Nicaragua

Well there have been a lot of changes in our plans and events that took place since my last post at Pangea. We took a Tica bus at 3 in the morning to Nicaragua. It started out great, fell asleep for like 3 hours (it was really spacious and luxurious) and woke up to breakfast. They gave us French toast sticks from Burger King which were AMAZING. Then reached the border at about 7. We were told the border was the best place to exchange money. Well we got off the bus and there were guys coming up to us trying to exchange money. Well Cass changed her money and i guy was trying to exchange mine but i was really skeptical so I was walking around trying to ask someone what the correct amount was. So the bus driver assistant looked at what the guy was exchanging for and said that it was correct so we both finished exchanging our money only to find out later that it WASN'T right and we lost a lot of money in the exchange. At this news, it was upsetting. But Cass already was having doubts about going to Panama so this put her over the edge. She said she didn't have money to go to granada and leon... a lady on the bus said it was expensive and said she was going to san juan del sur which was near the border, a beach town, and cheaper. Yada Yada Yada...4 hours after our bus trip starts we end up not getting back on the bus and going to the full way that we'd paid for with our ticket...taking a sketchy route straight to San Juan Del Sur from the border, booking 3 nights for the both of us at $25 total (actually like 4 a night each which is ridiculous!), and heading back to Costa Rica tomorrow. So...I was pretty upset and we were in complete disagreement, but unfortunately I wont be seeing as much of Nicaragua as I would have liked to and thought I was going to.
So...the last two days we've been here in an amazing little shop and beach town called San Juan Del Sur. We've lived amazingly cheap after our little incident. Of course with the cheap hostel, and then we bought groceries to make breakfast lunch and dinner all three days for $7.50 each. Tonight, however, is our splurge night and we're going to go out to a restaurant on the beach. They have a lot of cute, cheap shops so we visited them yesterday and then were able to rent a movie... 27 dresses... and watched it at our hostel which was an amazing luxury. Not to mention (fate i'm sure of it), when i turned on the tv they were letting us use to watch the movie...what was on but SEINFELD!!! So we watched the rest of the episode (when elaine eats petermans 28,000 slice of cake and george bought the frogger machine from his old restaurant) and then watched the movie. It was really fun.
This morning we rented bikes from our hostel and we rode to the next beach which was a really secluded little beach with almost no one there. It was a nice 45 or so minute bike ride through the hills of nicaragua, of course close to the coast, but it was really pretty. Downside...the bikes werent that great so it was really bumpy and my legs got tired because i couldn't raise the seat, change gears, and the pedals squeaked loud. It was still fun tho! Right now we're gonna go get a coffee drink then have our dinner and we're taking a bus out of here at 6:30 tomorrow and headed to Liberia, Costa Rica and Guachepelin.
Pura Vida!

Pangea

Hey I know I haven´t had posts up much recently but we´ve just been doing our thing in Montezuma for the past two weeks. Like i said last time, the hatchery is pretty much done which is good because tide has been getting ridiculously high these days. I never thought the height of our sandbag wall would ever really be needed but I can see now that it is really important. We also built a little hut next to the hatchery for when people have hatchery shifts. We made it from drift wood, bamboo, and palm leaves... its pretty cute.
Right now, however, we´re back in San Jose at good óle hostel pangea. We plan to hit up central market in a minute then we´ll just chill here for the night and tomorrow morning at 3 am is our but to Nicaragua. Its a 9 or so hour ride so it will actually be nice to leave that early and hopefully sleep most of the way! We should get there by noon which will be great. Our bus ride back to San JOse was rather long... we had to stand for about two and a half hours of it. And coming from MOntezuma we were the last ones back on the bus after the ferry so we were screwed (along with about 8 others from Montezuma) and when people got off along the way we were the last ones to fill seats (hence standing on the bus two and a half of the 3 hour trip from the ferry to san jose). Fabulous but it feels good to be back in San Jose for the night. I dont remember if i saiid last time what we were hitting up in Nicaragua. I think I did but I´ll just repeat myself incase I didn´t. We´re going to spend a couple nights at Ometepe Island, then Granada and Old Messiah Marketplace, then maybe Leon though we might not, then San Juan Del Sar. Then as a little splurge for ourselves we´ll stay at Guachepelin resort in Guanacaste whch Cassidy had seen on the travel channel which apparently has really high praise. Of course splurging here will be like only 20 or 30 a night but they have spas and things we are considering...since we are particularly dirty here haha. When we return from this trip we will be in the last third of our trip (crazy!). Then we´re plannin on staying in MOntezuma for another week, taking a 4 or 5 day trip by speedboat to Jaco and the southern pacific coast, then stay in Montezuma another week. Then we´ll be leaving Montezuma for good, spend a week in Panama (Cassidy´s uncle has connections there and supposedly will be hooking us up pretty good) then head back and spend our last few nights visiting our good ole friend Federico at his home near san jose (i mentioned him in an early post as a native who volunteered the first week and sounds like he´s on the discovery channel) anyways thats the outlook so far. We get sick of some of the long bus rides and travel so hopefully Nicaragua will be worth it! Later

