Living it up in the mountains

!Hola chicos!

hi we finally got to the internet place in town-we are literally miles and miles away from anything-we are living up in the mountains its fab! me and vicky are in an internet room in the nearest town catching up!

We arrived last thursday after travelling 8 hours to get here-4 bus journeys along the worst roads ever and 1 ferry trip for an hour in the gulf of Nicoya to Punteranus check us out! It´s gorgeous here we are having an amazing time at the mo especially after we had a bit of a rough time before in Montezuma this place is totally fantastic! Our tico host family is great we live with Betty and Cheechy Chavez and their daughter Marjorie (she´s a couple of years younger and we are helping her out with her english)they seem to be related to almost everybody in the village so the house is always very busy!they are looking after us really well here, all our dinners are home made and not always just rice and beans yippee!!

The weather tho is sooo different, we are up in the clouds so we get lots of fog, rain and some spectacular thunderstorms, most directly overhead which have been quite scary!when the sun shows it is strong and at night its so cold we need blankets-such a contrast to everywhere else save Heredia-we´ve been living in bikinis for most of the time so far!

Living in a log cabin in the mountains and me and Victoria are helping build a house at 1500 metres altitude!! We´ve been laying bricks and mixing cement and everything check us out, gonna be ripped by the time we come home with all this work and walking-we walk everywhere! we have to wear wellies and waterproofs all the time as its so muddy and we are always really mucky but its great! in the evenings we´ve been known to do the odd kareoke song and dance salsa they love it here!! spanish is coming along too as we are using it all the time, making sentences tho is still a bit challenging,claire realised the other day that where she thought she was saying really early she was actually saying really weather-no wonder we´ve had a few funny looks!! (she´s looking forward to going on all the school trips to spain when she´s teaching back home lol!!)

we´re staying in a place called zapotal-dont think its even on the map but its closest to the port of punteranus. as we are in the mountains we have to travel for 2 hours to the nearest town for the internet and shop-they dont even have phones in their houses just a public phone which constantly rings for different people in the village!so far this week we´ve helped lay the foundations for the house, built a rainforest path in the reserve, churned cheese and milked cows-and on thursday we went trekking on horses in the mountains with the farmer and saw vultures it was amazing!

last saturday it was a clear morning and after the soccer (dear oh dear where did it all go wrong?!)we travelled higher into the mountains with our host family in the back of their pick up truck hanging on for dear life and when we got there the views were fantastic-we could see right across into about 3 different states in Costa Rica and there´s a total of 7! ooh and next week we´re helping build a bridge!! made lots of lovely tico friends and Claire´s now permanently Clara as they cant pronounce Claire!

anyway must dash we have got to catch up on emails...may take some time!
been lovely to hear from you guys tho, hope you are all doing ok,

lots of love and hugs,

Claire and Victoria XXXXX

PS, we want to hear about the orange party if you´ve had it SGP!