TravelStream™ news feed for member chalk on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/chalk en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:23:52 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1238606220/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1238606220/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1238606220/tpod.html Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:23:52 -0400 Small mission

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Taganga, Colombia

Some images from past. Santa Catalina in panama down to columbia. Sorry about no updates. Will type some stuff sooon........ maybe........... if i can remember all that has happened :)
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Panama City, Panama

Contrary to some of the beliefs and concerns expressed in recent emails i have received...... i am not dead, although at some point after Australia Day, when i decided to leave Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica and head south into Panama, i may have appeared so to some people who saw me. Thats the problem with Australia day.... they start drinking at 9am!! A terrible thing to consider when your bus leaves at 10:30 and you have to travel on buses and cross borders, and yet for some reason that's exactly what happened.

It all worked out though and i made it to Bocas Del Torro in Panama after a day trip on the bus, unfortunately the Caribbean side of both Costa Rica and Panama is suffering from extreme weather at the moment and days in bocas were a little bit to rainy for my taste. i only spent a few days there and then headed to the pacific side to a place called Santa Catalina. Bocas was good fun though and apart from having to get boats out to all the surf breaks every time you want a wave it was a cool place.

So after a day of traveling on various claustrophobic and over crowded buses i made it to Santa Catalina, and after another hour of driving around in a local guys beat-up, ancient green car that broke down several times, i eventually found a room in a small hostel halfway in between the town and the reef break i was planning on surfing. After that the story gets pretty boring. The town is small and all there is to do is eat sleep and surf really. So thats what i did :) I saw loads of sun rises and some nice sun sets and got some good waves early before many people came out. All very tranquillo and relaxing. Probably the most exciting thing that happened, other than surfing the reef on the last day when it was so shallow it was like slalom with rocks, was when a random parrot style bird landed behind me one day around the hostel grounds, and then climbed onto my hand when i put it out. "I am bird-man!" i thought "Finally the animals are under my command!" - then i found out it was owned and trained by the locals next door. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Then later i found a scorpion on the wall of the hostel for a bit and kept it in a glass for a while, observing it's strange behavior and seeing if it would sting a Biro..... which it didn't.

And now here i am in a hostel called Luna's Castle in Panama City. To my right there a bunch of Israelis playing ping-pong at crazy speeds, in front of me there's a whole table full of random characters playing cards and drinking beers and the stairs to my left have a constant flow of people running up and down them at all times. Coming and going. it's a busy place and i think after a 5 day chill-out and detox period it might be time to go and explore the nightlife around this city :)

Bye for now

Karlos
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1232498160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1232498160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1232498160/tpod.html Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:30:46 -0500 Small mission

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Antigua, Guatemala

Well after the volcano tour i decided to randomly head up to a place called semuc champay as the photo of people jumping off a bridge looked like good fun! Its a 7 hour drive north of Antigua in a little shuttle so that kinda sucked, and the weather up there was cloudy for most of the time. But staying at the little place called El Retiro near to the 'New 7th Wonder of the World' - the semuc champay water falls; was good fun and very relaxing. The lodge is a sprawling area of cabinas and dorms, with a great little bar restaurant that does probably the best buffet i've ever had. Some friends from Antigua came up as well so it was a good laugh.

First thing we did was see the BAT CAVES!!!!!! I think the photos will say enough for you to get the picture but i'll explain briefly. To start with you hike into a cave which has all the usual and crazy formations of rock that have been developed over hundreds and hundreds of years, but the first and main reason i wanted to go was to catch some CAVE SPIDERS! After seeing a few photos of them at the hostel i knew it would be freaky as hell and a challenge to pick one up without loosing the plot a big, so as soon as we got into the cave i was on the lookout for the little buggers. I didn't find any, but the tour guide had a good eye for them and we found a small one and a BIG one. See the photos :) Took a while to get used to picking them up, and even the explanation of them being 'non-biting' as they dont have fangs didn't really help to start with. After a few goes i got the hang of it though and even managed put it on my face for a little while. Great fun.

Then Came the Bats. Lots and lots of Bats.

They All start leaving the cave at sunset and we sat on a small ledge near the exit to watch the spectacle. The exit was only a few meters tall and not more than 1 meter wide and having a few hundred bats zooming past you in this space is pretty amazing. You would have thought you would feel them more or have some smash into your head but that wasn't the case at all. In fact after taking the photos i was shocked to see just how many there were buzzing around, they're so silent it's incredible, and they even managed to avoid being caught by my hat as i randomly swung it around in the air. Skillful creatures!

