Crabs and Jerk Chicken

We made it! Our first blog update from central America, we are paying  as much for this hour on the internet as our for our camp site, but I cant really complain as I am sitting right in front of the air conditioner. Planes, trains, and automobiles and here we are, together again at last!

We spent our first night in San Jose and left all Chicolinis stuff in storage, hopefully it will be there when we get back. Although we were really taken by the smog, hustle, and bustle of downtown San Jose we made a quick exit to the next morning to the Caribe bus station and took a lovely scenic 4.5 hour bus ride trough the mountains and out to the Caribbean coast, which has less of a rainy season than the other side.

After a short hike up the main dirt road, passing Rasta’s of all ages enjoying the late afternoon sun and fishing, we made our way to camp ground Rocking J's which for most of the night is rocking, but for most of the day is a quiet and friendly safe haven for backpackers of all ages www.rockingjs.com see us on this map too - be sure to push the S at the bottom of the page so that you can see the satellite image! http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/workoutdetail/index.do?id=250751#

Our first few days we enjoyed the shallow tidal pools in front of our camp sight, which are filled with warm water, coral and beautiful tiny neon blue fish. They swim in and out and all around our legs as we enjoy the warm sun and gentle waves. My pre-tanning proved a great investment as we didn’t think to bring any sun tan lotion; Pollo has since made the investment. Norman, an older gent who has been at this camp site for 7 weeks now still has my golden brown gut beat, but at least I’m in the running!
There was a toga party with all you can drink tropical fruit punch with vodka, pollo enjoyed the punch and I enjoyed the togas. He met a few Newcastle fans and as the full moon came up over the sea I retired to our tent. The next day not many were up before noon giving me lots of privacy on the beach to do yoga and read my books. I did however break my sun glasses making it very hard to read- note to self, buy new sun glasses!

It was yesterday while chatting with some other folks here we were told we had been enjoying the crummy beach this entire time- you could have fooled me! I took a short hike up the beach through the jungle path that runs along the short and came to a huge open beach filled with surfers, white sand, and coconut palms. I jumped into the huge waves and rolled around a bit. It is indeed an amazing beach but I must say I still love our little tidal coral reef pools and tiny fishes. The walk through the jungle on the way was amazing in its self. the ground is COVERED in fist sized bright yellow, red, and purple crabs who are all pulling huge hunks of rotting fruit down into their underground layers. The trees above were filled with birds of all types including huge kingfishers and tiny yellow tail bobbing warblers? We need a bird book, for now we are left to guessing. Maybe we should start making our own names for them all.

The new tent is working out great, we have it set up under a roof so that we can take the fly off and the screen keeps us as cool as we can hope to be at night. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we needed to invest in pillows, but finding pillows in this town proved a bit more problematic. After all we asked a man selling his wares on the street and he said "Oh! My wife is pregnant! You need pillows for between your legs! Yes go to the pharmacy!" and indeed we did find there two very overstuffed pillows that as hard as bricks, but that can be fixed with a small surgery later. All in all the place we staying is great and the best part is, we are paying just 2$ per night for hammocks, showers, beach front camping, and friendly staff. Not to mention they have a TV showing the Euro soccer league games, so P has a worthy retreat from the mid day sun.

Everything here is just great. We are both so happy to be together again but missing our friends and family and wishing you were all here. But don’t worry; I had an extra helping of jerk chicken for you all last night! Yum yum!