I can surf!

Hi! How's it going? Is everyone excited about a long weekend? I didn't learn it until today, but apparently it's a long weekend here in Guyana too. We already had plans to go away Friday afternoon until Monday morning, but I guess it will be nice to have a day around here where I'm not even supposed to work.

This week has gone by pretty quickly. Not a ton accomplished, but for now we are for sure not going to be running the workshops that we came here to do and have to do other projects that we think will be useful. Stacey is busy working on some brochures for the locals about specific health care concerns that our colleagues here at Bina Hill think are not adequately being addressed (cervical cancer screening and nutrition). I have been helping the Medex here with his malaria prevention program and am trying to teach him how to use excel and other computer programs because while he is very knowledgeable when it comes to health care, he does not have much experience with computers. I also got to visit a health post for the first time yesterday AND rode a motorcycle for the first time ever! The health post was pretty barren and we didn't get to go until the end of the day, so there wasn't a whole lot going on. But I did get a chance to talk to the Community Health Worker for that town and get a bit more of a sense of how things work around here. I rather enjoyed the motorcycle ride there and back also :-) I think I'm going to see if I can go to the regional health centre in Annai and maybe shadow the Medex there for a day or so before I leave also.

Anyways, todays pictures are going to be of surfing :-) I still want to explain surf camp and where we were staying, but there's a lot to talk about so I'll save that for another day.
Here we are carrying our boards. This is the easiest way to carry the longboards, but it was doable by yourself if you needed to.
You can see us walking down the beach a little bit here. The beach we surfed at was about a 15 minute walk from the camp because there was too much reef (aka rocks) at the camp. The picture is taken from camp and the beach is quite a bit beyond the first point you see there but before the point you can see in the distance.
And here I am surfing! I like this one because I knew my picture was being taken and therefore was smiling, but it's not much of a wave so here's another one.
This actually looks like a decent sized wave I guess. Believe me when I say the waves seemed a lot bigger when we were actually doing it! Although I suppose when we were first catching them they were because they would have gotten smaller by the time I got standing up.
And here I am heading in. I would usually spend 1-2 hours in the water and I went twice a day (some people would forgo twice a day and just go once some days, but I am way too stubborn and was determined to get good at it :-P) This is also how the board was carried alone. My arms weren't quite long enough though, so when they got tired, sometimes I would carry it like this:
Pretty convenient, but after a while my head would start to hurt so I had to switch it up pretty regularly. Every once in a while my instructor, Brett, would be heading back at the same time as me and we'd trade boards. It was WAY easier to carry the short boards, that's for sure!

Anyways, I guess that's all for today! Since it's a holiday tomorrow I don't know whether the office will be open or whether the internet will be turned on. If it is I'll try to update, but otherwise, have a great weekend!

Kaila

Rock View Lodge and La Fortuna Pictures

Hi!

Long time no see :-) I just didn't really feel like updating yesterday, sorry. But anyways, Stacey and I had a lovely weekend at the Rock View Eco-Lodge which is probably the only thing around here which you could describe as luxurious. All of our meals were provided and were absolutely delicious! It was great to get a significant amount of fresh food and we even got soup and dessert at dinner which was a treat. We spent our days either hanging out on our porch in the hammock or by the pool reading or listening to ipods. We also got to eat many of our meals with the owner: a british man named Colin who has been living in Guyana since 1984. This weekend he also had a couple visiting him from Georgetown who seemed to be very influential people (the head of the bank!). From their conversations at our meals it seems like the 3 of them were in a social circle of Guyana which includes everyone of importance. From referring to all the politicians by first name, to talking about when this person or that person stayed with them it was definitely a unique experience. They were interested in hearing about our project and how we came to be here and everything. Colin is in fact a trustee here at Bina Hill and it was interesting to hear his perspective of how things work and about all the people we've been talking/answering to since we arrived.

So I realize I should probably be adding pictures of my weekend right now, but I didn't bring my camera to the office with me today and don't really feel like going to get it, so instead I'm going to show you pictures of my time in La Fortuna.
This is maybe the bottom third of the waterfall that I went to see. You can see how big it is because there are little specks to the right of it which are actually people. You could swim in the lake, but not get very close to the actual waterfall because it was WAY too strong.
A toucan! I saw and heard toucans all the time while I was in Costa Rica, but this was the closest I ever got to one. Actually at a look-off for the waterfall.
This is Volcan Arenal, the main reason most people come to La Fortuna. This is the best view of it I got, which was during my drive out to the rapelling tour I did (of which you already saw the pictures). I did go on a tour that took me to the volcano where I could see Lava, but it was pretty much just a little line of red in the distance and didn't look like anything in a picture. Pretty cool, but I can't show it here. I may have mentioned this already, but apparently there is a volcano in Guatamala that lets you get right up to the lava. So close that they roast marshmallows on it! Now THAT would be cool :-)
The other stop on my volcano tour was at the free hotsprings. Here is a picture of me taken by my tour guide. Like I described before, it was pretty much a hot river. Kinda cool. Also notice how white I am. I am by no means that white anymore :-) Although, I can't say I'm spending too much time in the sun here in Guyana so I might be this white again before I get home.
My final activity in La Fortuna was the hike up Cerro Chato the morning before I left. This is a good representation of the hike. Closest to the bottom of this picture is often what it was like with random roots at irregular intervals that sort of-sometimes acted like steps. Then there were areas more like the top of the picture which were actual man-made steps which were not very well maintained so while that was nice in some areas, it didn't really help much in others.
What I got at the top of the hike: a lake in the crater of the volcano :-) Quite beautiful for the 10 minutes I had before the clouds completely surrounded me, and also I nice refreshing swim before heading back down.
I had a lot of fun making this one. It is a combination of 6 or 7 pictures I took on the way down Cerro Chato of what the view was like. I believe if you click on it you can get a bigger view. If not I apologize, you're going to have to take my word for it that it was beautiful :-)