Visiting Semuc Shampay was next (after a few days of partying and waiting for sun. unfortunately that never came and we wandered up there on a cloudy day. It's an amazing place but my camera was out of batteries so i'll refer you to some random links and you can just imagine the rest. here > http://www.semucchampey.com/en/semuc-champey.html and here is a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_homM34xsU

Back in Antigua now and making a move to either El Salvador or Maybe Nicaragua or maybe Costa Rica soon.

bye for now
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1231518120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1231518120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1231518120/tpod.html Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:05:58 -0500 Small mission

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Antigua, Guatemala

Well i just woke up this morning to a random guy bursting into the dorm i'm staying at in Antigua/Guatemala at 6am to wake someone up so they could catch their bus. Then i woke up to very loud people chatting outside my room about half an hour later and while reaching into my wash bag to get some earplugs to drown out the insane babbling i managed to find my razor with the side of my finger and sliced off a fair chunk of it. The bleeding was quite intense and didn't stop for ages!

So an interesting way to wake up and it will also explain why the story about hiking up the Volcano and seeing some lava (real lava!!) might be a bit messy. it's hard to type with one finger wrapped up and having to correct all the mistakes i keep making is driving me insane :)

So I arrived here a couple of nights ago now after finally leaving Mexico and heading south on a nice long 12 hour journey. Arriving in Guatemala city was a bit depressing and i ended up in some random hotel on the outskirts of some district or another with nothing around to see or do.... or even eat, although i did find a random Chinese place after roaming the dodgy streets for an hour wondering why strange locals were hanging around telephone boxes.

So i was glad when i arrived in Antigua to see that it was a beautiful place, full of cobbled streets and old colonial architecture thats falling to bits but which also lend the place a very quaint atmosphere. I also found a great little hostel and as soon as i checked in a random English girl started raving and jabbering at me about a volcano tour that leaves in a couple of hours and that i should come along. I'd heard about the volcano and the lava from some other people and decided it would be well worth checking out..... a nice drive up to see some lava......... or so i thought.

What they didn't tell me was it involves a 2.5 hour hike up steep terrain that alternates between sharp volcanic rock, dust and some crazy sand-like stuff thats extremely hard to walk through. As soon as we started i knew why the guy laughed when i asked if i should wear my sandals or real shoes... "Sandals!!" he said "Are you nuts!"

So as i was completely un-aware of exactly what was involved (i thought we'd just turn up in a van and be presented with some lava action) i was forever thinking that the final destination was just around the next corner. By the time we made it to base of the volcano it had taken about 2 hours and pretty much everyone was messed up! It was great fun! Then we look up and see a plateau in the distance and what looks like a vertical climb to get to it. I managed to ask the Spanish tour guide if that where we're heading and had a little laugh when he replied 'yes' So me and another guy from the group decided to mission up there as fast as possible to make sure we were there for sunset! We'd started the walk at 3 and it was already getting near 6 so we just blasted up as fast as we could, over taking some other groups on the way. The final stretch to the top was a proper clamber. Having to sort or run up like a dog or a goat would, but when we reached the top and the spots from in front of my eyes and the dizzy feeling in my head had passed we finally found the lava..............REAL Lava!!!!!!!!

The funny thing about Lava is that it's pretty hot. What with being melted rock and all. Also the other thing is that when its all underneath the rocks your walking on they also become hot and its very hard to find a good place to sit down and rest your beer without burning your ass or at the very least heating your beer up to an undesirable temperature. It's very good for cooking marshmellows though, so long as you don't put the marshmellow to deep into the pits; if you do that your marshmellow just kind of explodes into flames and then falls off onto the rocks and kind of bubbles away for a while. But the Lava really is amazing!! The whole terrain that you walk around on is made of previously melted and then cooled-down rock so it has all these crazy shapes and forms, a bit like the ripples from the Vienetta ice-cream that i always wanted but never got round to eating. All over the place there's little holes and gaps where you can see down into areas of bright red heat. And the heat!! As soon as you get up there it's like being near a fire and when you get near to the proper flowing stuff you can feel your skin just about to catch on fire and you have to squeal and run back to safety, a few people had the soles of their shoes melt and others had leg/arm hair singe. All very funny stuff.

