Evidence

Hi all, we managed to get some photo's of monkey's on our heads at the rescue centre yesterday, incase you didn't believe us! In the afternoon we got to take them into the jungle to integrate with wild monkeys. We actually carry them and walk with them hanging off various parts of us, it's amazing! Anyway, when we were in the jungle, a wild troop of monkey's came down from a tree to meet these ones from the rescue centre, and there seemed to be some chemistry between some of them. Although on this day, they all returned home with us to the rescue centre, but some days we are told, they find a mate and decide to stay wild. There are some cases when they come back to visit the rescue centre's to show the humans their babies, kind of like visiting the grand parents! This is truely a wonderful experience, and we are pinching ourselves to make sure it is real!

Monkeys On Our Heads!

The title of this blog just about sums up our day today! We were accepted as volunteers at an animal rescue center here in Puerto Viejo yesterday and started today. We were thinking that our first few weeks would entail endless cleaning, shit shovelling and chopping of fruits/food for the animals, but no, on day one, hour one in-fact, we were thown in the cage with around 12 howler monkeys! My job was to clean the cages and Rene's was to work with the handyman to fix some cages, bit sexist but who cares (Rene is actually great at cleaning and me at fixing!). Within seconds, we had baby and grown monkeys on our heads, shoulders, in our arms and up our legs all vying for our attention. It was too good to be true and we felt that we should actually be paying for this amazing experience! They are so faccinating and affectionate, I don't think we could ever tire of them.

During the course of the day, we assisted with taking some of the monkeys into the jungle to get them used to being free, feeding baby raccoons and sloths, and of course, some sweeping up and cleaning. We will working there two or three times a week to start with and if we settle in this town then it could be a long term thing. We love it here and with the connections that we are making, it is feeling more and more like home.

Tomorrow we are helping in a soup kitchen for the homeless, and then we will visit the schools to see if there is any work for English teachers so we can earn a bit of money as well. We can't live on monkey love alone sadly!

Pictures of monkeys on our heads will follow after our first couple of shifts. We don't want to look like tourists with camera's just yet, rather more, like hard working, keen volunteers. I have attached a photo of our local beach though instead.

Two in a boat

Finally the weather settled enough for a trip out on a kayak this week. It looks like we are not doing much in this picture, but to get to the rivermouth it was a hard slog across a bumpy sea into the wind. Anyway, the instructor decided to put us in to one kayak since it would be easier to catch one than two if we drifted! When we got the river, we floated, gently guiding ourselves through the national park waters and observing various species that inhabited it. The high point was the large troop of howler monkeys that followed our progress through the trees and the baby one gripping onto the mother's tail in the tress as in the other picture. Our instructor was called....Rene, short for Reynold I think, he had kayaking down to a full art, but I doubt he could sing the blues!

From Coast To Coast

We were on the Pacific North West coast of the country and the plan was to take a slow trip across the mountians and down south to the East Caribbean coast of C.Rica over a few months, but weather forced us down in a day and a half! It rained so hard that bridges broke, and numerous landslides occured, sadly causing fatalaties and many road closures. We escaped just in time thanks to a Dutch couple with a car that befriended us heavy laden travellers and took us over 500k on bumpy roads in their 4 x 4 hire car!

So, it's calming down now and we have started to explore an entirely different scene to the one that we spent the last six weeks in. The Caribbean coast has a whole different flavour to the relatively sophisticated north. It's rustic at it's best and a little shanti with an aroma of special herbs in the air! We have been offered a variety of choice substances on the streets and have thus far declined!

We have secured a lovely apartment for a week in the town of Cahuita, owned by Italians (who talk very loudly and gesticulate wildly in true latin fashion) and due to Rene's heritage, managed to get a good deal on the price.

We went for a short walk in the National Park here and 9 kilometres later, looking and feeling rather bedraggled we ended up at the other end of a trail (still some 6k from our apartment) and came upon an oasis...an Italian restaurant set in beautiful gardens with a rather charismatic Italian owner. Another few heritage points here got us a lift home, after we had fed and watered of course!

Oh and there were kittens...added bonus!

Tonight we are going out with guitars to pimp ourselves out for a gig or two @ $50 a night, see what happens. Reggae seems to be the chosen genre here...we may get laughed at, worth a risk though!

Over and out bloggers, chef's cooking up a storm and it's nearly time to eat. xxx

A Giant Leatherback Turtle....

..laid it's eggs in front of us!! It was 1.65 x 1.25 metre's so not something that you would pass by without noticing! Wow, what an evening that was. We were visiting the Las Baulas National Park where their main objective is to protect the rapidly becoming extinct species of leatherback turtle from poachers and the like. www.leatherback.org/ldc/pg/park.htm .

We waited for 3 hours in the rangers office at night for a call to say that one had come onto the beach (it's not guaranteed though) to lay it's eggs and then we were marched in single file for around 1km along a very dark beach to where the turtle was being monitored by biologists. We got to observe for a while and it was quite a surreal experience. The whole of the beach is closed at night purely to protect the turtle activity and no ambient light was allowed apart from the biologists infrareds. For those reasons we have no photographs of the event, and in any case it would have seemed wrong to try and capture the moment with just an image. Here's some pictures of the beach though, and you will just have to take our word for it!