TravelStream™ news feed for member mchavez on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/mchavez en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:08:13 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/12/1225142160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/12/1225142160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/12/1225142160/tpod.html Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:08:13 -0400 London

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London, England, United Kingdom

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New York City, New York, United States

It's all good, enjoying exploring the USA (and Canada), watching lots of baseball games (and basketball...and hockey...and lacrosse...) and occasionally even going out to party. I've been driving lots of miles, about 3300 (that's around 5200km), unfortunately most of the time all by myself (and my car doesn't even have a stereo system (unlike the Hummer I made a down-payment for the other day...)).Well, to start at the beginning: I was in Miami for a couple of days and this time it was heaps better than in October. More beautiful people (ladies of course, I'm not looking after guys...), more fun in the clubs and the weather was still great. The first day I went to a car dealer and bought a tiny, red Suzuki Swift, for 1800.- dollars. I picked it up on April 6th and headed towards Tampa right away. Hmm, didn't get too far, 60 miles to be exact, until the motor suddenly stopped workingand I couldn't restart it nomore! It was rush-hour, I was in the mid-lane of a five-lane highway and one angry cop screamed at me, before he eventually stopped traffic and I rolled the car to the side of the road. Luckily I was pretty close to Ft. Lauderdale, so I just left my car there and I called a tow-truck the next day to transfer it to a garage. They looked at it for six hours, giving me different reports *every* sixty minutes, but at the end of the day they concluded that the fueltank was rusted (plus the fule-hoses were dirty), so the guys cleaned that stuff and re-coated it. That took three days (well, the tank has to dry, doesn't it...) and I was finally able to continue on Saturday, April 10th.Because of this delay I had to bury my plans about visiting every ballpark since a) I already missed two games and was late for a third and b) the repairs had cost me about 1000.- bucks, therefore I didn't have enough money anymore to go through with my project. In retrospect I gotta admit that it was a good thing it happened, because now I can spend more money on clothes, shoes and other stuff, instead of being tight-budgeted for the whole three months. And luckily it happened at the beginning of my trip, not when I would have been in 23 out of 30 stadiums already. Anyway, travelling here is sooo expensive, man! I spend between 40 and 60 dollars for a motelroom, gas is cheap but I drive that much that I need to fuel up twice a day, which comes to about 25$ daily. That just leaves me about 5$ to get a meal... (A Happy Meal!!!)Allright, so I decided to travel for about seven weeks, which is cool (I'm getting tired of changing rooms every day and living out of a huge bag!!). For everyone who's interested: I'll be back in Switzerland May 24th and in Finland May 31st, according to the latest plans (which might change, depends on how much money I spend until I reach San Francisco...).Back to the topic... From Ft. Lauderdale I drove on to Orlando and Savannah. It was a beautiful landscape around me, especially in Georgia. Everything was so green, phat green, and in full force of spring/summer. Savannah was quite tranquil and friendly. The roads took me to Knoxville next, through some mountains and a Native American reserve. I liked the nature there too, especially the woods and rivers. The day after I reached Cleveland (by way of Lexington, Cincinnati and Columbus), where I attended my first NBA-game (really cool, Let's go LeBron). Had a day off in Cleveland (ah, it rained and rained...) and continued to Chicago (the environment on that leg was mostly farmland and a little boring), where I watched a game at infamous Wrigley Field. I had a little trouble navigating Chicago, just too many "STOP"-signs there.A day after that I arrived in Toronto, a city I fell in love with straightaway! It's the best place I've visited so far on this trip. It has everything you need in a pretty small area, like stores, malls, clubs, eateries, sports venues, other sightseeingstuff, etc. It's close to a huuuge lake, which must be nice in summer! My girlie side took over and I ended my shoppingspree with 1000.- USD less in my pockets (or in my accounts, to be exact).Then I visited the Niagara Falls (nice, but way too touristy), Cooperstown (Baseball Hall of Fame), New York for a Mets game, Philadelphia (Phillies and a Flyers' Playoff-game), Baltimore (whoa, nice ladies...) and now I'm back in NYC for two more days. Gotta buy some more clothes/shoes here and I'll go to a Yankees-A's game with my buddy Jak on Tuesday. After that I'll start my trip towards the west coast via St. Louis, Denver and Las Vegas.Funny notes:In Miami two big, black women tried to pick me up... On my way to Knoxville I stopped at a gas station and when I was trying to take money out of my moneybelt (which was tucked in under my jeans), the girl at the cashier goes:"Hey, where are YOU goin'???"! (referring to my hands in my pants...)... There was a rainstorm the day I drove to Niagara Falls and it got pitch-black dark (seriously!) at 11am... Trying to find Cooperstown I got pulled over by a police officer (what an adrenaline rush, wow!!)... Driving in Manhattan is a nightmare, just that you know (even if it's 10pm on a Tuesday night)...
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San Jose, Province of San Jose, Costa Rica

