So, its been a while!
But we have been kind of been isolated from civilisation without the internet or phones for the past week!

So following from last time, we had our last day in Bocas. It was so sunny and we decided to go with some other people from our hostel - (Rafaelle, a guy from france that we had been hanging out with for a while, and also a dentist! (I managed to find one even out here!) so typically we had a load of geeky dentist chat for a while about his amazing job in holland - I am totally going to move to work there) to ´Wizard Beach´ (we felt we has to go there purely for the name!). It was on a different island to where we were staying so we took a boat ride and it was dead nice. We lay on the beach for a while and the sea for once wasn´t majorly wavey so we could have some relaxing sea time finally. We basically had the beach to ourselves so went exploring a bit and found a trail into like the forest behind it. It was brilliant (although full of midges just eating us) and we even met a local who gave us a load of fruit from this tree he was climbing - pretty novel! So that was really nice and then we just had a pretty quiet evening, and even treated ourselves to a meal out to give us some variation from rice and beans - claire still managed to eat a bean filled soup though (im nervous for the beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot to become true ha!)

We headed off really early in the morning at like 6ish as we had to get over from panama and up to this conservation project on an island in costa rice (about 5 or 6 different bus we had to get) so it wasn´t the most exciting day! But when we finally arrived on the island (after, missing a bus, then being put on and off 2 more buses, then finally nearly missing the last boat of the day to the island we need to be on!!), it turned out that we had come a day early! Clearly we aren´t the most organised of people!!! But our homestay family didn´t seem to mind us a day early so it was all fine and we went to get settled in. Slight problems did begin to occur with the massively big language barrier! Turns out that the limited spanish which we had thought we picked up realy doesn´t get you far!
But our family seemed nice, our ´host mum´was a 21 year old girl called Kimberly who had two little girls called Sechelles and Keishell, and she lived in their 3 bedroom "shack" (with a beautiful LCD tv yet no doors on their bedrooms or fans in their rooms - their priorties are not quite the same as ours!) with her mum (a hotel maid), dad (drug smuggler/fisherman.... no joke!), and two brothers so all of us made 9! It was a pretty packed house, along with their horse, numerous pretty bald chickens, and about 3 or 4 dogs, not to mention the cockroaches and gekkos!
They fed us a really nice meal though before our first night beach patrol of the week. They partol started at 8pm and went on until 12pm and basically we just have to walk along the 6km of beach and then back again to check for any turtle tracks, to see if any turtles are laying eggs, and to keep a watch out for poachers as they love to steal the eggs, and turtles to sell as they are a delicacy over here. Our guide for the first night was a local guy called Carlos who pretty much spoke no english, but made incredibly large hand gestures and facial expressions to make us understand everything that he wanted us to know and to fill the 4 hours with little silence! We didn´t see any turtles, or tracks, but he did show us the island´s lagoon residents, 2 crocadiles which he shined a light on so that we could see their red eyes. Needless to say, we were pretty shocked when he said that we should come swim in the lagoon in the daytime! It was nice, but we were pretty tired and walking in sand at night isn´t the easiest of tasks! So we were pretty glad when it was over, but this is when we realised that we were going to be attacked by sand flies and mosquitos in this place (we must have had hundreds of bites and basically have been smothering ourselves in tiger balm and resisting itching for the whole week!)

The next day we woke up pretty early due to the heat of the place, and pretty sandy due to the night patrol! We had been told to be at the conservation office (casona) at 10 am for a guide around the village by a local but when we turned up, noone was anywhere to be seen and instead we were sent to collect trash on the beach. We didn´t mind, but we had no idea what was going on and the whole thing seemed majorly disorganised! The only person there was a spanish speaking guy who didn´t know what on earth we were talking about so we ended up just spending the morning wandering round and trying to work out how to get back to our house! When we got back at 12 though for lunch, there was no lunch to be seen anywhere and then this girl turned up to give us a tour. We were so confused, and then somehow worked out that we were an hour ahead of everyone else, the mysterious time zone of Parismina! God knows where we had gained this hour from, but both our phones and watches had somehow miraculously put us on a different time to the rest of the village. So soon enough it all started to work out and this girl who showed us around the village was an 18 year old called henesis who lived in a falling down house with her 1 year old (they all seem to have babies really young and by many differnt men...). She spoke some english so we did get what she was on about compared to our family finally! The village is pretty small (400 people) and everywhere was just like sand under foot. There were loads of dogs, chickens and horses all about the place and everyone just rides about on bikes as there aren´t really any cars on the island - a pretty surreal place really.

