So I arrived in Reno, after a flight complete with a screaming child and Colleen took me out to meet up with Erik and her lovely sister Erin!
We then headed into Reno, the 'Biggest little city in the world' to meet some friends who were in Costa Rica with me. We met at this giant complex which had a ton of restaurants and a massive casino... just cos we were there we quickly hopped on a pokie machine and I played a dollar... I managed to get bored very quickly and had lost and won enough times to still have a dollar... We cashed out and headed for a restaurant. Everyone else just got desert but I was starving so ordered up a big burger and chips! YUM
We drove back to Colleens place after saying buy to the friends and Erik and fell asleep ASAp (Colleen's bed was pretty much the comfiest thing I have ever slept on).
Bright and early the next morning we left for San Fran.
It was so exciting driving in the states. Erik and Colleen prob got sick of the number of times I said 'its just like the movies'. We made it to SF airport fine and headed to the domestic arrivals level... no sign of Nathan, we called him, he said he was at SFO so we drove around again... still not there, we decided to try international arrivals but missed the turn off so headed through domestic again. He wasnt in international arrivals or departures so as a final resort we hit up domestic departures and there he was! PHEW we were starting to think we were in the wrong airport. The fab four were reunited again!! CHA WHOOOOO
The next four or so days were AMAZINGLY AWESOME
In SF we visited Chinatown, and the Pier and this Chocolate place called Ghirardelli's square before returning to the Pier for tea of Clam Chowder in Sourdough bread bowls! pretty much amazing!! We saw some pretty funny sights but nothing can beat the man dressed as Abu (tights over unsupportive undies with a vest and a cap and a tail)from Aladdin dancing to the beat of another guy playing a small drum kit... so bizzare and gross but mesmerizing!
After driving the windiest snaky street ever we drove back to Reno, having some interesting adventures, such as finding a loo, on the way home.
The following day we floated down the Reno river in tubes... Collen and Erik shared, me and Erin shared and Nathan was the lone sailor, but mainly we all held each others tires so we were one mighty raft. Pretty much the whole of Reno was out for the day but it was super fun chilling and going down the rapiditas. We had this really good takeaway like MDs but better called In and Out, it was pretty awesome, they had a drink option of pink lemonade... huh
As Erik returned to work the next day Nathan, Colleen and I headed out to lake Tahoe, what a beautiful lake. Beautiful BUT freezing freezing cold. We had a yummy lunch, fighting off hungry squirrels, and spent the avo catching some rays and taking a quick quick dip.Then we went to meet up with Erik,and chilled at his Dad's place with Pizza!
Shopping was next on the agenda and we quickly found me a pair of jeans and some good and much needed tops, I think we impressed Nathan with our quick shopping skills even though we were females. That night as Collen's parents were still yet to meet Erik the boys came out for dinner and stayed the night. We had a great BBQ and then chilled and shared some good Flor de Cana and played games and talked to the wee small hours. No one was looking forward to the next morning.
Up early again we dropped Nathan at the airport. Pretty sad times. Colleen and I shopped the rest of the morning finding some cute dresses and just enjoying ourselves. We met Erik after and got ready to drop me at the airport... More sad times. I was not impressed but a flight was to be caught. Yet another screaming child (quite a good contraception method would be to stick teenagers on a plane for three hours with a screaming child or two). And I was back in LAX. I found my way to Qantas, checked in, (they also weighed my hand luggage grrrrrrrr) and before I knew it was on my way back to NZ... Boy was it a cold place in July!!
I arrived home on the 2nd of July and as it was one of my best friend's birthdays I decided to only tell Mum and Dad the day I was coming home (everyone else thought the 7th) so I could surprise her. She was pretty stoked to see me I think :-)
And that was my adventure!! YAY YAY YAY cant wait for the next one though I can wait for the blogging!
lunes, 27 de diciembre de 2010
domingo, 26 de diciembre de 2010
Mission Impossible... Getting to Reno
So I headed out to the airport... got to the check in counter... all good luggage weight wise but my hand luggage... Since when do they weigh that?? Grrrrr I was only 10 kgs over the 7 kg limit... crickey... some quick rearranging into my big purse and I was away through security...
I sat and waited and waited for the plane, boarding time came... no plane... take off time came... no plane... but the TV screen still said 'on time' hmmmmmmmmm about half an hour after take off time I began to become concerned about making my connecting flight... so started to hunt down some COPA staff... very difficult... went to the help desk... no one there... hmmmm... got back to the boarding gate and more people were starting to ask questions. Eventually a few COPA staff came out to the gate and told us they decided not to have our flight anymore...grrrr so they were combining our flight and the one with the same destination an hour later... however all those with connecting flights out of Panama to the US would not make their connections so would get a connection the next day... THIS WOULD NOT WORK...
I had a connection from LA to Reno and HAD to be there on next day as on the following day we (Collen, Erik and I) were headed down to San Francisco to pick up Nathan from SFO airport.
So thus began my fight to get to Reno.
I was told to go back to the check out counter where my bags would be delivered back to me and from there they would work out a way to get me to LAX...
They told me at first again that I could simply wait for tomorrow, when I told them again that this wouldnt be possible they offered to send me to Mexico??? as if Mexico City and Reno were the same place. They really were not too helpful so as they fluffed around I did some translating for a poor Aussie guy who had a connecting flight from LAX home. We eventually managed to get a flight to Guatemala City for the night where they put us up in a nice hotel, then the next day they flew us early to LAX. I still missed my connection but was able to get a flight later that day. I hung out for about 8 hours in the airport myself but it was ok. I survived! and the aussie guy made his connection so... only a whole 12 hours or so late and a lot of stressful conversations I arrived in RENO!!! to see Colleen's beautiful face waiting for me!
Thanks COPA! You guys are awesome
I sat and waited and waited for the plane, boarding time came... no plane... take off time came... no plane... but the TV screen still said 'on time' hmmmmmmmmm about half an hour after take off time I began to become concerned about making my connecting flight... so started to hunt down some COPA staff... very difficult... went to the help desk... no one there... hmmmm... got back to the boarding gate and more people were starting to ask questions. Eventually a few COPA staff came out to the gate and told us they decided not to have our flight anymore...grrrr so they were combining our flight and the one with the same destination an hour later... however all those with connecting flights out of Panama to the US would not make their connections so would get a connection the next day... THIS WOULD NOT WORK...
I had a connection from LA to Reno and HAD to be there on next day as on the following day we (Collen, Erik and I) were headed down to San Francisco to pick up Nathan from SFO airport.
So thus began my fight to get to Reno.
I was told to go back to the check out counter where my bags would be delivered back to me and from there they would work out a way to get me to LAX...
They told me at first again that I could simply wait for tomorrow, when I told them again that this wouldnt be possible they offered to send me to Mexico??? as if Mexico City and Reno were the same place. They really were not too helpful so as they fluffed around I did some translating for a poor Aussie guy who had a connecting flight from LAX home. We eventually managed to get a flight to Guatemala City for the night where they put us up in a nice hotel, then the next day they flew us early to LAX. I still missed my connection but was able to get a flight later that day. I hung out for about 8 hours in the airport myself but it was ok. I survived! and the aussie guy made his connection so... only a whole 12 hours or so late and a lot of stressful conversations I arrived in RENO!!! to see Colleen's beautiful face waiting for me!
Thanks COPA! You guys are awesome
sábado, 25 de diciembre de 2010
Bout time I worte about travelling with the Irish Lasses
So I have been home for quite a while now and have decided to start writing about the next stage of my travel. It will be a pretty quick overview and probably is more to remind me of the trip than to tell you.
Ok so Leona and I got back to the mighty San Jose and chilled for the day... I do believe a movie and Patacones were involved. That evening as I was typing away at the computer a wee voice said... Is that you Ruth? It was none other than MISS DEBS ADAIR! After meeting her lovely friends, Susan and Laura (aka wee duck) we had a good solid sleep. We hung out in SJ the next day for the girls to rest up a bit then we left Leona at the hostel and made our way to the beautiful Nicoya peninsular. On the way we stopped in Puntarenas and the girls meet my host Momma and sisters, it was lovely to see them again and we also got an awesome lunch out of it (thanks Mama Tica)
We caught the avo ferry over and then hopped onto a bus, the bus however couldnt take us all the way to Montezuma as there was a massive hole in part of the road... so a four wheel drive hire later and we had arrived!
After exploring, cooking tea and learning how to operate the most confusing kitchen in the world we slept (kinda) with the sound of a stormy sea freaking the heck out of wee duck.
It was so lovely to see the sun the next morning and we made the most of it my setting off nice and early to walk to some waterfalls. The first part of the walk involved doing some extreme river crossing, the normal gentle stream was now raging from all the rain the night before and the best place to cross (according to the friendly local) was at the top of quite a rocky waterfall. Thank goodness we all made it across! It was a bit of an introduction to the wilderness for the Irish girlies though!
The rest of the walk to the waterfall was equally as interesting, climbing muddy hills with ropes anyone??
The falls were awesome though, so full of water that it was not safe to swim but amazing to see!
The following day we left Montezuma and made our way back through Puntarenas, stopping to see a beautiful family on the way. A lunch of Patacones and frijoles put in good spirits to make the next leg of the journey to Liberia. We arrived late and quickly arranged transport out to a national park the next day.
The national park was beautiful, it was jungly and then cleared out so you got a view a the entire area. It was such a great day it was very tempting to climb the volcano, but due to sore legs from our waterfall adventure we decide to walk to... another waterfall. This was was stunning, and after such a hot walk it was great to be able to swim. The water was beautiful and clear and the sun came through the trees at perfect spots so it wasnt too cold.
after a snack of mangos we headed back to the main entrance for lunch, a cold beer and more walking through a geo thermal area. By the end of the day we were super tired.
But no rest for the wicked and the next morning we headed off to the Nicaraguan border... ugggggg I hate this border, it is dirty and unorganised and full of slimy bus drivers.. and seeing I had to hang out here for 3 hours once in lines it is no surprise it isnt my fav place. But to get into the Great State of Nicaragua it must be done. So after a few frustrating moments we found ourselves on a bus heading toward the ferry for Las Islas de Ometepe.
We gto the first ferry we could across, got slightly damp from waves splashing over but survived then quickly decided where we wanted to go on the island adn made a bee line for the bus (away from the mob of travel guides). We got a lovely room on the lake front and got set fro a few relaxing days.
The island is such a lovely place, it is just paradise. Day two on the island involved a ton of reading, a walk and a long swim for me across to a smaller island. Half way across I stopped an thought, crap I didnt check to see if there were crocs in this lake (I knew about the rare fresh water sharks but decided to risk my chances)... hmmmm keep swimming...
We had the most amazing meal that night, and the next day set of for another part of the island where we hired kayaks and did some intense paddling,(note to self dont kayak with Madam Debs as you will end up with the brunt of the work :-P)nah just kidding, it was seriously about 3-4 hours of constant paddling and we did awesome!
We left the Island the following day and headed for Granada, it was so nice not to do too much traveling. We hung around Granada for a day just looking at the churches and markets and the carried on to Somoto.
This is the home of a canyon. It was a long trip so we booked an early morning tour so we could get into Honduras the next day. The Canyon was quite different from the last time I did it. It was a lot fuller of water an this meant some great rapids! Laura certainly loved it!!! She got swept down a rapid that we were supposed to walk down and the look on her face as she floated past was sheer terror... but pretty priceless! She did so well!
So we crossed over into Honduras and got as far north as we could for the night. But due to stupidly slow and late buses we didnt make it to the capital city where our bus the next day left from at 7.30 in the morning. GRRRRRRRRRRR
We were exhausted and grumpy and then could only find a hostel room with three beds for the four of us... so we pushed them all together making a giant bed, begged the hostel owners for another pillow (for some reason this took two tries and finally a very angry voice) (we made up for their grumpiness by taking advantage of the hot water showers and all shaved our legs) and bunked down for some brief but much needed shut eye!
An early 4.30 start to catch the 5.00 bus was not very welcome but had to be down, so we all trooped back down to the bus stop we had left only a few hours earlier. We made it to the Capital Tegucigalpa on time for our next bus, and even managed to sneak in a few phone calls to Ireland and some breakfast as well.
The Bus took us to La Cieba, where we caught a ferry out to Roatan... I had to sit on the edge of the deck the whole way as I felt so gross. Was so stoked to be back on tierra firma. In the dark we navigated West End and found a hostel where it was cheaper for us to get a private cabin, we also made an United Station friend called Nancy (quite a hilarious girl). We planned to stay here for a while so we made the Cabin our home!
The next day wee duck and I signed up for scuba lessons, we spent the rest of the day snorkeling the reef! Man God is so amazing I just cant even begin to describe how amazingly fantastic the reef was.
Scuba lessons began with theory... but by that avo we were out for our first prac lesson, sadly Laura had some congestion probs so had to pull out of the course. I got one on one lessons after that so managed to get through the course pretty quick.
I learnt how to use the jacket to help create a good buoyancy, learnt to clear my goggles if the filled up underwater, learnt some emergency techniques etc most of all I kept reminding myself to NEVER HOLD MY BREATHE, I really didnt want any lung blowouts or anything... I quite like my lungs.
By the afternoon of day two I was ready for my first open water dive, I felt almost as if i were in space floating around under water. The fish were amazing and I saw some crazy creatures, including a HUGE moray eel.
On day three I also saw a stingray and a trumpeter fish and a thousand different types of crazy worms. But still no turtle :-( and I had now finished my course, I was a certified PADI open water diver. We were staying for one more day so I decided to book in for another dive praying I might see a turtle.
The next day I went on my final dive in Rotan, (man would I have loved to stay and dive forever, and I saw TWO turtles! Thanks God! On was a larger one eating stuff of the reef. It just sat there and ate as z swam around it, the other was a baby turtle swimming for the surface. It was awesome to turn and see the light streaming through the water and watch the turtle flap toward the light. I was soooo over the moon!
Every evening we would go out and buy stuff for tea and by the end of our Roatan stay we had eaten more cabbage than any rabbit ever has. My word... Then Debs got sick... so in Roatan we were for another day. Thankfully she got better reasonably quick and we managed to move the next day back to the main land and over to the Guatemalan border area to see some Mayan ruins called the Copan Ruins.
After an interesting Coffee plantation tour (a fairtrade cooperative where the women and the men on the area share the processing plant but run different companies for differnt markets (men export, women local) we headed out to the ruins. Not as tall or large as the tikal ruins but a lot more detailed with more inscriptions, the still awed me and amazed me that ancient peoples produced them.Also crazily bumped into a couple that I had met at the Tikal ruins! The english tour book was all sold out so Debs Laura and I took turns translating the spanish guide book.