...and the story continues...From Cusco I took a bus to Puno at the Lago Titicaca. For those of you who don't know, that's the highest navigable lake in the world (they say...). The landscape is spectacular, the lake is huge and it's just generally nice over there (and the ride from Cusco through the Andes is amazing as well). From Puno my journey continued to La Paz in Bolivia. The city is quite ghetto, people bustling around and streetmarkets every day. It lies in something like a hole, meaning it's surrounded by populated hills up to 400m higher than the town itself. That's quite a view, especially with a 6400m high mountain looming in the background!I visited the world's highest ski-lift too (at 5300m) and threw some snowballs down the cliffs there. Thanks to a bad piece of pizza I got pretty sick (the hotelrooms toilet was pretty busy for a while...) and I had to shift my departure for Uyuni by a day. I left La Paz in the late afternoon and was supposed to arrive in Uyuni at 0600 the next morning. Unfortunately another bus got stuck in a river, which made it impossible for us to continue. After some hard work (and thinking) by the locals, they finally (after three hours) managed to pull the other bus out and a passage was made by moving stones into the river, so got going again and arrived in Uyuni at 0930. Forgot to mention that the bus was packed, half my seat was taken by my neighbours stuff, my knees were about an inch under my chin, the temperature was about two degrees (and you're supposed to sleep in these conditions???)...Uyuni is close to a big saltlake (one third the size of Switzerland) and I checked it out by way of a three-day tour, which would leave me in San Pedro de Atacama (Chile) at the end. The lake was truly amazing, huge really. We would drive for one hour, in a straight line, without anything closer than five kilometers. It was also very strange because I just couldn't believe that the white stuff I was seeing was salt and not snow. It just looked so much like a frozen lake covered in snow... There's also a hotel built entirely of salt, unbelievable. On the tour we saw other things as well, like volcanoes, weird rock formations in the desert (arbol de piedra), lagoons of different colors (red, green, turquoise) with flamingos, hot springs, geysirs, mummies, etc... The views were absolutely stunning and it was the best trip I've done so far (besides Tikal anyway)!! The nights we spent at altitudes of over 4000m, so it got really really cold! But the clear skies with thousands of stars and the cristal-clear milky way definately made up for the cold temperatures.At my next stop, San Pedro, I took it easy for a few days, enjoying a nice hotelroom with TV, trying to get rid of the flu I caught in Bolivia. I still managed to go on another tour to some geysirs and hot springs and with Kellie (who I met again briefly) I rented a bike and we went sandboarding in the Valley of Death. And to complete things a bee thought it must climb into my can of coke, right before I take a sip, so I ended up having it sting me on the inside of my lip, which was very painful (Kel, no you know how it feels, right?!). After San Pedro I travelled to Iquique, where I spent a couple of days relaxing at the beach. It felt good to be near the ocean again and the city had a McDonalds, so Raffi was extremely happy... ;-)Soon it was time to leave Chile, so by taking two buses and one collectivo I managed to get to the second-largest city in Peru, Arequipa. I didn't like that town too much (besides that it was a good place for present shopping), thus I joined a two-day tour of Cocha Canyon. This turned out to be quite a work-out... Within 24 hours we hiked a height difference of 2900m!! The first day (after a five hour busride from 0200 until 0700) we descended first 1100m, uphill 300m to have lunch and downhill again for another 300m. We stayed at an oasis at the bottom of the canyon, in bamboo huts with comfy beds but no electricity or running water. Had to get up at 0230 to climb uphill for three and a half hours, covering 1200m in altitude! Well, sore muscles, a couple of blisters and the promise never to go hiking again, those were the results of that trip.I met Kel again in Arequipa (thanks for the help while shopping, guapa!) and together we decided to travel to Pisco, before going back to Lima. The busride was supposed (again, supposed...) to last for thirteen hours, but after six of 'em we suddenly found ourselves in some sort of traffic jam. Closer inspection revealed that a cliff had collapsed and now completely blocked the road ahead (the Panamericana!). Although a bulldozer was at work it didn't look too promising. Eventually the road was cleared after six hours, which we spent sitting around in the shadow or trying to get some sleep in the bus. So we finally arrived in Pisco at 0230, the whole trip lasted around twenty hours. No big deal, really, as we quickly found a hostel to relax and sleep.The day after Kel and I joined a half-day tour to visit a couple of things close to Pisco. A boat took us to an island, which was full of marine birds. There must have been more than a billion of 'em, for real! They even collect the birds droppings and sell it as fertilizer. There were also a lot of sealions, who by the way make a lot of noise when they're hanging around on the beach, and some penguins. Cute...In the afternoon we took a bus to Lima and the next day I flew to San Jose, one more time. Here I am now and tomorrow I'll fly to Miami to start my Tour de USA. I still haven't decided if I will rent or buy a car, but hopefully that will be resolved before Sunday.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1077960120/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1077960120/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1077960120/tpod.html Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:50:20 -0400 Las Americas