In the afternoon, we made a lots of bracelets and necklaces for a project that is working alongside the turtle conservations for giving children education, to sell for them to get some money. It was pretty fun and basically we just turned into kids again! We then met like the head turtle conservation guy. He was a local guy called Jerry who had started to project 11 years ago as a teenager as he had grew up watching his neighbours killing turtles in their back yards and just hunting for eggs all the time and realised the the turtles were just becoming more and more rare and obviously would eventually disappear altogether. 98% were poached back in the day, where as now it is just 38%, an encouraging statistic! He gave us, and a new french volunteer called Vincent a talk on the project and he is one of the most passionate people we have ever met. He is just so knowledgeable and just like lives his dream almost. Its amazing - plus he had incredible dreadlocks - they are so long that he can just tie his hair up in them all, its crazy. And we got shown like these massive turles skeletons (as you can see in our pictures) and loads of pickled baby turtles (sounds gross but it was pretty interesting). But anyways, it was really great and this is when kind of the great 4 began (from this day forward we kind of all began to be a bit inseperable!)
Yet again, we didn´t see any turtles on the night patrol, but we did see turtle tracks! It was pretty amazing as the trurtles are like 1-2m in diameter so they leave massive tracks! But all of the ones that we saw had just come up to the beach but then not laid any eggs(can be for numerous reasons but they probably just didn´t feel that it was right - temperature or too much driftwood on the sand and things). But it was pretty excting for us anyways, and the night was just brill as we saw, similarly to the last night an amazing amount of stars! There is hardly any light pollution, and the moon was really small so the sky was just covered. There was like a shooting star every 20 minutes so we probably saw more this week than we will ever in our lives! This however was overshadowed as the highlight of the night, as on our way home, in the silence on the village, Carlos the guide did the most hilarious fart and pretended like it hadn´t happened, me and Claire were so close to wetting ourselves! (Clearly someone has been eating too many beans!!!!) You have no idea how hard it was to keep a straight face!!
So the next morning, was Thursday, and we all met in the morning to go down to the nutrition centre where all the kids get a free breakdast and lunch. Jerry had started organising all of these things for us to do so it finally felt like we had a purpose in the day.
We painted the nutrition centre with loads of birds and things and it looked really great (thankfully most of the outlines of the pictures were there so we didn´t have to show off our horrific artisitic skills!!!!). The kids wouldn´t leave us alone while we were there and kept on jibbering spanish to us only to recieve a wierd confused face back at them as we had no idea what they were on about! The little girls from our hosue had started to play with us in the evenings now aswell, by raiding our backpacks and becoming obsessed with our nail varnish , cameras and sunglasses! so they kept on coming up to us in the centre and running around trying to paint! We all went for a swim in the sea after it as it was absolutely baking hot, but the current is really strong and the waves massive so basically we were just getting throw about in the water! At least it was nice and cool though!

After lunch (I don´t remember what we ate, but our family was feeding us amazing stuff - far more than the rice and beans we were expecting!), we went and cleared the local park as it was covered in grass from being cut and loads of litter as the project is trying to get the locals to get into recycling and not littering but at the moment, its not seeming to be too successful. Then we headed back to the sea (as we were literally dripping from sweat as it was so hot - delightful I know) and then to the bar as it was our night off patrol!!!! Us four went and were joined by a Canadian girl who had come to visit the village and we bought the remainer of the bottle of vodka from behind the bar, and commensed with ring of fire with a mix of english, french and canadian rules!!!! This is where we were introduced to the delight of ´Coco-loco´, the mix of basically any spirit with limes and coconut water from coconuts on the trees all around - the cheapest mixer ever!!! The night soon tumbled into a bunch of either sleepy or drunk people and some started to get a bit close for comfort - the start of a possible RastaDisaster! Thankfully, the vodka didn´t last all that long and we all trapesed off home after a fair few rounds of the game!!! Considering it was our day off, we didn´t take much advantage of it too get an early night!