From here the home stretch began, we made our way back to Tegucigalpa, had a relaxing evening and then began a long journey back to the South of Nicaragua, to a place called San Juan del Sur. It is a touristy beach place but a nice place to rest for a few days. The next day (my birthday...22) we headed out to a lovely beach called Playa Maderas, it is really beautiful and we hung out there for the day. That night we headed out for dinner. We decided on Pizza... well it sure was an interesting evening we ended up having to share our table with three (one of whom was very drunk) Canadians... MY word could this man talk about himself... he was youngish, like 26, but already divorced and the owner of a large successful company, his business partner had been killed by his(the partner's) wife and she was now on the run... it was the most bizarre thing ever, we managed to excuse ourselves from hanging with them and partying with them for the rest of the evening and snuck off for some icecream, served by one of the most enormous people I have ever seen. And then true to our regular style we were all in bed at about 9.00
As the weather the next day was pretty crappy we decided to head out and back into Costa Rica, we stocked up on Nica Rum (Flor de Cana whoop whoop) at the border and then the girls hopped onto to a Tica Bus to San Jose, as I had a few days left I headed out to the Coast to a beach called Brasilitos which was very close to another lovely beach called Playa Conchal. That evening I walked along Brasilitos and over to Conchal, instead of sand this beach had a shore made up of tiny shells! so cool, and the water was he bluest ever!
The next day was spent on the beach, reading, walking, swimming, I hung out till after sunset making the most of my last day on a Costa Rican beach for a long time.
I left early the next morning for San Jose, arrived at a hostel and headed out to collect my massive suitcases. Job for the next day... Packing!!!
So I managed to find a good home for everything in my suitcase and pack and spent the rest of the day chilling in San Jose. That night after tea I headed to bed. Little did I know that this was going to be a horrific night.
I woke up around 1 or 2 to some rustling in the room, one of my dorm mates was in the middle of the room fiddling with himself. I, grossed out, turned over so as to avoid seeing this. Then a thought struck me, I was the only girl in the dorm, what if he was really drunk and was going to try something, so I rolled back over to make sure he wasnt going to do anything dodgey. Well, he had moved to the corner of my bunk, I was on the bottom, and was opening his fly... all my luggage was in the corner, I sat up and saw his whole body relax, suddenly it dawned on me that he was going to pee... I started shrieking and screaming.. NO GET OUT!!! THIS ISNT A TOILET!!! GET OUT! NO NO NO NO NO!! After what seemed like an age of screaming I woke him from his stupor and he did himself up again... well I kept an eye on him and he moved to the other end of the room and began the process over. NO NO NO NO NO GET OUT I began to shriek again like a proper banshee, by now the entire room was awake and confused (probably thought I was sleep talking or something) but the aussie guy across the room from me clicked quickly and while swearing profusely he chucked this stupid guy out the room, took him down the hallway to the loos and left him there. I was so nervous that he would come back and pee on me I couldnt sleep. An hour later I popped out to see where he was and he had passed out on the couch!! Phew...
SO DISGUSTING!! If I hadnt woken up
1) I would have been peed on
2) My bags would have been peed on
3) He possibly would have been smoking something stronger than tobacco, so my bags would have been leaped on by dogs in every airport on the way home...
4) the room would have stunk for the rest of the night
I am one thankful girl that I have a good set of lungs on me!!
The next day I left the hostel at check out time and taxied it out to the airport... it was time to head to Reno!
Ok so Leona and I got back to the mighty San Jose and chilled for the day... I do believe a movie and Patacones were involved. That evening as I was typing away at the computer a wee voice said... Is that you Ruth? It was none other than MISS DEBS ADAIR! After meeting her lovely friends, Susan and Laura (aka wee duck) we had a good solid sleep. We hung out in SJ the next day for the girls to rest up a bit then we left Leona at the hostel and made our way to the beautiful Nicoya peninsular. On the way we stopped in Puntarenas and the girls meet my host Momma and sisters, it was lovely to see them again and we also got an awesome lunch out of it (thanks Mama Tica)
We caught the avo ferry over and then hopped onto a bus, the bus however couldnt take us all the way to Montezuma as there was a massive hole in part of the road... so a four wheel drive hire later and we had arrived!
After exploring, cooking tea and learning how to operate the most confusing kitchen in the world we slept (kinda) with the sound of a stormy sea freaking the heck out of wee duck.
It was so lovely to see the sun the next morning and we made the most of it my setting off nice and early to walk to some waterfalls. The first part of the walk involved doing some extreme river crossing, the normal gentle stream was now raging from all the rain the night before and the best place to cross (according to the friendly local) was at the top of quite a rocky waterfall. Thank goodness we all made it across! It was a bit of an introduction to the wilderness for the Irish girlies though!
The rest of the walk to the waterfall was equally as interesting, climbing muddy hills with ropes anyone??
The falls were awesome though, so full of water that it was not safe to swim but amazing to see!
The following day we left Montezuma and made our way back through Puntarenas, stopping to see a beautiful family on the way. A lunch of Patacones and frijoles put in good spirits to make the next leg of the journey to Liberia. We arrived late and quickly arranged transport out to a national park the next day.
The national park was beautiful, it was jungly and then cleared out so you got a view a the entire area. It was such a great day it was very tempting to climb the volcano, but due to sore legs from our waterfall adventure we decide to walk to... another waterfall. This was was stunning, and after such a hot walk it was great to be able to swim. The water was beautiful and clear and the sun came through the trees at perfect spots so it wasnt too cold.
after a snack of mangos we headed back to the main entrance for lunch, a cold beer and more walking through a geo thermal area. By the end of the day we were super tired.
But no rest for the wicked and the next morning we headed off to the Nicaraguan border... ugggggg I hate this border, it is dirty and unorganised and full of slimy bus drivers.. and seeing I had to hang out here for 3 hours once in lines it is no surprise it isnt my fav place. But to get into the Great State of Nicaragua it must be done. So after a few frustrating moments we found ourselves on a bus heading toward the ferry for Las Islas de Ometepe.
We gto the first ferry we could across, got slightly damp from waves splashing over but survived then quickly decided where we wanted to go on the island adn made a bee line for the bus (away from the mob of travel guides). We got a lovely room on the lake front and got set fro a few relaxing days.
The island is such a lovely place, it is just paradise. Day two on the island involved a ton of reading, a walk and a long swim for me across to a smaller island. Half way across I stopped an thought, crap I didnt check to see if there were crocs in this lake (I knew about the rare fresh water sharks but decided to risk my chances)... hmmmm keep swimming...
We had the most amazing meal that night, and the next day set of for another part of the island where we hired kayaks and did some intense paddling,(note to self dont kayak with Madam Debs as you will end up with the brunt of the work :-P)nah just kidding, it was seriously about 3-4 hours of constant paddling and we did awesome!
We left the Island the following day and headed for Granada, it was so nice not to do too much traveling. We hung around Granada for a day just looking at the churches and markets and the carried on to Somoto.
This is the home of a canyon. It was a long trip so we booked an early morning tour so we could get into Honduras the next day. The Canyon was quite different from the last time I did it. It was a lot fuller of water an this meant some great rapids! Laura certainly loved it!!! She got swept down a rapid that we were supposed to walk down and the look on her face as she floated past was sheer terror... but pretty priceless! She did so well!
So we crossed over into Honduras and got as far north as we could for the night. But due to stupidly slow and late buses we didnt make it to the capital city where our bus the next day left from at 7.30 in the morning. GRRRRRRRRRRR
We were exhausted and grumpy and then could only find a hostel room with three beds for the four of us... so we pushed them all together making a giant bed, begged the hostel owners for another pillow (for some reason this took two tries and finally a very angry voice) (we made up for their grumpiness by taking advantage of the hot water showers and all shaved our legs) and bunked down for some brief but much needed shut eye!
An early 4.30 start to catch the 5.00 bus was not very welcome but had to be down, so we all trooped back down to the bus stop we had left only a few hours earlier. We made it to the Capital Tegucigalpa on time for our next bus, and even managed to sneak in a few phone calls to Ireland and some breakfast as well.
The Bus took us to La Cieba, where we caught a ferry out to Roatan... I had to sit on the edge of the deck the whole way as I felt so gross. Was so stoked to be back on tierra firma. In the dark we navigated West End and found a hostel where it was cheaper for us to get a private cabin, we also made an United Station friend called Nancy (quite a hilarious girl). We planned to stay here for a while so we made the Cabin our home!
The next day wee duck and I signed up for scuba lessons, we spent the rest of the day snorkeling the reef! Man God is so amazing I just cant even begin to describe how amazingly fantastic the reef was.
Scuba lessons began with theory... but by that avo we were out for our first prac lesson, sadly Laura had some congestion probs so had to pull out of the course. I got one on one lessons after that so managed to get through the course pretty quick.
I learnt how to use the jacket to help create a good buoyancy, learnt to clear my goggles if the filled up underwater, learnt some emergency techniques etc most of all I kept reminding myself to NEVER HOLD MY BREATHE, I really didnt want any lung blowouts or anything... I quite like my lungs.
By the afternoon of day two I was ready for my first open water dive, I felt almost as if i were in space floating around under water. The fish were amazing and I saw some crazy creatures, including a HUGE moray eel.
On day three I also saw a stingray and a trumpeter fish and a thousand different types of crazy worms. But still no turtle :-( and I had now finished my course, I was a certified PADI open water diver. We were staying for one more day so I decided to book in for another dive praying I might see a turtle.
The next day I went on my final dive in Rotan, (man would I have loved to stay and dive forever, and I saw TWO turtles! Thanks God! On was a larger one eating stuff of the reef. It just sat there and ate as z swam around it, the other was a baby turtle swimming for the surface. It was awesome to turn and see the light streaming through the water and watch the turtle flap toward the light. I was soooo over the moon!
Every evening we would go out and buy stuff for tea and by the end of our Roatan stay we had eaten more cabbage than any rabbit ever has. My word... Then Debs got sick... so in Roatan we were for another day. Thankfully she got better reasonably quick and we managed to move the next day back to the main land and over to the Guatemalan border area to see some Mayan ruins called the Copan Ruins.
After an interesting Coffee plantation tour (a fairtrade cooperative where the women and the men on the area share the processing plant but run different companies for differnt markets (men export, women local) we headed out to the ruins. Not as tall or large as the tikal ruins but a lot more detailed with more inscriptions, the still awed me and amazed me that ancient peoples produced them.Also crazily bumped into a couple that I had met at the Tikal ruins! The english tour book was all sold out so Debs Laura and I took turns translating the spanish guide book.
From here the home stretch began, we made our way back to Tegucigalpa, had a relaxing evening and then began a long journey back to the South of Nicaragua, to a place called San Juan del Sur. It is a touristy beach place but a nice place to rest for a few days. The next day (my birthday...22) we headed out to a lovely beach called Playa Maderas, it is really beautiful and we hung out there for the day. That night we headed out for dinner. We decided on Pizza... well it sure was an interesting evening we ended up having to share our table with three (one of whom was very drunk) Canadians... MY word could this man talk about himself... he was youngish, like 26, but already divorced and the owner of a large successful company, his business partner had been killed by his(the partner's) wife and she was now on the run... it was the most bizarre thing ever, we managed to excuse ourselves from hanging with them and partying with them for the rest of the evening and snuck off for some icecream, served by one of the most enormous people I have ever seen. And then true to our regular style we were all in bed at about 9.00
As the weather the next day was pretty crappy we decided to head out and back into Costa Rica, we stocked up on Nica Rum (Flor de Cana whoop whoop) at the border and then the girls hopped onto to a Tica Bus to San Jose, as I had a few days left I headed out to the Coast to a beach called Brasilitos which was very close to another lovely beach called Playa Conchal. That evening I walked along Brasilitos and over to Conchal, instead of sand this beach had a shore made up of tiny shells! so cool, and the water was he bluest ever!
The next day was spent on the beach, reading, walking, swimming, I hung out till after sunset making the most of my last day on a Costa Rican beach for a long time.
I left early the next morning for San Jose, arrived at a hostel and headed out to collect my massive suitcases. Job for the next day... Packing!!!
So I managed to find a good home for everything in my suitcase and pack and spent the rest of the day chilling in San Jose. That night after tea I headed to bed. Little did I know that this was going to be a horrific night.
I woke up around 1 or 2 to some rustling in the room, one of my dorm mates was in the middle of the room fiddling with himself. I, grossed out, turned over so as to avoid seeing this. Then a thought struck me, I was the only girl in the dorm, what if he was really drunk and was going to try something, so I rolled back over to make sure he wasnt going to do anything dodgey. Well, he had moved to the corner of my bunk, I was on the bottom, and was opening his fly... all my luggage was in the corner, I sat up and saw his whole body relax, suddenly it dawned on me that he was going to pee... I started shrieking and screaming.. NO GET OUT!!! THIS ISNT A TOILET!!! GET OUT! NO NO NO NO NO!! After what seemed like an age of screaming I woke him from his stupor and he did himself up again... well I kept an eye on him and he moved to the other end of the room and began the process over. NO NO NO NO NO GET OUT I began to shriek again like a proper banshee, by now the entire room was awake and confused (probably thought I was sleep talking or something) but the aussie guy across the room from me clicked quickly and while swearing profusely he chucked this stupid guy out the room, took him down the hallway to the loos and left him there. I was so nervous that he would come back and pee on me I couldnt sleep. An hour later I popped out to see where he was and he had passed out on the couch!! Phew...
SO DISGUSTING!! If I hadnt woken up
1) I would have been peed on
2) My bags would have been peed on
3) He possibly would have been smoking something stronger than tobacco, so my bags would have been leaped on by dogs in every airport on the way home...
4) the room would have stunk for the rest of the night
I am one thankful girl that I have a good set of lungs on me!!
The next day I left the hostel at check out time and taxied it out to the airport... it was time to head to Reno!
sábado, 10 de julio de 2010
Travelling in Guatemala... aka 3rd to last post ever!!!
So after my last blog we sat exams… not very intense exams but exams none the les.. then came the hard part saying goodbye to friends, my family and teachers… a few wee tears were shed…One of the hardest people to say goodbye to was Erik’s host momma who we used to go and sit and rock with one or two nights a week. Her family was simply amazing and she was the sweetest lady ever… She was so hppy and content with her life that after an evening wth her you felt at peace and happy too. The other AMAZING person who really helped make my time in Costa Rica even better was one of the teachers, Marielos. She was the most colour coordinated and lovely ladies I have ever met. Her passion for Spanish (she would always talk about how beautiful it was) was catching and she just made you want to learn!! So we said goodbye and then Leona and I set off on our big adventure to Guatemala.
We said goodbye o our friends at the Puntarenas bus stop after loading huge suitcases on to the bus. Thankfully one of our proffesors Arturo had agreed to let us store our gear at is house in the capital while we travelled. As I knew I would be seeing all my good Reno friends in 2 months the goodbye was not so sad… just sad they would not be travelling with me…
And we were off… after stowing our stuff in San Jose we stayed the night close to the airport. And an early morning flight later and we were in Guatemala!!
Getting out of the airport and being surrounded my men yelling directions and questions at us was quite verwhelming so just this once we decided to splash out a little and take a shuttle rather than the local bus to Antigua a cute ancient city an hour away from the bustling scariness of Guatemala city. So we got there and found a hostel super quick cos… we knew we didn’t have too much time in Guatemala and we wante to make the most of it… we raced out straight away and booked a tour for that afternoon (leaving in 10 minutes) up an active volcanp that had lava flowing down the side of it!! We climbed for say and hr and half to two hours to the highest you were allowed to go and stood beside a river (yes an actual river sized flow) of lava… people were attempting to raost marshmellows without being burnt by the instense heat coming off the lava… we didn’t have any with us due to the rushed nature of our booking… anyway it was super amazing… and slightly freaky… even more freaky was that three weeks later it actually blew up killing a journalist… (once again I will upload photos onto facebook… but it takes too long to do so here)
So we slept well after such a busy day and got up and explored Antigua a little… it was a really cute city that you could really just live in so easily BUT time was of the essence so in the afternoon we got onto a bus (a local bus this time) and went off to Lago Atitlan (lake atitlan). We took a boat over to a wee town called San Pedro where we spent two nights. It really was a cute place. Our hostel room overlooked the lake and had a fine view of the mountain we decided to climb the next day. The Indian Nose.
