Jun 2006

Hi guys,

just a quick one to let you know that we'll be leaving earlier than planned for Puntarenas tomorrow instead of saturday as our teaching project has finished early,we've had a minor hitch with it, and we've been given the option to move on to our next project. We're excited to be starting our next project and seeing a bit more of Costa Rica and what its like in the mountains! Keep you informed soon as we can find an internet cafe,

Lots of love,

Victoria and Claire XXX

Hey!

hope you are all well, congratulations Leanne!!! and happy birthday Jo!!! we´ve moved to volunteer now and we´re in the back of beyond,watched the england game tho on tues with a load of portsmouth fans strangely enough!it´s much hotter and humid than samara as we are closer to the rainforest and further along the coast, the nearest town is montezuma and its got internet so we´re taking the opportunity to update now before we travel back to our rainforest village in a bit! took absolutely ages to travel here last sunday from samara along the worst roads we´ve ever seen-montezuma is really just along the coast from samara but the roads are that bad it took 4.5 hrs!! when we got here, we´d literally just stepped off the bus with all our gear and were about to board for cabuya (where we are based) when vic well and truely made an entrance and fell flat on her face with all her baggage in the middle of montezuma!! luckily she wasnt too hurt and escaped with a few grazes;good way to meet the locals anyhow!!so far everyone´s been very friendly tho-on the way there we had locals guiding us to the cabinas and more importantly where to get off the actual bus-cabuya´s not really that obvious considering there´s basically nothing there save a restaurant and a lot of dogs!!

its very well...how do you put it...basic where we live!! school is just along the road from us and we have two classrooms with one male teacher and one female teacher, it´s got no resources and we teach in the unfinished shell of their new hall-the first day we literally had to set up our classroom-we have a victorian blackboard and 12 tiny wooden desks-the first day the kids tipped one over and a scorpian ran out!! we are only here for this week and tho then we´re off to punteranus in the mountains.

the actual place here tho is very beautiful,its on the pacific coast with waves crashing everywhere and loads of hippies in montezuma so sure you´d all like it! right next to us just off the pebble beach we´ve got an island that we are looking forward to exploring. it´s very safe here, the kind of place where you say hello to everyone you meet along the road. we live in a...shack....in a wood next to a pebble beach. Its baaasic-claire´s lucky as she has an ensuite:well a toilet plus a "shower" which is basically a cold water pipe!!! when we arrived we realised it was actually rooms rather than a homestay but we are practising our spanish with the kids non the less!Rosaura our landlady was turning down claire´s room when we first got here and a bat was roosting there and flew out! it´s new roost is above victoria´s door in the corridor! walls are open to the elements at the top also so alot of companions come to visit!! first night a huge cockroach crawled onto claire´s back and she about screamed the place down!we´ve made friends with the cat now tho and last night we let her hunt in our bedrooms before bed and she caught it! also the german girls who were staying there the first week with us have very kindly left us their roach spray so we are now prepared! not as many mossies as in samara tho thankgod, just alot of fire flies instead which are way cooler as they light the whole place up! we can see monkey´s from the house balcony and today at breakfast a gecko ran up claire´s leg!

kids are very cute, we are teaching them loads of vocab, yesterday we went to the local nature reserve at cabo blanco-in the back of the warden´s pickup truck(!!) and looked for animal tracks with the kids and helped them make plaster moulds of them-we ended up with one good deer one and about twelve other squashy messes!

food is good tho-we are cooked for morning and night and can have as much rice beans and meat as we like tico stylee and there´s a local man there who goes around making monkey sounds all the time which adds to the entertainment!!-both missing the choice (and fruit) that we had in Samara (yeah we def were completely spoilt there!) but there´s some excellent coffee/icecream down in montezuma instead! By the way our last night in Samara was absolutely amazing-it had rained the last few days but that night was the clearest ever and it was all lit up with the brightest stars so we all went out onto the beach to get a better look and realised we were looking at the milkyway, then as we watched, Sarah our friend from switzerland and us all saw the same shooting star literally drop out of the sky-was a very special last night.

we have rented bikes now too so that´s cool, they are amazing trekking bikes with suspension thank god! although its only 4 miles to montezuma from cabuja where we are based the bus only comes every two hours and that´s on costa rican time!! its ok tho..all experience hey, we all need challenges right?!!

with love fron Victoria and Claire XXX

PS;

has anyone seen the latest OC?! oh my god!! if anyone saw it please comment-we randomly saw an episode in samara and couldnt believe what happened!!

PPS what´s happening in Lost? (from vic!)

PPPS; added to our total of 4 card games that we know this week by learning to play shithead - does anyone know if you can put a ten down whenever?!..even if a 7 has been put down before?!..it´s been causing issues over the dinner table card games!!

PPPPS; any questions/comments from you lot please forward!!!!

