I've spent the last two days with Megan in Puerto Viejo. It's been a lot of fun! She's great company. Our days consisted of eating, beaching, biking, snorkelling, and shopping! We had two beautiful days of no rain so it was perfect! The morning leaving the sanctuary was hard. I packed and went over to have breakfast and say good bye to everyone. Julie and Madi had already left so I just had to say good bye to Claire, Matt, and the sloths! I will miss everyone I've met so far on the trip. Having so much down time and no Internet leads to a lot of talking! I feel like I know almost everything there was to know about Madi and Julie and Matt! By the second week Julie started singing "we are the three best friends that anyone could have..." song from the hangover. it became our theme song amongst us three girls. It's weird to think i will probably never see them again, but I had a great two weeks with them. And we do plan to meet up in the future but you know how those things go! Megan and I had a lot of fun, I wish I could've spent longer with her! She was here for a week hoping to get some research done for a university paper, but the management of the sanctuary was not cooperative and didn't permit her to take any hair samples from the sloths or answer any of her questions! So she was disappointed with that but still happy to be there! First day in puerto Viejo we checked into our hostel. It's very nice, just on the other side of the road from the ocean and we both got our own rooms with double beds and shared bathroom. My Visa card didn't work which was very annoying so I had to pay in cash. No big deal but it costs $5 to withdraw from the ATM every time so I try to do that as little a possible. After getting settled we rented bikes and headed to the beach for a couple hours of sun and swimming! No burns that day! I was very proud of myself. We walked along the market stalls and Megan stopped at one which had dream catchers (she collects them). The seller said he would custom make one for her so she picked out about 10 shells to put in the web and some feathers for the bottom string. she asked him if he had any sloth beads (he had turtle shaped beads) and he said no but he did have a few sloth "toes". when i say toes i mean the white claw-like things they use to grip the branches with. she put one on her dreamcatcher and i got him to make me a bracelet with one incorporated in it. We got pizza and met some friendly people in the restaurant so had a couple drinks with them and a chat and then headed back to the hostel around 8! We are still in the sanctuary sleeping pattern. We have wifi at the hostel all the time which seems like such a luxury now! Today we went to the bakery for breakfast and I had a Blackberry smoothie and a croissant with egg, ham and cheese like a sandwich. It was delicious and I'm hoping I can get another before I leave tomorrow morning! There are a lot of good places to eat here, I'm hoping I can find some good places in the other towns I visit. After breakfast I rented some snorkel gear and we got bikes from the hostel and headed back to the beach. We went further south to some coral reefs and swam around for a long while! I haven't been snorkelling since Mexico in grade 5 so that was pretty fun for me! We saw lots of pretty fish and nothing scary (thank goodness). Sometimes we would hit an edge to the reef that would drop off into very deep ocean. I thought that was cool so I was swimming along the edge but Megan who is a more seasoned snorkeler had to tell me that that is where sharks tend to be! Good thing I had her with me. :P today I did burn the back of my legs/butt from snorkelling. I'm not looking forward to the 5 hour drive to la Fortuna tomorrow sitting on my burn! After snorkelling Megan had to go to the bank so we got some air conditioning for ten minutes (HEAVEN). We went to a new place for dinner called the locust garden! It was very beautiful with an Asian influence. I had teriyaki salmon! It was very good and something very different than what we've been having (but a little more expensive). I helped her find the right bus home and then I got some Italian gelato, creamy chocolate chip flavour tonight, and then headed back to the hostel. It was still light out but I was still totally creeped out by the men. Today while biking some guy grabbed my shoulder, I don't know what he was planning on doing but I was on my bike thank goodness so I kept biking away. When I was walking back to the hostels after dropping off Megan I got the standard cat calls but also this creepy guy started following my for a few meters. I totally felt like sprinting away but I tried to stay as calm as possible! He didn't follow me very far. Needless to say I don't want to walk around here by myself at night. So here I am all holed up in my hot hostel room with a sunburn and no company! :( at least I have the Internet! And I'm starting to see a few more places where knowing Spanish can make things much easier so I'm going to get going on my Spanish audiobooks tonight. Depending when I get to la Fortuna tomorrow, I'm hoping to hike to the waterfall nearby. The next day I have my volcano and hot springs tour. Excited to move on! Good night! Or should I say "Buenos Noches!" (I didn't even have to look that up).