So we were up bright and early to get our hike on… Up Up Up in the scorcing heat… it was so hot and a lot higher than the 0m above sealevel I had been used to for the past 9months… It was hhard going… I quickly ran out of energy… you know the feeling when you are so tired from exercise you are going to vomit…well… I dint vomit but I thought I was going to… quite funny now looking back… I must have been quite a sight… at half way though I ate something and felt better straight away… got to the top… AMAZING view of the lake… The lake was somewhere I had really wanted to go cos we had studied a short story/legend about it and its surrounding Volcanos in a Spanish lit class I had had. The deal is that the indigenous people used to look to one of the volcanoes for predictions over war and peace. When there were clouds over the vlocano it was a time of peace but when they cleared war or an attack was coming. So when the Spanish were on their way as conquistadores the volcano warned the people so they left. The Spanish arrived and saw all this gold just abandoned (to the indigenous people living was more important than riches) and rubbed their little hands together. But before they could get any of the gold the volcano erupted and covered the treasure… obviously not the outcome the Spanish were hoping for…
So it was cool to see this place in real life…
The next day we continued on our whirlwind tour of Guatemala and moved on to a town commonly known as Xela (said shell-a) (its real name is Quetzaltenango so you can see why it is shortened). This was a lovely wee place… We headed off to explore a surrounding town where I had heard there was a womans weaving cooperative. Mum had expressed a desire for a local weaving so I htought why not buy it from a place where I know the weaver will receive a significant amount of money for their hard work. So we went over and I found mum a weaving… we were going to walk around but there was aprocession on and it looked very serious and travel books warned about prying into local religious festivals and what not so we shot back into Xela…
The following morning we explored Xela a wee bit… I loved it... Guatemala sure has some very lovely cities… and in the avo headed out to some natural hotsprings… very warm and we got all pruny sitting in the lovely surrounds… but there is a certain amount of time you can sit in a hot springs for before you need to return so we came back to town driving through local farmland in the lat afternoon… in time to get a yummy dinner cooked…
On the move again we headed toward a place recommended to us called Shamuc Champey… if you go to Guatemala you HAVE to go there. We had to go back through Guatemala city and… so we were on the bus and this man asks where we were going… we say Copan… this other little old man leans forward and says… Copan?? I know where the bus stop is… we can go togther in a taxi… well lets just say that that would not be happening… gosh we had no idea where in the city we were and we were not going to risk being the next days news headlines on the dominion post “Two blond kiwi girls missing after taxi ride in guatemala” I can imagine… so we asked if it was close and he said oh we could walk… so it was either seem very rude and go in a taxi by ourselves… or trust this man a little and walk with him and if it got dodgey get in a taxi as soon as possible… we decided not to seem rude and we set off walking with this man… he turned out to be trustworthy and we got to the next bus stop in no time…
We stopped for the night in a city called Copan… we had tea at a restaurant called “las Monjas” or the nuns… the restaurant may need to reconsider their placement of a ‘nun’ manaquin outside their doors as she looked scarily like the grim reaper… That night we met a young english guy who was heading in the same direction as us and so for the next four or five days we had a travelling buddy called Matthew… a very easy going guy so that was good otherwise he would have got the boot haha…
We got up to Shamuc Champey eventually… longest 64km of my life… and Leona and I explored some caves that afternoon… the were pretty epic… we were given a candle by the guide and spent two hrs underground swimming and jumping into water in the dark… pretty cool stuff!!!
Then the next morning Shamuc Champey itself… it is the most beautiful place ever… I think if heaven was like that I would be a very happy camper and Im sure it will be better… This is a place here a natural limestone bridge has formed ove the river (crating a cave for the river to go through) and the bridge has pools in it feed by contributories… the pools are beautiful and clear and have these freaky little fish that nibble your toes… But the water is a perfect temperature and it is just amazingly calm and beautiful…
We continued on our way and with and extremely long day of travelling… we took a pick up truck filled with sacks and people (we were hanging on for dear life) to this town near Shamuc, then a mini bus back to Coban, then a mini bus to this corner where we changed to another mini bus, then we took a bus to this river where we hoped on a boat then onto another bus and then finally onto a taxi… we arrived in Flores… we booked our bus to Tikal the next day at… 5am!! Yes we went to bed early that night…
So getting up at 5am to see something you would hope that something were freakin awesome and it was… It was truly amazing… Tikal is an area of pre colombian Mayan Ruins famous for its very high temples and pyrimads… they pop out over the top of the jungle and if you are a star wars fan they actual made it onto one of the old movies… once again look on fb for photos or google image the place for a much better idea of what we saw…
We came back and had a lovely afternnon relaxing before we began an intense card game a fellow traveller taught us… we had a quick break for tea… some very yummy pasta and a strange panini… and we were back into the game… it was kinda like phase 10 but with normal playing cards…
Leona and I then decided to pop over to Belize… speaking english again was so strange… we headed out to one of the Cayes called Caye Caulker… beautiful but it insisted on raining for the next two days so we couldn’t snorkle or anything… we did find real baked beans though YUM YUM… typically as we were leaving half way to the main land the sun came out…
We headed down to a sleepy wee town called Punta Gorda… we stayed the night and had dinner at a plce where a tour group or something was and got treated to a cultural show of the local Garifuna culture. There were some cute little girls dancing… boy could they move their hips…
In the morning we hung around the town till mid day when our boat back to Guatemala left. We got a tour of a fairtrade chocolate shop and read a little under the bus shelter where we met a very nice local man… he was quite extreme… had dreads like Nandor… anyway he took us to the wisdom tree up the road where he introduced us to his friends… bought us some pineapple pie and just chatted about life… when the boat left we really felt a little sad to be leaving a country where we had only met nice people.
Back in beautiful Guatemala, back speaking Spanish… everything was right with the world… until we met a bunch of US soldiers on their weekend off after being in the Guatemalan jungle for three weeks… you would have thought Leona and I were next top models the way we were yelled at… GROSS… That night we had an amazing dinner, seafood in a coconut soup… soo yum and then we went to a bar where some drummers were playing… a pretty fun night all in all… Cucaracha anyone??
We travelled to Rio Dulce up a river that was very pretty… flat flat water, apparently no crocs… wide wide areas… WHY WHY was no one sking or wakeboarding???
We stayed in a lovely wee hostel you had to get to by boat… that avo we explored some of the canals on a dugout canoe… great team work experiment… and the next day we went to a hot waterfall… the water pouring over the cliff was sooo hot… and it hit a clod river creating a warm pool… the waterfall fell over a limestone overhang so you could slip under the falls into a cave like thing and it was pretty much a natural sauna… AMAZING… a local lad also gave us a tour of the ‘cave’ and took us through a series of tight tunnels till we poped out on the right hand side of the falls…
Off to Guatamala city again for us… this time to meet a girl who had done an exchange to Freyberg while I was there. It was so good to see Claudia again and her family was lovely… If you want ot see the capital of Guatemala I def recommend staying with a local family… a lot nicer… Claudia was on exams so she hung out with us a bit and we went to uni with her but we also spent time with her family especially her lovely mother…
Then before we knew it we were on a plane again… heading back to Costa Rica for Leona to catch her flight home and for me to meet up with the Irish girls I was going to spend the next part of my adventure with…
We said goodbye o our friends at the Puntarenas bus stop after loading huge suitcases on to the bus. Thankfully one of our proffesors Arturo had agreed to let us store our gear at is house in the capital while we travelled. As I knew I would be seeing all my good Reno friends in 2 months the goodbye was not so sad… just sad they would not be travelling with me…
And we were off… after stowing our stuff in San Jose we stayed the night close to the airport. And an early morning flight later and we were in Guatemala!!
Getting out of the airport and being surrounded my men yelling directions and questions at us was quite verwhelming so just this once we decided to splash out a little and take a shuttle rather than the local bus to Antigua a cute ancient city an hour away from the bustling scariness of Guatemala city. So we got there and found a hostel super quick cos… we knew we didn’t have too much time in Guatemala and we wante to make the most of it… we raced out straight away and booked a tour for that afternoon (leaving in 10 minutes) up an active volcanp that had lava flowing down the side of it!! We climbed for say and hr and half to two hours to the highest you were allowed to go and stood beside a river (yes an actual river sized flow) of lava… people were attempting to raost marshmellows without being burnt by the instense heat coming off the lava… we didn’t have any with us due to the rushed nature of our booking… anyway it was super amazing… and slightly freaky… even more freaky was that three weeks later it actually blew up killing a journalist… (once again I will upload photos onto facebook… but it takes too long to do so here)
So we slept well after such a busy day and got up and explored Antigua a little… it was a really cute city that you could really just live in so easily BUT time was of the essence so in the afternoon we got onto a bus (a local bus this time) and went off to Lago Atitlan (lake atitlan). We took a boat over to a wee town called San Pedro where we spent two nights. It really was a cute place. Our hostel room overlooked the lake and had a fine view of the mountain we decided to climb the next day. The Indian Nose.
So we were up bright and early to get our hike on… Up Up Up in the scorcing heat… it was so hot and a lot higher than the 0m above sealevel I had been used to for the past 9months… It was hhard going… I quickly ran out of energy… you know the feeling when you are so tired from exercise you are going to vomit…well… I dint vomit but I thought I was going to… quite funny now looking back… I must have been quite a sight… at half way though I ate something and felt better straight away… got to the top… AMAZING view of the lake… The lake was somewhere I had really wanted to go cos we had studied a short story/legend about it and its surrounding Volcanos in a Spanish lit class I had had. The deal is that the indigenous people used to look to one of the volcanoes for predictions over war and peace. When there were clouds over the vlocano it was a time of peace but when they cleared war or an attack was coming. So when the Spanish were on their way as conquistadores the volcano warned the people so they left. The Spanish arrived and saw all this gold just abandoned (to the indigenous people living was more important than riches) and rubbed their little hands together. But before they could get any of the gold the volcano erupted and covered the treasure… obviously not the outcome the Spanish were hoping for…
So it was cool to see this place in real life…
The next day we continued on our whirlwind tour of Guatemala and moved on to a town commonly known as Xela (said shell-a) (its real name is Quetzaltenango so you can see why it is shortened). This was a lovely wee place… We headed off to explore a surrounding town where I had heard there was a womans weaving cooperative. Mum had expressed a desire for a local weaving so I htought why not buy it from a place where I know the weaver will receive a significant amount of money for their hard work. So we went over and I found mum a weaving… we were going to walk around but there was aprocession on and it looked very serious and travel books warned about prying into local religious festivals and what not so we shot back into Xela…
The following morning we explored Xela a wee bit… I loved it... Guatemala sure has some very lovely cities… and in the avo headed out to some natural hotsprings… very warm and we got all pruny sitting in the lovely surrounds… but there is a certain amount of time you can sit in a hot springs for before you need to return so we came back to town driving through local farmland in the lat afternoon… in time to get a yummy dinner cooked…
On the move again we headed toward a place recommended to us called Shamuc Champey… if you go to Guatemala you HAVE to go there. We had to go back through Guatemala city and… so we were on the bus and this man asks where we were going… we say Copan… this other little old man leans forward and says… Copan?? I know where the bus stop is… we can go togther in a taxi… well lets just say that that would not be happening… gosh we had no idea where in the city we were and we were not going to risk being the next days news headlines on the dominion post “Two blond kiwi girls missing after taxi ride in guatemala” I can imagine… so we asked if it was close and he said oh we could walk… so it was either seem very rude and go in a taxi by ourselves… or trust this man a little and walk with him and if it got dodgey get in a taxi as soon as possible… we decided not to seem rude and we set off walking with this man… he turned out to be trustworthy and we got to the next bus stop in no time…
We stopped for the night in a city called Copan… we had tea at a restaurant called “las Monjas” or the nuns… the restaurant may need to reconsider their placement of a ‘nun’ manaquin outside their doors as she looked scarily like the grim reaper… That night we met a young english guy who was heading in the same direction as us and so for the next four or five days we had a travelling buddy called Matthew… a very easy going guy so that was good otherwise he would have got the boot haha…
We got up to Shamuc Champey eventually… longest 64km of my life… and Leona and I explored some caves that afternoon… the were pretty epic… we were given a candle by the guide and spent two hrs underground swimming and jumping into water in the dark… pretty cool stuff!!!
Then the next morning Shamuc Champey itself… it is the most beautiful place ever… I think if heaven was like that I would be a very happy camper and Im sure it will be better… This is a place here a natural limestone bridge has formed ove the river (crating a cave for the river to go through) and the bridge has pools in it feed by contributories… the pools are beautiful and clear and have these freaky little fish that nibble your toes… But the water is a perfect temperature and it is just amazingly calm and beautiful…
We continued on our way and with and extremely long day of travelling… we took a pick up truck filled with sacks and people (we were hanging on for dear life) to this town near Shamuc, then a mini bus back to Coban, then a mini bus to this corner where we changed to another mini bus, then we took a bus to this river where we hoped on a boat then onto another bus and then finally onto a taxi… we arrived in Flores… we booked our bus to Tikal the next day at… 5am!! Yes we went to bed early that night…
So getting up at 5am to see something you would hope that something were freakin awesome and it was… It was truly amazing… Tikal is an area of pre colombian Mayan Ruins famous for its very high temples and pyrimads… they pop out over the top of the jungle and if you are a star wars fan they actual made it onto one of the old movies… once again look on fb for photos or google image the place for a much better idea of what we saw…
We came back and had a lovely afternnon relaxing before we began an intense card game a fellow traveller taught us… we had a quick break for tea… some very yummy pasta and a strange panini… and we were back into the game… it was kinda like phase 10 but with normal playing cards…
Leona and I then decided to pop over to Belize… speaking english again was so strange… we headed out to one of the Cayes called Caye Caulker… beautiful but it insisted on raining for the next two days so we couldn’t snorkle or anything… we did find real baked beans though YUM YUM… typically as we were leaving half way to the main land the sun came out…
We headed down to a sleepy wee town called Punta Gorda… we stayed the night and had dinner at a plce where a tour group or something was and got treated to a cultural show of the local Garifuna culture. There were some cute little girls dancing… boy could they move their hips…
In the morning we hung around the town till mid day when our boat back to Guatemala left. We got a tour of a fairtrade chocolate shop and read a little under the bus shelter where we met a very nice local man… he was quite extreme… had dreads like Nandor… anyway he took us to the wisdom tree up the road where he introduced us to his friends… bought us some pineapple pie and just chatted about life… when the boat left we really felt a little sad to be leaving a country where we had only met nice people.
Back in beautiful Guatemala, back speaking Spanish… everything was right with the world… until we met a bunch of US soldiers on their weekend off after being in the Guatemalan jungle for three weeks… you would have thought Leona and I were next top models the way we were yelled at… GROSS… That night we had an amazing dinner, seafood in a coconut soup… soo yum and then we went to a bar where some drummers were playing… a pretty fun night all in all… Cucaracha anyone??
