Jan. 23, 2008.  It took no time to get to the Costa Rican border, but the crossing took forever.  Lots of waiting in long lines and moving to other lines.  We did well and managed, for the first time, to acquire no helpers.  People were helpful and the scene was nowhere near as seedy as some of the other crossings that we have encountered, but it took nearly five hours getting out of Nicaragua and into Costa Rica.  The narrow border roads were clogged with tractor trailer trucks parked wall to wall for kilometers.  Huge potholes through the fumigation 'area' racked the bottom of the car. 

Greeting from Manzanilla Costa Rica.  We are just wrapping up day two here and our luck has been fantastic.  Two years ago, Eli spent a couple months here and got to know the town really well.  There is not much to do in Manzanilla except sit on the beach, burn a beach fire, sit in a hammock, play with a dog or walk in the jungle.  Upon arriving here we met up with an old friend of Eli’s, Walter, who is letting us stay in a nearly complete cabin-house just down the hill from his own amazing house.  Walter is a very friendly and animated fellow in his late 50’s.  An amazing storyteller, his eyes nearly jump out of his head as he gets himself and both Eli and I worked up over a good story.  The jungle here is dense and lush.  The flowering plants are amazing, the wildlife extreme.  There are howler monkeys and white face monkeys everywhere.  You can hear them all the time.  We have seen sloths and giant guinea pigs and toucans and ringed raccoon -like creatures with monkey tails and parrots and hawks and thousands of mosquitoes, ants, beetles and butterflies.  The beach here is one of the most tranquil that I have ever seen.  The water is just right and there are never any people here.  A couple towns north there is the town of Puerto Viejo, which is a big surfer town with lots of kids cruising around, but few come down here.  There are some day trippers that bike the 10-15 kilometers and hang out for a while, but few people take the night here.

The Caribbean coast has a distinct Caribbean culture that is different than the Pacific and highlands.  There are a lot of rastas and reggae.  Spanish is still spoken, but there is a lot more English. 

Yesterday Eli and I trekked into the jungle and eventually freaked ourselves out enough to turn back.  We were in flop-flops and started feeling very out of our element as the dense jungle closed in around us.  The jungle literally roars with the sounds of insects. Super ant highways scar the ground, and you can’t see more than a couple feet into it.  We have heard enough stories about snake and spiders to get a little paranoid.  This is not the woods of Warner.  Today we bought a machete and tomorrow we are going to put on better footwear and plunge deeper.

On the agenda tonight, we have bought a chicken.  We are going to try to build a spit on the beach and sort of rotisserie it up.

It is so nice here, we have decided to stay another day.  Tonight there is supposed to be the biggest party in the Caribbean.  People are flying in from everywhere, and there are already of ton of people in our lazy little town.  We’ll try to get some photos. Right now I am in the nearby town of Puerto Viejo where there is the option of internet.  I gave a guy a ride into town named Chumba, who has a little house here.  He is shopping around for a couple auto parts while I write this to you.  I picked up my laundry down the street (my cleanest clothes are always the ones that I wore least recently, so I have been rotating through my dwindling clothing selection for weeks) and am so excited to have a couple clean duds to climb into this afternoon!!