Estoy aqui!

Well, I´m here in Costa Rica at last. It´s quite an exhilarating feeling to finally be here. I´m starting my classes on Wednesday. I must say that I´m a bit nervous about it all, but I´m looking forward to it. My Spanish skills are lacking, but I´m getting by. Hopefully, in three or four months they will have improved by then. I just got back from Playa Cahuita yesterday. It was quite an adventure! Playa Cahuita is on the Caribbean coast near south of the city Limon. This area of Costa Rica is primarily black. I think they might have come here from Jamaica. I´ll have to do a little more research on that topic. Anyway, the beach was lovely. I went with another English teacher, and we stayed at fantastic place called Spencer´s Seaside Lodge. The place is right on the beach complete with hammocks. Reuben, the guy in charge of everything, was wonderful. He will help you out with anything you need. Anyway, after we arrived we took a tour through the Playa Cahuita National Forest. This forest was right alongside the beach. You can see monkeys literally climbing along the trees. I wanted to see some sloths, but I guess they were too lazy to show themselves. There were even some howler monkeys that you could hear through all the vegetation. They sounded like a group of warthogs that I thought were going to come running through the trees. What a scare!

The following day we took a rainforest tour with one of the indigenous people of the region. The tour started on an iguana farm near the town of BriBrí. Iguanas are considered a delicacy on the Caribbean coast and have all but vanished from the beaches due to the poaching. At one time, you could literally see them from the coconut trees. Supposedly this is still the case on the Pacific side of the country. After the iguana farm we headed into the forest and saw all kinds of amazing things. There were poison dart frogs, agupti (a type of rodent), enormous centipedes, leaf cutter ants, blind ants, walking trees, and so much more. I have never been in a place that felt so primitive and wild. You will definitely not find that in Clear Lake, TX. Montana might come close though. After that we stopped off for a bit in Puerto Viejo which is a little more developed and has more touristy stuff. I wanted to take a bike ride from there to Manzanillo, but was not able to. Perhaps another time.... I´ll be finishing this up since it´s getting pretty long.