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Cusco, Peru

I decided to write smaller emails, but more frequently, even though it's been four weeks again since the last update. Well, I'll try to keep it short, compact and interesting...After getting back from Honduras I met Nora in San José and we spent about ten days together in Dominical. We had agreat time hanging out at the pool and the beach, getting tanned (and peeling after a couple of days). She left and I hung around in San José for a week, planning my trip to the US and figuring out how to get to South America. Eventually I decided to fly to Lima and then to go through Bolivia and Chile, in the end back up the coast of Perú. I arrived in Lima on the 26th and my flight back to Costa Rica will be on March 31st, so I got five weeks to travel around here.Well, I spent two nights in Lima, which is just a huge city. They have about eight million inhabitants, so it really is quite big. At least it resembles a capital, unlike San José. I didn't do too much there, just walking around town trying to find a guidebook about South America. I ended up finding a pretty cheap one, but later I noticed that it's an edition from 1996 (and used), so I won't trust any of the schedules/timetables mentioned in it. At least it covers all the sights and interesting things to see/do, that's enough.On Saturday the 28th I flew to Cuzco, which is north-east of Lima. Cuzco's at 3500m above sealevel, therefore I had to take it easy for a couple of days, because some sort of altitude sickness kicked in and I had a headache for almost two days. It's also very cold up here! We're wearing two jumpers at a time and we use three woolen blankets for cover while in bed. Te air is really fresh and dry, a big difference to the cities and beaches. Well, I've been in the Alpes and mountains, but this place is just amazing! The town itself is surrounded by high mountains and if you make it over those, then you´ll just see more and more of 'em! What's weird is that there's still much vegetation, with cloudforest even at an altitude of 2700m. Cuzco is very touristy too and now during the low season everybody's hustling like crazy to get tourists to eat at their restaurant, to come to their bar, to let 'em clean your shoes, etc. For example most bars/discos show two or three movies a day (and not old ones), on big screens, and all for free. You're supposed to eat and drink something, but with a coke for three soles (less than one USD), it isn't too bad. For the night they're trying to lure you to a specific place by giving away free-drink-flyers and similar stuff. Kellie and I went out a couple of times and it was nice, not too different from home though, and the music sucks!Cuzco's also the gateway to the infamous Machu Picchu. We went for a two-day trip to visit it. The first day we took a train to km104, from where we climbed up about 700m (height, not distance) to a lodge, where we spent the night. The trainride was spectacular, highland plains surrounded by huge mountains, as well as riding through tiny canyons or valleys. The lodge was at 2700m and on the way there we passed two smaller sites with temples and the distinct terraces the Incas used to grow corn and other vegetables. It's sad that not even the scientist know a lot about the Incas, coz the Conquistadores destroyed a lot and didn't keep records of the Incas customs. In the morning of the second day we continued towards a place called "Sungate", from where we caught our first glimpse of Machu Picchu village. The building's weren't as impressive as the Maya ruins, but the setting makes up for that. The place is very well hidden and it makes you think if there aren't any other sites out there which we haven't found yet.To finish off our trip Kellie, Jak (a guy from NYC with whom I talked about hiphop and baseball for the first time in a looong time!) and me climbed that mountain you usually see on pictures of Machu Picchu. It was about a 300m ascent on tiny paths, very steep and quite scary (when you're afraid of heights, like me). Eventually we reached the top at 2700m and, clinging to the rocks like a baby to its mother's breast, I enjoyed a terrific view around... maravillosa!!
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Utila, Bay Islands, Honduras