That's all for today!
Talk to you later,
Kaila

A day in the life

Since today was a relatively eventful day compared to the last few, I've decided to make my whole post about Guyana rather than add some pictures from earlier. This morning we got up and were accompanying Medex Sampson to a nearby village called Kwatamang to help him with his project which is trying to impregnate everyone's bed-nets with a pesticide to decrease the malaria. It was only about 2 miles away, so we were up and walking to the village. It was an interesting walk to say the least. Here is Stacey and Medex in what was usual for where we were.
Some of the way there and most of the way back we were carrying our shoes and walking through shallow water because it's the rainy season. I actually rather enjoyed this. Especially because usually if we weren't in the water we were in grassy areas where we got absolutely attacked by mosquitos. We've since learned that these types of mosquitos apparently don't leave itchy bites, but it was still not so fun to be swatting whole swarms of them away. The way back we took a different route which was way more water but almost no mosquitos. Quite pleasant in fact.

When we got there, we pretty much just observed a town meeting where the Medex explained what he was trying to do and what he wanted from them. Here is a pictures of a bunch of the people that were there.
Most of the meeting was in english, but some of it was in the local indigenous language of mukushu. It was the first time I'd ever heard it and didn't understand anything (except imported words like mosquitos and bednets and stuff). After the meeting, we asked them if it was okay if we took pictures and all the kids were immediately interested in our cameras. I actually let a couple of them take mine and take some pictures. They didn't really know how to work it though so I got quite a few pictures of the floor. Here is one that I helped them take of me.

Then it became a fun game for me to take pictures of them and then show them. They clearly had never seen a digital camera before and were fascinated to see pictures of themselves. Here are a few of the kids.
Then there was just the walk back here to Bina Hill. Here is a picture I took that I think gives you a pretty good sense of what it's like around here. The donkeys are everywhere and just sort of roam around. But we're told they all belong to someone. Some to individuals and some to entire villages.

And finally, on our way back, we got a nice view of some of Bina Hill from the back.The building you see closest is actually mine and Stacey's room. The two windows on the left are by our beds. The other windows are part of the open part that doesn't really have rooms or walls or anything. The blue and white building that you can see in the back is the main building where the office is and where we spend most of the day. I have better pictures of the area though and will add those some other day. Still 4 weeks left... tons of time for pictures!

Anyways, now we're just doing a couple hours of work before we head out for the weekend. We are going to be staying at the Eco-Lodge near the airstrip and are very excited for a bit of luxury like hot water, hopefully lots of fresh fruit and apparently even a pool! I don't think I'll be on the internet this weekend (although they may have wireless... who knows) so have a great weekend and I'll update again on Monday!

Bye!
Kaila

Not-so-wild life

So no comments today, I guess you guys all have lives... oh well! Maybe tomorrow :-)

So last night was a bit out of our regular routine (if you can call 2 nights a routine). Two americans who are part of a huge research project going on all over the Rupununi region ended up here for the night. And they have a truck! And they invited us out for with them to have a couple drinks! Yay! So rather than go hide in our mosquito nets as soon as the bugs get out, they took us to the Oasis which is a sort of little restaurant type thing. Not only was it nice to get out and be a little social for once, but we also learned a lot about where we are. The guy that we were with has been on this project full time for a whole year and a half and had lots of advice for us about what we should see before we leave and how to survive in the middle of nowhere. Before talking to them we had sort of decided it wasn't worth trying to get all the way to Boa Vista in Brazil because it would be too much of a hassle. But after talking to Jeff, it sounds like it would be worth it. Especially since it only takes a couple of hours once you get to Lethem, which sounds like it will be the most difficult part. Boa Vista isn't anything special, but it is in Brazil and it is the closest thing to a city that exists in these parts. He even gave us a suggestion for a hotel that has a pool and a restaurant that has pizza! We might have some adventures seeing as neither of us speak portuguese, but we've been told that if we really get into trouble we can go to the dentist because there is a Guyanese woman that works there who speaks English.

As great as it was to meet some more people (and we're probably going to get to see them some more because Bina Hill is sort of their homebase for the North Rupununi region), one of my favorite moments of the night was on the way home. I was in the back of the truck just enjoying the view of the millions of stars and the lightning far off in the distance every once in a while. I had forgotton how many stars you can see when there is no semblance of civilization! AND I learned that dusk is actually the worst time for the bugs and they die down a little once it actually gets dark so I may go out and try to enjoy the stars some more in the future.

And now for the fun part of the day: Pictures!! Today rather than give you some pictures of some places that I went I decided to make a collection of the mostly amazing (and mostly) pets that I have met along the way.

These are two of the 3/4 dogs at the Hotel Interamericano where I stayed in Turriabla (3 were actually pets there and there was one stray that was a friend who hung out all the time). The Golden retreiver was Allison's favorite because he was very calm and affectionate, but I like the black one because he was nuts... in a good way of course! He LOVED to play fetch so much that if his ball wasn't actually around, he would find anything he could and bring it to you to throw for him. This varied from a leaf, to a little twig to sometimes something that was too small for me to figure out what he wanted to throw. It didn't matter to him that it only went about 2 feet when you threw it.
This is Pelusa who belonged to Pete of Gringo Pete's in La Fortuna. She was the sweetest dog I've ever met and just sort of hung out all day at the hostel. I pretty much couldn't walk by without either playing a little fetch or giving a little love. She was awesome!

There were a couple cute little dogs at the Hostel Vista Serena in Manuel Antonio, but they didn't like hanging out with guests as much so I didn't get any pictures of them.


