Ils sont un couple espagnol très sympathiques. Des fois, je me sens comme leur petite fille adoptée quand ils m´invitent de les rejoindre pour les weekends des activités. Francisco et Edward sont des locaux qui travaillent dans la association ...

... to be going snorkeling, but it got cancelled because of the weather. We also tried to go to the Sloth Refuge (in the rain) and when we got there we found out we could not afford to go in. We read in the book that you could pay about $5US and just look around, but a very unfriendly man told us we would have to pay at least $15US each and we just couldn't afford it. I would love to have seen the Sloths and given a ...

... unique way (names, countries, etc). This place was right on the beach. Like 30 seconds and you're there. This town was so unique. Tons of Bob Marley merchandise, fresh fruit vendors, as well as both black and white sand beaches. <br><br>I met a group of people who were from various places in the USA, currently studying in Puntarenas, Costa Rica but on a trip down here to Puerto Viejo for the ...

... met lots of cheeky white-faced capuchin monkeys loitering to be fed or steal food from tourists who´d arrived further along the trail by boat. At Punta Cahuita, the reef is more accessible from the beach and many people had congregated here. Once past this point we saw nobody (this was the 3.5km point). More wildlife in shape of a raccoon, blue helicopter flies for the boys, and pink dragonflies for the girls were spotted. Around ...