Montezuma

Hey all
Still in Montezuma right now just laying low till our trip which starts this sunday. We´re going to San Jose for a night, then taking a bus to Nicaragua and going straight to Omatepe island. Then to Granada and Old Messiah market. Then Leon, down to San Juan Del Sar then we´re going to stay a few days in Guanacaste, which is back in Costa Rica. Probably at a resort called Guachepelin but we´ll see. The hatchery is almost finished, just putting the last bit of fence around it then we´ll be able to relocate nests into it and take shifts watching over it. Tonight, cass and I are both leading our own separate night patrols which is a first so that will be cool. Thats pretty much all the updates for now, just been having a good time with a lot of down time now that the hatchery is almost done.

Hay

Back in Montezuma

So i should clear this up immediately... apparently costa rica plays el salvidor tonight IN el salvidor or something. Turns out language barrier is a problem... this guy is legit but he's actually the president of the Liberia soccer team in the futbol club in Costa Rica. I think they have a game in San Jose that we could get in for free and stay at this guys house and the whole thing...but we feel bad asking for time off for a game thats not as big as the international costa rican team so we aren't going to go. Just back in Romelia working hard on the hatchery and some other projects again.. but our trip was great! looking forward to the next one. Working on downloading some pics from it onto facebook and my skydrive through hotmail.

Tamarindo

So we took the shuttle this morning from Monteverde to Tamarindo. Tamarindo is a beach town which is way more touristy than most places we've been. Touristy as in they have a Subway and pizza hut and TCBY and its not as primitive as many places. Suprisingly we couldn't even find a little coffee shop/bakery that was open before hitting up the beach. We ended up going to this little Mandarin Fruit Smoothie place to have a fruity drink. These guys started talking to us and offered to pay for our drinks and we sat down and chatted with them...and the one guy is actually the president of the Costa Rican soccer team...as in the national team that just lost to mexico 3 to 0 and plays el salvidor on Saturday trying to get into the World Cup. He was wearing umbro and had the shirt on too. So crazy as it is he said he could watch his team practice in Liberia anytime and he can give us tickets to the game this Saturday in San Jose...CRAZY!!! He offered to fly us to San Jose from Montezuma but we asked for a 3rd ticket for Braulio... this 19 year old costa rican from Gandoca who is part of the staff... he is knowledgible enough to work with the turtles. He's been at Romelia for like 3 months and we're good friends with him....he's in some facebook pics. We play soccer with him and we thought it would so cool for him to get to go! Anyways... the point is we're going to just take the bus to san jose friday (hopefully if all works out) and catch the game at 11 saturday morning and we can stay at this guys house while we're in San Jose. So... we're cutting our time here short (seeing as all we can do is sit on the beach and we're not going to be volunteering long before leaving AGAIN) and heading back to Romelia tomorrow morning. So basically it was just the craziest thing to run into this guy who is the president of soccer in Costa Rica and have him buy us drinks and invite us to the game for free. We were freakin out (needless to say). So thats what is going on right now... this just happened about an hour ago and we're fixing our plans around.
Aside from that I have some interesting other tidbits. I forgot to say that on our shuttle from Arenal to Monteverde the guy next to us in the van started talking to us...turns out he is from Ogden and just graduated from Weber this May just like me... CRAZY. He's a 31 year old mormon and he's been all over central america the last 3 months. We also started chattin with this guy who was in the serpantarium with us in Monteverde and he said he'd been livin in the Tri-cities a short time as a physical therapist. He was just touring around for a few weeks. Then we saw him at lunch... then he happened to be riding the same shuttle here to Tamarindo. Its just crazy how you meet people...and if you see someone once you'll probably run into them 2 or 3 times... thats how its been.
On the shuttle here we saw our first Toucan, and we saw loads of scarlet macaws at a bus stop. So our wildlife total is:
loads of turtles (olive ridley), a whale, a toucan, scarlet macaws, a sloth, loads of howler monkeys, loads of capuchins, a family of Spider monkeys, loads of enormous Iguanas, a huge stick insect, lots of little stick insects, 3 turantulas, giant grasshoppers, lots of Coatis, another jumping relative of the raccoon, fresh Jaguar footprints, LOADS of Blue Morph butterflies, a few other interesting bird species, an owl, and thats all i can recall right now. Oh except i saw the fleeting image of a small cat at night on the side of the road on our ride from Puntarenas to San Jose on Tuesday but it was so fast i couldnt tell what it was... but i know it was a wild cat.
So thats the news from now...basically we have ridiculous luck and we're going to the Costa Rica El Salvidor game this Saturday for free and staying at the house of the president of the team....and hell for all i know he'll probably have us meet the team

