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