Meet Lassie and Lucy. Two of the three dogs at Zopilote surf camp. The whole week I had trouble telling the two of them apart. Only just now did Stacey inform me that one of them is wearing a collar, the other isn't... I'm pretty observant :-P The third dog was a husky and was beautiful but I don't know how she handled the Costa Rica weather with such thick fur!

And this is the horse that lived at the surf camp. He just sort of grazed all day like this, but sometimes he got a little rowdy. Definitely the most personality I've ever experienced in a horse! Side story: Our first night at surf camp when we had arrived at about 11pm and went straight to bed, I thought I heard the horse. When I said something along those lines to Stacey, her response was "It was probably just someone snoring" Little did we know, there actually WAS a horse!
And finally, here at Bina Hill. There are a bunch of dogs and one cat that just sort of hang out. I don't think they belong to anyone or are even fed by anyone (although they did let me give them my bones from the chicken we had at lunch yesterday). The american PhD that is based out of here has somewhat adopted her and her sister and mother. Her name is Iris, she is about 8 weeks old and she is just adorable. But I try to make sure to wash my hands after playing with her because she recently had worms lay eggs in her skin... who knows what other diseases she could be carrying.

I think that's it for the pets. Not quite the wildlife I showed before (and probably will show in the future), but I love them, and it just makes me miss Elly!

That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed!
Kaila

Things are looking up!

Hi!

I'm going to start by thanking people other than my parents for commenting :-) It does make me happy to hear from people and know that you are enjoying hearing my stories.

Anyways, so lots has happened since yesterday (although lots may be relative considering the pace at which things move around here). The chances of us getting approval for our workshops before we leave seems to be getting less and less every day. So rather than wait around doing not a whole lot hoping to hear from the ministry of health, we have decided to start our own project to keep ourselves busy and be useful while we're here. At the moment it looks like we're going to be putting together some brochures intended to be distributed throughout the district in health education concerning things which the people working here at Bina Hill believe are not understood well enough. These include (barring some changes of course) the importance of cervical cancer screening, healthy pregnancies and/or nutrition and maybe something about the risk factors for liver cirrhosis. It's all in the early stages and therefore likely to change and evolve over the next month, but it's nice to finally have a goal and something to be working on that lets us feel like we're being of some use to the community. We're also going to be working with some women who specialize in the local language and culture to make sure it is culturally appropriate and has both english and the indiginous language spoken here on the brochure.

Moving on, adding my picture worked extremely easily yesterday so I've decided to be a bit more ambitious today. Here are a few pictures from when I was in Tortuguero.

This was the first time I saw the ocean while I was in Costa Rica and actually the only time I was on the Caribbean coast. I think this was the first day I was there, but the next day I actually went for a swim. Found out later that that wasn't the brightest of ideas as there are crocodiles and apparently sharks around. No wonder there was no one else swimming!

This is while I was on the canoe tour looking down one of the canals into the national park. All the canals were kind of like this and the further in you went the narrower they got. It was pretty cool!

Look, a bird! Sorry it's not the greatest quality, and I really have no idea what kind it is (although that day it seemed like everything we saw was some sort of heron, so that could be it), but I still think it's a pretty cool picture.

Here is a view of the village from my canoe. I wish I had taken more pictures of the village itself because it was pretty cool, but you sort of get a sense from this. No new buildings (except I guess the resorts which were all outside of town and very expensive to stay in) and all very quaint, but also sort of dilapidated and falling apart at the same time. No roads at all, just dirt paths to walk around in, and you could probably walk around the entire village in less than half an hour. This is the canal side of the village, the other side was limited by the beach.

That's it for today, I hope posting still works with a bunch of pictures!
Talk to you later,
Kaila

Bina Hill described

Hi again!

So things aren't looking good for the project we were originally supposed to be doing. Apparently the Ministry of Health was really excited when they were first told about our project, and had pretty much given the go-ahead, but when they went to get the signature everything had changed and now it keeps getting sent to higher and higher levels to seek approval. Right now I think it's with the Chronic Disease Department. We're still hoping that it will be approved in time for us to run at least one workshop, but if that does not happen, our responsibilities are going to have to change. For this week, we are working a bit on the script of the workshop to try to make it as culturally appropriate for this area as possible. Other than that we are helping out the Medex here with the project he is already working on. On Friday we are probably going with him to a nearby village to help treat mosquito nets with an insecticide. I'll keep you up to date with what I'm doing, but can't say much else now because I really don't know.

Now I'm going to try to explain where it is I am. We are at Bina Hill which is an Institute which seems to do many things and provide many services. I haven't quite figured it out, but we are working here in the office which has quite a few computers for people to use and then upstairs there is a meeting area as well as a community radio station which broadcasts in the evening (apparently the only one in Guyana!). There is a kitchen in it's own little building with a cook that provides us with all our meals and there is a school, which isn't actually in session right now because they are on summer vacation. There is also a little store where we have gotten some bottled water, some toilet paper, and some insecticide spray to try to keep our room as bug-free as possible. Most people here live in these little thatched-roofed huts, but I don't think there are any available right now so we were put in this sort of barn like building where half is just open and has a hammock in it and the other half is our room where we have beds and shelves and a kerosene lamp. They seemed worried that we wouldn't be happy with where they put us, but personally I think I like it better than I would like the huts because with brick walls and zinc roof I feel like there are less places for critters to hide on us. I haven't seen the inside of the huts though so who knows.

We are pretty much in a Savannah so it's flat and grassy with some small mountains visible in the distance. The 'airport' was actually more of a dirt landing strip which dropped us off in what is the only semblance of a hotel in the community (actually called an ecolodge). I gather that the eco-lodge is also the only place to get ice and also where you can send mail and stuff. But that doesn't matter too much because Annai is actually 3 miles away from me and we don't really have any means of travelling there. That's about all I saw there.