The sunset was amazing and thats when the lava looked the best. Seeing it flow just as it was getting dark was kind of mesmerizing and i didn't really want to leave when the tour guide started wrapping things up in a hurry, but as we started the descent i understood why he was in such a rush, the path down was full of people slipping over and landing on their asses and the darker it got the more dangerous it was. I'm pretty surprised nobody gets seriously hurt. Eventually we made it back down though and returning to the hostel covered in dust and scars was pretty funny.

All in all a pretty amazing experience. Go and check out some of the photos and i'll try and upload some of the video footage of the lava (real......FLOWING lava!!) as soon as i can.

Hanging around Antigua for a bit is the current plan. There's lot's of salsa up here and bars with Conga drums so im enjoying it a great deal :)

Bye for now
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1230141300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1230141300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/3/1230141300/tpod.html Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:41:37 -0500 Small mission

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puerto escondido, Mexico

Whats the first thing that crosses your mind after a few days of recovering from illness and sleeping in hammocks? Go to El Circus of course!

Yesterday I felt a lot better after a few days of shivers and sweats (which i find you always get at least once on any trip) so as my mind slowly started kicking back into gear and i was hangin around on the balcony considering what to do for the evening a small truck with a speaker phone drove past announcing 'El Circo' was in town. I didn't need much persuading; the paintings of crazy looking apes and a boxing kangaroo on the truck pretty much sold it for me even before the incomprehensible plug in a loud Spanish accent came. So off i went. To the circus.

It was Terrible.

I did document some of it in video format to try and convey the sense of doom i was feeling after only 30 minutes but no form of media could really convey the feelings of pain and despair that the circus instilled. Which was a shame because the opening act was fairly promising. A crazy looking Portuguese guy with long hair and a twitchy look in his eyes was doing the old juggling act that every circus must have..... except he messed up every time. To his credit though he persevered until he eventually pulled off the act in the end.

After Juggling man came the double acts of probably the most annoying clowns in the world. Their act consisted of one clown playing a track on a CD player and the other one repeatedly switching it off and screaming 'Silencio' - Silence i presume. The the other clown would turn it on, dance around; then the bad clown turned it off - 'Siencio!' the crowd booed and jeered. This went on in circles for about 5 times and then for the big finally the bad clown threw the cd player in a bin which made delayed 'woofing' noises everytime the good clown opened the lid. After 3 more repeats of this hilarity he opened the bin lid and a small dog lept/fell/sprawled out of the bin and ran out of the tent, presumably back to his dog community for counseling to repair the damage done by spending so much time with these terrible terrible clowns, i have a feeling the dog will never recover.

Then there was some animals. I didn't know what to expect or how i'd feel about being in a circus with trained animals but you have to see these things, at least once. Or only once. I wasn't to impressed and wondered if everyone was applauding the animals for their very basic tricks, or the trainers for somehow being able to convince them to do these things (probably with pain and whips) - Some of the highlights included Llamas that were joined together by a cord on the face and had to run around and do a few things like jump a small jump and kind of straddle the raised box around the outside while continuing to run around the ring. Some very VERY small horses (shire?) that didn't do much. A big horse that did a small jump and then put 2 feet on a box and a monkey, which to be fair, managed to complete several cool backflips and a bit of break dancing which i almost clapped at. Then came some more clowns. Similar act as before but replace 'Cd player' with 'Trumpet' and make the bad clown even more annoying with a high pitched voice... it made me wonder what i might do if i had a machete easily at hand.

Eventually i gave up and left. Just after they brought out a little tiger cub and i gave him a stroke, very sad really. I just wanted to set him free, or steal him and take him back to my balcony there and keep him as a pet.

So that was yesterday. A few other things have happened in the past few weeks which I'll now relay in no real order and probably not in to much depth. I got a strange hair cut. Kind of like a Mohawk effect. I'll send you photos :)

Snapped my board a few weeks ago. Its now called Harry Potter as its got a lighting shaped scar on the belly. Happened the same day i bought it as well!