Monteverde

We took the shuttle yesterday morning from Arenal to Santa Elena (Monteverde). We're staying at this place called Casa Tranquillo... SO CUTE. Its an amazing little hostel with 2 double beds, a private room for us and bathroom, towels and soap, free breakfast, free coffee all day, community kitchen area usage for just $10 a night. Which you have to imagine we've often stayed in rooms with dorm beds with 4 to 6 people in bunk beds without towels and community bathrooms and often no breakfast. It was a steal...and such a cute little place. So we were thrilled about that... We did the serpantarium yesterday which was an exhibit for snakes in Costa Rica (a couple fer-de-lance coral snakes). It was pretty cool. Then we did a night hike which we were thoroughly disappointed with. It was not very intense. You are supposed to sometimes see the bigger night life animals like armadillos or certain monkey type animals or even cats (very rare) but there was a REALLY loud annoying girl from california...we were SO ANNOYED. We definately gonna see anything with her talking and her questions were SO stupid. like... what eats birds here? or are there frogs here? or to spiders eat other spiders? Because basically all we saw were insects. A big walking stick and a few huge turantulas we're basically it (although the turantulas were cool) So we were disappointed after that.
This morning, however, we did the extreme canopy zipline tour which was amazing. It was about 2 hours of doing ziplines of various lengths and also a Tarzan swing which was like a long drop then big swing out... really intense actually. The last zipline (about 1000meters long i think...) you could do the zipline superman style which of course i tried. It was amazing. We got tons of pics and videos which we'll be uploading soon. We've loved monteverde...though its raining right now... but we'll be heading to Tamarindo on a shuttle tomorrow morning (big beach scene on the pacific side just a few hours north of Montezuma). So I'll catch you all later!

Arenal

Right now we are at Arenal backpackers... you can tell by my pics on facebook its SWEET! such a cool place. We took a tour up to the mountain today. We were able to go to an observatory really close to the volcano, took a hike to a nearby hanging bridge and waterfall, then catch sunset by the volcano and see lava flow down in the dark. It wasn't the best day since it was cloudy but i think good days are hard to come by around here. After that they took us a too a natural hot springs. It was real cool... you slide down into a larger pool area and if you hike farther up the springs (which is semi difficult because the rock was flat and really slippery) there was a spot where 2 rivers or streams merged... one was cold and one was a hot so you could position yourself for any temperature. In the cold one, on the hot side, or sit in a spot where they merged at the right temperature. It was cool but Julio our tour guide who was really cool in the beginning started coming on a little too strong!!! So that made the hot springs a little less enjoyable but overall it was really fun! tomorrow we're taking a shuttle to monteverde where we are going to do a canopy tour (zipline at the treetops) and check out some other animal exhibits and hanging bridges.

Baby Turtles

We finally got to see a nest of baby turtles go to sea. On the first day, just one little guy came up earlier than all the rest and went to sea right before Cass and I went to dinner and a movie (had to see revolutionary road since cass loves kate and leo). I didnt mention how we met an older lady when we saw the first movie (curious case of benjamin button). Shes an older lady and she told us her and her husband have been coming here for 2 months every year for the past 20 years when it gets too hot in california, but her husband recently died so it was her first time coming without him. Naturally after that we kept running into her. We ran into her on the beach coming back from Montezuma the day before the movie, and we saw her little house she rents and had iced tea on her porch listening to all her crazy adventures! She also gave me two books for the road: Kite Runner and the sequel which was something like a thousand suns. Anyways she was really nice and she went to revolutionary road too but her last day in costa rica was yesterday. After the movie i bought some smore goods (marshmellows and chocolate cookie things) in montezuma for if we had a fire...and crazy enough low and behold me and cass were walking back to our camp and by some miracle....fate... we run into a perfect smore fire on the beach, deserted, perfect coals, so we stopped and roasted a few...it was RIDICULOUS! The next day (which was yesterday) we went back to the nest because more should have been hatching and we saw pretty much the rest of the nest (about 88 turtles i believe) make their way down to the ocean...pretty spectacular and we got some good pictures. Oh and i never mentioned...prolly about a week ago we had another soccer game on the beach and when we finished we saw some whales off the coast which was pretty cool.
So right now we are in San Jose. Were taking the week to travel to Volcano Arenal, Monteverde, and most likely Guanacaste and Tamarindo as well. We were going to go the other direction and speedboat to Tamarindo first but the speedboat is undependable, they didnt have enough people booked for the trip. But it should be a fun trip...theres tons to do in Monteverde and Volcan Arenal is supposed to be beautiful. We also are BOTH spending all of our time at Romelia now and talking breaks for trips. The plan right now is this week trip, then 2 weeks volunteering in MOntezuma, then a week trip to Nicaragua, then a week volunteering, 2 week trip to jaco and panama, then the final week volunteering. So theres the plan for now! Its late so im gonna get some sleep...just wanted to give the update.