Holidays :)

hey everyone!

So I'm home again from a week of wonderful holidays! it was fantastic :) Firstly i went with some of the people that i live with and a bunch of the exchangees at the uni here to Bocas del Toro in Panama. It was super touristy compared to the places I've been here so far, but it was amazing!



So this photo is from the canals in Panama - we caught a bus to the Caribbean side of Panama and then a boat over to Isla Colon (island!) and thats where Bocas is. The canals were amazing, all the houses are literally hanging over the water and people use boats as transportation. It was an amazing long journey to get there, I went sat morning with the spanish drs (housemates) and we took a bus, a taxi, walked across the boarder, another taxi and then a boat.... so all in all like 10hours, but it was worth it.

The first day we all met up and hung out and went to a party which was in a hostel that was actually on a small island near there - lots of fun. Very very hot Panamanian waiters. Lots of dredlocks and reggae and fun!

But sunday we took a tour on a boat like this one (above!) of the islands. We went snorkeling and saw dolphins and spend ages at this deserted island - it was absolutely wonderful!!! The tour included lunch at a restaurant which was on stilts out of the water! :) lots of fun! :) Below is Punta Hostpital which was also amazing place to swim. The coral around these places wasn't the coolest i've ever seen. But there were ssooooo many fish! So many different types it was amazing. In Isla Zapatilla (above) we were snorkeling and we found a bunch of calamari. It's so strange, they swim in a line and are an amazing assortment of colour - green, pinky/purple, blue. it's really amazing.... that night i had calamari for dinner and ended up feeling a little bad!! heheheh.


After 12 hours in the sun on boats we had an early night - but not without a night ocean swim!!! Our hostel has a back verandah which is ontop of the ocean, we could just jump off the back and swim in water that was like 3m deep :) amazing!

The next days all the boys had to leave to go back to the real world, but Iria, Patricia, Tine and I could stay and so we went to Playa de Estellas... (starfish beach!!!) and man, it was amazing. i have NEVER seen so many starfish in the on place, we collected 19 and weren't even trying :)

They are really cool, you can pick them up as long as you put them back under the water every minute or so :) so we collected a bunch. We were at this beach for about 4 hours till our meet up time with the taxi. Unfortunately it is the rainy season though - so like an hour before we were meant to leave, it just started raining an unbelievable amount :) we could barely see about a metre in front of us and it dropped like 10 degrees! eek! But ppl are so nice, there were fishermen passing and the stopped to give us a lift - which was nice considering with this european couple who were splitting the taxi with us, there was 6 of us!

The water at bocas is amazing! its so warm, like a bathtub, but also amazingly clear and beautiful to go swimming in... So many fish and cool things to watch :)

Anyways, I got back from Bocas last Tuesday - after another mammoth (but less complicated journey). But with almost a whole other week of holidays, i took off again to Bahia Ballena, which is on the pacific side of coast rica! I went with Iria, my housemate. So we arrive there at 1pm on thursday and go to the beach - amazing! I mean, it's rainy season, the most rainy few weeks at the moment, so we barely saw the sun the whole four days we were there. But oh my gosh! unbelieveable! there's like NO tourists there (Amazing for CR and doubly cool after Bocas... more english than spanish there!).

The beach at Bahia Ballena is kilometres of unspoilt sand, inside a national park, so no buildings or highrises and almost no other people. The coolest thing there is, that there's a strip of sand/rocks that's shaped like a whales tale and when the ocean goes out you can walk out to the tail and go snorkeling! it was amazing - too rainy and cold for snorkeling, but still! wow! You have to be careful though, cuz there's currents and if you snorkel/swim/sunbake on the tail without paying attention, you can get stuck there. Its like 120m to land, and through the surf and shark/crocodile waters, i don't really fancy that! hehehe.

Well, okay, so maybe the sharks and crocodiles are our over-active imaginations! but still, there are sharks there, maybe not soo close in! :) To get into the park you have to wade across this river, which is like prime crocodile territory... each time made my heart race more than a little. I don't even know if there are crocs in that part of the country (actually there's one river here that's world famous for having some of the biggest crocs in the world - over 4m long!).

