Claire and Vic's Costa Rica Blog

Hello from Mexico!

well guys we are now in our last country before we come home its gone so fast!we arrived late on friday night after the journey from Belize which should have taken 7 hours was more like 14 oh well esta bien! border crossing was fine,and we managed to find a hotel to stay in which had a vacancy after trawling around the town at midnight looking for a hostel! luckily the hotel we were in turned out to be the nicest out of the few we looked at the next day and at only 7pound a night we get two double beds in a huge room with a fan and an ensuite bathroom!everyday the maids come round to clean the room and leave us a swan made from our towels!the first day it was very overcast so we spent most of it just looking around, its very different from anywhere else we ve been in than its like being in america basically but cheaper!the roads are really wide,theres lots of shopping and restaurants and cocktail bars to keep us busy and we ve a walmart at the end of our road!

ooh guess what the sun actually came out in Playa Del Carmen and now its roasting hot!! the beach is really nice and clean so we re enjoying just laying back on it!unlike all the other beaches so far the sand is really unique as it doesnt get hot and burn your feet-apparently its the coral in it that makes it so cool!theres alot of good diving round here also so we might get in one last dive before we come back we arent sure yet but we ve met up with our dive buddy russ from australia who we met in utila and hes checking out prices here for it but think we ll definately travel down to the maya ruins at tulum where there are supposed to be some spectacular city walls on a cliff overlooking the coast.

we had a pretty spectacular storm yesterday right overhead which lasted most of the mid-day so we were out of the worst of the heat at least taking cover in our hotel room and doing the odd bit of shopping!when we did come out alot of the roads were flooded and the policemen were standing in the water up to their ankles directing traffic! theres lots to do here for tourists (mostly italians and americans!) and we discovered we have a cinema over the road the other day so we saw pirates of the carribean!

we ve managed to get a flight arranged to mexico city for our connection home-we will fly on monday morning and arrive in mexico city at about 10 oclock so we ll just have time to look at the old historic part before we fly home!we ve managed to book a backpackers hostel for the one night we are there and its near the zocalo which is the main square where the president does his speeches and the oldest latin american cathedral in the world and it only costs 8pound a night!plus the architecture and revolution art there is supposed to be amazing we cant wait to see what the biggest city in the world is actually like after hearing so much about it on this trip!!

anyway its just a quick one as we have to get some tea-not from asda walmart tonight thought we d actually sit at a proper table!see you in just over a week! (we fly tuesday evening so should arrive in the UK wednesday around 6pm)


lots of love,
xxx claire and victoria xxx

alright mon!!!

hiya just a quick one from Belize City, we are great, got here ok yesterday morning,we ended up flying there in a little plane it was fantastic!!altho we managed to get stopped and searched and both got stuff confiscated lol! (vicky had a penknife on her and claire a pair of scissors so slapped wrists-hey this is the caribbean!!) Belize City is cool,its no way near as scary as the guidebooks make it out; its got a real caribbean atmosphere,its a real ramshackle and colourful place with a history of pirates and slaves,wish we were here longer!! yesterday when we arrived we went to Belize museum in the old prison and learnt all about hurricanes and maya history-very cultured arent we?!the prison itself was scary-it only closed in 93 and by that time they had 8 prisoners to a cell and the cells were 6ft by 8ft if that.today we went to see jaguars at belize zoo and we had a carribean breakfast at the bus station it was gorgeous! the people and food are excellent,we are only staying tonight though and then taking a bus tomorrow morning to mexico,we are going to playa del carmen on the yucatan peninsula-its between cancun and tulum (where there are lots of maya ruins) so we can hopefully see alot while we're there-cant believe how little time we've got left-although we are looking forward to seeing you all!!!anyway only a quick one as we've got to dash,

lots of love,

Claire and Victoria XXX

Hey guys,

sorry we havent been in touch for a while-we have been super busy! well where to start...

after the longest journey ever here through Nicaragua and Honduras we arrived last Friday in Utila island off mainland Honduras - where all the pirates used to live! We travelled on a really nice coach -for 14 hrs-yeah we know-up to San Pedro Sula in the north east coast of Honduras and stopped there for one night in a hotel that was a cross between a jailhouse and hospital-nice!then in the morning somehow we negociated our way through the markets to the bus depot and got another bus which took a further 4 hrs to the port of La Ceiba!!we then had to wait for the Utila Princess to pick us up and we sailed off to Utila at 4pm.