We travelled to Rio Dulce up a river that was very pretty… flat flat water, apparently no crocs… wide wide areas… WHY WHY was no one sking or wakeboarding???
We stayed in a lovely wee hostel you had to get to by boat… that avo we explored some of the canals on a dugout canoe… great team work experiment… and the next day we went to a hot waterfall… the water pouring over the cliff was sooo hot… and it hit a clod river creating a warm pool… the waterfall fell over a limestone overhang so you could slip under the falls into a cave like thing and it was pretty much a natural sauna… AMAZING… a local lad also gave us a tour of the ‘cave’ and took us through a series of tight tunnels till we poped out on the right hand side of the falls…
Off to Guatamala city again for us… this time to meet a girl who had done an exchange to Freyberg while I was there. It was so good to see Claudia again and her family was lovely… If you want ot see the capital of Guatemala I def recommend staying with a local family… a lot nicer… Claudia was on exams so she hung out with us a bit and we went to uni with her but we also spent time with her family especially her lovely mother…
Then before we knew it we were on a plane again… heading back to Costa Rica for Leona to catch her flight home and for me to meet up with the Irish girls I was going to spend the next part of my adventure with…
viernes, 30 de abril de 2010
Jaco, San Jose, Birthdays and goodbyes...
The sad day came when I needed to sell my surf board in preparation for leaving so me and two friends trooped down to Jaco, the closest surfy tourist town near here to sell it and hang out for the day. We pretty much sold it as quick as possible to get rid of it and spent the day hunting down cool arty things and souvenirs and had a massive smoothie for morning tea and for lunch as well as an avocado and some crackers that I sneakily ate while colleen my other friend ate a muesli bar at a restaurant where Leona was the only one buying food…(yes we know we are cheap and that when i was younger had my parents done such a thing I would have been mortified!!) Then we sat on the beach had the yummiest passion fruit sorbet and came home….
A few weekends later I decided I wanted to buy a bag for travelling in San Jose so Colleen and I went into the capital and then out to this wealthy area where we had heard there was a really nice mall… It was super super nice… for lunch we shared a cinabon roll and got the biggest coffee ever. When ordering coffee we asked how big their cups were and they showed us these tiny wee things so we saked if there was anything bigger… the lady was like well we could charge you for two coffees and put it in this… and whipped out a massive fizzy drink cup!! it was AWESOME!! we both took one look at it and said “that’s what we’re talking about’ so we sat happily in this shiny new mall munching and drinking our treats. We found the bag… YAY… and spent the day wandering and trying on lots of cute but expensive clothes…
The final thing that happened that was exciting was that we had another birthday this week. So we went out for tea. Our fav restaurant was closed so we chose somewhere we had never been before… it was a small pizza place and we were originally quite concerned cos we were the only ones in the place but after an age we got our pizza (it took so long that we think they probably went out back and slaughtered all the animals and grew the tomatoes and onions from scratch) and it was amazing, this was followed by a movie at a friends house and some yummy carrot cake…
Oh this week we also said goodbye to this Catholic feed the homeless drunks thing we have been volunteering for this semester. Costa Rica though it tries to hide its poverty and does pretty well still has issues and me and three friends were blessed to be able to help out at such a cool outreach. Every week our job was to makeup and bag the juice. We always had to add more sugar no matter how sweet we thought it was because the Costa Ricans love sweet drinks… we would fondly term the juice ‘diabetes in a cup’. Anyway the people who ran it were really sweet and they gave us a really lovely farewell party which was so nice,on a sad note one of the cute old drunk men who used to sing to me died from liver poisoning...
This is the end of my blog catch up unless I have a revelation this evening that I have forgotten something important!! I will try and update when travelling but knowing me this may not happen!! hope you all enjoy reading about the last four months catch ya soon!!
once again see facebook for photos
A few weekends later I decided I wanted to buy a bag for travelling in San Jose so Colleen and I went into the capital and then out to this wealthy area where we had heard there was a really nice mall… It was super super nice… for lunch we shared a cinabon roll and got the biggest coffee ever. When ordering coffee we asked how big their cups were and they showed us these tiny wee things so we saked if there was anything bigger… the lady was like well we could charge you for two coffees and put it in this… and whipped out a massive fizzy drink cup!! it was AWESOME!! we both took one look at it and said “that’s what we’re talking about’ so we sat happily in this shiny new mall munching and drinking our treats. We found the bag… YAY… and spent the day wandering and trying on lots of cute but expensive clothes…
The final thing that happened that was exciting was that we had another birthday this week. So we went out for tea. Our fav restaurant was closed so we chose somewhere we had never been before… it was a small pizza place and we were originally quite concerned cos we were the only ones in the place but after an age we got our pizza (it took so long that we think they probably went out back and slaughtered all the animals and grew the tomatoes and onions from scratch) and it was amazing, this was followed by a movie at a friends house and some yummy carrot cake…
Oh this week we also said goodbye to this Catholic feed the homeless drunks thing we have been volunteering for this semester. Costa Rica though it tries to hide its poverty and does pretty well still has issues and me and three friends were blessed to be able to help out at such a cool outreach. Every week our job was to makeup and bag the juice. We always had to add more sugar no matter how sweet we thought it was because the Costa Ricans love sweet drinks… we would fondly term the juice ‘diabetes in a cup’. Anyway the people who ran it were really sweet and they gave us a really lovely farewell party which was so nice,on a sad note one of the cute old drunk men who used to sing to me died from liver poisoning...
This is the end of my blog catch up unless I have a revelation this evening that I have forgotten something important!! I will try and update when travelling but knowing me this may not happen!! hope you all enjoy reading about the last four months catch ya soon!!
once again see facebook for photos
Semana Santa / Holy week
Here in Costa Rica Catholicism is MASSIVE like in all parts of Central and South America. So instead of having just the fri, sat, sun off like we do the whole week in the lead up to good Friday (santo viernes). On Thursday avo the whole country comes to a stand still until Saturday morning and many masses and processions are held.
So like the rest of the country I had the semana santa off from school… Now what was I to do with it. I had some friends going to Panama but I had gone last semester and didn’t want to spend money and go again. I had other friends who had people coming to visit them and they were going to stay in a house in Jaco with them and so there was me…
I was thinking of going over to Montezuma where I had missed going cos I was sick and that was my plan until… Jack, a fellow year long student asked me if I liked rafting… so he had been planning a week long rafting trip with some friends that were coming down and his girlfriend wasn’t sure if she was still coming and if she pulled out there would be a spot and I could have it… she pulled out
So on the Sunday before easter weekend we left for San Jose, got off the bus at the airport where our guide met us and took us to his home in a wee city called Turrialba.
We got there and met the guides wife and wee little one year old son… The wife, Andrea was my age and it was really nice to have a friend to come back to at night as all the people we were rafting with were males. We also stayed at their house and they were soooo lovely!!
So for four days we rafted leaving in the morning and coming back in the late afternoon.
DAY ONE: Pejibaye (or pejevalle depending on where you look), the first section we had to do in infkatable kayaks cos it was too skinny to do in a raft. I had never used one before and some of the rapids were reasonably big… came out a few times and got a few knocks but it was fun!! the second section we did in the raft… I liked the raft a lot…. didn’t come out at all!!!
DAY TWO: Upper Pacuare. This was super fun. I did most of it in the raft… when we stopped to play in a rapid tho I did run it in a ducky (what the kayaks were called) and I stayed in which I was rather pleased about… I developed a rather good physics (?) reasoning for why I kept falling out… it wasn’t that I was bad at it, it was simply that I wasn’t heavy enough to keep the boats stable like the boys were haha…
DAY THREE: aka the most amazing day on the river ever!! we ran some awesome rapids including a class five!! it was awesomely cool!! I would love to do it again… the river was called the Reventazon…
DAY FOUR: Lower Pacuare, lots of fun too we had some good play arounds in the rapids and saw some stunning scenery… by the end of the day I was exhausted!!
We drove to Puerto Viejo this night where we slept in hammocks cos there were no beds in the hostels. I was surprised at how easy I slept… plan to bring one home with me IF I have space…
DAY FIVE: hung round Puerto Viejo and the beaches near by till early avo, saw some cool caves. Then I went back to Turrialba with one other student and stayed the night with the guide and wife again, had the most amazing meal, who knew that dried fish soup (the fish rehydrates) could be so good… we couldn’t get back to Puntarenas as there was no public transport on Friday,
and on Saturday we came home to the Punt… what a good week!!, didn’t want to come home because the climate in Turrialba was amazing and I was so over the heat of the PUNT, and I really got on well with my friend Andrea but had to so we did…
So like the rest of the country I had the semana santa off from school… Now what was I to do with it. I had some friends going to Panama but I had gone last semester and didn’t want to spend money and go again. I had other friends who had people coming to visit them and they were going to stay in a house in Jaco with them and so there was me…
I was thinking of going over to Montezuma where I had missed going cos I was sick and that was my plan until… Jack, a fellow year long student asked me if I liked rafting… so he had been planning a week long rafting trip with some friends that were coming down and his girlfriend wasn’t sure if she was still coming and if she pulled out there would be a spot and I could have it… she pulled out
So on the Sunday before easter weekend we left for San Jose, got off the bus at the airport where our guide met us and took us to his home in a wee city called Turrialba.
We got there and met the guides wife and wee little one year old son… The wife, Andrea was my age and it was really nice to have a friend to come back to at night as all the people we were rafting with were males. We also stayed at their house and they were soooo lovely!!
So for four days we rafted leaving in the morning and coming back in the late afternoon.
DAY ONE: Pejibaye (or pejevalle depending on where you look), the first section we had to do in infkatable kayaks cos it was too skinny to do in a raft. I had never used one before and some of the rapids were reasonably big… came out a few times and got a few knocks but it was fun!! the second section we did in the raft… I liked the raft a lot…. didn’t come out at all!!!
DAY TWO: Upper Pacuare. This was super fun. I did most of it in the raft… when we stopped to play in a rapid tho I did run it in a ducky (what the kayaks were called) and I stayed in which I was rather pleased about… I developed a rather good physics (?) reasoning for why I kept falling out… it wasn’t that I was bad at it, it was simply that I wasn’t heavy enough to keep the boats stable like the boys were haha…
DAY THREE: aka the most amazing day on the river ever!! we ran some awesome rapids including a class five!! it was awesomely cool!! I would love to do it again… the river was called the Reventazon…
DAY FOUR: Lower Pacuare, lots of fun too we had some good play arounds in the rapids and saw some stunning scenery… by the end of the day I was exhausted!!
We drove to Puerto Viejo this night where we slept in hammocks cos there were no beds in the hostels. I was surprised at how easy I slept… plan to bring one home with me IF I have space…
DAY FIVE: hung round Puerto Viejo and the beaches near by till early avo, saw some cool caves. Then I went back to Turrialba with one other student and stayed the night with the guide and wife again, had the most amazing meal, who knew that dried fish soup (the fish rehydrates) could be so good… we couldn’t get back to Puntarenas as there was no public transport on Friday,
and on Saturday we came home to the Punt… what a good week!!, didn’t want to come home because the climate in Turrialba was amazing and I was so over the heat of the PUNT, and I really got on well with my friend Andrea but had to so we did…
jueves, 29 de abril de 2010
Monteverde
This semester our overnight trip with Uni was to Monteverde a cloud forest (yep just like it sounds a forest in the clouds). It was also over the weekend that held our friend Amanda’s Birthday. So a few of us girlies got together and made a banana cake and iced it and then froze it in the tin so it would travel good. It took a bit of sneakiness to get it up to Monteverde without anyone noticing we had a cake on us but it worked out well and we managed it!!!
The morning we left we met early and got some yummy bread for breakfast as it was Amandas birthday…
Anyways we got there on sat morning ad had the best pizza lunch… it was so good… the best part no rice and no beans!!! (yep a little over those). Then we headed out for a forest walk… we were supposed to see wild life but all we saw was a centipede and a stick insect hmmmmm maybe we were too loud… but the forest was cool and very Jurassic parky…we also went to a hummingbird garden… I don’t really (read AT ALL) like birds especially ones that flitter al over the show so I was very close to screaming at times when they got too close to me… we went back to the hotel… had a nap under blankets (because of clouds it was chilly) and then hot showers before going out for din dins… we ate and came back to the hotel for some special coffee and to eat the cake. We stayed up to the wee small hours of the morning playing fun hand clappy rhythm games!!
Breakfast (after another hot shower… BLISS) was fruit, cha whooo, then we got ready to go zip lining. The zip lining was the most amazing thing ever!!! it was sooo high and the lines were insanely long!! the final one was 1km flying over the top of forest!! it was crazy cool.
a butterfly garden later and we were on the bus heading for home… what a sweet weekend!!
The next weekend we were to start spring break and as Erik’s birthday was on the sat we decided to celebrate early and have a fire and make smores on the beach on the thurday night… the boys got crazy lighting palm leaves one fire and waving the around… but a the women of this couple visiting Erik who had had three sons told us not to worry and that it was just a boy thing!!
well next blog will be about my AMAZING time during spring break so hold tight!!!
Oh and if there are losts of mistakes i apologise... learning spanish has screwed with my english spelling and i was never good to begin with anyway, and i am too lazy to spell check...
The morning we left we met early and got some yummy bread for breakfast as it was Amandas birthday…
Anyways we got there on sat morning ad had the best pizza lunch… it was so good… the best part no rice and no beans!!! (yep a little over those). Then we headed out for a forest walk… we were supposed to see wild life but all we saw was a centipede and a stick insect hmmmmm maybe we were too loud… but the forest was cool and very Jurassic parky…we also went to a hummingbird garden… I don’t really (read AT ALL) like birds especially ones that flitter al over the show so I was very close to screaming at times when they got too close to me… we went back to the hotel… had a nap under blankets (because of clouds it was chilly) and then hot showers before going out for din dins… we ate and came back to the hotel for some special coffee and to eat the cake. We stayed up to the wee small hours of the morning playing fun hand clappy rhythm games!!
Breakfast (after another hot shower… BLISS) was fruit, cha whooo, then we got ready to go zip lining. The zip lining was the most amazing thing ever!!! it was sooo high and the lines were insanely long!! the final one was 1km flying over the top of forest!! it was crazy cool.
a butterfly garden later and we were on the bus heading for home… what a sweet weekend!!
The next weekend we were to start spring break and as Erik’s birthday was on the sat we decided to celebrate early and have a fire and make smores on the beach on the thurday night… the boys got crazy lighting palm leaves one fire and waving the around… but a the women of this couple visiting Erik who had had three sons told us not to worry and that it was just a boy thing!!
well next blog will be about my AMAZING time during spring break so hold tight!!!
Oh and if there are losts of mistakes i apologise... learning spanish has screwed with my english spelling and i was never good to begin with anyway, and i am too lazy to spell check...
SICK SICK SICK
So quite soon after our week off (actually the very next week) the rounds of birthdays for our group of friends started! Colleens was on the Thursday.
BUT before we could get to the birthday I got sick… Now not just normally a day off sick but the sickest I can ever remember being!! I am for real here it was BAD! and because sick stories are always funny in retrospect I shall share my rather humorous one with you!!
