Cahuita

Hola Amigos,

We're in Cahuita, about an hour from Limon on the south Caribbean coast. It's amazingly hot here, even at 9am it's about as baking as any summer's day in London, which I suppose is good since we've been moaning about the rain quite a lot. Here are Lou and Ben's top five ways to cope with baking hot weather and 90% humidity.
1) Worship your fan. Sit directly in front of it, as near as you can possibly get without actually sitting ON it, for a good few hours a day.
2) Since the smallest of tasks suddenly becomes a gigantic schlep requiring superhuman willpower and effort to complete, set yourself small, manageable goals for the day. Such as, today I am going to change some travellers' cheques and then probably sleep a bit, and then maybe get some dinner. Be proud of yourself after each tiny thing you do, and then repeat number 1.
3) Have a siesta. Have lots of siestas! Followed by some number 1.
4) Buy lots of water, but not in restaurants because they absolutely rip you off. Instead, don't order drinks with dinner, which will cause the serving person to give you a look that communicates that you have just massacred their family. Eat your creole food slowly and with plenty of bread and salad, since really what you need is a big glass of coke with it. When you are finished eating, walk calmly round the corner and down a 2 litre bottle of water as fast as you can to stop the burning pain in your mouth. Sitting in front of the fan will help too.
5) Get a hotel with airconditioning, and bring more than two books for a month's holiday (doh), and avoid much of the above.

So, we're probably going to move on tomorrow, to Puerto Vieja de Talamanca which is about 15km further down the coast, where it sounds like there's a bit more happ'nin', and also for a change of scenery. It's nice here and good to get out of the cultural homogenity of the rest of the country so far, people speak a sort of creole/patois here, kind of a combination of Jamican, Spanish and English which we can inexplicably sort of understand. People are more genuinely nice here too, and there's lots of character.. currently I can hear the local school's children having a loud drumming session, which is fine since I don't have a headache today. Yesterday maybe I would've seen it less as 'charming' than 'bloody annoying'. The beach here is beautiful, it's a national park since there's some of the last remaining coral reef here, and the sea is very clear turquoise and lovely and calm for swimming. Unfortunately, though, that's about all there is to do around here. You can sit on the beach but there are zillions of crabs, which I find quite sweet and fascinating to watch from a distance, but when they're within a 1 metre circumference of me I like them less well. (Un)surprisingly, we don't really like the tourists here either, probably because we're terrified that we might be lumped in with them. I finally heard my first British voices, belonging to some supercool surfer dudes on the bus down here.. very exciting!!
Also, I forgot to mention this a while ago, but here in Costa Rica the word supermarket is abbreviated to 'super', so they're called things like Super Anita, or Super Safari, or, our personal favourite, 'MegaSuper'. Also, while it's better than in India (where their toilets were really just a hole and your loo roll was just your hand, a tap and a jug), here they have virtually no water pressure so you can't throw toilet paper down the toilet, it has to go in a bin next to you instead. The bins don't generally have a lid. Lovely.

So with that exciting newsflash, it's about 11.45am and we're off for lunch quite soon, perhaps followed by some lazing around in the hammock. Hope all is well there! Missing you all lots and looking foward to seeing you and the country in 12 days.
xxx Lou and Ben