Oct 2006

That was a wonderful experience. It looked hard for it to walk, really painful on these long claws. At times i thought it was just going to give up and have a lie down instead. I didn´t have my camera.

So the Caribbean is full of lots of nice little encounters like that. People give you words of encouragement in the streets. A wise man told me to keep my head up and not look at the ground. He said for real, keep my head up high.

Today a lady braided the front bits of my hair. She put this nice gel on it too. My hair was so dry and horrible it felt nice and fresh just like she said it would.

I´ve toured the whole Caribbean coast now. Went to an amazing place that was only accessible by boat. The boat ride was magical just as i imagine the amazon to be. Caimans basking at the sides of the river and lots of birds. I had a brilliant guided walk on the beach at night too to watch a turtle laying her eggs. But while I watched i felt like i was intruding on a private momnet. I felt a bit guilty about it. But loved the beach walk. The turtle was huge.

Then I stayed at a seaside lodge in another town, I could hear the waves crashing against the rocks when i went to sleep. It was owned by all these young boys who sat around in rocking chairs, and hammocks listening to reggae. I love the pace here. That´s my kind of pace. The people have been friendly too. The Caribbean is like a different world to other parts of Costa Rica. San Jose feels a million miles away, not just a 5 hour bus ride.

I went swimming in the sea too. the beaches here have flowers on them, and lots of little crabs running around.

things are going well..................

The butterfly garden was making me sad and giving me an upset stomach, so I left. It rained constantly and was always covered completely in cloud. I found the dark, damp nights alone a little claustrophobic. I didn´t like looking at the insects in the little glass boxes either. I wanted to let them all go, but I was supposed to catch more from the garden. So I decided that that wasn´t what I wanted to do for a month. There feels like so much I want to see here that there isn´t a month spare to do something I´m not happy with. After all, I may never get back to Central America in my life so have to make the most of it.
So I got up really early friday morning and got the 6am bus to La Fortuna, a touristy town with a massive active volcano overlooking it. It was very beautiful, but everyone kept speaking english to me and there were lots of North Americans everywhere. I stayed in a little cabin attached to a Costa Rican family´s house. The lady was really friendly and cooked me vegan breakfasts and called me isabelle (she liked my middle name, elizabeth more than karen).
So now I´ve had a rethink, and I have the travelling bug. I´m now in a jungle border town called Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, where I stayed last night. I´m waiting to get a bus into the proper Caribbean. So my new plan is to travel on the local buses right down the Caribbean coast. It´s lovely and warm and dry (well, less dry) on this side. Something I craved a little after the wetness of Monteverde. So I´m just going to take it as it comes.....I like the idea of being able to go and do whatever I feel like doing. The butterfly garden experience made me really appreciate the freedom I have on this trip. There´s plenty of time later for restrictions and routines. But for the moment, I have 8 weeks left to learn how to speak some Spanish in the past tense and see some life in this beautiful country.

I'm at the butterfly garden now. My head is hurting.....this morning I felt completely overwhelmed, and packed my bag and was ready to leave. Luckily the lovely girl in charge of the garden persuaded me to stay. There is so much to learn! All the insect names and their life cycles and relating it to Costa Rica and the whole animal kingdom and then on top of that trying to speak Spanish to the local people who work here. So this morning I woke up with no confidence and thought I could never give the tours and never be heard with my stupid quiet voice that cracks all the time. and my ear problem came back with avengence, making it even more hard to speak.

deep breath though......

this is really good experience for me. I could conquer my fear of public speaking if I can pull this off.

and i'm staying at the garden alone at night for the first week. which is quite an experience. massive spiders crawling up the walls right beside my head and crazy insect noises all around me. but this is why i came here.

so i'm trying not to run away and once again face my fears (not the spiders the speaking!).

the day got better though and i listened to lots of tours and tried to take in the information and chatted to the tica girls who work there, and then we all went out for a drink tonight.

so tomorrow i will give my first tour of the garden. unless i run away in the night......which i won't be doing...

Spent the weekend in Puerto Limon, on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was the carnival. What a fantastic experience that was! The main parade is next weekend, but there was still lots going on. Lots of stalls and soundsystems in the streets. Mucho mucho divertido to be had! The music was lots of bass heavy stuff with dirty macho lyrics, salsa and cumbian. Oh yeah and the big Costa Rica favourite, Reggaeton. Reggaeton is Puerto Rican, so all the lyrics are Spanish. I think it´s probably for the best I can´t understand all of the lyrics. There was teenage boys in the crowd, lighting up aerosols too, just like I´ve seen in the videos!

In the day time there was a children´s parade. We weren´t sure what was going on at first becuse all these boys were running so fast down the street with such a huge sense of urgency, it was quite frightening. Wondering what it was they were running from. But then when you watched for longer, there were older boys with these big papier mache heads on, and they would wack the other boys with the heads and then they´d all chase after each other down the street. Apparently it is a ¨´community joke´ and something which happens every year. It was fun to watch.

Then at night the streets just came alive with music and dancing. The people were so nice again, and I got to have some lovely chats in spanish with some limoneses, as the locals call themselves. So I didn´t want to leave, as the carnival goes on all week. I´m not usually one to leave the party when it´s in full swing, but I didn´t think it would be so safe to stay alone. Also I have the next stage of my journey....so i have commitments.

So tomorrow is Monteverde and the butterlies.....feeling quite nervous wondering what is in store for me. But excited too...

I felt like my Spanish was coming along really well until today. In class we started to learn the past tense today and I realised what an absolutely huge task this whole language learning business is. So I feel like I have a good grasp of the present tense now. But that took 3 weeks. It feels really sad to be leaving the school, when I am learning so much everyday. But I can´t really stay here for the whole time. I need to use the language I´ve learned to talk to people and build on it from there. The school and staying with Felicia gives me such confidence, I hope that I have the nerve to keep talking when I leave that security net.

So my last class tomorrow, and then at the weekend I´m going with some North American girls to the carnival at Puerto Limon. I wasn´t sure wether to go, because the big weekend is the following weekend. I´ve heard it´s dangerous too....well I´m drawn there anyway...I´ll be with other people. People say Notting Hill carnival is dangerous but I managed to stay safe and have fun there. So I´ll give it a go anyway...

I was feeling sad about the bird project not working out, so have been going all out to contact them, but there´s no reply. The phone line is disconnected, the emails bounce back, the website has gone. Well at least I tried all possibilities. So I´m off to the butterfly garden in Monteverde to be an english speaking guide on Monday. I have my own room in this really beautiful, remote area so am looking forward to that. I´m a little nervous about giving the tours, but just keep thinking that I´ve been speaking almost completely in Spanish for the last 3 weeks so how hard can giving tours in English really be? I might have to pick up tarantulas too! Wonder if I´ll be able to do that.....I´m looking forward to being in such a lovely, peaceful location after all the traffic and craziness of San Jose.

The photo is a typical scene of my life from the last few weeks. I sit at the table with Felicia and we chat and often she paints and I try to learn verb endings, but often get distracted by the amazingly tacky soap operas you get on Latin American TV. I think watching tele is a better learning style anyway, writing and rewriting verb endings doesn´t really stick in your head for too long...Haha that´s my excuse anyway....

Tonight I´m going out for dinner with some North Americans. They´re nice people but one of them seems to constantly talk about the price of things. He keeps announcing in a really loud voice how "that´s absolutley nothing" to him. I just cringe in my chair and hope that noone around can speak English. But of course they probably all can, and can understand every word of his arrogance.