So here goes…
So on Sunday night I (yep on the sat I went to the movies in San Jose and this is now the very next day) I started to get some mild back pain but I thought it was from sitting on the bus or something the day before. Then on Monday morning I wasn’t feeling too hot but okish… Tuesday I had TWO exams I did one, went home, slept, did the other BOTH feeling kinda gross but very drugged up on Ibprofen… by the end of the second exam my Ibprofen had really kicked in and I was feeling good so when my friend asked if she could still use my bathroom to cut a guys hair that night I said “as long as its early”. So 7.30pm came around (I hadn’t eaten all day cos I felt gross) and I was starting to feel really cold. (so in puntarenas where it is 40 degrees even in your room and that is no exaggeration, when you feel cold you feel like an IDIOT) you KNOW something is not good… but my friends showed up, came into my room and I lay in bed. Half way through the hair cut I thought, Oh my word… I want to chunder… what am I going to do I have three people in my room… so I asked one of them to go and ask my host momma for a bowl… eventually we got one sorted but I REALLY didn’t want to be sick with all those people in my room, how embarrassing… The haircut took FOREVER!!! you would not believe it.. I was in so much pain trying to hold my vomit in and I thought my friends were never ever ever going to leave but eventually they did and I could vomit in peace. During all this time I started to have cold patches and hot patches…
So the rest of the night was a real treat. I vomited every time I tried to drink water so I was getting really dehydrated; I was super super hot… once again in 40 degree heat even more unpleasant than normal. And by hot I mean ON FIRE. I was sweating and would heat up my sheets so much that I would roll of my patch and a few minutes later when I rolled back on they were still super hot. And then I would go to cold, so cold I was chattering and with all my warm clothes on and a blanket couldn’t get warm, then hot, cold, hot, vomit, cold… all night!! at 6 the next morning I found some flat ginger ale in the fridge and that stayed down (phew cos I was thinking I may have to go get a drip if I still couldn’t hold liquid down). So for the next few days I still was quite feverish and didn’t eat anything.
On Thursday it was Colleens birthday and we were going out for dinner, we were also meeting her friend from the states Mandy. I was not feeling good or like eating but shoved a few ibuprofen into me and went to dinner. It was fun but what was not fun was that I started to develop a hacking cough! it started to rip my abs to pieces and was sooo painful
got through the birthday dinner and then went to bed, where I didn’t sleep cos I was hacking all night. Then Friday morning I had another delightful exam which I had to do in the hot porch cos my cough was disturbing everyone…
I went home and had to make a very sad decision…
We had been planning a big fun group trip with Colleens friend and I was super excited BUT I was really too sick and no one would want to be my friend after a weekend of being kept awake by my coughing. So I decided to stay in Puntarenas while they went of and had a jolly old time.
I got some very powerful prescription cough medicine which helped a little but I still coughed constantly for the next week and was feeling yuck for a good while. I still actually am coughing from it but not too much…
anyway that is my fun sick sick story… as said before it is funny now but at the time… well it was gross and I cant remember anything like it… maybe it was the H1N1???
BUT before we could get to the birthday I got sick… Now not just normally a day off sick but the sickest I can ever remember being!! I am for real here it was BAD! and because sick stories are always funny in retrospect I shall share my rather humorous one with you!!
So here goes…
So on Sunday night I (yep on the sat I went to the movies in San Jose and this is now the very next day) I started to get some mild back pain but I thought it was from sitting on the bus or something the day before. Then on Monday morning I wasn’t feeling too hot but okish… Tuesday I had TWO exams I did one, went home, slept, did the other BOTH feeling kinda gross but very drugged up on Ibprofen… by the end of the second exam my Ibprofen had really kicked in and I was feeling good so when my friend asked if she could still use my bathroom to cut a guys hair that night I said “as long as its early”. So 7.30pm came around (I hadn’t eaten all day cos I felt gross) and I was starting to feel really cold. (so in puntarenas where it is 40 degrees even in your room and that is no exaggeration, when you feel cold you feel like an IDIOT) you KNOW something is not good… but my friends showed up, came into my room and I lay in bed. Half way through the hair cut I thought, Oh my word… I want to chunder… what am I going to do I have three people in my room… so I asked one of them to go and ask my host momma for a bowl… eventually we got one sorted but I REALLY didn’t want to be sick with all those people in my room, how embarrassing… The haircut took FOREVER!!! you would not believe it.. I was in so much pain trying to hold my vomit in and I thought my friends were never ever ever going to leave but eventually they did and I could vomit in peace. During all this time I started to have cold patches and hot patches…
So the rest of the night was a real treat. I vomited every time I tried to drink water so I was getting really dehydrated; I was super super hot… once again in 40 degree heat even more unpleasant than normal. And by hot I mean ON FIRE. I was sweating and would heat up my sheets so much that I would roll of my patch and a few minutes later when I rolled back on they were still super hot. And then I would go to cold, so cold I was chattering and with all my warm clothes on and a blanket couldn’t get warm, then hot, cold, hot, vomit, cold… all night!! at 6 the next morning I found some flat ginger ale in the fridge and that stayed down (phew cos I was thinking I may have to go get a drip if I still couldn’t hold liquid down). So for the next few days I still was quite feverish and didn’t eat anything.
On Thursday it was Colleens birthday and we were going out for dinner, we were also meeting her friend from the states Mandy. I was not feeling good or like eating but shoved a few ibuprofen into me and went to dinner. It was fun but what was not fun was that I started to develop a hacking cough! it started to rip my abs to pieces and was sooo painful
got through the birthday dinner and then went to bed, where I didn’t sleep cos I was hacking all night. Then Friday morning I had another delightful exam which I had to do in the hot porch cos my cough was disturbing everyone…
I went home and had to make a very sad decision…
We had been planning a big fun group trip with Colleens friend and I was super excited BUT I was really too sick and no one would want to be my friend after a weekend of being kept awake by my coughing. So I decided to stay in Puntarenas while they went of and had a jolly old time.
I got some very powerful prescription cough medicine which helped a little but I still coughed constantly for the next week and was feeling yuck for a good while. I still actually am coughing from it but not too much…
anyway that is my fun sick sick story… as said before it is funny now but at the time… well it was gross and I cant remember anything like it… maybe it was the H1N1???
miércoles, 28 de abril de 2010
Week off!!
Also like last semester there was a week long trip but this time to Nicaragua. However as I had already done some exploring in Nicaragua I decided to save my money (school trips are rather expensive) and do some other traveling.
BUT just before our big week off something very exciting happened… two of my bestest friends here from Reno, Nevada in the states. They were dating when they got here (had been for like 2 yrs) and got engaged at a 2 and a half yrs so it wasn’t a surprise really to any one back home or to those who knew them well here but it is still so exciting!!! Erik told me he had bought the ring about a week or two before her proposed so I had to keep my lips sealed for quite a while. (if anyone wishes to sponser me to get over to the wedding in August I will not say no!!)
Well we left them in Puntarenas to start wedding planning and went off travelling. Due to groups expanding and changing my friend Laura and I eventually decided just to travel the two of us for the week. We decided to see a few of the Northern beaches in Costa Rica and then head to Nicaragua cos Laura had to do a border run.
So for the first section we had to take a bus with some fellow USACers to a town called Liberia. From there we were heading out to the Pacific and they were heading nth to Nicaragua. Got to Liberia and bought our tickets to our next stop, we were going to a beach called Brasilitos. As we were waiting for our bus the others loaded onto the bus for Nicaragua. Moments later Cody comes running off and grabs his surf board out from under the bus… turns out her forgot his passport… a rather essential piece of equipment for border crossing. So that Cody didn’t have to go all the way back to Puntarenas by himself we decided to change plans. We changed our tickets to Tamarindo beach, better for surfing, and went there instead. Laura and I hired boards and for the next three days this was our rutine. Breakfast, surf, lunch, (shop maybe) nap, surf, dinner, sleep… we were so tired from surfing that we were real nanas and slept early…
The surf wasn’t the best but it was still lots of fun, and the beach was 100% nicer than the one we have in the dirty Punt!! we decided to come back to Puntarenas early rather than going anywhere else and I hung out round here and with Colleen and Erik for the rest of the week.
On Saturday I gave them their engagement present and took them in to San Jose for the day. We had churros filled with caramel and coffee!! then we went to the movies- saw Hurt Locker which was very strange but very good!
BUT just before our big week off something very exciting happened… two of my bestest friends here from Reno, Nevada in the states. They were dating when they got here (had been for like 2 yrs) and got engaged at a 2 and a half yrs so it wasn’t a surprise really to any one back home or to those who knew them well here but it is still so exciting!!! Erik told me he had bought the ring about a week or two before her proposed so I had to keep my lips sealed for quite a while. (if anyone wishes to sponser me to get over to the wedding in August I will not say no!!)
Well we left them in Puntarenas to start wedding planning and went off travelling. Due to groups expanding and changing my friend Laura and I eventually decided just to travel the two of us for the week. We decided to see a few of the Northern beaches in Costa Rica and then head to Nicaragua cos Laura had to do a border run.
So for the first section we had to take a bus with some fellow USACers to a town called Liberia. From there we were heading out to the Pacific and they were heading nth to Nicaragua. Got to Liberia and bought our tickets to our next stop, we were going to a beach called Brasilitos. As we were waiting for our bus the others loaded onto the bus for Nicaragua. Moments later Cody comes running off and grabs his surf board out from under the bus… turns out her forgot his passport… a rather essential piece of equipment for border crossing. So that Cody didn’t have to go all the way back to Puntarenas by himself we decided to change plans. We changed our tickets to Tamarindo beach, better for surfing, and went there instead. Laura and I hired boards and for the next three days this was our rutine. Breakfast, surf, lunch, (shop maybe) nap, surf, dinner, sleep… we were so tired from surfing that we were real nanas and slept early…
The surf wasn’t the best but it was still lots of fun, and the beach was 100% nicer than the one we have in the dirty Punt!! we decided to come back to Puntarenas early rather than going anywhere else and I hung out round here and with Colleen and Erik for the rest of the week.
On Saturday I gave them their engagement present and took them in to San Jose for the day. We had churros filled with caramel and coffee!! then we went to the movies- saw Hurt Locker which was very strange but very good!
Carnivales… whoop whoop get your fiesta on!!
SO every year Puntarenas is home to Carnivales just before lent starts. It is a time of party partying!!! There were tons and tons of food stalls… ate my weight in caramel filled donut logs thingys called churros rellenos… every night the streets were pretty full with people and dancing!! BUT the final night was by far the most packed! there was a concert during the day with this really awesome reggae band called fuerza dread and there was this famous international guy but Im not cool enough to have heard of him before or remember his name… so you will have to live without knowing…
well I actually enjoyed the week though I was ready for the Punt to shrink back to normal size and for the mounds of rubbish and crap to be cleared away… and oh my for the smell after the horse parade to go away!!
well I actually enjoyed the week though I was ready for the Punt to shrink back to normal size and for the mounds of rubbish and crap to be cleared away… and oh my for the smell after the horse parade to go away!!
First part of the new semester!
Ok so yes I have yet again waited a LONG time to post a blog… but you kinda get a better deal when you think about it because now im only going to remember the good stuff to write about so you wont have to wade through any of the boring stuff!! I aim to have you pretty good and caught up in a couple of days but I do have exams soon so…
ok so cranking into it… (please note something may not appear chronologically but rather in an idea as it fits better or something…)
I waited all day for the new kids to arrive cos my friend from nz was coming! When she got here her accent sounded so weird!! but it was great to hang with a kiwi again!! The only kiwis I had met in the past 5 months had been at the border crossing back into Costa Rica a few days early there were a few girls in the line for the loo... they were from Auckland so maybe that explains there behaviour but they were not very friendly (note to all kiwi travelers it is pretty much a law that when you meet other kiwis you should act excited and welcoming!!) so I was happy to see Leona!
As with last semester we had a day trip during our second weekend. We went to visit a national park on the Nicoya peninsula as well as a really pretty island group called the Tortuga Islands. In the national park we wondered around trying to spot some exciting animals… eventually we saw a howler monkey and a camo butterfly but all the animalitos seemed to be hiding… We went snorkeling, it was cool, quite a few fish but the Caribbean has spoiled my snorkeling experiences for life as I don’t know how anything will compare to the coral and fishes we saw over there… For afternoon tea there was a ton of fruit and Colleen and I went crazy just because we never get fruit in our houses... it was soooooooo good…
Because we hadn’t learned from our last church camp experience we decided to go on another one back to the same finca… OH MY WORD… WHY WHY WHY is all I ask… it was torture!! I learnt about all the fun things Christians cant do… like drink at all, dance anywhere, go to the beach?? also how I should go to church about 100 times a week… yeah sign me up for that… so glad I don’t have to do all that/ not do that to actually have a relationship with Christ but it sure made me feel sorry for all the kiddos in that youth group. Me and colleen had some good bonding time sharing a single mattress again for two nights… again we were busting to get out of there but the funny and awkward strange moments did kinda make it worthwhile!
This semester I signed up for a conversation partner again, they are students learning English and so we practice some English and some Spanish. Last semester it didn’t work out too well as my partner never showed after the first time when he found out I wasn’t from the states (no chance of a green card) and I didn’t really like to party. So this semester I got paired with an older married chica… she was lovely and we talked for an hour each week for the first couple of weeks until I got sick and then we never really organized to meet again. But she was really cool the times we did hang out… she taught me how to make tres leches, a traditional (and yummy) desert here. if you are in palmy in NZ I shall make it for you sometime if you want! I also got taken with the family to a really nice river and we had a bbq and swam and walked a little. It was a really cute place check out photos on facebook… (should be up soon)…
ok so that is the first part of the blog. I intend to still break up the sections a little so you can digest them and not get beaten to death with way to much writing… once again no photos yet unless someone can instruct this technologically illiterate girl on the art of uploading pics quickly… look on face book!!
ok so cranking into it… (please note something may not appear chronologically but rather in an idea as it fits better or something…)
I waited all day for the new kids to arrive cos my friend from nz was coming! When she got here her accent sounded so weird!! but it was great to hang with a kiwi again!! The only kiwis I had met in the past 5 months had been at the border crossing back into Costa Rica a few days early there were a few girls in the line for the loo... they were from Auckland so maybe that explains there behaviour but they were not very friendly (note to all kiwi travelers it is pretty much a law that when you meet other kiwis you should act excited and welcoming!!) so I was happy to see Leona!
As with last semester we had a day trip during our second weekend. We went to visit a national park on the Nicoya peninsula as well as a really pretty island group called the Tortuga Islands. In the national park we wondered around trying to spot some exciting animals… eventually we saw a howler monkey and a camo butterfly but all the animalitos seemed to be hiding… We went snorkeling, it was cool, quite a few fish but the Caribbean has spoiled my snorkeling experiences for life as I don’t know how anything will compare to the coral and fishes we saw over there… For afternoon tea there was a ton of fruit and Colleen and I went crazy just because we never get fruit in our houses... it was soooooooo good…
Because we hadn’t learned from our last church camp experience we decided to go on another one back to the same finca… OH MY WORD… WHY WHY WHY is all I ask… it was torture!! I learnt about all the fun things Christians cant do… like drink at all, dance anywhere, go to the beach?? also how I should go to church about 100 times a week… yeah sign me up for that… so glad I don’t have to do all that/ not do that to actually have a relationship with Christ but it sure made me feel sorry for all the kiddos in that youth group. Me and colleen had some good bonding time sharing a single mattress again for two nights… again we were busting to get out of there but the funny and awkward strange moments did kinda make it worthwhile!
