Costa Rica - Feliz Navidad!

Over Christmas, we get 2 weeks off, with no volunteers, so we've been coming up with plenty to pass the time. It's very strange to be spending Christmas somewhere hot and sunny, seeing Christmas trees while you're wearing shorts and sun cream takes some getting used to!

The three of us left on camp have taken a couple of day trips. The first, we went to an area called Matapalo. Not much is there except a few ecolodges and a gorgeous stretch of beach. We walked for an hour or so down the beach, then sunbathed, read and enjoyed being able to go in the sea (it's too rough on our patrol beaches). We also visited Carate, again it consists mainly of ecolodges and a lovely beach, but it is best known for being the starting point of expeditions to Corcovado National Park, which I'll be doing in early January! The beach was beautiful, with a stunning view of Corcovado and we even found tapir tracks going along the beach!

On Christmas eve, we headed in to town and had dinner at our friends' house. His mum cooked us  lovely pork joint with vegetables inside, pinepple chutney and salad. We headed out for some yummy cocktails. Town was pretty quiet and the big countdown to Christmas we were expecting never happened. When we got back to the room though, Elle had made us stockings and Kate made mobiles from shells and wood and for them, I painted name signs on wood. On Christmas morning we opened our stockings, went for a walk and a quick trip to the beach. In the evening we watched The Help in our hostel room. On boxing day we returned to camp, to the nasty surprise of a wasp nest in my backpack. Unfortunately I didn't notice before I tried to put things away and got stung SEVEN times!

The next few days made up for it though. We wandered to the end of Piro beach and climbed into the forest, away from the beating sun of the beach. We followed a picturesque stream and clambered up a few rocks. Before I saw the waterfall I could feel the breeze from the force of it. There was a waterfall in a sort of cove, pretty high and with a small shallow pool so we could stand underneath it. The next day we visited another waterfall down Death Creek, which was a little smaller but the pool was deep enough to swim in.


We went back in to town for New Years Eve. After a couple of our favourite local cocktails, tico sours, we headed to an event ground out of town, where a rodeo competition has been taking place all week. There's a small fairground, a few beer tents and the rodeo ring. There was a good atmosphere and it looked like most of Puerto Jimenez was there. At midnight, we went into a dance area and counted down (backwards in Spanish!), then there was a firework display over the town. We wound down the evening with a few rounds of pool and spent New Years day just relaxing and wandering around town.