It's really quite hard to describe where I am because it's so different from anywhere I've been, but I hope that helps a little. Now, even though the internet is uber slow I'm going to try to post a picture. If this works I think I'll try to post one each day. I'm going to have choose wisely because I think I'll be lucky just to get one and should try my luck with more than one. I've even made the picture smaller to try to let it load. Here is today's

This is a baby monkey licking smushed banana off my fingers! I know feeding them isn't a very good idea, but they were SO cute I just couldn't resist! I even had some of them sitting on my head for a while. These little ones were the cutest I think, and they were so gentle! Although you had to be careful to hold on tight to the banana or they would just take the whole thing from you instead of just eat out of your hand. I learned that the hard way. Oh yeah, and this was when I was in Manuel Antonio and went on the mangrove tour.

That's it for today. If this posts well, I might try adding more later or tomorrow.
Talk to you later!
Kaila

I have arrived at Bina Hill

Hello!

So it’s been a LONG 2 days of travel. We were up at 5am yesterday to get to the airport for our flight to Miami. After about 20 hours of flying, standing in customs lines and hanging out in airports, I had pretty much spent enough time flying to last me for a while. We finally arrived at our destination in Georgetown at about 1am and after a quick shower were ready to get a few hours sleep. Just as we were drifting off to sleep though, we found ourselves right in the middle of a short, but CRAZY thunderstorm. In fact, on of the lightnings was so close that the light and the sound were completely together also accompanied by a sound that sounded like a lightbulb breaking or something. Immediately after that there was this crazy smell that I was sure something had been hit and was on fire, but now I’m not as sure and think it might have just been the smell of lightning. Our power went out for about 5 minutes and then another 5 minutes later the storm was pretty much over and we could finally go to sleep for a whole 4 hours.

Anyways, this morning came entirely too quickly. We were up at 7am to get packed, get some breakfast and head back to ANOTHER airport. Literally the smallest airport I have ever been in. Our flight was a total of 7 people (although I think they plane had capacity for about 12) and I sat right behind the pilot. Close enough that I could keep track of our altitude and vertical velocity if I wanted to. Our safety announcement consisted of the pilot turning around in his chair, telling us about the exits and the jungle survival kit under the first seat and then warning us that we might smell food because he was going to be eating his lunch.

And now, more than 48 hours after leaving surf camp, we have made it to our final destination of Bina Hill outside of Annai, Guyana. I can’t deny that there’s some culture shock and than I’m not a little overwhelmed, but we’ve been fed and showed around and introduced to what seems like a million people. Now we have some down time to catch up on our email and whatnot before the Medex comes back and we can meet him (he is probably one of the people we will be working most closely with while we’re here). I forsee a very early night to bed tonight and the up tomorrow to start what feels like the real work (although from what I see right now it’s all very laid back and I don’t know how hard we’ll actually have to be working at any time… only time will tell)

I think that’s it for now. The internet here is super slow, but if I have the time I will still try to add a few pictures now and then. And I still have to fill you in on my week of surfing. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten.

Talk to you soon!
Kaila

Photos!

Hi!

Long time no see! So I guess I owe everyone a huge update. But you're all going to have to wait for a while to hear about surf camp because I now have my own computer and can show you pictures of my whole trip up to now. And I have 5 whole weeks in Guyana where I can't imagine there will be TOO much to add so I'm going to post the photos in stages (also because it takes some editing and I'm too lazy to do it all right away). Surf camp was awesome though. I surfed twice a day for 5 days straight and I'm pretty happy with my abilities! Yesterday afternoon was especially fun because the waves were pretty good for me (BIG and really sucky for anyone that's actually good and goes out to the furthest waves, but made some nice fast, consistent white water in where me and any other beginner surfs) and now that I can stand up pretty regularly I could just enjoy myself.

But again, more to come later.

Today I've decided to limit the pictures to Turrialba. I already got to add the white-water rafting pictures, so these are just the day and half or so other than that that I spent there, most of which was spent going to Volcan Turrialba.
This is the hotel I stayed at in Turrialba. Still one of the friendliest places I've been. Luis, who was the manager there was the most helpful person I've met in Costa Rica by far. And he cooked us AWESOME breakfasts!

The view from the upstairs of the hotel.
Volcan Turrialba on the way up (in the taxi)
The view from the top
Me in front of the active, steaming volcano crater. Notice I'm wearing long sleeves. This was one of the only times in the past 3 weeks that I was actually cold. We were up high!

One for my dad.
The crackers we shared with our cabbie got shared with the birds. Maybe not the most environmentally sound practice, but led to some cute pictures :-)
A cow just sort of hanging out on the road on the way down.

My friends Wade and Allison with Luis, the awesome manager I was talking about earlier. Our last night in Turrialba, Wade actually treated myself and Luis to dinner in a nice restaurant. What a treat! I also ran into them again in La Fortuna and then Monteverde, but I don't think I have any more pictures of them.

That's it for today. Stay tuned for more pictures, I promise they are coming! Tomorrow morning, Stacey and I are catching the 5:15am shuttle to the airport and are headed to Guyana via Miami. Getting in to Georgetown late at night then leaving for Annai early the next morning but after that we are settled for the rest of my trip.

Hasta Luego!
Kaila

In Santa Teresa

Hey!

Quick update because I'm not spending too much time on the internet. Stacey and I have arrived safely to our surf camp, which entailed a LONG day of buses boats and taxis. I can't even imagine how long it was for Stacey having flown from Canada that morning. We didn't get in until like 11pm and everyone else was asleep so it was a little strange, but now that we've been here a couple days and are getting used to our surroundings we're getting settled in and are able to relax. We surfed twice yesterday and once this morning (lesson later this afternoon). Surfing is fun but boy is it tiring... and HARD!! I think I'll be in better shape after this week than I have been in a while.