We arrived at about 6pm and were imediately deluged by millions of dive school reps all wanting us to stay at their dive school-we cut our losses and headed to the cafe to decide!after a trawl around most of Utila complete with heavy backpacks in the heat we found a place to stay-we were rescued by what have turned out to be our guardian angels in central america-taz and monty from the uk who also helped us in nicaragua!!our dive school is called underwater vision and is right on the quayside with its own boat and dock and the rooms are 2pound a night not bad!!

the next morning we signed straight up for our open water diver PADI course after an overlay from Tatiana our teacher-she was a fantastic teacher originally from equador and she can speak spanish,english,portugese and french fluently! we checked out the amazing beach after that on the west coast and couldnt believe our luck this place is beautiful-so far we've been here nearly 2 weeks!! the sand is white and the sea crystal blue with tropical fish and everyday its been blazing hot!

at the weekend we had a social with the other divers lets just say the local rum is indeed very good stuff! our class mates are all really nice people, we were in class with Ryan from Canada who played the guitar, Christie from the US, Mark from Ireland, Russ from Oz, crazy Anna trainee police officer from Sweden, Mariah from Denmark and Johannes and Katrina from Germany.

unfortunately tho our long travelling caught up with us the following day and we were very ill for most of the weekend which was rubbish because we had such a good first night but then had about 200 pages to study on diving and physics by monday afternoon and we only had one small fan in our bedroom!!

Diving turned out to be really fun, Claire was a bit nervous to start with but she got over it and apparently we were really good dive buddies according to the divemasters!for every dive we got to ride out on board the Captain Josh to our dive sites and saw alot of the surrounding robinson crusoe stylee cayes around here which are just blissful. one is host to the famous sunjam party which takes place this weekend on the island sob sob! so far we've done 8 dives, 6 of which were on the reef surrounding Utila and we even saw a wreck the saturday just gone!! underwater it looks just as films on tv of it and we saw some amazing tropical fish including a big squashy sea cucumber and a giant lobster!

the course lasted a week and we passed all our exams so we are now certified to dive to 18metres -30ft!so any of you fellow divers who want to venture into the deep we're on... (not sure how the british version wil fair in comparison though!)

our last dive was saturday which was also the carnival on utila we were lucky enough to see it start because we were on the far end beach sunbathing...and we even got interviewed for Honduran tv-tele cuatro!!they really know how to do carnivals here-this one lasted a whole week and involved lots of street parties and lots of reggaeton we love it!! the festivities culminated on sat with the parade where they decked out all the minivans and golf buggies that they drive here with banana leaves and streamers and there were plastic beads everywhere, little girls shaking their stuff and boys on top of stacks of speakers MCing along to the musica!

People here speak with a really cool creole caribean accent and a mixture of spanish too so its sometimes hard to know which language to use!

since then we've basically been sunning ourselves on various locations around the island and eating banana bread which is absolutely amazing-claire could live on it its actually replaced chocolate!today we had a little adventure and hired out bicycles to ride around the island...in theory-but as we couldnt seem to find anything that we wanted to reach we joined our Danish friends on the beach did some swimming on the deck at the dive school then headed to the iguana station where a german expert showed us round their breeding programme for the endangered spiny tailed iguana that's only found on Utila Island. It was really interesting and actually quite sad because the locals like to poach and eat them and americans keep buying the mangrove swamps where they live to build houses on!!!..we left them a nice tip.

Plans from here onwards...our last full day will be tomorrow as we are flying on wednesday to Belize City direct from Utila in one of those tiny little aeroplanes which should be an experience! we will spend a few days there seeing the city and hopefully checking out their famous zoo with the jaguars and then we are back on a bus to Mexico where we hope to head to Tulum on the Yucatan Peninsula which is renowned for its Maya sites which should be interesting. Then we are heading off to Cancun to fly to Mexico city for a few days; then its vamos home to you guys in approximately two weeks-if Victoria's right lol!!

hope you are all well and still enjoying the sun-we've missed the hottest summer ever by the sound of it!!

Besos y abrazos (hugs and kisses)

Claire and Victoria XXXXXxx

PS girls back home keep us updated on the goss and Victoria is still in search of a Lost update Jo or Claire!!! XXX