Volcano boarding & Costa Rica

Hey everyone,

Sorry it's been so long since we last updated our blog or photos, but I guess that means that we have been busy. Graham and I are now the only two volcano boarding tour guides, so we have been alternating volcano boarding tours, each taking one every other day. All of our tours are in the afternoon now, so we often board down or at least drive home during a gorgeous sunset. The tours have been going well and Bigfoot just bought a brand new speed gun, so we will be able to start making our attempts at the record. When Graham and I initially came down and volcano boarded for the first time, I stomped him...I also face planted in the process. Truth be told when they "clock" your speed with the gun, it's not an exact science, so who really knows what the speeds are. Anyways, when we first went, Graham the granny got somewhere in the 40's and I got somewhere in the 50's (kmph). The all time record for boys is 82 kmph and 76 kmph for girls. So, as you can see, we have our work cut out for us. Graham has gotten a lot better, but I am still taking things nice and slow and haven't gone fast enough to where I might fall. So, I may be a lost cause to break the record, but I have a lot of faith in G and we will update you on our speeds. So volcano boarding every other day and a few Isla Juan Venado tours (boat ride through a mangrove estuary) for me are our main activities. We still go to the gym and it is still pretty dirty with an average of one of the three available treadmills actually working. We kind of miss 24 Hour Fitness, but at least the gym helps to offset the pizza we eat religiously twice a week and the slough of ice cream and cookies that somehow find their way into our diet down here A LOT more than at home.

However, for the past week we broke from routine. Our temporary visas for Nicaragua ran out

and so we had to go to Costa Rica to renew them...tough life we know. Last Sunday, we took chicken buses for an enternity, making our way from Leon to Managua to the southern border with Costa Rica. Then we spent about two hours in the dusty and confusing limbo land that is the sprawling, very landfill-like space between Nicaragua and Costa Rica where you wait in a lot of lines and get various things stamped. We were one day over our 90 day limit and so that added at least an hour to the whole process. So, when we finally crossed into Costa Rica, crabby and dust-covered, we jumped on another bus to Liberia and then to the Pacific Coast to a place called Tamarindo Beach.

We stayed here only two days. It was horribly expensive - I paid $8 for a salad at Subway and we paid $18 for one pizza and one bottle of water - and the way in which it was developed made it feel like you were living in an over-priced strip mall. Now we realize that living in Nicaragua (second poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti) for the past six months may have changed our perspective a little, but I think everyone can agree that if it is hard to tell that you are even in Central America, then development hasn't really been done in the correct way. It was one expensive compilation of chain restaurants and beachside resorts and high rise hotels and there only seemed to be Americans visiting and/or living there. We couldn't find any tipical Costa Rican food and we were so burned from our first day at the beach (which you could no longer see from town as the hotels blocked any view) that we didn't venture far outside the main part of town to find any. With all of those complaints laid out, it was impeccably clean, the buses were waaaaaaaaaaay nicer and our hostel had AC. So although it was nice to be in a more developed place, we just didn't think that the development had been carried out in the most tasteful or appropriate way. Plus it was freakishly hot and expensive. So we left and took another series of four buses inland, due east to Monteverde and Santa Elena.

Things in Monteverde were much more our style, although still very expensive compared to Nicaragua. The weather was a pleasent change as Monteverde sits between two cloudforests at a much higher elevation. During the day, it was cool and at night, you had to bundle up, which was fantastic. Graham however, has persisted in his quest to not wear pants for one year and he refused to even pack any for Costa Rica. A couple nights it was super cold and windy and while I had on pants, long sleeved shirt and my wind breaker, G was in shorts and a t-shirt. I guess all that hair helps to keep him warm...

While we were there, we took a guided night hike in the cloud forest and saw a tarantula (terrifying), some pretty cool sloths and some beautiful sleeping birds. However, Graham and I both agreed that we probably would have preferred a day hike...when you can actually see everything. We also took a tour of the Lecheria (the Monteverde Cheese Factory), which was started by Quakers from the states in 1948. They bought a chunk of forested area where there was nothing - no roads, economy, anything. They knew nothing about cheese, but decided that it would be the best product to produce because it could involve more people and had a high value to size ratio. They wrote the USDA to get some instruction and then started making cheese. Now, it is a very successful company and exports cheese to Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. We took a tour of the relatively small factory and got to try a variety of cheeses and caramel that they make. Graham stayed behind after everyone left and refilled his toothpick a few times with the leftover cheese squares. We also walked all over Santa Elena and Monteverde and visited a lot of art galleries as we found them.

It was a great vacation and we returned late last night. All in all, Costa Rica was a lot more expensive, but it was a nice break from the norm. Plus so many more people spoke English there than in Nicaragua, so that helped us avoid some of the awkward conversations we often have here. But we have another 90 days in Nicaragua now and we are eagerly awaiting the start of mango and avocado season.