Anyways, not much to report. It's a pretty laid back place and I think will be a very relaxing week (other than the surfing I guess). No internet at the camp so I likely won't be back on the internet until we're back in San Jose on Saturday.

Hope you're all having a great summer!
Kaila

San Jose... again

So here I am back at my old friend Hostel Pangea in San Jose. Not much to report since yesterday. Spent last night with a few german girls and 4 american guys who lived up to every stereotype about americans you can think of. At first I thought they were just joking, but as the night wore on it never stopped and I just kept getting less and less impressed with them. Good thing I've met so many nice Americans or I would start thinking that stereotypes are always justified.

My bus this morning was a direct bus from Quepos to San Jose... I know, only one bus, what a luxury!! Unfortunately, the supposedly 4 hour bus got stopped in construction (or something like it... I couldn't quite figure out why traffic had stopped for so long when we finally drove by it) for almost 2 whole hours! Without moving! Ugh... but anyways, I made it fine and now I'm getting the last touches of organization needed to pick up Stacey and make sure we make it to Mál País tomorrow without any hitches. I forsee tonight being another relaxing night with no plans of leaving the hostel or getting into any adventures or anything.

So since I have no news today and the internet is free, I have a present for all of you. I decided to make a map of where I've been:

Sorry for the crudeness of it, but was just using paint to edit the map I found. Yellow dots are the places I actuall stayed and the blue dots are places I had to change buses. Notice all the blue dots getting to and from Tortuguero on the Caribbean coast. While I have by no means seen the whole country, I think I've done a pretty good job of getting a good representation of it. I'm surfing on the very southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula which is the big peninsula on the northwest corner of the country. It was kind of a fun little project, hope you enjoy looking at it!

That it for now I guess. Talk to you later!
Kaila

Manuel Antonio

So now I'll do a real update about what I've been up to. Not that it's all that much really. My first night here I met a bunch of people that have started travelling together: an american, an israeli and 2 swiss. Was kind of cool because it's the first time I've used any significant amount of french on this trip. While we were hanging out, one of the owners of the hostel convinced me and the 2 guys to go on their Mangrove tour the next morning. So there I was up bright and early yet again, but boy was it worth it! Saw a bunch of the same animals as I've seen already, although Mangrove is very different from rain forest so that was kinda cool. But for sure the highlight of the tour was when we got a whole family of monkeys to hang out on and around our boat for like 20 minutes while we fed them mushed up banana! I know probably not the best thing to do for the environment, but they were SO cute and it was SO fun! I think my new friends have a bunch of pictures of me with a baby monkey on my head, so I really hope they keep to their promise of sending me pictures. The other most interesting part of the trip was they found a snake sleeping in a bush. I, of course, was not nearly as cool and collected as I was at the serpenterium and immediately ran (or probably actually walked quickly) as far away as I could (which wasn't far since I was on a boat) as everyone else got to within a couple of feet to try to take a good picture. I know it was a harmless snake, but that doesn't mean I want to voluntarily get close to it!

Anyways, we were back from the tour relatively early and all 5 of us headed to the beach for the afternoon. Relaxing, and not too eventful. Exactly what I needed! Last night we all hung out again and called it an early night. This morning my new friends all left together heading a bit south where apparently you can swim with dolphins. So I've had a full day to myself where I went to the beach, slept in a hammock, listened to my ipod, read my book and enjoyed the view from the hostel. Pretty full day eh? Now I'm planning for a little more of the same for the evening. Maybe I'll make some new friends or maybe I'll just call it a night early. Tomorrow I'm up and off to San Jose where I'm meeting up with Stacey on Sunday.

Talk to you later!
Kaila

How to tell if a snake could kill you

So rather than tell you what I've done today, I decided today to make my post educational and I am going to teach you what I learned about how to tell a poisonous snake from a harmless one. Although I think this information may only be good in Costa Rica. But it's a touristy place... many of you could be here someday!

To start, there are 3 types of venomous snakes here in Costa Rica:

1) There is a venemous sea snake, which I believe is pretty distinct in that it has a yellow bottom with a green or blue top and IT'S IN THE SEA. The good news about this snake is that it has a tiny mouth and is very unlikely to ever bite you unless you try to pick it up. The bad news is that because of this Costa Rica does not make any anti-venom for it so for gods sake, if you see one of these, don't try to pick it up! Also, if it comes out of the water, it's probably old and dying, so no need to worry.

2) The coral snake. These are the colorful ones that are generally black, yellow and red. The way to know if this one can kill you is by the order of these colors. If it goese red-yellow-black-yellow then it is deadly, if it goes red-black-yellow-black, it is harmless. Got that? No, me neither, but another way to remember that is that "Red and Yellow *add something here that rhymes with yellow that means stay away!*, Red and Black is a friend of Jack"

Okay, now that we've gotten that straight, there is an exception. Some coral snakes only have 2 colors: Red and Black. In this case, the only way to tell if it is venomous is to look at the banding. If the bands go all the way around the snake, it can kill you, if the bands are only on the top or only on the bottom, it's fine.

3) Did you think Coral snakes seemed confusing? Well now we're on to vipers, which seems to be a little more nuanced. There are several ways to tell the difference between vipers and harmless snakes that look sort of like vipers, and they all involve looking at the head (at least those are the ones I remember)

• looking from the top, vipers have triangular heads (because of the venom stored in the sides of course) whereas the harmless ones have more straight heads
• also from the top, the scales on a viper's head are big, whereas the harmless ones have little scales
• looking from the side, vipers have a more pointy nose, whereas harmless ones tend to have rounded noses
• again from the side, vipers have 2 'nose holes' (one actual nose hole and a heat sensor) whereas harmless ones only have the nose hole
• vipers are nocturnal and so basically close their eyes during the day so look like they have cat eyes (slits for pupils) whereas most harmless ones are diurnal and have round pupils. However, there are harmless nocturnal snakes that have cat eyes too so this one isn't perfect)

These are all that I can think of. Good to know right?? However, I don't know about you, but for me if I do see a snake I am 100% sure that I will not be taking a closer look to see if I can tell if it is poisonous or not. I will be running in the other direction.

