Hi everyone.

The last week in Gandoca continued pretty much as usual but with many more turtles as it got closer to the peak nesting season. We had a couple of interesting events occur before we left - a secret wedding and discovering that we were illegally residing in Costa Rica for about 5 days!

On Thursday, the grandmother of the family we were living with told us that the next day Maria and Lalo (our host parents who we assumed were already married) were planning on marrying, although they had not told us or anyone else in Gandoca. A couple of us went and bought some last minute wedding presents for them while the rest of us carried on pretending we had no idea. On Friday, we were relaxing on the beach when one of our housemates cycled down to tell us that the wedding was about to take place at our house. So we all rushed back to find a few random men hovering in our garden. A few minutes later, a man who turned out to be the registrar arrived on a moped with a learner plate swinging off it and the wedding commenced! It actually just involved us gathering around their dining room table whilst they signed the register and the registrar said a few words. It was over as suddenly as it had begun! But we had an amazing meal afterwards especially as we had bought them an incredible chocolate cake and some sweets. All in all it was a bizarre but beautiful occasion!

The monday before the wedding we had been on a day trip to Panama as Gandoca is right next to the border (not a pleasant experience as the city we visited was absolutely horrible!). But we discovered before we left Costa Rica that due to an extreme lack of security between the two countries we had managed to re-enter Costa Rica without getting our passports stamped when we left Panama, meaning we were officially still in Panama even with a Costa Rican stamp saying we´d returned. So, after a very tearful goodbye in Gandoca on Saturday morning, we had to return to the Panama border and somehow plead our case in Spanish so that they´d give us a fake stamp. It took a long time but amazingly we were successful although we did have to pay $100 - outrageous!

After this drama we arrived safely in Lima on Sunday and soon discovered that our hostel is awesome - it has hot water!!! The three of us are just exploring Lima until Friday when we´ll meet up with the rest of our group to start travelling around Peru for 3 weeks.

We were all sad to leave Gandoca but happy to be in Lima as we can finally get some cheese and meat! We´re very excited about embarking on the next part of our trip.

Hope English life is treating you all well.

Lots of love, Emma, Hatti and Jess Xxx

p.s. Sadly we can´t upload anymore photos at the moment so you will have to wait in suspense until we can!