¿Que tal? If I remember correctly the last time I wrote was between X-mas and New Years, when I was staying in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica. I've travelled quite a lot since then, so here's a more or less short description of my experiences:The first two weeks in January I spent in Costa Rica. First a couple of days in Jaco, then some more in Dominical. Both are places on the pacific coast and I was mostly hanging out at the beach. While Jaco was a very US-tourist-place, Dominical was a small, quiet village visited mostly by surfer's. I'm going there again with my girlfriend for the next two weeks.In mid-january I flew to Cancun, Mexico, to meet my friend Heidi, who I know from language school in Samara. To get a cheaper planeticket I flew via Havanna, Cuba, and stayed there for one night! Didn't see much of the city though, the only thing I did was ride a taxi from the airport to the hotel and back. At least I got to buy a shirt of the Cuban National Baseball Team...Well, Cancun was a pretty uninviting place itself. It's designed for tourists from the USA, so you feel more like being in Miami or Las Vegas. Heidi and me chose to go to an island called Isla Mujeres, which is about 30 minutes outside Cancun. That place was much nicer, with white-sand beaches and blue-green waters.Three nights later we moved on to a city called Valladolid. For two days we visited Maya ruins (Chichen Itza, Ek-Balaam) and a cenote. That's a cave with a pool of water and it was refreshing to swim in the cristal-clear and cold water, surrounded by stalagmites. The ruins were cool too, up to 32m high pyramids. It was a pretty steep climb up and my heart beat a bit faster than usual while looking around from the top.Then we changed location again and ended up in Playa del Carmen. We stayed there for four nights, partying pretty heavily on three nights. It was the perfect spot for that, having kind of an European flair (like Rhodes, Cyprus or Gran Canaria). The clubs were right at the beach, I mean something like five meters from the shore... During that time I also made food by myself for the first time in about three months... Even though it was very cool there, we had a schedule to keep up with, so we moved on to Chetumal, near the Belizean border with Mexico. We visited the ruins of Tulum on the way; not very impressive, but in a nice, quiet setting right over some cliffs. Unfortunately we had to stop over in Chetumal, in a really crappy, jail-cell like room, but already the next day we took a bus to Belize City.I recommend you never to spend a night in that town, believe me!! That was the worst I've seen ever, dirty and very dangerous people around, even in daylight! We met a cool girl from England called Georgina on the way and with her we dislocated to an island (or key) called Caye Caulker. We spent two nights there, going for a very cool snorkelling trip one afternoon. Besides lots of fish and corals we also saw (or snorkelled with) a couple of nursesharks and tons of stingrays! That was a great experience and now I'm more positive of taking a diving course later during my trip.Next stop was San Ignacio, close to the Guatemalan border with Belize, where we went on a short canoetrip in a very very dark cave... They had some human skulls there, because it was used as a cemetary by the Mayas ages ago. Following our schedule didn't leave us much time there either, thus we headed to a village called Santa Elena in Guatemala, close to the famous ruins of Tikal. Exactly these we visited the next day and that was the coolest place I've been to so far!! The temples rise out of real jungle (rainforest), up to 70m high and the views/athmosphere is spectacular! You can hear monkeys howl almost constantly and there aren't too many tourists to bother you, so you kinda feel like being in another time/world. Oh yeah, that was by the way on Superbowl-Sunday and I didn't miss the game, of course!!The second morning (or better night) in a row we got up at four to catch a bus, this time to Copan, Honduras. Well, first we waited one hour at the busstop, coz it left at six (and not at five as we thought), then we were stuck in a very hot bus (no open windows) with three morons driving (whole thing lasted more than eight hours!!). That sucked big time and after two hours more in another bus, plus a bordercrossing, we finally arrived at our destination. Luckily Copan Ruinas is a very relaxed spot and we got the chance to get some sleep that night!! The next day we spend at the ruins and two Maya museums. Ok, ruins are cool, but five of them in only two weeks is definitely enough!! Now I really need a break from all this and hopefully I'll get it during the next two weeks at the beach in Costa Rica.Anyway, I'm writing this email from Utila (Bay Islands) on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. I came here for one night with Heidi. Tomorrow our paths will part, coz I've gotta get to Guatemala City and then to San Jose on Saturday. But I'll be back here maybe at the end of March to take a diving course and finish my travels in Central America.As I mentioned before I'll go to CR for two weeks and then I'll probably go to Peru, Bolivia and Chile. I'll try to go on the Inca-trail and visit Machu Pichu. Then to the salt lakes in Bolivia and crossing over towards Chile and the Andes. After I'll go back to CR, Nicaragua and Honduras, before flying to the US and Canada at the beginning of April (for three months).
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1072687260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1072687260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1072687260/tpod.html Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:43:06 -0400 Las Americas

