San Carlos, NICARAGUA

I made it! although to their credit they did their best to keep me out. on the boat ride from tortuguero to nicaragua, the river briefly passed through nicaraguan territory. so i had to get stamped into and out of nicaragua on my passport. well that was no problem, except for the slight issue that the boat didn´t stop for me to first get stamped out of costa rica, and then back in afterwards. so i dont even know what country i was legally in by the end of it. and i didnt realize it was an issue until i got to the border crossing and the lady looked at it confusedly for a while and then politely informed me id have to take a 5 hour bus back into san jose (dirt and danger capital of costa rica) to get it cleared up. needless to say that was about equal to a punch in the face. but then i double checked with her 5 minutes later and she called someone and i dunno what they said but all of a sudden it was all fine. she didnt stamp me out of costa rica tho, she just wrote a note to immigration on the nicaraguan side and told me id have to explain it all to them. so then there was a lot of relief and a beautiful boat ride through canals to get to nicaragua, where they politely informed me that i hadn´t been stamped out of costa rica, which was necessary. haha so i had to wait a while for them to figure that all out but eventually they said it was fine and stamped me in. so now in my passport it looks like i entered left and entered nicaragua without going anywhere else. sweet. san carlos was a nice old-looking town. my matress was about an inch thick. and i woke up at 5 in the morning to a damn troop of little kids watching sesame street in spanish right outside my room, which not even ear plugs could block out. in about 5 minutes i have a boat to catch to el castillo, where apparently there is an utterly memorable and unexpected castle waiting for me. i just cant wait! hasta luego, your traveler.

san carlos, CR

well i left tortuguero this morning, am on my way to nicaragua, and have reached the 3 month point in my trip! i was going to leave tomorrow but i wanted to take the boat out instead of a bunch of busses and the only boat was leaving today. it was rainy which kinda sucked, it would have been amazing if the sun had been out. but nevertheless we saw upwards of ten enormous crocodiles and those things are freakin huge. their teeth are really yellow too. so now im spending the night in a little city that people call san carlos even though its real name is different and it really confused me because the city im going to in nicaragua is also san carlos. eventually i understood though. my first main goal once in nicaragua is to go to ometepe which is an island made up of two connected volcanoes in the middle of a lake which just sounds cool. Tortuguero ended up being a blast and a half and i have more pictures of animals than i know what to do with. Elias, the guy in charge of the volunteers (there were only two of us) was a complete crack up. he had more energy than both of us combined and near the end of our stays he told us to guess how old he is. first of all, hes about 5 ´2" has a nice pot belly and a slightly graying mustache. we both guessed 50s somewhere, and with a huge laugh he shouts 66! and starts bouncing around in a boxing stance. he was a nut. we really did very little work while we were there. probably only worked about 4 of the days, and one of those was just raking the lawn. the coolest one was cutting the lawn with machetes. it actually just sounds cool cuz it sucked pretty bad in reality and i kept thinking id split my shin in two on the follow-through. im proud to say that they are still intact and working at maximum capacity. one of the days we went to the only hill in the area to look around. at the bottom there were tiny red poison dart frogs everywhere, some of which had blue legs. i felt like i was at the zoo, which i later felt weird about because when im at the zoo i should feel like im in the tropics not the other way around. but then we walked to the top and it was an amazing view of the islands and canals and the carribean. towards the end of the second week though we had seen so much that we ended up playing cards more than anything else. i taught the other volunteer casino which he of course loved. that will be one of my goals, spreading the wonders of casino wherever i go. one of the nights me and the other volunteer, who was from south dakota, made an american dinner of fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and corn ie loads of grease and no vegetables. we all felt a bit sick afterwards. but it was wonderful to have a meal where the meat was a main course instead of starving-chicken legs on the side. or fried bologna. im looking forward to better food in the near future, though truthfully the food at tortuguero was pretty good. we introduced elias to banana pancakes which were a big hit. my art project for tortuguero was carving a frog out of coconut, which is really pretty if you sand it down past the fuzzy stuff. and i am proud to say that it is very recognizable as a frog. and on top of it i broke off two fingers on one of his hands so now it looks like hes making the hang loose sign. so we named him the hang loose frog. well thats all that comes to mind now. the next time i write i should be in nicaragua! hoping for the best for everyone, miss you all.
gus

tortuguero

just a quick update to report that im alive and awesome cuz this place is gorgeous. me and two other volunteers rented a canoe and took it out into the canals and i think we everything i know exists here: cappuchin, howler, spider monkeys, iguanas and vaarious other lizards, turles, river otters(!), caimans, herons, jacanas, egrets, toucans, green macaws. i dont think im forgetting any. im living in a house in the park and dont have much work to do and get to hike around every day. theres a sloth that lives in the tree above us and theres always monkeys around. and each night we go out looking for frogs and other critters. and they feed us meat! there was a pretty serious earthquake the other day, about a 6.2 at the center and i think it destroyed a lot. but here it wasnt too bad and having experienced so many before didnt freak me out too much. so i just kept eating my lunch and kinda enjoyed it, but the volunteer i was with had never been in one before and just freaked and grabbed his bag and was asking everyone he could in broken english if it was dangerous haha so that was pretty funny to see. so yeah, everythings good, and im here till the 21st at which point my visa expires and i somehow go north to nicaragua. the adventure continues! solo bueno