Bunch of aussie guys below me are pretty cool. Doing xmas dinner with them and a xmas eve dinner tonight with Marchee who's the owner of a bar called UTOPIA which i'm supposed to be playing at for new yea. Equipment is short though so we only have a single laptop, i have the feeling it's all going to go a bit pear shapped. A polish xmas eve should be interesting though, he told me they eat food, drink lots of vodka and then hold hands and sing, and dance on tables, then run around the beach naked and then get hammered and ride quad bikes around. Hold hands and Sing?!?!?! SING. He'd better be joking. I'll find out later either way.

Oh here's something that i didn't know. A scorpion will kill itself if it's in pain. It uses it's own stinger on itself for some reason. I found this out because the guys below me decided to see if it was true and put one in a hot pan to see what would happen. The scorpion went nuts and then stabbed itself. Crazy. Kinda glad i didn't see it though, i like scorpions.

Well thats about all that springs to mind at the moment. The surf is Flat but i went out with a mask today and theres loads of fish out there so i'm in the process of getting a spear gun to pass the time with. It would be good to catch a few for tea.

Hope your all doing well and having a happy xmas so far :)

xxx
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puerto escondido, Mexico

video?
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puerto escondido, Mexico

Well I wasn't going to do much of an update log on this trip because I figured it would be pretty uneventful and i'd be mainly just staying in the same place, but after having a crazy trip just getting this far I thought I might as well keep a small log just for the hell of it, they're always fun to read over again after a few years when you've forgotten the details.


The Problems started when I got to Guernsey airport and realised that instead of booking a flight to Manchester to see my family as planned I had somehow, in my monday morning confusion booked a flight to Gatwick. This revelation coupled with the after effects from a couple of nights 'leaving parties' was the last thing my brain needed. So that's it I thought. I'm going to Gatwick now, and I i'll just have to figure out how to get up to Liverpool from there. I checked in my bags and then started thinking about how to get up to Liverpool, which is when I randomly decided to pull my bag off the flight to Gatwick and buy a horribly expensive one-way ticket to Manchester instead... I figured by the time I get to Gatwick and then spend either 4 hours on trains or even 2 night in hotels around London i'd be no worse off then spending the £135 just to get up to Manchester and then Liverpool as planned. Silly Me.


So after a few more issues with confusing trains for buses and then eventually getting a bus I made it to Liverpool and had a good couple of days seeing family that I hadn't seen in years and watching my team Everton win in a local pub full of Everton fans. The problems started again when I tried to LEAVE Liverpool. This time it wasn't my fault though, just the chaos monkeys in the sky throwing bananas of randomness down on me. I couldn't help but laugh really. The bargain one-way train I had purchased from Liverpool to Euston got cancelled just as I paid for my ticket, then the next train with Virgin also got cancelled JUST after I had paid an extra £30 to upgrade to their train, the whole station was in disarray and the next quickest way of getting to London was unavailable because the platform was so crowded full of people they had to stop any more from getting through. Luckily just when I was starting to think i'd never leave the station another Virgin train appeared on the screen and the boss told me this one is 100% on it's way and will make it to Euston, but I only really believed that i'd make it their when the train actually pulled in to the station, which to my surprise it did! A bit more chaos ensued on the underground with half the lines being shut. Some how I ended up on a Picadilly line instead of getting to Paddington Station and a train just pulled up that was heading right to Heathrow terminal 5. At last some randomess going my way!


And now after a night stay in Mexico City and a flight down here im back on the pacific coast. Things have been much better than the first half of the trip. I managed to blag a flight to the coast for only 300 pesos more than a bus which takes 16 hours. The flight took 1 hour. Result! Had a bit of a surf last night and a small one this morning and now hanging around in a cafe with wireless internet and preparing the laptop for getting on with some 3d work. Yes you heard me right. Work :)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1207243140/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1207243140/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1207243140/tpod.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:04:54 -0400 Dice Mission and a one way ticket to Toronto

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New York City, New York, United States

Every now and again you end up having one of those trips where everything that can happen, does happen. After leaving the sunny and peaceful hostel in San Jose it seems that events have conspired to test my patience to the limits and luckily im still doing fairly well.