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San Jose, Province of San Jose, Costa Rica

It´s about time to let y´all know again what´s been going on the past few weeks. Hope all of you are doing ok, celebrating X-mas and the New Year the way it´s supposed to be celebrated...Well, after being in Flamingo I spent four weeks in Playa Samara, which is also on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. It was quite a bit different though, we partied a whole lot more (about 6 out of every 7 nights!) than in Flamingo and, again, I met some very nice people from all over the world. The highlights were watching NFL a whole Sunday afternoon (12pm til 11pm...), surfing a couple of times (including getting smashed into the ground and getting a bloody face as a consequence...), undertaking a kayaking trip to the reef close by (to snorkel and eat pineapple), skipping school for one week (the last one, couldn´t be bothered to learn all those useless tenses nomore...) and the many parties and graduations with my friends! Our favourite place was called "Las Olas" (no doubt about what the name of that bar stands for...) and they had pool and foosball tables to use for free. Don´t think my pool (or my foosball) skills improved, the pockets are still to small and the ball never does what I want it to do...For Christmas I was supposed to go to Bocas del Toro, Panama, and we almost made it there too. While we (my friends Heidi, Kristin, Kellie and me) were waiting for the bus to Panama at the station in San Jose, some asshole played a trick on us and stole Kellie´s backpack with all her money, airplane tickets, credit cards and passport in it! After looking for a police station with her for about one hour, I decided to stay with her to help organize the stuff lost. Since it was Saturday we had to wait until Monday to be able to get things done. That was ok, it gave us time to come up with a game plan and eventually it only took us two days to set her up once again. Besides that she´s a British citizen now for the next ten years (the Aussies don´t have an embassy in CR, but thanks to the Commonwealth she still got a passport...), everything is ok and we finally changed the scenery on the 24th.Thus we´ve been spending the past six days in Puerto Viejo, which is on the Caribbean coast in the Northeast of Costa Rica. It´s a great place, although a bit touristy, but there are numerous beautiful beaches close by and we´ve explored almost all of them by bike. The athmosphere is also different, you´d think you´d be in Jamaica or something, since the population is mainly of black Jamaican descent. They also speak some sort of English dialect similar to Patois (and they listen to Bob Marley, while smoking huge blunts...). We were also blessed by an earthquake the other day, epicenter in Panama with a 6.1 on the Richter scale. That was quite weird, waking up to your bed rocking back and forth while people outside are screaming "Earthquake, Earthquake!!"...Good, that´s about all the exciting news from my side for the moment. The current plans are to dislocate to Montezuma, Pacific coast, tomorrow (30th) morning for about a week or so. Depending on their answer, I might travel in Mexico and Guatemala with the Norwegian ladies from mid-January to mid-February. That plan would leave one open week in January, for which I haven´t yet decided my destination.Again, I´d like to wish everyone a happy New Year 2004. If you´re still looking for a New Year´s resolution, I´d recommend planning a trip to some nice place for a period of at least two months! Everybody´s got the right to take time off and relax, you´ll never forget an experience like this!! Just do it!
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Playa Samara, Province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Time goes fast, as we all know, and I'll finish my fourth week in Costa Rica today already! I'm gonna transfer to another school for four weeks tomorrow. That place is called Playa Samara and apparently it's a pretty quiet spot, good for swimming and snorkelling. I hope that there will be some waves though, so that I could start learning how to surf, yeah!!A few things worth mentioning happened since the last time I wrote everyone. Two weeks ago we went on a trip to visit the volcano Arenal, which is still active. We didn't see any outbreaks or lavastreams (actually we didn't even catch a glimpse of the top, since it was always cloudy), but we heard it rumbling a few times. We hiked through some rainforest for about 1,5 hours too, seeing some monkeys, tucans and a sloth. After the hike we relaxed and recuperated at the hotsprings (www.tabacon.com) and this was great! The water flows through man-made channels and pools, reaching a temperature of about 40 degrees Celsius (probably a bit more than your average hot-tub). While we were chilling out at the poolbar it started to rain pretty hard, hence we had a nice contrast being covered half in hot, half in cold water. Sunday morning we visited a 15 meter high waterfall, but the weather was bad and most of us declined the change to take a swim. It was also very touristic (ie lots of people around), as was the hike in the forest, so that was a bit annoying.Last week then I had an encounter with a turtle at the local beach. My friend and I were walking home in the dark at around 9pm, when we came across some weird tracks in the sand. We decided to follow 'em and to our suprise there was a huge leatherback turtle (about 1,5m long) digging out a hole! We stayed and watched for a while, checking out how it dug the nest for its eggs (60cm deep) by using its hind legs or flippers. After 45 minutes I returned to see how far things are and the turtle was already finishing up by covering up a big area around the nest (to make it harder of finding it). Unfortunately it didn't work out as planned, because the next morning somebody had already dug out all the eggs.Last weekend we hung out mostly at the beach, watching American Football Sunday afternoon at the local bar. I'm quite happy to leave Flamingo, since it started to get a bit boring after 3 weeks of staying here. And most of my friends are leaving anyway, one by one, so there's nothing to hold me back and I'm up for a new challenge and new people down in Samara.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1224920100/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1224920100/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/mchavez/11/1224920100/tpod.html Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:38:23 -0400 Las Americas