Anyways, with the rain, we'd return to the cabin's hammocks every afternoon for a nap/read a book (Iria had to study!). But about 5.30pm, the total tranquility of the town was shattered by the insanely loud karaoke that started.... Thursday it was okay, just one bar open (the whole town has one bar, a soda, 2 restaurants, our hotel and a supermarket!). So i don't know why, but i guess they believe that all of Costa Rica wants to hear their abysmal singing, so the karaoke is turned up to the maximum volume. We were in hysterics at first, but after 3 hours, it's not so funny. But we were being nana's and in bed by 930pm. So anyways, the next night, believe it or not, it was worse. Fri and Sat nights, the restaurant has karaoke too... so not only was the bar up to full volume with their karaoke, but also, the restaurant. So we got to listen to that fabulous competition :) hehehehe. Out of the maybe 30people in this town, not a single one can carry a tune... but i guess they're happily tonedeaf together! :) hehehe. But in the end all was good, we managed to sleep through, and didn't succumb to the karaoke lure!

Now sadly, i'm back in San Jose preparing for work tomorrow - i'm administering mid-semester exams for all my students! Wish me luck!

love you lots
jane

Cahuita and the TLC

Hey Folks,

how's life going in Brisbane (or wherever else you are!)?? Life here is good. It's a drizzly, grey tuesday, but it's okay, cuz I was a beautiful beach for the entire weekend!

So saturday morning, bright an early (5.20am!), Iria, Chechu and I packed off to Cahuita which is a town on the caribbean side of the country. It's a small town - maybe 6streets. But it has a few spectacular beaches and a national park! Woohoo! So Saturday we went to playa Blanca (which is White Beach) which was SPECTACULAR! It was beautiful, crystal clear, knee deep gentle water and it was soo hot that the water was totally devine.

In the afternoon we went the other way out of town and arrived at Playa Negra (black beach!)... it's really interesting cuz the sand is black, so when you swim you can't see your hands or anything, cuz the sand's picked up by the surf and tossed around. It's kind of like swimming in refriend beans or something! it's actually kind of gross. but we still had a good afternoon. And although it's the height of the rainy season, we only got spat on a little bit.... but considering the warmth of the beach water, it didn't matter at all!

It's such a nice comparason to San Jose, because the town is just so chilled out and relaxed. We stayed at a decent (cheap!) hotel there. Although we were in bed by 10pm, apparently all the power to the town when off at 1130pm and didn't come back on! hehehe.

So sunday we head back to playa blanca and hte national park. We took a bushwalk up to punta cahuita (the headland) and saw so much wildlife it was amazing!!! We saw 2 sloths! Which was like, "wow! it's a real life sloth!!!... oh wait, that looks exactly like a koala!!".... Cuz it's up in tree about 5m up... it just looks like a koala... it's the bum of a furry creature about the same size. But as we kept walking we saw another sloth, but this one was only like 2m up so we could see it's face... it's really cool... it actually looks kind of person like. well, that's a streach. But they have a pretty amazing face...

Sadly though we had to head back to the city because I had work and they had uni. We'd been in the bus about 30 mins and then we had to stop at a police checkpoint... apparently the state that we were in (Limon) has heaps more drugs than in the city, so at first i thought they were going to go through our bags and everything. BUt it was actually passport control. Thank god i had a copy of my passport on me.

So the deal is this, in CR you have to have your passport, national id card or a copy of your passport on you at all times (cuz they have problems with illegal immigrants from nicaragua). And so they wanted to check all the foreigners. If you don't have anything on you then you get detained at the checkpoint till someone faxes a copy of your passport to the police. and i guess if no one can, you go to jail. So the bus infront of us, left without 6 of it's passengers who didn't have their passports on them. Then from our bus 4people (including one of my friends) didn't have sufficient ID... so out of the ten ppl freaking out at the policecheckpoint, 5 of them are studnts at the uni here and had their student id card (mind you, we're on the last bus of the day) but the police wouldn't let them through. You can imagine the frantic calls and begging and whatnot that happened. Evenutally though they let the ppl with uni id cards through, but we ended up leaving the other 5people sitting there, waiting for their parents or whoever to fax through copies of their passports. A nice reminder for me to always have my id with me!!

So as well as beachday, sunday was the day for a referendum here. the USA has proposed a freetrade agreement with central america (CAFTA) and the costa rican govt was going to pass it, but apparently, if you petition against a law, they have to hold a referendum before it can pass. So for the last year, there's been a very hard-core campaign from both sides about whether or not the TLC (it's the local acronym) should be passed. It's been pretty interesting..