Anyways, that's all for today. I'm not planning on doing much except my laundry tomorrow so I'll update you on today and tomorrow then. I'll give you a hint though. I may be okay with looking at snakes that are separated by a pane of glass, but I was by no means as cool as that when there was no glass!!

Buenas!
Kaila

P.S. Lots of cool flowers here, but I don't know the names of any of them... sorry

Long time, no see

Sorry for the delay. Not only was the internet in Monteverde unbearably slow, but come on, I'm in Costa Rica! Sometimes I have better things to do with my time than make sure my parents know I'm alive (but granted, that's important too),

So where did I leave off? Oh yeah, done rapelling, going to hike Cerro Chato. Did I mention that it was up a volcano? Well, I think the key word there is UP because boy was it tough! Basically an hour and a half of hiking straight up, two thirds of which were not very well maintained steps, some of which were about the height of my waist. Needless to say, I was EXHAUSTED by the time I got to the top. In fact, I saw the sign saying it was 120m down to the lake in the crater, looked at the stairs down and seriously considered not going down there because of the thought of having to climb back up them. But I had gone that far, I may as well get the satisfaction of going for a swim (and I was soaked by sweat anyways, so I didn't really have anything to lose). I am proud of myself for doing it though, and the crater was definitely beautiful.

The way back down was immesurably easier, and I felt bad for all the people I saw on their way up (only 5 of 6 groups), each of which asked me a variation of How much further? When I got back to the hostel, I had an hour or so to get organized, change and repack my bag a little before the Jeep-Boat-Jeep arrived. I've heard from other people that it's not all that fun, but my group was not very big and it was a relatively clear day so I thought it was pretty cool! The scenery was awesome and quite a bit different than what I'd gotten used to seeing (more clear fields... I still haven't figured out if they're natural or forrested, but either way it's beautiful).

Arriving in Monteverde, I again ran into my friends from Turrialba, so once I got settled in we went out for dinner again and were able to catch up one last time before our paths differed. Then I was exhausted (remember the hike was the same day) so I passed out and slept for about 11 hours. Yesterday was my only full day in Monteverde, and it was jam packed. I had decided that I would take a bit of time off from hiking, but I was still in the mountains so pretty much everything I did involved walking in some way. The first adventures was a canopy tour which, if you're not familiar, is a tour involving mostly zip-lining... kind of like this:

It was pretty fun, and the long lines went across a big canyon so you had like 20 or 30 seconds while you were going across to just admire the expanse of the view and being so high up the hawks were flying UNDER you. I was lucky too because I think yesterday was the clearest day here since I've arrived so I got quite the vistas.

Anyways, also included in the canopy tour I decided to do was a tarzan swing, which I originally thought meant swinging on a rope and jumping in the water. But I was wrong. As it turned out, I was the first one of my group to get to the tarzan swing. Basically I got to the top of this platform about 10m above a lower platform. The guide hooked me up to some ropes and told me to stand on the edge and bend my knees. Sort of like this:

I was a little freaked out, not really sure what was going to happen, but I eventually did it to his approval, at which point he pushed me off. Here is my reaction:
After the initial shock, it was just a big swing and was actually a lot of fun! Here I am actually enjoying it:

Anyways, I think that was the highlight of the tour for me, but I can't complain about the rest of it either because it was all awesome :-)

For the afternoon I decided to check out the Butterfly Gardens (again trying to avoid having to hike a lot, but it was about a 45 minute walk there), which turned out really cool. Included in the price of admissions is a free tour and our guide was very knowledgeable. I feel like I learned a ton about not only butterflies but other bugs too... and saw some beautiful butterflies also. As I was leaving the butterfly garden, a couple of travellers that had been on my tour were walking back also, so we started talking. Turns out they are the first brother and sister duo that I've met yet, which made me happy because it reminded me of when Tim and I were travelling together :-) They were pretty cool (and half Canadian!... but have lived in England their whole lives), and actually convinced me to go to the Serpenterium... Yup, you read right... I went to the serpenterium!! I was super nervous at first but I ended up enjoying myself, and the only thing I wouldn't do is go near the rest of the group when they were getting to hold a little snake. There's no way I was going near a snake that wasn't behind glass! And boy am I glad I didn't because when the guide took him out of his thing, it bit him!!! Needless to say, no one actually volunteered to hold it after that.

Anyways, I saw lots of snakes, some venomous, some not. I also learned how to tell if a snake is poisonous just by looking if you see them in the wild, so I actually feel much better about them than I used to :-) By the time all my adventures were over yesterday and I got a shower it was getting late so I decided to forego the internet and get to bed at a decent hour because my bus left this morning at 6am.

Now it's 4pm and I just arrived in Quepos where I am staying at a hostel outside of town which seems rather nice, but I'll find out later when I get more of a chance to explore. I think I'm going to spend my final 3 nights before I have to head back to San Jose to meet Stacey here. I'll probably try to just relax and hit the beach tomorrow, but I also kind of want to either rent a kayak or find a kayaking tour to go explore a nearby mangrove or something.

That's it for now! Hope this update makes up for the days away :-)
Kaila

Feeling a little lazy

So I was looking forward to showing you all some pictures today, but turns out this computer fits every type of memory card EXCEPT mine. So no pictures today. I'm also not particularly feeling like writing a ton about what I've been up to but figured I better write something so my parents know that I'm still alive.

