Chillin at Samara beach

Hey guys!!!

sorry about the gap in messages-we've now moved to a different part of the country and have just found an internet cafe but its the slowest ever!!We're now in the poorer Guanacaste region on the west coast at the most amazing beach called samara and it doesnt rain so much and the bars are really cool as they all have hammocks-even the school too! (dont want to make you all jealous but the beach is lined with coconut trees and has a barrier reef and lots of surfers!)and our new spanish school is a hundred metres off it-we literally go to school then run into the water!we are loving it-this place is so much more chilled and safer than heredia.
before we left there we actually went into the capital san jose and there wasnt that much to see-it literally had one old building which turned out to be closed and so we ended up just wandering about and watching each others bags!we took the most amazing trip to get to samara beach tho last weekend. we went to the rincon de la veijha national park also in guanacaste with 9 other students from intercultura and stayed in the rainforest in chalets for two nights. we arrived there in the dark in a thunderstorm with fork lightening lighting up the sky and got there via the worst road ever-we had a land rover guide us part of the way and then even he gave up and left us to it!got there in one piece tho and when we woke up we were on a farm with stables right next to the rainforest. we had about 4 tico guides with us and we went on horseback up to the zip lines for the canopy tour which literally zipped us around in and above the canopy - vicky was very good at it but I was a bit of a hazard as I couldnt manage to slow myself down as I zipped into the first stations and the guides had to catch me! got the hang of it in the end tho and it was so cool, at some of the stations we even had visitors; we saw wild parrots and tucans, then we went galloping off (western style like cowboys) to the natural hot springs which were so strange-the area was volcanic and we rode through the forest to this stream in a glade and there were torqouise pools of warm (smelly) water-our guides said we could swim in it but we we happy just to paddle!saved the swimming till later when we swam in a waterfall pool to cool off-the rainforest's aircon!we had lunch in a hacienda in the middle of nowhere-there were so many bugs like we'd never seen before and then we galloped in the rain back to the ranch it was amazing-and we all had some pretty huge bites-lets just say we were so pleased to have brought our hiking boots-thanks mum! we were guarded that night by the ranch dogs who sat outside our doors all night and we had fireflies in the room with us not to mention several million leaf cutter ants (altho they were cool if you just left them alone) and a girl next door who sleeptalked in french!the next day we went on a walk in the forest and the guides pointed out trees and birds to us, we saw the stangulators around all the big trees, learnt that nearly all the fruit on the trees were poisonous,we even saw purple doves, babies in a parrot's nest and sleepy ferns which closed up if you touched them.

after all this we travelled to samara and so far have had a wonderful time - we've been surfing-check us out! and the hotel we are staying at is nice and clean and apparently there are howler monkeys in the trees altho we have yet to verify this! we've made some really cool friends-done yoga and salsa outside next to the beach and watched the worldcup this morning!!looking forward to england's game tomorrow morning-it'll be a 7am start for us tho get in!!
better go now as we are about to go surfing and need to catch some good waves!

hope you are all well, carry on leaving us messages!

lots of love,

claire and victoria xxxxx