So the referendum was sunday and the Yes (as it, accept the CAFTA) won, by a margin of 4000 votes. Out of a country of 4million people, that's not really that many. So now there's a huge outcry from the No group who so far will not accept that they lost. So they're all meeting tonight to talk about it (well, not all of them obvioulsy, but the organisers) and they are making noise about corruption and missing votes and the such. Apparently the No scrutineers counted a different number of votes than the Tribunal (which is like the electoral commission here). So I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens for the rest of the week. Hopefully it's all sorted out peacefully and quickly.

So that's life in San Jose, at the moment :) Make sure you update me when you get the time! Soon I'll put photos and a video of Cahuita up at my pic website - http://picasaweb.google.com/goodwin.jane

alrighty, I'm off to work!
Love from
Jane

Rafting!!!

Hey Guys!!

So last sunday I went rafting with a bunch of exchange students from University of Costa Rica (cuz most of my housemates are exchangees there!). I don't have many more words to say other than it was a spectacular experience!!!

So we started out at 6am and drove to a hotel for breakfast - which is the picture above (Jessie, Iria and me!). So it was great food, but the view was amazing! The hotel is on the side of the mountain and down the valley floor there is the river that we went rafting on - Pacuare. Anyways a couple of hours later (road here really aren't that great!) we were at the river and ready to go.

The river runs through an indigenous reserve so it's unbelieveably clean and untouched. The trip takes you through 2 canyons and four hours of beautiful scenery! The rapids are level 3 and 4 so the action is also pretty exciting! Our boat guide was really funny. He kept saying, "It's not that i don't like you, but paddle harder!!!" hehehhehe.

So the wildlife was also spectacular! We saw so many different birds, including toucans! TOUCANS! In the wild. amazing. They flew accross above us :) There was also and Iguana the size of a rather large goanna! And where we ate lunch (and were swimming) the guides showed us some eels... not that cool :P Besides the birds and lizards there were butterflies with more stunning colour than i've ever seen. There was this butterfly that was so blue that it looked like a sequin!

At the second canyon we got out of the boats and took turns jumping into the river off a little cliff face and just floated down the river. So relaxing and amazing. There was a suspension bridge above us but other than that, no signs of humans! the canyon's quite narrow (about 5m accross) but the sides are extremely tall and very steep with vines and plants twisting their way down to the water. The current is really strong, so even just floating along we were going about the pace of a brisk walk.

After lunch the storm came in - it is the rainy season after all! But it was all okay because, although it rained it didn't actually storm! Sharing the day with 6 new people was really fun to get to know them and find out more about some other's foreigners experiences here - including a Seppo who's teaching english here too. :)

Anyways, after lunch beside the river and four hours on the river it was time for a shower and to head home. Such a wonderfully exciting day, it was also very very tiring! :) But very worthwhile!

Alrighty-roo my people, that's enough rambling - i hope you manage to understand how much I enjoyed my day on the pacuare! I hope all is well with you and make sure you keep in touch! I'll put rafting photos up as soon as i get them!

love you all!
jane

Hello again!

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I haven't posted in ages! Party, it's cuz i'm slack and partly it's cuz the internet at home's been playing up. But anyways, i'm alive and well!

So, Last weekend a few of the people from the hostel and I went to Manuel Antonio! It's a beach here and it's gorgous! I can't believe how nice it is there! There's a national park so if you go inside (a pretty steep $7 I might add!) then the beaches are fantastic! the first time I've felt like the surf was really fun!

So anyways there's a beach as you just enter the park which is long and white and spectacular! but if you keep walking to the other side of the headland (like 5mins) then you get to a gorgous protected beach where you could swim better with kids (or limited swimming ability!). Anyways, we spent a day at each of these beaches and it was gorgous! I really can't express how pretty the environment is. Cuz you're in a national park there's no buildings or anything so the jungle is literally on the beach. After I'd had enough swimming, I lay down to read under one of the trees and a monkey started to throw seeds at me!!!! Cheeky thing! heheh, but it's all good!