The volcano tour last night was pretty cool, hotsprings also.It was actually a very nice night to be watching the volcano so I saw avalanches of lava (which from the distance I was wasn't very big but I still thought pretty impressive). The volcano actually erupted in 1968, destroying 2 whole villages. It's been active ever since (hence being able to see lava), but apparently is more likely to keep goign like this until it goes dormant again rather than erupt again any time soon. But volcanoes in general seem very poorly understood and are quite unpredictable. The hotsprings were a little unreal because we were in a normal river (think smaller than the river in Wentworth), but it was hot! Very weird sensation, but also pretty cool.

This morning I was up bright and early for my canyoning tour which I absolutely loved! I wish I could do it every day, but unfortunately (well... not really) there is way too much to see in this country to be able to do things twice (not to mention I can't really afford it :-P) But basically what it entailed was making our way down a small river for about 2 hours. So much of it was just trekking through the water and sometimes jumping into small pools, but there were 5 places that we had to actually rappel... so much fun! 3 of them were small and sort of like climbing down but while attached to a rope, whereas there were 2 really big ones (120ft and 200ft long) where you basically went straight down, except when the guides swung you into the waterfall to make sure you got wet. I feel like it's pretty hard to describe, but it was awesomely fun.

Anyways, I don't really have any plans for this afternoon or this evening. I was thinking about making to a local swimming hole, but there are lots of locals there, so I think if I went on my own I'm likely to get harrassed quite a bit... plus I just had a shower and it's not very often that I feel clean and dry, so I think I'm going to try to keep it this way for a while. Tomorrow morning I'm hiking up Cerro Chato (the dormant part of the volcano where there's a lake that you can swim in in the crater!) and then off to Monteverde by Jeep-Boat-Jeep in the afternoon.

That's all for now! Hope you all had a great weekend!
Kaila

La Fortuna, Part 1

Hello there!

So here I am in La Fortuna, what seems to be one of the more touristy places in Costa Rica (and on everyone's list of places to go because not only did I have dinner with the couple I met in Turrialba, but also ran into the guy I did the turtle tour with here today!). But I am staying at Gringo Pete's which is just lovely. Not very big (I swear it only fits like 30 people max), super cheap and provides the cheapest rates in town for the millions of different tours you can do.

This morning I decided not to do a tour at all and instead headed out on my own (well, with 2 of the other people in my hostel) to the Catarata de La Fortuna, or in other words the waterfall. It's a 70m high waterfall in the middle of the rainforest that is unbelievably beautiful! I´ve just realized that this computer may fit my camera memory chip, but I didn't bring my camera with me so I'll try to upload some tomorrow. Anyways, it was quite the walk down into the canyon where you can actually swim in the pool that the falls goes into (although not right under it because it is WAY too strong). We found a tour group that seemed to be coming from the other side of the canyon, so we took our chances in heading back up the other side. It was a cool little hike with a swinging bridge and some zip-lines at the top, but as we were walking down the road to find the exit, someone stopped us and told us it was private property and we weren't allowed to get out that way! So back down to the bottom we went, back across the river and all the way up again the way we came down in the first place... ugh! We were going to walk the 5km back downhill to the hostel (we took a cab up), but after the 2 whole trips down and up we were hungry and tired so grabbed another cab.

It hasn't really been all that long since I've updated, so not much else to say. Got my laundry done for the first time since I've been here and it feels GREAT! It's so humid here that everything ends up feeling damp at all times even if you haven't worn it. I'm getting used to it, but it still feels awesome to have nice clean, dry clothes to put on. On tonight's schedule is a tour to the hot springs (for those of you that have been here, I'm getting taken to the free hot springs, which I believe is just a couple of swimming holes next to the river that feeds the crazy spa-like hotsprings) and then to see if the clouds will part for long enough for us to get a glimpse of the lava on the volcano. Then tomorrow morning I'moff on a tour to go rapelling :-) Can't wait!! If anyone around the hostel shows up that wants to do a crazy long hike with me, I may stay an extra day because there is an about 6 hour hike that goes to the top of a different, dormant, volcano with a lake in the middle of the crater that you can swim in. From what people have told me it's a crazy hard hike up but beautiful once you get there. Anyways, more about all that, and hopefully some pictures, tomorrow.

Hasta luego!
Kaila

P.S. There is an option to leave your name for the comment instead of anonymous, but if you are going to leave an anonymous post, please sign your name at the bottom... I know all these are likely my mother, but who really knows?

Sorry about the delay!

Now I know it´s probably just my parents worrying about me, but I apologize. I did end up staying another night in Tortuguero and was on the incredibly slow internet writing a very detailed entry about everything I had seen when the internet stopped working and I was too frustrated with it to keep going (I think I paid 3 dollars for 45 minutes of internet which amounted to what i can do in about 10 minutes at home).

Anyways, Tortuguero is unlike any place I´ve ever been. It's this small little village that survives off of eco-tourism but isn't very developed, so for instance, where I went for dinner was off of someone's kitchen and serving whatever they happened to be cooking that night and the 'reception' of the cabinas I was staying in was the owner's living room.

The main attraction in Tortuguero is the turtles (or tortuga in spanish), so I went on my 'tour' from 10pm to midnight which seems at first like an exercise in futility waiting around in the dark being attacked by mosquitoes (thank god I'm taking malaria medication because they LOVE me!) while you hope and pray that the ranger in your section of the beach finds a turtle in that time span on your part of the beach. Luckily, just when I was losing hope at about 11pm a turtle was spotted. Another half hour of waiting later and my group and 3 others got to take turns watching a green turtle (more than a meter long!) lay about 200 eggs then bury them in the sand to try to hide them from predators. It was a pretty impressive sight! Unfortunately we didn't get to watch her go back to the ocean though because it got to be midnight which means everyone is kicked off the beach.