Hey!

hope you are all well, congratulations Leanne!!! and Happy Birthday Jo!!! we´ve moved to our volunteer project now and we´re in the back of beyond,watched the england game tho on tues with a load of portsmouth fans strangely enough!it´s much hotter and humid than samara as we are closer to the rainforest and further along the coast, the nearest town is Montezuma and its got internet so we´re taking the opportunity to update now before we travel back to our rainforest village in a bit! took absolutely ages to travel here last sunday from samara along the worst roads we´ve ever seen-montezuma is really just along the coast from samara but the roads are that bad it took 4.5 hrs!! when we got here, we´d literally just stepped off the bus with all our gear and were about to board for cabuya (where we are based) when vic well and truely made an entrance and fell flat on her face with all her baggage in the middle of montezuma!! luckily she wasnt too hurt and escaped with a few grazes;good way to meet the locals anyhow!!so far everyone´s been very friendly tho-on the way there we had locals guiding us to the cabinas and more importantly where to get off the actual bus-cabuya´s not really that obvious considering there´s basically nothing there save a restaurant and a lot of dogs!!

its very well...how do you put it...basic where we live!! school is just along the road from us and we have two classrooms with one male teacher and one female teacher, it´s got no resources and we teach in the unfinished shell of their new hall-the first day we literally had to set up our classroom-we have a victorian blackboard and 12 tiny wooden desks-the first day the kids tipped one over and a scorpian ran out!! we are only here for this week and tho then we´re off to punteranus in the mountains.

the actual place here tho is very beautiful,its on the pacific coast with waves crashing everywhere and loads of hippies in montezuma so sure you´d all like it! right next to us just off the pebble beach we´ve got an island that we are looking forward to exploring. it´s very safe here, the kind of place where you say hello to everyone you meet along the road. we live in a...shack....in a wood next to a pebble beach. Its baaasic-claire´s lucky as she has an ensuite:well a toilet plus a "shower" which is basically a cold water pipe!!! when we arrived we realised it was actually rooms rather than a homestay but we are practising our spanish with the kids non the less!Rosaura our landlady was turning down claire´s room when we first got here and a bat was roosting there and flew out! it´s new roost is above victoria´s door in the corridor! walls are open to the elements at the top also so alot of companions come to visit!! first night a huge cockroach crawled onto claire´s back and she about screamed the place down!we´ve made friends with the cat now tho and last night we let her hunt in our bedrooms before bed and she caught it! also the german girls who were staying there the first week with us have very kindly left us their roach spray so we are now prepared! not as many mossies as in samara tho thankgod, just alot of fire flies instead which are way cooler as they light the whole place up! we can see monkey´s from the house balcony and today at breakfast a gecko ran up claire´s leg!

kids are very cute, we are teaching them loads of vocab, yesterday we went to the local nature reserve at cabo blanco-in the back of the warden´s pickup truck(!!) and looked for animal tracks with the kids and helped them make plaster moulds of them-we ended up with one good deer one and about twelve other squashy messes!

food is good tho-we are cooked for morning and night and can have as much rice beans and meat as we like tico stylee and there´s a local man there who goes around making monkey sounds all the time which adds to the entertainment!!-both missing the choice (and fruit) that we had in Samara (yeah we def were completely spoilt there!) but there´s some excellent coffee/icecream down in montezuma instead! By the way our last night in Samara was absolutely amazing-it had rained the last few days but that night was the clearest ever and it was all lit up with the brightest stars so we all went out onto the beach to get a better look and realised we were looking at the milkyway, then as we watched, Sarah our friend from switzerland and us all saw the same shooting star literally drop out of the sky-was a very special last night.

we have rented bikes now too so that´s cool, they are amazing trekking bikes with suspension thank god! although its only 4 miles to montezuma from cabuja where we are based the bus only comes every two hours and that´s on costa rican time!! its ok tho..all experience hey, we all need challenges right?!!

with love fron Victoria and Claire XXX

PS;

has anyone seen the latest OC?! oh my god!! if anyone saw it please comment-we randomly saw an episode in samara and couldnt believe what happened!!

PPS what´s happening in Lost? (from vic!)

PPPS; added to our total of 4 card games that we know this week by learning to play shithead - does anyone know if you can put a ten down whenever?!..even if a 7 has been put down before?!..it´s been causing issues over the dinner table card games!!

PPPPS; any questions/comments from you lot please forward!!!!

Hey all!

We hope you are all well and having as much fun as we are (you hate us right now dont you!!) Lets just put it this way, life is coolio at the beach con muchas fiestas en la noche!

This morning we actiually saw some monkeys in the trees outside school in our break from lessons, it was a family of about 5 and they had babies with them, the romours have been proved true (although we are the last to see them - Victoria was convinced it was the British accent that put them off!). We also saw a huge iguana right outside our hotel room the other day!Our days in Samara have mostly revolved around the changing tide and classes but if we are not in class we are on the beach and visa versa! On Sunday we rented bikes with our friend Sarah from Switzerland and rode to Carillo beach which is just along the coast from Samara, it alot more remote and less developed compared to Samaras one shop! We set up camp and basked in the sun until the tide caught us unawares and almost swept us and everything we had away including the bikes! Luckily we made a quick getaway and biked off into the sunset and ended up in some remote town in the mountains eating ice-cream and cake!! The next morning we decided to take advantage of the bikes and left our hotel room at 6 in the morning for a leisurely bike ride before school at 8am, it was really beautiful with the mist rising and the wild horses grazing in the fields, all the local children were on the way to school and we followed them back!

The nights here are good as there are pleanty of bars to entertains us and our fellow school friends so we normally meet up around 8.30pm at one of the local bars, often in torrential rain wearing waterproofs which is a really good look!! The school has a really nice atmosphere as all the students go out together either drinking, dancing, eating or just hanging at the beach! We have made lots of new friends from Arizona, Texas, Switzeland, Quebec, to mention a few! We are still the only Brits here so our British accent is still a novelty to the fellow Americans, its cool though becuase we are teaching them all our street slang i.e. Mardy, blimey, Sausage roll (for you Amy & Denise) etc!

We have decided to extend our stay one more day and we are travelling to Montizuma on Sunday morning for our next set of adventures to begin!

We may or may not have access to the internet on our volunteer placements which start next week for a month but never the less keep the comments coming and please let us know your news (Leanne keep us posted!)

lots of love,

Victoria and claire xxx

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