claire.vic

Hello kids!

just to let you know that we arrived in Nicaragua safe and sound yesterday afternoon, was a bit of a shock to leave Costa Rica and reach the hustle and bustle of Granada!

We are in a lovely backpacker hostel called the Oasis in old colonial Granada on Lake Nicaragua,the place we are staying in is very atmospheric and relaxing,its in a really old historical building right in the centre. Yesterday afternoon when we got here we went for a walk around the town and it really is the most beautiful place, lots of crumbling cathedrals and squares and horse drawn carriages!today we went to nearby Mesaya on the bus to check out the artisan market it was very good, lots of traditional crafts and art,I`ve bought a nica doll tho and victoria thinks she`s a bit scary!

its very different here to Costa Rica, it all looks very different, the people are alot more darker and more indian looking and the street layouts are more eclectic and alot poorer nicaragua is actually the poorest central american country so there`s lots of oppportunity for volunteer placements if only we had more time. its also lots cheaper than costa rica so we are going to get to practise our haggling skills!Ooh and the local beer here is only called Victoria!**insert your own gags we dont do brackets!**

we left Liberia yesterday at 6am and took a bus to the border, it wasnt anything like we expected, for one thing it was down a country lane amidst a load of trees!we just walked in and got our passports stamped then walked thru another dozen checkpoints,paid some american dollars then they opened this metal gate and we were in Nicaragua!the roads were all dirt and the buses all painted in mad colours and jam packed with people and vendors trying to sell you things!we`re going to buy lots of copied reggaeton music for you to enjoy back home lucky you!

we managed to find a bus to a place called Rivas which looked like what we would have imagined mexico to look like with all the chaos and noise then we hopped on a bus to Granada and found the hostel after some other backpackers recommended it-its fantastic, free internet (which is how im writing this right now), hammocks around the spanish garden in the centre and a little pool. we are staying in a dormitory with really high carved ceilings and fans thankgod-its hot! and all for 3 pound a night!we have somewhere to lock our things away and its really quiet away from the hustle and bustle of the main streets, so far so good!

anyway i must dash the shower is calling me i feel really dusty and dirty right now!

lots of love,

Claire and Vicky XXXx

PS photos are coming Peter and Catherine, Victoria is working on them right now!!

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

!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!

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!!!!