Fast forward about 4 hours of sleep and I was up to do a canoe tour of the national park. It was early and I got rained on, but I loved every minute of it :-). Animals I got to see include (but may not be limited to):

-Howler monkeys - they are pretty hard to miss because they have a very apt name and make a ton of noise

-Tons of birds (tiger herons, blue herons, kingfishers, toucans and something crazy that likes so swim along with only it's neck and head out of the water... I'm sure there are more)

-Jesus lizards - I'm not sure if that is the official name, but they actually run across the water!

-A sloth!! Also very aptly named as they move very quickly

-No manatee, but we did see a section of sea grass that apparently the manatee had eaten (although who knows, my guide could have been making that up)

Anyways, by the time the tour was over it was only 9am and I was ready for a nap! I said by to Vince and went to bed for another few hours. The afternoon was pretty laid back. Mostly made up of a 2km hike through the park (more wildlife, more mosquitoes.... and an eagle!, and some weird crabs that were living nowhere near the water in little holes), and a long walk on the beach. Some of that walk was with the ugliest dog I've ever seen. It had no hair on most of it's face and legs, but was SO excited to be walking with me! I never touched it or even said anything to it, but it still had a blast running along beside me and playing in the waves until it got distracted by some other dogs. My walk was completed with my first swim since I've been here which felt great. I couldn't go in too far but the water was awesomely warm and the waves were fun to jump into.

Now for today: up early again to catch the 6am boat out of Tortuguero. I was going to take the bus from Cariari to San Jose then from there to La Fortuna, but the guy working on the bus to Cariari told me it was faster to go the other way so off I went. Today's trek was total of about $10, 11 hours, 1 boat and 5 buses. What I've learned is a) the guy didn't know what he was talking about because some american girls on my last bus had left San Jose at 12:30 and if I had gone there I would have arrived at 11am. Also learned was that it's a little unfortunate that I am a woman travelling alone. Ever since I've arrived most of what I hear from Tico men is cat calls so I pretty much ignore all of them, however today on one of my buses a guy sat down next to me and after talking to him (while somewhat trying to ignore him) for about half an hour he said goodbye and was on his way. I kinda wish I could talk to locals more often and not have to worry about their intentions.

I have now arrived safely in La Fortuna and when arriving at my hostel found the couple that I met in Turrialba staying at the same place :-) So we are headed out for dinner tonight, and they are off to Monteverde tomorrow (where I will likely be going in a few days).

That's it for today, now you can stop worrying,
Kaila

Tortuguero

So I left Turrialba this morning at 8am where I had to say goodbye to Luis, the most friendly and helpful hotel manager ever, and Wade and Allison, my travel buddies for the last couple of days, and was off to the Caribbean coast. I wanted to see the turtles, but wasn't sure whether it would be easier to get to Tortuguero (more well known for the turtles) or Parismina (actually closer to Turrialba, but unfortunately quite difficult to get to unless you leave at like 5am). 7 hours, $10, 4 buses and a boat later, here I am in Tortuguero :-) It is this tiny little village on the coast that is mainly for tourists to see the turtle nesting sites and is only accessible by boat and therefore only gotten around by walking. It's extremely cute and very relaxed. Originally I was going to stay 2 nights figuring it took me so long to get here that I may as well stay for a while, but as soon as I arrived where I was going to stay I met an American who is going to do a Turtle tour tonight, a boat tour tomorrow morning and then head out after only one night. So I'm going to join him for the tours and unless I still feel like there's more to see, I may to the exact same thing because there's a lot to see in this country and only so much time to see it in!

Today has by far been the hottest day yet, and the buses I took were by no means comfortable (usually cramped, making it especially so with my backpack on me also) so it's nice to finally be on the ocean! The waves are pretty big and it doesn't seem like anybody is actually swimming, so I don't think I'll head in but I'm definitely going to go for a walk along the beach until it starts raining on me. It had been sunny out until about half an hour ago, but in the 15 minutes that I have been on the internet it seems to have clouded over which means we'll likely be rained on at any minute. I was asked what the weather has been like since I've been here. It has rained almost every day (all but 1 I think) but usually only for a couple of hours. For a while it was consistently in the later afternoon/early evening but the last couple of days it has been a bit unpredictable. I can't really complain though because I don't think it has stopped me from doing much except renting a bike yesterday afternoon, and I needed to get myself sorted out in terms of plans anyways. When it's not raining it hasn't been particularly hot (I was actually quite comfortable!) until today which was stuffy and hot and not comfortable at all, especially on overcrowded, un-airconditioned buses.

Better head out and enjoy the rest of the afternoon quickly! I'll update what the tours were like later.

Kaila

Happy Canada Day!

Quick update today to let you all know I'm still alive. We got a taxi up to the volcano this morning, but instead of leaving us about a 2 hour hike from the top like they told us he was going to do, he drove up a treacherous switchback dirt road all the way to the top (3500m above sea level). And unfortunately all the paths around the volcano are closed because apparently it's too hot. So we didn't get our hike in, but the volcano was awesome and considering it's rainy season we got some pretty spectacular views of the surrounding areas too. It takes too long to add pictures, and it's extremely stuffy in here, but I'll get some up eventually. So now we're back in Turrialba way earlier than expected. We may just relax for the afternoon, or we may rent bikes or something if the rain holds off and see if we can't get a little exercise like we had expected :-)

That's it for now! Hope you are all celebrating Canada Day in style! If I were still in San Jose (which I'm glad I'm not), I'd try to find the embassy and celebrate with other Canadians, but unfortunately I'll have to figure something to do out here with the American couple that I've been spending all my time.

Buenas Tardes!
Kaila