Blue Palm Hotel Jaco

... a big smiley face...wasn't Guayaquil the place I was trying to reach to begin with? That was awesome, as long as I could recoup my backpack from the plane. Well, it ended up that I could not no matter how much I sweet talked every single person who was working in the airport at that time of the night, it did not work. I then wondered if my bag was really in the plane anyway. The problem about waiting in Guayaquil was that when you already waited two days in Costa Rica ...

... are not paved...lucky some of them are graveled...unluckily the one we are on has no gravel just dirt! (For those missing what is coming at this point... dirt + water + bus with big wheels = mud...lots of red sticky slippery mud.) Shortly after we left the pier one of the big forty-seater buses passed us on the "Freeway" LMAOROTF....so it made it to the turn off before us and of course churned the road into a mud bog ahead of us. It got worse! After 45 minutes of busting my ...

... and we had a couple of buskers performing old Bob Marley numbers, ocassionally crying out Escocia (trust me to tell one of them where we came from!). At Puntarenas - a bit of a downtrodden port toon - we decided to stay for a night rather then carry on south - my head was splitting anyway, because we just donŽt seem to drink enough water....oh well! So, we found a ...

First of all, go and look at the previous entry, i just uploaded a load of photos from back in Belize, the Jungle trek and caves, and also the small island, its taken me a while to be able to get them from my camera onto my little USB memory stick so thats my excuse for it taking so long. Nothing to do with laziness and stagnation of course! ;) Costa Rica so far has been pretty interesting and its been great being back on the pacific coast with all the ...

... kept secret) and studied some vocabulary. I was picked up at seven by my favorito taxista Johnny who took me to the Cloud Forest Preserve. Along the way, Johnny stopped to show me a quetzal, a beautifully coloured bird which is apparently on the endangered specied list. There are only 300 left in these parts so I was quite excited to have seen one. I tried to take a picture but it didn't really turn out ...

... We arrived on a wet and dark night in San Jose to be assaulted firstly by the humidity of the tropics and secondly by the legions of taxi drivers. They'd tell you anything to get you in a cab, promising you that the hotel you want to go to is full so youŽll go somewhere they get a commission. We got talking to an English couple and shared a collectivo, a group taxi, which cost $3 each. The cowboys were looking for $12. They wanted to take us to places we'd ...

... in a private direct bus straight to Mal Pais and Santa Teresa, two surf towns on the end of the Costa Rican peninsula. The other girl named Kristen who has been traveling for a while now from Mexico all the way to Costa Rica, and knows less Spanish than I do, came with me on 4 public busses one ferry and one taxi. We had a three-hour head start on the other girls but we had to go a different way because the roads on the peninsula are really bad, so we called ...

So yesterday I took off with Andrew and Alan (Carmen's kids) and a friend of theirs, Catalina, to their beach house. Its just outside Jaco, which is a popular beach destination on the Pacific about two hours from San Jose. Their beach house is awesome and overlooks the beach (its probably 30 meters to the beach). Carmen, Ian, and Catherine met us out there a couple of hours later. I am the oldest, but since I'm a kid at heart, I fit right in ...

... not used to eating so much of it; even though it is all delicious. I remember its time to take my Lipitor! When i left Costa Rica I packed 2 liters of water, figuring to only drink botteled stuff. But for breakfast i drank tang, so there went that plan. Since then i have totally fallen off the water wagon with no bad indications. After all, the signs do say "AGUA POTABLE". I am told there are 2 rivers within walking distance, and both are loaded with fish ...

... and she said, if we were interested, she runs horse tours up into the jungle. We saw her again the next day and she convinced us. I have only been on a horse once in my life and thought it would just be a cheesy touristy horse ride..I was very wrong !! Waiting at the tour spot we met some pretty colorful characters who owned the horses. He kept calling Arvin Poncho Villa, and was trying to get him to speak Spanish, it was hilarious. Every ...