This semester I signed up for a conversation partner again, they are students learning English and so we practice some English and some Spanish. Last semester it didn’t work out too well as my partner never showed after the first time when he found out I wasn’t from the states (no chance of a green card) and I didn’t really like to party. So this semester I got paired with an older married chica… she was lovely and we talked for an hour each week for the first couple of weeks until I got sick and then we never really organized to meet again. But she was really cool the times we did hang out… she taught me how to make tres leches, a traditional (and yummy) desert here. if you are in palmy in NZ I shall make it for you sometime if you want! I also got taken with the family to a really nice river and we had a bbq and swam and walked a little. It was a really cute place check out photos on facebook… (should be up soon)…
ok so that is the first part of the blog. I intend to still break up the sections a little so you can digest them and not get beaten to death with way to much writing… once again no photos yet unless someone can instruct this technologically illiterate girl on the art of uploading pics quickly… look on face book!!
martes, 26 de enero de 2010
Christmas Holidays in Honduras
Wow, three blogs in one month… I am a machine!!! This will teach me for putting it off for so long!!! Prob will happen again tho!! I definitely have not found a life long hobby in blogging… so heres hoping more than one person reads this after all the pain I go through to write this haha!!
So December 10th and 11th were full of sad sad goodbyes… after months with many a lovely person it was soooo dumb to say goodbye!! I was definitely not impressed that the group was going to change so much for the second semester!!
So I had no desire to hang around the Punt when all my good friends had left so I decided that on Friday morn I too would head off… Colleen and Erik handily decided to travel to Guatemala and so would be passing through Honduras where I was going to be staying for my Christmas break, I had decided to volunteer in a project that worked at getting kids of the street and rehabilitating them as long as their long term care… so I had bus buddies which was lovely…
Ok so the day before we left we decided as a final awesome foursome momento to make a banana bread loaf for each one of us… we whipped up a quadruple mixture of the batter and due to having only one small loaf tin we decided to make a large cake and cut that into four…well sounds like a good plan right… well NO!! because FIVE yes FIVE hrs later when I was soooo sure it must be cooked I finally took it out of the oven… in the morn when I went to cut it I found to my horror it still wasn’t cooked through… Erik had fun throwing the bottom goopy (ultra MOIST) part of the loaf at road signs on our way North…
On Fri we said goodbye…until si Dios quiere we all meet up in June in Nevada… Erik, Colleen ad I spent the next two days reminiscing the amazing semester that we had had…
The bus trip was more than interesting… the border yet again frustrating… but by far the worse part was the first bus after crossing into Nicaragua…
We were heading to a wee town called Rivas and a guy on the bus took a shine to me... he started to make some super attractive hissing noises and say things like ´Que bonita´ and ´mi amor´ I just ignored him... he asked me if I spoke spanish and I continued to ignore him... he kinda gave up but then started up again this time stroking my arm... shudder... I still ignored him...AND THEN... so gross... he gave his crotch a good and I mean good scratch and then stroked my arm with the same hand... I was so disturbed!!! But just ignored him and was extraordinarily pleased when he got off in Rivas… Any single male reading this… take it from me… NOT a way to impress the ladies!!
So I arrived in Tegucigalpa after two long days of bus travelling… found a internet café and rang the director of the home I was going to be staying at. (turns out I actually talked to his son as he was conducting a wedding) The person on the end of the phone said he was going to come and pick me up straight away and so about 20min later Georgito showed up… I got taken to the church where the director was… I was then told just to go into the wedding… I was in dirty jeans, a sweaty top, I had been travelling for two days straight… I did not feel attractive as I walked into a room of very nicely dressed people… girls all in cocktail dresses with fancy hair etc… following the wedding we went (this time with George Senior) to a birthday party… At one of his donors homes… it was a MANSION!!! so big… Honduras is one of the countries in Central America with the biggest wealth gap… very easy to see that night… Once again I was very underdressed, but everyone was super welcoming esp Pastor George and his wife… Bed was heaven that night! such a LONG day…
SO I hung out in Teguc for a few days and then was taken out to the project… it was a farm like place and had about 40 kids living on it from the ages of 7 to 21ish… The younger kids all lived on a different site in Teguc
So for the next 3 weeks I made my home on the farm… what did I do?? Some times I asked myself the same question…
I kinda hung out alot with the kids... pretty sweet really... The older ones did a lot of the organising so I kinda just did what I could to help and just tried to give the kids a bit of one on one attention... one job I had was motivating the kids to do their washing…they hated washing their clothes (by hand)… One girl who was about 7 super hated washing clothes so she once wore all her clothes out and then as one of the other smaller girls had gone o spend sometime over christmas with her family the wee girl wore out all her clothes too… No one realised for ages and when she was finally caught out she had two full days of hand washing ahead of her… poor thing… but she was so tranquila that it didn’t seem to bother her once she had started and so for the next two days there she was scrubbing her clothes singing to herself with a massive grin on her face… funny girl!!
Sometimes me and the other 2 volunteers would take the older ones into the park so they could get away from the project for a while...The kids weren’t in school as it was the holidays and so they played quite a bit, football (soccer) was a favourite… sadly no osmosis took place while watching hours of football and I still have zero skills in that area!!!
after the meals I helped with cleaning the dining room and then I also supervised the computer lab in the avos... ... at night I watched movies with the kids, I now know word for word the movies Twilight and New Moon due to watching them NON STOP for 3 weeks I really DISLIKE the Twilight series now!!, and that was pretty much it... couldnt have done it for a life time as it def didnt have enough brain stimulation but it was great for a few weeks and really cool just getting to know the kids...
in my second week there I was pretty much a full time translator for a guy from Minnisota. He comes down 3 times a year to hang with the kids for a week and loves the project but doesnt speak any Spanish, craziness!! So I translated between him and the kids and then also the directors finding out what he could do and then how he could do it... I even managed to translate a sermon to him… while the sermon was going on(the bare bones as I was trying to keep up with the pastor... Cricky my head was sore after that from thinking so hard... some ideas were super hard to express in english and my english sentence structures kept getting super muddled lol... Or I knew what the idea was in spanish but couldn't find the english word for it so would have to say...'I know we have a word for this but can't think of it... the idea though is that..." and then he would say the right english word an I would say yes...
One of the funniest and most annoying things on the farm was a lady we called the Profe…
The ´profe´ was a strange strange lady, she is Paraguyan... and just such an interesting person to watch... I could actually watch her all day... just so interesting BUT she talked to everyone as if they were small children… She had dyed bright red hair and had matching lipstick on with out fail and always wore BIG bright green or purple eye shadow… her eye liner was always a mile away from her eyes… whenever she talked to you she would purse her lips and batter her eye lids… she would also start EVERY conversation by saying…. ‘hmmmmm Ruth”… (then in Spanish she would say)… ‘you understand Spanish well right? You understand what I am saying to you right now?’ I would think to myself… duh that is why we had a conversation in spanish yesterday… But would just nod and smile…
well one day this is what she then proceeded to ask me…
she asked me to help her make a sign... so we sit down and the she says... ´now I will draw the letter and you will cut them out’ ‘you know how to use scissors right?''´ I am 21 for heavens sake, how could someone make it to 21 and not know how to use a pair of scissors... In my head I had to tell myself to ´love... just be kind dont be sarcastic´ because she had made a number of similar comments earlier and I was pretty much fed up with being treated like a kiddy... so anyway then every time she finshed drawing a letter she would hold it up and say ´look´ and I would have to oooo and aaaaaah over this letter telling here how bonita (beautiful) her block letters were... it was just bizarre and when an older girls came to tell me it was time to go to the park I was super happy to escape haha...
While in Honduras I met this girl from the States who was teaching in a school with a mission set up for kids who worked or whose parents worked on the rubbish dump from Teguc…So on the 23rd of Dec I took the day off and went to visit her…
They were on holiday so I couldnt see the school but I went and hung out at her place and we made christmas biscuits and iced them!! It was very exciting to do something christmasy. I ended up staying the night as it was dark when we finished and needed to catch a early bus (takes like an hr) to be back before 8 when I started work at the home... well good thing I got back early because Christmas in Central America is actually on the 24th so I got back and everyone was getting ready for a big day…
We ended up having a big lunch (traditionally they eat their big Christmas meal at midnight of the 24th) as some of the kids were leaving the project to have Christmas with their families… so we had a big lunch… Chicken, potato salad… and something called tutti fruity which was apple, grapes, corn, marshmallow and sour cream… Interesting… No desert (one thing I really missed apart from family on Christmas)…
Then we had present time… The kids all got a few presents which was super nice… one of the newest boys was so overwhelmed that he had got two pressies that he only opened one and saved the other to be opened later… a few days later it was still wrapped and in a safe place)… It was so cute…
The kids who stayed at the project were allowed to stay up as late as they wanted on Christmas eve and they all lit fire crackers and had some fun… I headed to bed at 2.30 am I just couldn’t hack it any longer but the kids really made the most of the night and stayed up till about 4 or 5am…
On Christmas eve the other two volunteers (from Denmark) and I also had a wee celebration of our own… chocolate, chippies and sparkling grape juice, coke and biscuits… Note a lack of Pav, icecream and fresh berries… these were sorely missed… the 25th was a super quiet day as they do not do anything special… this was really weird for me…
So the next big thing was that the profe left for holidays on the 24th of dec after lunch… but before she did we had a little fun…
Before she left she comes up to me and says...'hmmmmmm ruth' (batting her eyelids like normal and pursing her lips) 'I have something for you... I am really worried about you staying here in this house by yourself so I bought you this lock which one of the boys will install soon on the inside of this door here see' (it was a deadbolt sort of thing with a padlock)...
(ok so I already had a front door with a good sturdy lock and then a closed in porch with another lock on it and there is a guard with a gun walking round all day and night... I think I was safe)...
I just nodded and smiled... Then she said... 'and everytime you leave you need to shut the padlock'... I then smiled and said sweetly ´but profe if it is on the inside of the door to protect me at night I can not shut the padlock when I leave as it is on the inside´... she looked at me quite harshly and said.. 'but I have expensive things in this house and if it is left alone I wouldn’t want my small fridge and stove top to be taken
(yet again guard on duty all the time and two locks... also the house was at the back end of the property that you would need a farm truck to drive up to so it is pretty near impossible to steal anything from the house that you can not carry with ease and even then it would be tricky...)
I replied... 'but profe whenever we go to church only the guard is here and the two locks have served and I cant lock the lock if it is on the inside'...
she looks at me sternly again obviously agitated that I have figured out a slight problem with the lock situation and says,.. 'well it needs to go on the outside then and you need to lock it everytime you leave!!'
I said (a bit cheekily I must say) 'and what about me?? at night??' I prob should have held my tongue and done some more smiling and nodding but I couldn’t the opportunity to be a bit cheeky was too tempting... I continued 'so do you want it on the outside or in?'... 'outside' was her final response…
Turns out she didn’t buy the lock so much out of concern for my safety but for concern for her fridge and stove... well anyway the older boys were not keen to put the lock on (work) and so on the day I left and she was returning it still had not been welded to the door… on the outside or inside!!
New Years was really interesting… they have a tradition in Honduras where they make a scarecrow like man (kinda like we do in NZ for Guy Fawkes) and they stuff him with not only newspaper but fire crackers… so you set off one limb and eventually all the firecrakers get some form of spark and the man convulses as he explodes… I was slightly nervous as in Honduras Firecrakers are not legal anymore… and if you take a child into the hospital with burns from crackers you can be heavily fined or even out in jail… so as we on the project did an ‘año Viejo’ I made sure a;ll the kids knew that if they were burnt they would be making their way to the hospital themselves… No Hondureño jail for me thanks!!
So after New Years I kinda just did the same old thing till the 4th of Jan when I left the project… I spent the night in Teguc… where I went to a mall, got a good coffee… got an AMAZINGLY fantastic caramel pecan cinnamon roll from a place which is pretty much food heaven on earth called Cinabon and found a cosy chair in the mall and read… I bought a novel from a book shop and as I am such a dedicated Spanish student I decided to be hardcore and get a novel in spanish… so I found a Nicolas Sparks novel that had been translated from English to Spanish and I cranked into it… now as it was not a literature masterpiece (ie not full of insane extended metaphors) I managed to understand it really well… in fact I even ‘saw’ the book and had really clear images of what was going on like I do when I read in English… VERY COOL MOMENT!!
I caught the Bus from Teguc at 6 in the morn and arrived just after 6 at night in San Juan del Sur, a beach town in the sth of Nicaragua…
I somehow ended up in the party hostel ekkkk not a great choice for sleep but I did met some funny people... One guy arrived just after me... already drunk drunk... and proceeded to tell me how he had come the whole way from Manuel Antonio in one day (mid-sth pacific coast of Costa Rica)... IN a TAXI!!!! In a TAXI!!!... he paid like 175-200 US dollars (it would have been 10 on a bus max)!! Because and I quote ¨I hate the f***** buses”... Obviously he didnt have a tight (or any kind of budget) right...
I spent the next day on this beautiful beach called Maderas… and then on Thursday crossed the border back into Costa Rica… stood in line for ever at the border as the whole world wanted to return to Costa Rica but made it…
after 4 police stops on the bus I finally made it to the Punt… So good to be home!!!
Please remember that due to the extreme gap of blogging I decided not to post photos… If you want to see photos of arenal, my Nicaragua trip or my Christmas break please find me on Face Book… Choice…
Yay pretty much all caught UP!!!
So December 10th and 11th were full of sad sad goodbyes… after months with many a lovely person it was soooo dumb to say goodbye!! I was definitely not impressed that the group was going to change so much for the second semester!!
So I had no desire to hang around the Punt when all my good friends had left so I decided that on Friday morn I too would head off… Colleen and Erik handily decided to travel to Guatemala and so would be passing through Honduras where I was going to be staying for my Christmas break, I had decided to volunteer in a project that worked at getting kids of the street and rehabilitating them as long as their long term care… so I had bus buddies which was lovely…
Ok so the day before we left we decided as a final awesome foursome momento to make a banana bread loaf for each one of us… we whipped up a quadruple mixture of the batter and due to having only one small loaf tin we decided to make a large cake and cut that into four…well sounds like a good plan right… well NO!! because FIVE yes FIVE hrs later when I was soooo sure it must be cooked I finally took it out of the oven… in the morn when I went to cut it I found to my horror it still wasn’t cooked through… Erik had fun throwing the bottom goopy (ultra MOIST) part of the loaf at road signs on our way North…
On Fri we said goodbye…until si Dios quiere we all meet up in June in Nevada… Erik, Colleen ad I spent the next two days reminiscing the amazing semester that we had had…
The bus trip was more than interesting… the border yet again frustrating… but by far the worse part was the first bus after crossing into Nicaragua…
We were heading to a wee town called Rivas and a guy on the bus took a shine to me... he started to make some super attractive hissing noises and say things like ´Que bonita´ and ´mi amor´ I just ignored him... he asked me if I spoke spanish and I continued to ignore him... he kinda gave up but then started up again this time stroking my arm... shudder... I still ignored him...AND THEN... so gross... he gave his crotch a good and I mean good scratch and then stroked my arm with the same hand... I was so disturbed!!! But just ignored him and was extraordinarily pleased when he got off in Rivas… Any single male reading this… take it from me… NOT a way to impress the ladies!!