pictures

okay here are some pics from the turtle reserve! to describe a few, we have the chess set and board i made, a group pic, me and the two italians, the 45 egg omelet, some baseball pictures (i taught all the europeans how to play one day-none of them ever had before and the only thing they really knew about it was that you got to scratch your balls and spit a lot, which they enjoyed quite a bit), the christmas party, a big sea snail, collecting food to bring back to camp, baby turtles, and a sunset. i am currently in san jose and for sure leave tomorrow morning for tortuguero, so ill write again whenever i get the chance. later

buenavista

my last day at the turtle reserve! it has been very very fun and im sad to leave all the crazy europeans ive gotten to know here. accomplishments while ive been here: i finished the chess set, board and all, became an expert body surfer, climbed a mini mountain to watch the sunset, cooked a 45-egg omelet, learned a song in italian, a few select words of german, ate countless fresh machete-opened coconuts, didn´t break my camera in the sand, and survived to the 75th day of my journey! i didn´t get to see any big turtles while i was here, but i released about 5 nests and transplanted one from the beach to the hatchery. on the nightwalk where we found the nest the ranger just suddenly stopped and walked a few steps up the beach and started digging. meanwhile im looking around trying to see whatever it was he saw, and even with my flashlight i had no clue. he told me that he can feel the change in the sand that the turtles make with his feet. thats cool. i wore shoes for the first time today in over two weeks and i didn´t remember them feeling this comfortable. tomorrow morning i leave back to san jose for a night and then on to tortuguero national park to volunteer for two weeks. i think internet will be sparse once again, but ill write when i can. hope everyone had wonderful holidays, mine were spent with bonfires, music, and phosphoresence-filled midnight pacific ocean swims. im guesseing yours probably went a little differently. hasta luego!

buenavista

well just checking in since im at the internet, but nothing has changed really. i got sick the other night and threw up a couple times but appear to have made a strong comeback. for some reason most of the volunteers im with are german, though theres a couple italians, a couple dutch, an english guy, and one other american. and we all speak english which is kinda weird. they all had to learn it in school. they also told me over half the music they listen to is american which surprised me a lot. they always know what im talking about when i mention movies or songs. theres one german volunteer who reminds me exactly of my uncle gene which was really funny/weird. and i realized it before he told me he was studying to be a teacher which my uncle is which made it even weirder. theres also a crazy italian guy named simon who wears everyones shoes and tries to take peoples shirts and doesn´t speak great english, which has lead to various very funny misunderstandings. christmas was celebrated with alcohol and a bonfire and was entirely unchristmasy. im also carving a chess set now and am half way done. making level bases for the pieces was an unforseen difficulty, especially with only a swiss army knife. my friend anna from seattle came to samara with her family yesterday on vacation so ive gotten to spend all of today with her which has been wonderful. a big relief to see someone i really know after all this time. thats all for now i think, hope everyones well.

gus

Playa Buenavista

i feel like im staying at a resort except we get to play with turtles on top of it all. theres about 18 volunteers here most of whom are german for some reason, and we're all in on big open-air house thats approximately 3 steps from the sand of the beach. and on the beach which is a few km long we are basically the only sign of civilization. so we have this huge tropical beach all to ourselves. we work a few hours doing maitenance stuff during the morning before its too hot, then have the rest of the day off to relax, read, tan, swim, surf, etc. and then we do all of the turtle stuff at night. there are two patrols throughout the night that walk the beach to see if any mom turtles come to nest, and there are constant shifts of volunteers monitoring the hatchery in case any nests there hatch. the idea is that when a mom lays her eggs, we find the nest, collect all the eggs, redig a new nest the same size in the hatchery, and put the eggs in. this is so that animals and people can't get to them. then when they hatch we take them in a bucket to where their original nest was and release them to flap their way back in the great big ocean. and they are frickin cute. the only downside of it all is that it messes with your sleep big time, but so far its been a lot of fun. theres no electricity so after dark its all candles, and we have to carry in any drinking water and food, though luckily i haven't had to do that yet. Its nice though im getting nice and tan and all of you guys are freezing your butts of in the snow of seattle. go figure that i'd be here the one time it snows feet at a time though! getting to experience that is one of my dreams! i can't really complain at the moment though. i get to watch the tropical beach sunsets every night for over 2 weeks after all. alllllright i gotta go cuz we have to walk back before high tide or theres a river that gets too deep to cross. so enjoy the cold! talk in a week, gus.