Hello from Costa Rica!

Shing and I are sitting at our hotel here in Tortuguero on Day 3 of our Costa Rica vacation. We´re having an amazing time so far and are really happy that we took Zack and Sarah´s recommendation to come here to Tortuguero. For those of you who don´t know, this is a village of about 1700 people and the main trade here is tourism.

Actually, we just watched the most amazing community play EVER today that was performed in their local theater mostly for locals (it was all in Spanish). It was fantastic. It´s really hard to do this justice though - imagine a school play, but with adults also acting, add a little bit of improvisation and a director who would turn off the lights when he thought the scene was over. So start with that and then throw in a whole bunch more chaos. (Wait, Shing is losing it right now as she recollects the scene.) You need to factor in a very loose script where sometimes two scenes would occur simultaneously, but with no one speaking audibly and then add in two stray dogs that would howl when we clapped between each of the 20 scenes. The height of the play was when a kid who had to be about 13 was flopping around on stage like he had flippers for arms and legs and wearing a green bag. The rest of the actors yelled "Tortuga!!" (turtle) and cheered and started too kill him (turtle was a great source of meat in early Tortuguero (1950´s). Everyone in the audience was laughing and the two dogs almost ran up on stage. Pure chaos and very funny even if you couldn´t understand more than 10% of the words.

At least now, we feel much more educated on the history of Tortuguero.

Our first day was spent in San Jose which we liked, surprisingly enough. Just about everyone who has been to San Jose has reported hating it, so we weren´t expecting too much. I think it helped that we were there on a Saturday, so there were a lot of people out around town. Plus our Hostel was located in a better part of the city. We walked down to the main street in downtown San Jose and just cruised around. We got a little bit lost looking for El Teatro Nacional. Now when I saw "we," I mean the royal we. Shing wanted me to ask for directions (and I was holding the map). As it turns out, I got a little bit turned around and half the streets aren´t labelled anyway. Shing asked a couple of people for directions and we finally managed to get to the teatro, unfortunately just as it was closing. Even worse, we realized that the main plaza we had been in 30 minutes earlier was where we needed to be. Note to self, ask for directions, even if you are a guy. I think she has finally gotten over that one.

The rest of the night was fun. We actually ended up running into a political rally on one of the streets. The Costa Rican presidential election was on Sunday and a bunch of supporters for one of the candidates were out with flags. As cars drove by, people handed out flags and all sorts of cars blew their horns. It was pretty chaotic, though I was really proud of myself for figuring out what was going on. I saw a guy with a t-shirt that matched the colors of the flags being passed out (they were rectangular with a line down the hypotenuse - one half was red and the other was yellow) with the slogan, "La Costa Rica que queremos" or "the Costa Rica we want." Anyway, I asked a guy there and he confirmed my suspicions and told us about the election. Apparently, the incumbent is named Laura Chinchilla and she has been very popular since Costa Rica has really not suffered at all throughout the economic problems facing the world. People respect her because she is a woman and is very intelligent and has done good things for Costa Rica. That said, we were at a rally for an opposition candidate (there were like 12) named Otton. I don´t know who won the election, but Shing and I are pulling for Laura (though we like saying Otton - pronounced Oh TONE - a lot more).

Sunday morning, we woke up at 5:45am to take a guided one-way tour from San Jose to Tortuguero. We went with a company called Jungle Tom Safari and our guide and driver was a guy named Tomas. I was pretty sure that he was Jungle Tom, but Shing confirmed it with him later. The route took us from San Jose to Siquirres to a very small town called Cano Blanco at which point we boarded a boat and rode for about 2 hours to Tortuguero. The trip was amazing - Jungle Tom reminded me a bit of dad, but with a lot more experience with nature. Some may say 100% more experience, but I´d give it a modest 90%. We actually had only really paid for one-way passage, but he kept stopping the minibus to show us sloths, birds, and poisonous frogs and then also showed us how to use our cameras better. Plus the guy was VERY gregarious and very funny. We were also riding with a German couple and their two daughters who were one and a half and three. Plus they were AMAZINGLY well-behaved considering that it took us 5 hours to get there. Once we got in, we grabbed a light snack, walked around the village, grabbed dinner and then went to bed.

This morning, we woke up early (at 5:37am) to go on a boat tour of the canals and rivers. We saw all sorts of animals - spider monkeys, white-faced something monkeys, howler monkeys, blue herons, green finches, Oropendulas, snow finches, and even a toucan. The highlight was watching a spider monkey carrying a baby monkey that couldn´t have been more than two weeks old according to our guide. We came back for breakfast and then I needed a nap. After a light snack, Shing and I went for a hike where we apparently saw an eyelash viper (a very poisonous snake...which we didn´t find out about until we were on our way back, which was quite some time AFTER we had taken pictures from pretty close). We also saw a few trails of ants. Now these weren´t just ANY trails of ants, there must have been tens to hundreds of thousands of ants carrying pieces of leaves from trees to their homes. One of the trails of ants stretched for at least 30-40 yards AND THEN up a very tall tree and the trail was about four or five ants across just transporting leaves and walking back. I could not get enough of it.

After the hike, we did a little bit of shopping and then walked to the Turtle Museum - okay, that´s a simplification of the organization that is working to protect the sea turtles. We learned a little bit about how the turtles reproduce and how they live. It was interesting. We´re thinking about volunteering for the group at some point during the summer. Could you see me working with giant sea turtles?

Anyway, tomorrow, we are flying in a very small plane back to San Jose, will rent a car and then drive to a town called Sarapiqui where we will be staying along the Costa Rican Bird Route. We´ll be going whitewhater rafting and then will take a bird watching tour.