So I arrived in Tegucigalpa after two long days of bus travelling… found a internet café and rang the director of the home I was going to be staying at. (turns out I actually talked to his son as he was conducting a wedding) The person on the end of the phone said he was going to come and pick me up straight away and so about 20min later Georgito showed up… I got taken to the church where the director was… I was then told just to go into the wedding… I was in dirty jeans, a sweaty top, I had been travelling for two days straight… I did not feel attractive as I walked into a room of very nicely dressed people… girls all in cocktail dresses with fancy hair etc… following the wedding we went (this time with George Senior) to a birthday party… At one of his donors homes… it was a MANSION!!! so big… Honduras is one of the countries in Central America with the biggest wealth gap… very easy to see that night… Once again I was very underdressed, but everyone was super welcoming esp Pastor George and his wife… Bed was heaven that night! such a LONG day…
SO I hung out in Teguc for a few days and then was taken out to the project… it was a farm like place and had about 40 kids living on it from the ages of 7 to 21ish… The younger kids all lived on a different site in Teguc
So for the next 3 weeks I made my home on the farm… what did I do?? Some times I asked myself the same question…
I kinda hung out alot with the kids... pretty sweet really... The older ones did a lot of the organising so I kinda just did what I could to help and just tried to give the kids a bit of one on one attention... one job I had was motivating the kids to do their washing…they hated washing their clothes (by hand)… One girl who was about 7 super hated washing clothes so she once wore all her clothes out and then as one of the other smaller girls had gone o spend sometime over christmas with her family the wee girl wore out all her clothes too… No one realised for ages and when she was finally caught out she had two full days of hand washing ahead of her… poor thing… but she was so tranquila that it didn’t seem to bother her once she had started and so for the next two days there she was scrubbing her clothes singing to herself with a massive grin on her face… funny girl!!
Sometimes me and the other 2 volunteers would take the older ones into the park so they could get away from the project for a while...The kids weren’t in school as it was the holidays and so they played quite a bit, football (soccer) was a favourite… sadly no osmosis took place while watching hours of football and I still have zero skills in that area!!!
after the meals I helped with cleaning the dining room and then I also supervised the computer lab in the avos... ... at night I watched movies with the kids, I now know word for word the movies Twilight and New Moon due to watching them NON STOP for 3 weeks I really DISLIKE the Twilight series now!!, and that was pretty much it... couldnt have done it for a life time as it def didnt have enough brain stimulation but it was great for a few weeks and really cool just getting to know the kids...
in my second week there I was pretty much a full time translator for a guy from Minnisota. He comes down 3 times a year to hang with the kids for a week and loves the project but doesnt speak any Spanish, craziness!! So I translated between him and the kids and then also the directors finding out what he could do and then how he could do it... I even managed to translate a sermon to him… while the sermon was going on(the bare bones as I was trying to keep up with the pastor... Cricky my head was sore after that from thinking so hard... some ideas were super hard to express in english and my english sentence structures kept getting super muddled lol... Or I knew what the idea was in spanish but couldn't find the english word for it so would have to say...'I know we have a word for this but can't think of it... the idea though is that..." and then he would say the right english word an I would say yes...
One of the funniest and most annoying things on the farm was a lady we called the Profe…
The ´profe´ was a strange strange lady, she is Paraguyan... and just such an interesting person to watch... I could actually watch her all day... just so interesting BUT she talked to everyone as if they were small children… She had dyed bright red hair and had matching lipstick on with out fail and always wore BIG bright green or purple eye shadow… her eye liner was always a mile away from her eyes… whenever she talked to you she would purse her lips and batter her eye lids… she would also start EVERY conversation by saying…. ‘hmmmmm Ruth”… (then in Spanish she would say)… ‘you understand Spanish well right? You understand what I am saying to you right now?’ I would think to myself… duh that is why we had a conversation in spanish yesterday… But would just nod and smile…
well one day this is what she then proceeded to ask me…
she asked me to help her make a sign... so we sit down and the she says... ´now I will draw the letter and you will cut them out’ ‘you know how to use scissors right?''´ I am 21 for heavens sake, how could someone make it to 21 and not know how to use a pair of scissors... In my head I had to tell myself to ´love... just be kind dont be sarcastic´ because she had made a number of similar comments earlier and I was pretty much fed up with being treated like a kiddy... so anyway then every time she finshed drawing a letter she would hold it up and say ´look´ and I would have to oooo and aaaaaah over this letter telling here how bonita (beautiful) her block letters were... it was just bizarre and when an older girls came to tell me it was time to go to the park I was super happy to escape haha...
While in Honduras I met this girl from the States who was teaching in a school with a mission set up for kids who worked or whose parents worked on the rubbish dump from Teguc…So on the 23rd of Dec I took the day off and went to visit her…
They were on holiday so I couldnt see the school but I went and hung out at her place and we made christmas biscuits and iced them!! It was very exciting to do something christmasy. I ended up staying the night as it was dark when we finished and needed to catch a early bus (takes like an hr) to be back before 8 when I started work at the home... well good thing I got back early because Christmas in Central America is actually on the 24th so I got back and everyone was getting ready for a big day…
We ended up having a big lunch (traditionally they eat their big Christmas meal at midnight of the 24th) as some of the kids were leaving the project to have Christmas with their families… so we had a big lunch… Chicken, potato salad… and something called tutti fruity which was apple, grapes, corn, marshmallow and sour cream… Interesting… No desert (one thing I really missed apart from family on Christmas)…
Then we had present time… The kids all got a few presents which was super nice… one of the newest boys was so overwhelmed that he had got two pressies that he only opened one and saved the other to be opened later… a few days later it was still wrapped and in a safe place)… It was so cute…
The kids who stayed at the project were allowed to stay up as late as they wanted on Christmas eve and they all lit fire crackers and had some fun… I headed to bed at 2.30 am I just couldn’t hack it any longer but the kids really made the most of the night and stayed up till about 4 or 5am…
On Christmas eve the other two volunteers (from Denmark) and I also had a wee celebration of our own… chocolate, chippies and sparkling grape juice, coke and biscuits… Note a lack of Pav, icecream and fresh berries… these were sorely missed… the 25th was a super quiet day as they do not do anything special… this was really weird for me…
So the next big thing was that the profe left for holidays on the 24th of dec after lunch… but before she did we had a little fun…
Before she left she comes up to me and says...'hmmmmmm ruth' (batting her eyelids like normal and pursing her lips) 'I have something for you... I am really worried about you staying here in this house by yourself so I bought you this lock which one of the boys will install soon on the inside of this door here see' (it was a deadbolt sort of thing with a padlock)...
(ok so I already had a front door with a good sturdy lock and then a closed in porch with another lock on it and there is a guard with a gun walking round all day and night... I think I was safe)...
I just nodded and smiled... Then she said... 'and everytime you leave you need to shut the padlock'... I then smiled and said sweetly ´but profe if it is on the inside of the door to protect me at night I can not shut the padlock when I leave as it is on the inside´... she looked at me quite harshly and said.. 'but I have expensive things in this house and if it is left alone I wouldn’t want my small fridge and stove top to be taken
(yet again guard on duty all the time and two locks... also the house was at the back end of the property that you would need a farm truck to drive up to so it is pretty near impossible to steal anything from the house that you can not carry with ease and even then it would be tricky...)
I replied... 'but profe whenever we go to church only the guard is here and the two locks have served and I cant lock the lock if it is on the inside'...
she looks at me sternly again obviously agitated that I have figured out a slight problem with the lock situation and says,.. 'well it needs to go on the outside then and you need to lock it everytime you leave!!'
I said (a bit cheekily I must say) 'and what about me?? at night??' I prob should have held my tongue and done some more smiling and nodding but I couldn’t the opportunity to be a bit cheeky was too tempting... I continued 'so do you want it on the outside or in?'... 'outside' was her final response…
Turns out she didn’t buy the lock so much out of concern for my safety but for concern for her fridge and stove... well anyway the older boys were not keen to put the lock on (work) and so on the day I left and she was returning it still had not been welded to the door… on the outside or inside!!
New Years was really interesting… they have a tradition in Honduras where they make a scarecrow like man (kinda like we do in NZ for Guy Fawkes) and they stuff him with not only newspaper but fire crackers… so you set off one limb and eventually all the firecrakers get some form of spark and the man convulses as he explodes… I was slightly nervous as in Honduras Firecrakers are not legal anymore… and if you take a child into the hospital with burns from crackers you can be heavily fined or even out in jail… so as we on the project did an ‘año Viejo’ I made sure a;ll the kids knew that if they were burnt they would be making their way to the hospital themselves… No Hondureño jail for me thanks!!
So after New Years I kinda just did the same old thing till the 4th of Jan when I left the project… I spent the night in Teguc… where I went to a mall, got a good coffee… got an AMAZINGLY fantastic caramel pecan cinnamon roll from a place which is pretty much food heaven on earth called Cinabon and found a cosy chair in the mall and read… I bought a novel from a book shop and as I am such a dedicated Spanish student I decided to be hardcore and get a novel in spanish… so I found a Nicolas Sparks novel that had been translated from English to Spanish and I cranked into it… now as it was not a literature masterpiece (ie not full of insane extended metaphors) I managed to understand it really well… in fact I even ‘saw’ the book and had really clear images of what was going on like I do when I read in English… VERY COOL MOMENT!!
I caught the Bus from Teguc at 6 in the morn and arrived just after 6 at night in San Juan del Sur, a beach town in the sth of Nicaragua…
I somehow ended up in the party hostel ekkkk not a great choice for sleep but I did met some funny people... One guy arrived just after me... already drunk drunk... and proceeded to tell me how he had come the whole way from Manuel Antonio in one day (mid-sth pacific coast of Costa Rica)... IN a TAXI!!!! In a TAXI!!!... he paid like 175-200 US dollars (it would have been 10 on a bus max)!! Because and I quote ¨I hate the f***** buses”... Obviously he didnt have a tight (or any kind of budget) right...
I spent the next day on this beautiful beach called Maderas… and then on Thursday crossed the border back into Costa Rica… stood in line for ever at the border as the whole world wanted to return to Costa Rica but made it…
after 4 police stops on the bus I finally made it to the Punt… So good to be home!!!
Please remember that due to the extreme gap of blogging I decided not to post photos… If you want to see photos of arenal, my Nicaragua trip or my Christmas break please find me on Face Book… Choice…
Yay pretty much all caught UP!!!
jueves, 14 de enero de 2010
NICARAGUA TRIP end of November 09
The awesome foursome decided fairly early on that we would save our permitted one absence from every class and use it to extend our thanksgiving break... so one week before thanksgiving we took off... we had a school sized backpack each and banana bread in hand... we were ready to go!! we took off to Liberia and then crossed the DELIGHTFUL Costa Rica/ Nicaragua border... CR side fine... NIcaragua side you have to pay a tourist few... no probs... BUT NO!!! of course they wouldnt have change... we were expected to have the exact 7USD on us... what traveller just has random one dollar bills floating round... and they wouldnt accept Cordobas (their own currency) so silly!!! Finally we figured the mess out and made our way onto a bus headed to Rivas... we were all seperate on the bus... the guy next to me was fromm Honduras and knew the Pastor who runs the project that I was going to volunteer at over christmas... so Random... Erik or Nathan met a nice young man who helped us find a hostel... We got a great deal... $2.50 each a night AMAZING... only catch was that the hostel was under construction BUT our room was great and the owners were very kind...
Next day (DAY TWO) we were up early and headed off to Isla Ometepe... We got on this super rickety boat… Colleen and I realised pretty quickly why our seats with prime view had not been previously occupied by others… they were where the splash and boat wall leakage were worst… I got off the boat a lot damper than when I got on... We were immediately accosted by local tour guides who were not letting an opportunity for work go without a fight and in our desperation to flee we got on a bus without really knowing where it was going and got out of the main town… we were relieved to find out that the bus actually would take us to where we wanted to go anyway so we sat back and settled in for a ‘short’ bus ride that actually turned into 4hrs… BAD roads but the island was stunning… just gorgeous…
Got to the finca (farm) and walked up the 1km road to the hostel… some amazing views and after a lovely kip we had dinner got a hardcore game of scum cranking and then lay beside sun roasting coffee looking at the stars…
DAY THREE… the boys walked down to get us a cheapo deapo breakfast from a shop on the main road... bananas and bread…CHA WHOOO I was stoked I hadn’t had to walk down… then we set out on a bush walk up the side of a volcano… we decided to follow the trail without a guide to save some dosh but I began to question our decision when I saw a snake slither off through some grass on the side of the trail… But it turned out to be ok… only encountered a crazed bee after that and ZI interpreted some ancient petro-glyphs for the group… made to a really cool look out about an hr and a half – two hrs up the volcano… we came back down in time for lunch of beans in a bag and bread oooo and some tomatos… really jazzed up the sarnies that’s for sure!!!
We wanted to swim in the lake in the avo but due to a lack of entrances into the lake and Colleen and I really not wishing to enter with a ton of local men staring at us… we opted to not swim… another similar night this one with some great coffee…
DAY FOUR… we left the island on a bus that was a heck of a lot quicker than the first and a ferry that had an upstairs deck… we had all done some washing on the finca that had not dried and I hate the smell of wet clothes… so I did something my parents would have done and when I was younger I would have died from shame for being near them while they were doing it… I whipped out all my wet clothes… quite a lot of clothing… and hung it all over the seats on the top deck… my friends followed suit and we had quite a collection on display… then due to the fact that we had lost all sense of shame we also got out our wet undies and hung them out to dry too… well within the hour ferry ride we got all our clothes dry and had no nasty smelling clothes to pack away... we headed to Managua and got a taxi to a hostel… ‘the white house’… we got the only room that had a door to the loo rather than a curtain (quite awkward for anything more than wee)… Colleen worried about the fact that the door could be opened through the window devised a deterrence using a fan placed very closely to the door so that you had to squeeze in and out and had to open the door with care…
Exploring the city was next on the list…we went down to the area which had been damaged severely by the earthquake in 1972… There was a really cool monument to Ruben Dario, a Nicaraguan poet we had studied in Lit class, we also saw the old cathedral a huge old church with massive cracks all through it… It was so bizarre to walk passed a huge slum area and then walk into a mall within 5 minutes… It just really struck home again the huge inequalities there are in the world…
We had the most AMAZING dinner at this wee restaurant… great curried chicken and Pasta!!!
