Hi
I have just wrapped up what has to be my most physically active week of the trip. When last I wrote I was on my way to Ometepe with 3 Australian women (Alex, Kate, and Mazzie) and an Irish guy (Liam) where we met up with some friends from Granada--an Isreali guy (Mo), a Canadian guy (Ryan), a Dutch woman (Anouk), and a South African (Jen). This is another one of my favorite parts of travelling. We went for a bike ride-hike to a waterfall and I love being in cool places like that with people from all over the world. There were 9 of us representing 7 different countries.
The island was really cool though. In addition to that bike ride-hike, we rode bikes to see some petroglyphs, went kayaking to 2 islands that had monkeys on them (spider and capuchin), went kayaking to a swampy area where we saw a ton of birds, and then climbed a volcano. Remember how I said the volcanos were just hikes? Well this one wasnīt. It was a full on scramble over rocks and trees and crossing through mud bogs. Plus we gained something like 2500 feet. It was just up and down and lots of pulling and slipping. As a matter of fact of the 3 of us who went somehow I was the only one that didnīt wind up in the mud at somepoint. Unfortunately the summit of the volcano was in the clouds so there werenīt great views but it was a great trip because we just laughed a lot and got a lot of exercise. I havenīt been that tired in a long time. In our spare time on the island we managed to play shithead which is a really fun card game that Chad and I played in New Zealand.
After a couple of days on the island we came to a beach town called San Juan del Sur. Some of the people left after a day but 6 of us have continued to travel together. I went on my first zipline-canopy tour which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately I managed to get stuck inbetween platforms a couple of times and had to pull myself to the next station. But it was still a lot of fun whizzing through the trees. In case you donīt know a zipline is a wire that you clip onto and then just slide down. The tour we were on had 17 stations and covered a territory of 2 kilometers. We then travelled north to a small beach where we spend the past 2 days. It was really nice just relaxing on the beach and enjoying some sun. Plus the waves were really good and got to do some excellent body surfing. I even tried my hand at surfing and managed to standup once for all of 3 seconds. It was a lot of fun though so I may try to do it again in Chile.
Iīm off to Costa Rica tomorrow morning with Mazz and Kate. We are going to go to Montverde National Park and probably to Volcan Arenal. I havenīt done enough research yet so Iīm not sure what Iīm going to do there but Montverde is a cloud forest so Iīm sure that I will do some hiking and hopefully see a lot of wildlife. From there I will head to San Jose on Wed, go whitewater rafiting on Thurs and then fly to Rio de Janiero on Fri and Sat.
Love
Scott
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