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Playa Flamingo, Province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica

For most of you it has been a while since you last heard from me, so basically I just want to let everyone know what's been going on since I left Finland in September.I spent two weeks of organizing and shopping back in Zurich, which was nice, but more stressful than relaxing. I also went for one amazing week to Anwerp in Belgium, where I visited my girlfriend Nora. It's a pretty cool city with lots of restaurants, bars and funky clubs. The weather is similar to London, so you better take an umbrella with you, in case you ever go there.On October 18th I flew to Miami via London. I spent six days at a hostel in the city of the 2003 World Series winners, but unfortunately I wasn't there anymore to watch the parade. It was fun to watch the game on big screen TV though. Otherwise I didn't like the place at all!! Out of season, it was full of gay men and we got kinda paranoid, since every time a guy was looking at you, you started to think what he's got in his mind... But we managed pretty well in the end and one day the even had MTV's Latin Video Music Awards at the club across the street, so we had a chance to go and see a few chicks with fake boobs and nose-jobs... :-) The bottomline is, that it's really not the partytown everybody talks about, but I'll reconfirm that in about 6 months or so, when I'll go back for a couple of days.Now I'm in Costa Rica, since about 10 days. I live with a tica family at Playa Flamingo, which is a beach resort in the northwest of the country. I'm going to school for four hours a day and the afternoons we spend at the beach or going on trips. The lifestyle is quite different, although the families got almost everything we've got too. Like big SUV's, microwave, TV's and even Playstations... Since it gets dark at around 17.30, there's much time to sleep and only on Wednesdays there's something like a party in a seaside bar about 15 minutes from my homestay. The beaches and especially the wildlife are amazing!! Geckos, Birds, Iguanas and other animals are everywhere (mosquitos too...) and right now, in spring, all the plants and trees are so green (it rains almost daily too, for one or two hours). Nevertheless it's really hot here and I envy anyone fighting the cold and scraping snow from the hood of the car... yeah, right!!!I've met a few very nice people at school, from Switzerland and the States mostly, and we have lots of fun talking with each other, getting to know different habits and cultures (like Popcorn for breakfast...).Next weekend we will travel to the highest (and still active) Volcano Arenal, which promises to be quite an adventure.
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Junction City, Kansas, United States

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Montrose, Colorado, United States

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