Apparently i'm lucky he only wanted to annoy me, cuz one of my friends had his whole bag stolen by a monkey when he was there!!!! Luca had to chase down the monkey (and throw the seeds back at it apparently...... wonder who taught who that!?!) but the monkey left the bag handing in the tree and he had to go get it!!! hehehe.

Another interesting thing about the park is that there's toxic trees. So if you touch them, i'm not exactly sure what happens. Cuz like a good girl i obeyed the signs.... so yeah, mental note, if you see a big tree type thing. you may not want to touch it. that's just so helpful in a national park, huh? The beaches/park are set onto a headland so it's really effected by the tides. To get into the park in the morning, you walk accross about 4m of water that's like ankle deep. There were guys there with a boat charging like 20c a person to take you accross and i'm like... uh? i can walk thanks.... But when the park closed at 4pm, we go back the same way and that 4m of ankledeep water had turned into 15m of waist deep water!!! But we were all in our togs, so not to worry. Although... there is a sign that warns about crocodiles... the cynic in me says that's to scare ppl into using the boats and to make a bit more money.

Although there are crocodiles here in costa rica, something about the hundreds of ppl that walk accross there everyday made me feel a bit safer, and being in the middle of a group of 20.... hopefully they'll pick off the outsiders first :P

So since then we've been back at the hostel. I had a week at work and the hostel filled up. We now have officially 13 ppl there. The owner Enrique and his secretary Andrea are ticos, Diego is from central america somewhere (he's pretty shy!), jim from the states who has a tica mumma, Nelson the colombian, me, Baptise from france, Julia from Germany and Iria, Chechu, Rocky, Alfonso, Alberto and Louisa are all from Spain. So it's pretty cool (but very noisy) place to be these days! Half of me wants to move some place with a little more privacy and quiet time and half of me would really miss the guys (and the free spanish lessons!) hehehe. So i'm not really sure what i'm going to do at the moment.

This last weekend was beautiful! Basically everyone went to mal pais, which is another beach so there was only 4 of us at home, so i got to sleep in and have space! it was like heaven! I also had an AIESEC training thing saturday night, helping to prepare the ticos who will be going on exchange soon. So to that i gave a little presentation and made them all taste vegemite! Some of the expressions were pricesless!!! But they were all rewarded with a lamington for their good efforts! The training was a camp, so I stayed over saturday night, we were in the mountains about an hour from here and man, it's the coldest i've been in a really really long time. And just so you know, if a tico says there's a blanket, what they mean is, there's a sheet, so no matter where you go make sure you take your own sleeping bag... learnt that a less than fortunately way! but i survived and managed to sleep some (in 3 pairs of socks, 5 shirts, a jumper, pj pants and jeans....)

Anyways, now it's monday again and i'm back at work and hoping this week goes quickly! hehehe! This weekend, i'm hoping to go white water rafting, i'll let you know how that goes! But for now it's time to say goodbye! So i hope you're all well and happy! Let me know what you've been up to and you can check out the photos from the beach (which don't do it justice) at http://picasaweb.google.com/goodwin.jane/ManuelAntonio

Alrighty-roo, have a good day and take care!
love from
jane

Markets

Hey Guys,

how's life going? I hope well :) I'm finally feeling 100% again after a near-fatal drink of water in the beach at Cahuita. Woops. oh well!!! After spending a week making very good friends with the toilet, i'm back on my feet and back at work :)

And on sunday morning, i even went to a market! It was a real fruit and vege market, in a suburb here called Corinado :) it was so much fun. I went with Zana and our friends Carlos and Christa and Ramona. Anyways, so I put photos of the yummy things up on my photo wedsite

http://picasaweb.google.com/goodwin.jane

but, man! they were so good! We got star fruit, custard apple, watermelon, pineapple and these new things i'd never even seen before called Mangustan (or something like that!) anyway, they're from Colombia and are just about the best fruit i've EVER had. I know they don't look like much - they're the things above :) But they're about the size of a large plum. They have a very tough exterior and once you peel it off, it's like a lychee in the segments similar to an orange. They're very sweet, and moist and white and refreshing! One of the segments has a big seed. They are so good. I'm not sure how I can stress how much i like them!

We also got some veges called chyote (or somethign like that!) which are meant to be cooked with salt and something cuz basically they're very healthy but have no taste! They also have yuca, banana, plaintains, these things that are all carbs which the indigenous pop had as a staple of their diet, that i really can't remember the name of.