It all started on the flight from San Jose. After checking in and paying my leaving tax of 26 dollars i eventually made it on to the plane and settled down for the 4 hour flight to charlotte where i'd then transfer for the connecting flight to New York. The plane was slightly delayed because of winds and a few of the passengers, mainly loud Americans, started getting a bit irate. it was only a 30 minute delay but even so this made the chances of catching the connection pretty slim.
About half way through this waiting period i hear a little noise to my right (im on the left aisle seat) and turn my head in just enough time to catch some rather drunk and over weight girl do a projectile vomit all the way up the side of the airplane and up the window side where she was sitting! She liter tally just half covered her mouth and it shot up the side of the plane. Everything went a bit nuts from here on. First of all her friend and the other random next to her jump up and start going mental and calling her all sorts of horrible names, the girl at this point is looking around a bit dazed and generally acting like the stupid cow she would later turn out to be. Her friend ignores her plea to 'hang around and look after her', calls her a stupid bitch and the legs it to the back of the plane with the other random to get the last 2 spare seats, leaving her friend just sitting there with puke all over the place.
Then all of a sudden the stewardesses are all over the situation, got her to move to the aisle seat (right next to me!), and sprinkled white power over all the chunks. At this point a guy in front of the puke girl jumps up exclaiming he can't take it any more and runs to the back to empty the contents of his own stomach and then one of the stewards also has to run to the front to do the same, leaving just one left, who at this point is throwing ground coffee all up and down the aisle to calm the smell, all the while instructing us not to 'put our fingers in and try eating it' - of course not! My plan was to get down on all fours like a dog and lick it off the carpet silly. And actually, seeing as they had confiscated my water and my mouth was dryer than a nun on Christmas day, the thought of a nice mouthful of coffee and saliva didn't seem to unappealing. Never the less i refrained.
The thing that amazed me was the girl wasn't even trying to help. Maybe she was that drunk that she could do anything, even so she just sat there with all this going on around her, looking stupid and covered in her own puke, then after things calmed down a little bit, just rolled onto the now free seats to her right, and passed out........ in her own chunks. Lovely.
By this point the plane is getting ready to take off and we all have to put our seat belts on, which everyone has done apart from the puke girl. So the stewardess wakes her up pretty harshly and tells her to put it on, which she doesn't do. In fact she just kind sits there with this look of contempt on her face like shes been mistreated and wont comply just to prove a point. I'm finding this all faugly amusing in a detached sort of way but the couple to my right are getting pissed off. They seemed like the kind of people you'd get in a grad school movie, always hollering abuse from the back of the class and making bitchy comments about people. They went into over drive and the puke girl was the source of much ridicule for the whole flight, when she was awake and trying to move anyway. She lent over once and the couple busted out with "My god that a large ass!!!" - the puke girl didn't put on her belt in the end, the stewardess had to come and do it for her, chaos! - Im sure you get the picture. The only time the couple didn't have digs at puke girl was when they were lamenting over the family just behind us! My god. not that i blame them. If you can picture the worst family, with 3 kids, ever, then your close. The kids were running the aisles, pounding the seats, screaming "i want's:" and "Give me's" the whole flight whole the parents did pretty much nothing other than the occasional "please sit down honey" - which was obviously ignored. When the kid tried to use me as a climbing frame it was almost too much, but i'd already decided at the beginning of this trip that i would use this as a good test to see how much stress i could take without letting it effect me, i think i managed quite well and by the end of the flight i still felt surprisingly relaxed..... even though the connecting flight was about to leave in 30 minutes. I only just made it, which is more than i can say for my bag..........

The connection to New York only took an hour and twenty minutes, but that seems like a long time when you have an overweight man elbowing you in the side as he snores his way into another twitching dream state. I'd only just made it onto the flight, and when i got off at the other side i had a pretty strong intuition that my bag wouldn't be coming out of the conveyor belt, unless the baggage people ran as fast as me to get it there. So when it didnt arrive i wasn't to surprised and went through the routine of logging the bag and getting my codes to track it the next day.

"Any unique items in the bag" the chap asks me.
"Errmmm, a 2 foot machete from Honduras" is what i didn't say.

So luckily i met a guy who lives near the place i was going to check into, and its also lucky that i decided to crash on his sofa last night. All the hostels seem to be full! I said good bye to Ian the piano player and his room mates and left off in search of the place i was originally going to check into. In the 6 months i've been traveling i've never turned up to a hostel that has been full before, theres always at least ONE dorm bed for a night. But like i said; events are conspiring against me. So i've been walking around new york for 3 1/2 hours in my board shorts (its damn cold here!) and my pair of odd socks (i didnt think i'd be in them for this long!) trying unsuccessfully to find a place to stay, and at the same time trying to recover my bag. The problem is i need an address to get the bag delivered to when i phone up in half an hour to find out if it came on the latest flight. It's coming to the moment of truth! One of the hostels said phone at 2 and they might have a cancellation so soon my situation will be revealed to me, hopefully in a good way. The funny thing is that nobody gives a shivering guy in board shorts, odd socks, and a panama hat a second glance here. In Fact i'm still more normally then a lot of the crazy's. Now theres a scary thought, and possibly something that should be remedied in the event of my bags not turning up and all the hostels being full.