DAY FIVE- Day to explore Granada…
Bt first money changing was needed… on the way to the bank we walked past a high school… I was a few metres infront of colleen and attracted the attention of some boys in a class… by the time colleen walked past the entire class of boys had collected at the window and were watching her until… she dropped a banana peal that was in her hands… now due to the fact that the streets aren’t exactly the cleanest place it could have been left there BUT due to our adversion to littering Cooleens immediate reaction was to bend over to pick up the peal… The boys quite liked this bending down action and let out a massive hoot of appreciation!! HILARIOUS…
we hoped on a public mini van that was PACKED all four of us were standing up and there were about 15 people in one small van… Colleen and I got asked by a hilarious (ie slightly dodgey) old man firstly why we didn’t like to wear make up… (perhaps because it was on fire outside and it would sweat off in 1 second or maybe because we were travelling) and also why we like latino boys better than boys from home (I don’t know where he got this idea from and let me just say I do not find machismo esp being hissed and yelled and oggeled at attractive at all!!)
Granada was beautiful!! what a lovely wee city… felt like we were somewhere in Europe… the buildings were so cute… we opted not to look like complete gringos and walked rather than take a ride in a horse and carriage around the city… then we heade to Masaya for all of 40 min and strolled through the local Mercado… picked up a knife for 50 cents tho to help make sandwiches… came in super handy!!
Dinner… cornflakes and milk in plastic cups ooooooo yeah we are cheap!!! and then a yummy helado that the boys ran back from the shop as a surprise with for us…
DAY SIX… On a bus to Tegucigalpa Honduras… yet another fantastic border crossing without change and a deadly bus ride from the border to the city… we found our hostel and went out to get din dins… more budget work with peanut butter, bread and banana…
DAY SEVEN… THANKSGIVING… my first (or maybe second??) ever… saw the sights including a really bustling local market a interesting art museum ( the group was a great group to art museum it with as we all were not to quick or to slow in our appreciation of art)… Oh in the avo we had a great coffee so good… and then that evening we went to hunt down some thanksgiving dinner… the first place we went to we had to leave… great menu but actually only had the ingrdients for one recipe… a club sandwich… ummmmmmm how bout NO!! so pizza hut here we came… got a giant pizza which was super good…
DAY EIGHT- Caught the super early bus at 6 to the border… once again very deadly at one stage we were zooming along a one lane section and came within metres of a head on crash with a truck!! Scaryness… crossed the border (Yet again no change… notice a friendly habit here??) and made it to a pueblito called Somoto around lunch time… Yum… Beans in a bag for the 7th day straight WHOOP WHOOP!! the guy at the hotel was so cute and lovely (claro que si… of course was his response to our every request) and we also got free cafecito so we were stoked!!
In the afternoon we headed to see the canyon!! we had heaps of fun scrambling over rocks and swimming through the canyon… jumping off some pretty high rocks… and getting kind cold after a number of hours of being in the water… the guide was awesome and before sending us home took us to his house for a wee snack… coffee…beans… tortillas… cheese… and sour cream..soooooo good… ‘
DAY NINE- Nathan had visited Somoto twice before on a mission trips and had a few friends… super kind people so we decided to hang out Somoto another day… we found another hostel due to bookings… meet a really gross man and decided I didn’t want to stay in his hostel… but found a room eventually with a curtain door for the bathroom lol… quite funny to hear everything… luckily we were quite comfy with each other by this stage…
Then we went to a soccer game… ok so this town is not touristville by any means and so Colleen and I got a lot of attention… every man and his dog on the street made some comment or whistled etc… but as we walked into the soccer game all males in the stands ran to the top to watch us walk in… then they watched up sit down… when colleen and erik went to get drinks every male eye was on her backside and then wen I pointed at the to show Nathan he told me not to point… I thought it was somewhat ironic that I shouldn’t point when they were blatantly staring at her rear end…
DAY TEN- we had to get all the wa back to the punt in one day from the nth of Nicaragua sooo… we got on the earliest bus out of Somoto… at 4am… crickey that was hard… on the morning bus ride Nathan and I got the grossest seat ever… but saw something 100 times worse… I saw my first dead body… a man had been hit on the road and had had his head smashed…his face was covered as the police had arrived but you could tell it had been squashed very badly… so horrible…
well the drama continued when on the bus out of Managua we heard some very bullet sounding noises hitting the side of the bus… everyone screamed and ducked..we however forgot to look at the damage when we got off but we hold to the claim we were shot at… we finally made it home at about 7pmish after a long day of travel… We would have loved to keep travelling as we had a super duper amazing fantastically choice trip but school was a calling and we had no choice… how sad is I to get back from holidays right… not much time left of the semester was also a sad thought we all were sharing… next big thing we knew would happen was saying goodbye :-( BUT THE TRIP WAS SO FUN and we were very pleased about that!!!
Next day (DAY TWO) we were up early and headed off to Isla Ometepe... We got on this super rickety boat… Colleen and I realised pretty quickly why our seats with prime view had not been previously occupied by others… they were where the splash and boat wall leakage were worst… I got off the boat a lot damper than when I got on... We were immediately accosted by local tour guides who were not letting an opportunity for work go without a fight and in our desperation to flee we got on a bus without really knowing where it was going and got out of the main town… we were relieved to find out that the bus actually would take us to where we wanted to go anyway so we sat back and settled in for a ‘short’ bus ride that actually turned into 4hrs… BAD roads but the island was stunning… just gorgeous…
Got to the finca (farm) and walked up the 1km road to the hostel… some amazing views and after a lovely kip we had dinner got a hardcore game of scum cranking and then lay beside sun roasting coffee looking at the stars…
DAY THREE… the boys walked down to get us a cheapo deapo breakfast from a shop on the main road... bananas and bread…CHA WHOOO I was stoked I hadn’t had to walk down… then we set out on a bush walk up the side of a volcano… we decided to follow the trail without a guide to save some dosh but I began to question our decision when I saw a snake slither off through some grass on the side of the trail… But it turned out to be ok… only encountered a crazed bee after that and ZI interpreted some ancient petro-glyphs for the group… made to a really cool look out about an hr and a half – two hrs up the volcano… we came back down in time for lunch of beans in a bag and bread oooo and some tomatos… really jazzed up the sarnies that’s for sure!!!
We wanted to swim in the lake in the avo but due to a lack of entrances into the lake and Colleen and I really not wishing to enter with a ton of local men staring at us… we opted to not swim… another similar night this one with some great coffee…
DAY FOUR… we left the island on a bus that was a heck of a lot quicker than the first and a ferry that had an upstairs deck… we had all done some washing on the finca that had not dried and I hate the smell of wet clothes… so I did something my parents would have done and when I was younger I would have died from shame for being near them while they were doing it… I whipped out all my wet clothes… quite a lot of clothing… and hung it all over the seats on the top deck… my friends followed suit and we had quite a collection on display… then due to the fact that we had lost all sense of shame we also got out our wet undies and hung them out to dry too… well within the hour ferry ride we got all our clothes dry and had no nasty smelling clothes to pack away... we headed to Managua and got a taxi to a hostel… ‘the white house’… we got the only room that had a door to the loo rather than a curtain (quite awkward for anything more than wee)… Colleen worried about the fact that the door could be opened through the window devised a deterrence using a fan placed very closely to the door so that you had to squeeze in and out and had to open the door with care…
Exploring the city was next on the list…we went down to the area which had been damaged severely by the earthquake in 1972… There was a really cool monument to Ruben Dario, a Nicaraguan poet we had studied in Lit class, we also saw the old cathedral a huge old church with massive cracks all through it… It was so bizarre to walk passed a huge slum area and then walk into a mall within 5 minutes… It just really struck home again the huge inequalities there are in the world…
We had the most AMAZING dinner at this wee restaurant… great curried chicken and Pasta!!!
DAY FIVE- Day to explore Granada…
Bt first money changing was needed… on the way to the bank we walked past a high school… I was a few metres infront of colleen and attracted the attention of some boys in a class… by the time colleen walked past the entire class of boys had collected at the window and were watching her until… she dropped a banana peal that was in her hands… now due to the fact that the streets aren’t exactly the cleanest place it could have been left there BUT due to our adversion to littering Cooleens immediate reaction was to bend over to pick up the peal… The boys quite liked this bending down action and let out a massive hoot of appreciation!! HILARIOUS…
we hoped on a public mini van that was PACKED all four of us were standing up and there were about 15 people in one small van… Colleen and I got asked by a hilarious (ie slightly dodgey) old man firstly why we didn’t like to wear make up… (perhaps because it was on fire outside and it would sweat off in 1 second or maybe because we were travelling) and also why we like latino boys better than boys from home (I don’t know where he got this idea from and let me just say I do not find machismo esp being hissed and yelled and oggeled at attractive at all!!)
Granada was beautiful!! what a lovely wee city… felt like we were somewhere in Europe… the buildings were so cute… we opted not to look like complete gringos and walked rather than take a ride in a horse and carriage around the city… then we heade to Masaya for all of 40 min and strolled through the local Mercado… picked up a knife for 50 cents tho to help make sandwiches… came in super handy!!
Dinner… cornflakes and milk in plastic cups ooooooo yeah we are cheap!!! and then a yummy helado that the boys ran back from the shop as a surprise with for us…
DAY SIX… On a bus to Tegucigalpa Honduras… yet another fantastic border crossing without change and a deadly bus ride from the border to the city… we found our hostel and went out to get din dins… more budget work with peanut butter, bread and banana…
DAY SEVEN… THANKSGIVING… my first (or maybe second??) ever… saw the sights including a really bustling local market a interesting art museum ( the group was a great group to art museum it with as we all were not to quick or to slow in our appreciation of art)… Oh in the avo we had a great coffee so good… and then that evening we went to hunt down some thanksgiving dinner… the first place we went to we had to leave… great menu but actually only had the ingrdients for one recipe… a club sandwich… ummmmmmm how bout NO!! so pizza hut here we came… got a giant pizza which was super good…
DAY EIGHT- Caught the super early bus at 6 to the border… once again very deadly at one stage we were zooming along a one lane section and came within metres of a head on crash with a truck!! Scaryness… crossed the border (Yet again no change… notice a friendly habit here??) and made it to a pueblito called Somoto around lunch time… Yum… Beans in a bag for the 7th day straight WHOOP WHOOP!! the guy at the hotel was so cute and lovely (claro que si… of course was his response to our every request) and we also got free cafecito so we were stoked!!
In the afternoon we headed to see the canyon!! we had heaps of fun scrambling over rocks and swimming through the canyon… jumping off some pretty high rocks… and getting kind cold after a number of hours of being in the water… the guide was awesome and before sending us home took us to his house for a wee snack… coffee…beans… tortillas… cheese… and sour cream..soooooo good… ‘
DAY NINE- Nathan had visited Somoto twice before on a mission trips and had a few friends… super kind people so we decided to hang out Somoto another day… we found another hostel due to bookings… meet a really gross man and decided I didn’t want to stay in his hostel… but found a room eventually with a curtain door for the bathroom lol… quite funny to hear everything… luckily we were quite comfy with each other by this stage…
Then we went to a soccer game… ok so this town is not touristville by any means and so Colleen and I got a lot of attention… every man and his dog on the street made some comment or whistled etc… but as we walked into the soccer game all males in the stands ran to the top to watch us walk in… then they watched up sit down… when colleen and erik went to get drinks every male eye was on her backside and then wen I pointed at the to show Nathan he told me not to point… I thought it was somewhat ironic that I shouldn’t point when they were blatantly staring at her rear end…
DAY TEN- we had to get all the wa back to the punt in one day from the nth of Nicaragua sooo… we got on the earliest bus out of Somoto… at 4am… crickey that was hard… on the morning bus ride Nathan and I got the grossest seat ever… but saw something 100 times worse… I saw my first dead body… a man had been hit on the road and had had his head smashed…his face was covered as the police had arrived but you could tell it had been squashed very badly… so horrible…
well the drama continued when on the bus out of Managua we heard some very bullet sounding noises hitting the side of the bus… everyone screamed and ducked..we however forgot to look at the damage when we got off but we hold to the claim we were shot at… we finally made it home at about 7pmish after a long day of travel… We would have loved to keep travelling as we had a super duper amazing fantastically choice trip but school was a calling and we had no choice… how sad is I to get back from holidays right… not much time left of the semester was also a sad thought we all were sharing… next big thing we knew would happen was saying goodbye :-( BUT THE TRIP WAS SO FUN and we were very pleased about that!!!
ARENAL!! - November 09
Ok so to begin with I am sorry for how long these blog updates have taken… due to the extensive amount of time I am just going to write, as photos take so long to upload I could be here for an age… if you want to see photos check out my facebook page…
There is another reason that I have taken so long to blog… I had written a lot of one blog... about arenal and then had to do something… I swear I had saved it on the blog site but the next time I went to edit it, it was nowhere to be found… anyway… I was not a happy camper and so have avoided blogging ever since…
So Blog One
ARENAL…
Arenal is a very active volcano that we have here in
so we drive up to Arenal and arrive to our hotel to drop off our stuff… we sort out the rooms…
Ok so Colleen and I really wanted just a two person room (more time in the hot water shower haha) as did Erik and Nathan… we thankfully were at the front of the line and hold firm in our requests… we normally get reasonably crappy rooms when we travel anywhere so we didn’t care what they looked like at all… just wanted one for two ppl… Colleen and I go to find our room… we go down a lovely little path and find a series of individual cabin things surrounded by cute gardens… we find our room number… Oooooo yeah!!! we got the honeymoon suite!!! Amazing big bed, sweet bathroom just overall greatness… then we go check out the boys room… it is the first in the series of joint rooms… and it to is a honeymoon suite… leather chairs… big bed and spa bath!!! My gosh so funny to see other peoples reactions!!! also very funny that quite possibly the nicest hotel rooms we will ever get at least for a very long time are on a school trip!! But we were stoked!!! absolutely stoked!!!
so then we go to the hot pools… there are tons of pools all diff temperatures… and also the BESTEST water slides ever… I am not kidding… I love water slides and I have never been on slides like this in my life!!! they were so much fun!! The best one was super fast… It said on the sign that it got up to 45km an hour so… pretty speedy… you dropped into it and then went down picked up speed… around a corner… down…more speed… final corner… a vicious corner… you hit it at such a speed you got some good air… came crashing onto the final slope (more speed) before skimming and somersaulting across the top of the water with limbs flailing in all directions!!! It was extreme one boy managed to knock himself out while coming down it… and they had recently covered it due to someone flying out on the final corner!!!
So after a few attempts of this amazing water slide sitting up I felt the need for more speed… so making my body a tight bullet I shot down it on my back…. AMAZING atleast twice the air and soooooo much faster… I went again and again and… well a fair number of times… but what I felt but due to excitement didn’t care about was a graze on my back from the immenseness of the slide…which my the end of the night was a bit of a chunk out of my back that in a few days turned into a pus-ie mess.. bUT Well worth while… we had a fantastic dinner and for desert starved girls (lets just say
we went back to our honeymoon suite and got some really good USAC ‘news’ from a slightly over indulged member of staff and later had an amazing sleep in a super super comfy bed…
day two of the trip we went to some super high hanging bridges and got some great views of the volcano… we got hated on by some other tourists for being too loud when they were watching a bird… but as soon as they were done taking photos and it was our turn they moved off loudly and scared the bird away… RUDE!!!
lunch was a rice volcano… Drew craftily turned his into a exploding volcano with the help of some tomato sauce…
trip back had some hilarious moments especially on a tired bus of students but we arrived back in one piece and only slightly wounded from our weekend away!!!
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