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

Playa Samara

Good morning everyone,
I really don´t want to make this blog entry sound boasting or anything, but it´s going to be very difficult, given that we´ve found the most beautiful beach either of us has ever seen. It´s absolutely picture-postcard-perfect, with coconut palm trees, pale sands and sunny, breezy weather. Location-wise, we´re on the North-Western peninsula of Costa Rica (near Nicoya) which is about a 5 hour bus journey from San Jose. In any case, I feel that Samara is no less than we deserve, for the horrible travelling day we had yesterday - nothing bad happened but we found the less nice parts of San Jose, and then had a not-terribly comfortable schlep on a bus, which was like National Express, except there were, in addition to people on every seat, also people filling the aisles. And they played loud latino music, which was all very well and festive for about the first few 15 minutes or so, but when you want to sleep and the man sitting behind you and the boy standing in the aisle next to you (bumping against your shoulder every time the bus judders.. ie a lot) know and apparently love EVERY SINGLE SONG that comes on, and insist upon beating their hands against the back of your headrest, or jangling change, respectively, in time with the music... as I was saying, I´d like to think that we deserve this beachside paradise.
We´re staying in a place that wasn´t in the guide, in a house owned by an artist ex-pat from Arizona (whose maiden name is Smiley and who thinks she and Ben might be related), who is lovely and makes the most amazing breakfasts, to be eaten outside on the terrace (with coffee!!). There´s also a hammock, which was what sold Ben. We were planning to go to Tamarindo or Mal Pais or another beach, but the former is apparently hideously expensive and has become so popular with ex-pats and tourists that you don´t even realise you´re in Costa Rica, and the latter is difficult to get to without a 4X4 and only really for surfer dudes, which neither of us kids ourselves that we are. So we´re staying here for at least 4 nights, but because the internet is much more expensive here will probably not update for a while, and in any case we won´t be doing much of interest, apart from sitting, swimming and strolling around on the beach. In the interests of balancing out that boastful sentence, I feel I should really mention that it does rain here, an awful lot - both in terms of frequency and especially amount - so we´re going to have to do quite a lot of running back to the hotel, I think. The last afternoon we spent in Orosi, Sunday, from about 4-6pm we had THE heaviest rain I have ever seen in real life or on telly, to the extent that cooking in the outdoor kitchen involved a little more getting close to the elements than I´d normally like, although it was nice and cosy to hear the rain pelting down onto the tin roof overhead. Oh yes, and we tried to find the waterfall back in Orosi, assisted by a helpful family, but obviously Nano doesn´t keep up the trail in the wet season - we did, however, find the thermal baths, which seem to be where all Tico families go of a Sunday afternoon to hang out. Sort of like Homebase, really. The food is really nice and actually the cheaper dishes or ´tipico´are better - the Casado is a dish of rice, beans, salad and whichever meat or fish you want, and all sorts of condiments on the side, and they do wonderful drinks called Refrescos, which are milk or water, blended with the fruit of your choice - so far the banana and the guanabana (custard apple I think) are the best.
What´s happening in England? The tv here is either Spanish, or CNN which is showing mostly Hurricane Gustav and Barack Obama. Thanks for the emails so far, it´s lovely to read them and keep them coming :) And if you´re reading, just drop in a comment, even if you don´t have anything to say because it´s nice to hear from you.
Sending you lots of love and sun,
Louise and Ben xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx