Montezuma

This last weekend I went to Montezuma (Costa Rica) located at the southern point of the nicoya peninsula on the Pacific side. It was a lot of fun, although the beach (at least the part close to town) was dirty and for some reason smelled like cooked carrots which orange-tinted foam to match....we did find a cleaner and non-carrot smelling part after walking for about an hour outside of town though.

Outside of town also had a series of waterfalls and swimming holes. It was nice to go swimming in freshwater again...and you could even jump off of one of them.

The return home from the trip was quite a journey though. To get to Montezuma from the San Jose area you have to take a ferry over to the peninsula. Normally the ferry ride is about 1.5 hours, that is if your ferry doesn´t break down halfway like ours did....instead it took us 7 hours to make the trip. We had to wait for a tugboat to come get us, and then slowly...and I mean really slowly...pull us the rest of the way.

On a positive note...when we did make it to the other side, there was a news crew waiting to film us...and when I finally made it back to my house in Heredia...my tica mom was all excited because she said she had seen me on TV!! I am an international television star!!

Panama

So I recently had a week off of school and made a trip down to Panama to visit some friends from MTU who are in the Peace Corps there.


I spent part of the time visiting my friend Ryu in Panama City while he was undergoing treatment for leishmaniasis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leishmaniasis
I did get to see some other parts of the city besides the hospital, but I wasn´t very good about taking any pictures so you don´t get to see that much (I did go to the Canal, but I forgot to bring my camera...Sorry!)

These pictures are in Casco Viejo the old colonial part of town.

These pictures are taken from the Causeway which is near the entrance of the canal.

A ship on its way out of the Canal.

The other part of my trip, I went to visit my friend Brandon at his Peace Corps site in Bocas del Toro. Unfortunately, once again I didn´t take any pictures, but if you want to check out his website it is http://panamericanproceeding.blogspot.com/

The last weekend of the trip, Brandon and I met up with some friends from school on the Islands in Bocas...but the weather wasn´t that great (cloudy and rainy)...guess I will just have to go back when it is sunny sometime...and take more pictues of course.