Zapotal wonderful Zapotal!

hi everyone,

hope you are all doing ok, just got a chance to read all our emails now we´ve spotted our second internet place in the last few weeks, thanks guys! sorry we havent had chance to reply to all the emails direct but we are reading them!

we are now in cowboy country in Liberia where we are staying the night before our crossing to nicaragua tomorrow morning. we arrived here this morning after staying an extra couple of days and there were more than a few tears to leave our family and friends in Zapotal...we´ll definately want to go back!

We´ve had a cool week with lots happening, we had a whole new bunch of volunteers arrive monday from the uk which was fun, they were a college party from Stockport. it was a bit of a shock tho to find we had two extra people staying in our cabin tho..we´d been so spoilt having it all to ourselves up till then!! too many volunteers came to fit in the hostel so we ended up with the teacher and one student! they both turned out to be really nice tho and we had a good giggle. It was funny tho because we do work hard here-on the first day we went out into the cloud forest to help relay the path in the forest again and I dont think they knew what hit them! we were trundling wheel barrows full of gravel up and down the hill and that was even before the path started!...we ended up cutting in extra steps and laying new wood up there to keep the banks steady, and on wednesday they let me and victoria have a go clearing the way ahead with machetes! felt like rambo or indiana jones or something! at first we were a bit cautious with them but by the end we were chopping anything in our way!

what else have we been doing...well we had a go helping put up the new bridge once the water had gone down that is (last sunday it rained torrentially all day and it ended up washing huge sections of gardens away in Zapotal and leaving the river at 20ft deep!...locals didnt seem that concerned tho..it was a great opportunity for them all to get together in the rain and take photos!)anywho so the bridge needed wooden slats fitting under the gurders and we had to cut them to shape, only they all kept coming out either too large or too small, lets say we dont think our new vocation is in carpentry! but building however is another story we´ve been loving it!! since the first day when we were helping them move their stuff out for the work to begin we´ve added 5 extra breeze block rooms to roof level and we have made most of the metal gurders to support it! we taught the new volunteers how to shape the metal on thursday too.

our host family have been absolutely fantastic they are so kind,on sunday betty´s sister in law and three kids had come to stay this week so we all drove out of zapotal into the mountains to visit the grandmother of our host family, it was the clearest evening as it was after the rain and the moon lit up the sky and we could see right over the mountains at cloud level to the sea, Betty´s mum lives near a gold mine so there were lots of beautiful rivers nearby. when we got there they took us into their land behind the house and we went fruitpicking for berries and this strange fruit thats a kind of cross between an orange and an apple..dont ask us to name it tho!!her mum is eighty odd and was really nice and welcomed us into her house for dinner and showed us pictures of her 10 children. big families are the norm here,we were helping an 18yr old on the construction who´s the youngest of 12!everyone here seems to be the uncle or aunt of the next person! our spanish has come on miles since we were first here as we are using it all the time, the little girls staying at our house (Arrianna and Jennifer) were funny as they would just rabbit along constantly to us in baby spanish and we´d just nod and smile! on their last but one day we gave them a colouring book and pens and they thought it was fantastic, think by the end of that day most of the family had had a quick colour it was great, we went through the book with them and taught the girls some english.

we ended up staying longer in Zapotal as it was wonderful and also they had arranged a bbq for us on friday night so we sang kareoke and danced the night away salsa style with the locals! we left at 5am saturday morning with our friends and we all went to the beach in Punteranus while we waited for our connection to northern guanacaste later in the afternoon. the heat was quite a shock after the mountain air! Punteranus was quite shabby but the sea was beautiful, we could see right across the gulf of nicoya to montezuma where we were two and a half weeks ago strange!there was a pier there and a 10k beach run was also going on that day so we were sat watching the crazy runners go by in an ice cream parlour when we realised the last bus had gone! so we stayed another night in nearby Miramar which turned out really well because there was a fair on and everyone from Zapotal had come down so we had another fiesta and left early this morning!

Liberia is real dustbowl country, its stifling hot here and we´ve found ourselves a room in an old building just off the central square near this gigantic white church, tomorrow at 6am we are catching the bus to the border at Penas Blancas and then its on to Lake Nicaragua where we are staying in Granada which is supposedly the place to visit at the moment in Nicaragua. Looking forward to checking the place out as its supposed to be quite colonial in style and the lake has lots of crazy wildlife in it, like sharks... so we wont be going in the water!!

Anyhow, as this is now the second time we´ve attempted to write this all out as the damned computer here lost it the first time we wont push our luck and write much more! just wanted to let you know that we´re safe and just having the most wonderful time, it´ll be sad to leave costa rica tomorrow it´s such a fantastic place.

All our love, hugs and kisses

Claire and Victoria xxxxx