There's so many different types of fruit here, it's amazing! I"m going to have go back to that market all the time! :)

The most fun part of it was when we took our horde back ot the hostel and everyone was trying it! None of them (even Zana who's lived here for 4 years) had tried custard apple before (although they had all had the juice which is ubiquitous here. And none of them had seen the mangustan! Anyways, we had a lovely 'breakfast' at 3pm of pancakes and all the different fruits we could fit in our tummies!

Anyways, that's my excitment for the week :) I am going to the beach again this weekend :) Promise to not drink the water though!

hope you're healthy and happy!
love from

jane

Puerto Viejo

Hey Guys,

Sorry it's been quite so long since I've posted on here, but i went to the coast for the weekend and stupidly drank the local water, and well, I've been indisposed for a week!!!

These photos are from the weekend away, we went to the Caribbean coast, to a town called Puerto Viejo, it was really great! the beach was so much nicer than in Jaco. So we caught the bus out there saturday morning and ended up staying in this hostel called Rocking J's. Where its super cheap, cuz you sleep in a hammock! it was a really nice place, very trendy hippy! Also, there are mosaics everywhere and you can add to them if you've had enough beach.

So we went swimming Saturday afternoon and found tropic fish like 2m from the shore! it was so much fun! I went out there with Laura, her friend and her husband. But saturday night met up with some friends from San Jose, it was lovely! We were at a bar, having a few beers literally on the beach! We had a table closest to the water, like maybe 5m from the water, it was so beautiful, there was a bonfire and a full moon! i really recommend this party!

Then on sunday i went to playa cocles, which is the next beach along, about a 10m walk and it was soo nice, white sand, great waves, reggae from the local shops and just a chilled out happy beach feel!

Puerto Viejo also has markets and stuff, it's a little touristy, but it was great! So after much shopping and relaxing, monday morning we headed to Cahuita, which is a national park about 30mins away by bus! it was so nice, the beach there was spectacular! The park itself brings the jungle right up to the beach, it's just stunning. The waves were a little rough, but it was lots of fun!

The bus back on monday night was another matter!!! We took the last one and turns out there wasn't enough seats!!! :( so for a four hour bus trip ppl were standing. I was lucky enough to swipe a seat on the back steps, so all was good. We also got stopped by police on the way home. They wanted to check out passports, but i'd left mine in San Jose (i did have a copy though, my friends didn't have anything). Man, they're not exactly that efficient. We got off the bus and then moved straight into the line of ppl who had had their passports/id cards checked and were waiting to get back onto the bus! hehehe. oh well, it's an adventure right!

alright, well i'm gonna go put some photos up on my picasa site if you wanna check them out!

I hope you're all well and happy, write me when u have some time!
love you lots!
janie

Tech

Hey :)

So, my hosting AIESEC club is from the University of technology here, called the Tech. Anyways, Tech is actually in Cartago (remember the place where the pilgrammage was to?). So this week I went out there a couple of times to check it out!

Cartago is 19km away, according to the road sign, but in the bus from my house it takes like 40minutes!!! Anyway I went wednesday because they're having a careers fair type thing and AIESEC had a stall and wanted me to help. So I went along, but it was very quiet, so instead I got a great tour of campus, which was nice :) Its a really nice campus actually. Its sort of like QUT I guess... The buildings aren't as old at the st. lucia, but its so nice to be outside, with grass!! And from one of the taller buildings we could see the city of cartago and behind that, the volcano Irazu. So its an active volcano! eek. hehehe.

Then last night, they had a dance. (Tech that is). I guess because its the start of a new semester and they always have one. It was pretty fun, extremely crowded but good!! They had a brazillian (?) drumming band, which was really fun :)

Also I got dancing lessons.... there's just so many different types of dancing here!!! Some of it, i'm just too unco to do, but you know, I have a year to practice! hehehe. The ticos were really surprised when I said i'd never been to a university dance before and that it wasn't exactly typical in Oz to have the uni hosting a big dance party! Anyways, overall it was a really fun night :)

Anyways, tonight we're going out again for a friend's birthday, then saturday morning I'm off to the beach again! woohoo! Its a long weekend (this time for mother's day) so we have to make the most of it, right!?

Oh well, I hope you're all well and I will talk to you soon!
love ya lots
jane