Wish me luck.

Karl
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1206739560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1206739560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1206739560/tpod.html Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:46:48 -0400 Dice Mission and a one way ticket to Toronto

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Santa Teresa, Costa Rica

The last post was going to be the last but since i've now left the Caribbean side and bombed over to the pacific i thought i'd do one more update. Im now in a very cool little place called Santa Teresa which is in the top left hand side area of Costa Rica and getting a nice swell at the moment. I just had the best surf EVER this morning, so good in fact that i couldn't get out of the water, even when i was physically exhausted. I ended up in there for 4 hours! Gotta make the most of it since ive only got 3 or 4 days left.

My God. Going back to England soon! It seems like it's not going to happen, even at this late stage.

But anyway. The trip over here was pretty long. Left Viejo at 7.30 pm and got to San Jose at midday, the dodgey taxi drivers swamped me so i picked one at random that looked fairly respectable. I'd only just woken up on the bus and was dazed as hell so ended up settling on a price that was about 1000 collones to much. Thats a english quid. Not much to worry about. As we're in the car on the way to the next bus station so i can get the connecting bus to the pacific side he starts telling me that the bus leaves at 3.30pm and theres no way it will make it as the bus has to go on a boat to cross over and according to taxi driver the boat only leaves at 10pm, so i'll have to stay over night. Bullshit! Luckily i took a gamble and ignored him, i got to the station, the bus left at 2.30 and we all crossed over on the ferry in happy spirits will nice cold imperial beers in our hands. Never listen to taxi drivers, i found out they just want to sell you and over priced stay in one of their buddies hotels. The evil swine.

The first 2 mornings here have been amazing. In a way i wish i'd headed over here a little earlier, the surf is so much better! Not as heavy as the reef at salsa brava but nice and chunky all the same, and very glassy. Also the sunsets are stunning and its great to be back on the west coast so i can float out and watch the sun go down as im surfing in water thats almost to hot sometimes. Not that i'd change that for anything but yesterday evening i was burning up out there and the water was to hot to cool me down! I like it! I stayed in till i was the last one and had to walk the little jungle path back to the hostel in the dark and i could hear all these scuttling creatures to my right and left bolting out of my way, probably crabs or lizards i thought but then something ran over my foot and my mind started filling in the images of cute lizards with those of great big spiders. Pretty freaky but also very funny!

Not much else to tell really. Woke up this morning and though my bike had been nicked but it turned out that someone had borrowed it to go look for their passport as their whole dorm room had been robbed.... while 4 people were a sleep in it! Turns out the robbers came in and actually carried out the whole stack of safes in the corner which had a few people most valuable things in it. Quite shocking really. This one poor chap sliced open his foot the other day so he cant surf for his last week and now lost all his cards and passport etc. Evil!

Well im going to head off now, last days so i've got to make the most of it all!

Bye for now

Karl
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1205599020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1205599020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/chalk/dicemission/1205599020/tpod.html Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:48:02 -0400 Dice Mission and a one way ticket to Toronto

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Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

Well it's been a pretty eventful few weeks even though i haven't managed to do any updates. This place seems to have gotten hold of me a little bit and it almost feels like a second home now! Inbetween surfing the main surf break and occasionally breaking my board its been a chaotic mix of partying and exploring around the beaches..... oh and getting in some serious hammock time. The vibe out is really quite special, such a cool mix of people and always something going on to distract you from moving onwards. Next week is some kind of easter festival and the place is expected to be packed to the brim, i might even think about renting out my spare bed to make some extra cash!

Unfortunatley it will all come to a close soon as i've had to book my ticket back, so i'll be landing in Guernsey on the 4th.... it doesnt feel quite right but i have to go and make the best of it. So instead of waisting time trying to remember all the random things that have happened i'm just gonna say 'chao' and i'll explain all about it when i get back. It seems the travel logs always fade off at the end huh! :)
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