We has organised the nect day, to have our hair braided by the girl henesis who had given us a village tour. However, the more that we thought about this, and the more people that we talked to about it, the more that we suspected that she wanted to fully braid our hair (not just a nice little cotton braid like we were thinking), and visions soon came into our head of us leaving her house with corn rose!!! But as we had tried sneakily to get out of going to get them braided the day before and failed miserably by her tracking us down to ask us to still get them done, we figured that we had to go! Thankfully, she brought out her selection of 3 colours of cotton and we just left with a simple braid!!!! However, not only did I leave with a braid, but also a dreadlock!!! Jerry offered to give me one as I had been talling him how great his were, and before you know it, he was knotting away at my hair! So now its been there for a couple of days and is getting a bit more established! However the rest of my hair surrounding it seems to want to migrate into it so don´t be too shocked if you see me when I get home with just a giant dreadlock taking over my head! We then headed to the lagoon with the guys to go swimming and walked through the forest kind of area to get there. At this pinicle moment we finally saw a SLOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And not just one sloth, but 2 brown sloths with babies and another one white one!!!! They were pretty still (surprise, surprise!) but the babies did move which was pretty great and rare to see!!! So that was pretty great, and a bonus was that we didn´t get eaten by any crocodiles in the lagoon!!! We managed to spend a while in there as it was so calm compared to the sea and just messed about for a bit.
After lunch, we had to get down to business with repairing a turtle skeleton that had been found a while ago. This is easier asid than done when you are given PVA glue to stick bones together! Needless to say it took a while, and Claire got taught how to make a baby cricket out of a palm leaf in the mean time!!! So after that very productive afternoon, we went to learn how to dig a turtle nest before the sun set. This basically just involved us getting majorly sandy by digging a giant hole in the sand like almost a metre deep!!! Was quite a work out!!! And you never know, maybe one day it will come in useful if we ever find some turtle eggs lying around!!!
That night, we were back on patrol again, along with a new volunteer, and yet again saw nothing. It kind of seems that we bring bad luck!!!!
On the Saturday, we got up bright and early to clean the beach once again of plastics and trash, as the plastic is being eaten by turtles in the sea once it starts to degrade, and this can in turn kill them. It sounds like it is a neverending task, as once the rubbish is cleared, more gets swept in the next day, and many of the local people do not bother recycling, and litter around the village. It seems very frustrating for those involved, especially Jerry, as he works as a volunteer for the project and basically gets little thanks from the village in return. Its sad, but they are trying to educate the children now, and get them involved, so maybe the next generation will care more. Obviously a swim had to then follow this! As we had been sweltering on the beach for ages!!!!
After lunch, Jerry took all of us crabbing, the Costa Rican way! A bit of chicken skin tied on a line wrapped around a stick in the sand was all we needed, but we didn´t have too much luck with the crabs!!!! We did collect maybe 4, but two were only small an´d one had even lost its´front claws so we threw it back in to give it a second chance! Claire though took the plunge in killing one of the two that we planned to eat. Now we had been shown how to do it, by basically machettying it through the middle really quickly, but with the apprehension of possibly not killing it quickly, Claire basically hammered it straight though! The crab basically flew apart in two!!!! But at least it was a quick death! So that was dinner caught for tomorrow night!!!

Later on we went on the patrol, today it was with Jerry though for a change, so there wasn´t the big language barrier for once! No surprise, we didn´t see any turtles. But in the last 10 mintues patrolling, we came across a turtle track and before we knew it, Jerry like flew off down the beach! He had noticed that there was the track of the turtle coming up the beach, but that there was not one of it going back into the water, and it certainly wasn´t anywhere to be seen, so he thought that a poacher had got it. Maybe 10 minutes later, he returned and told us how he had gone to the end of the beach as he noticed some people camping out with a big fire. He then pretended to be a poacher himself, to work out if they had stolen the turtle. They totally fell for it but luckily they hadn´t had the strength to turn the turtle on it´s back in order to move it so it had got away. Jerry was pretty brave to have gone running up to them though, rather him than me!!!!! But it was an exicting end to the night at least, and one step closer to seeing a turtle!!!!!

So sunday saw us have a bit of a lazy day, starting off with a trip to the lagoon, on the way we saw some howler monkeys. they had a tiny baby who was just hanging off the branches so naturally! we also managed to see one of the sloths we saw earlier in the week, still hadnt moved an inch! while at the lagoon, jerry climbed a bread fruit tree to get some of there fruits for us to take back to give to the families we were staying with, they are like a large knobly melon on the out side, with a very sticky sap (apparently great to keep dreadlocks in shape!) but then on the inside they are more like a potato and can be fried to make chips, a very yummy addition to tea. after lunch we lazed on the beach and caught some rays. jerry came to find us and made a life sized sand sculture of me (claire) lying on the beach, unfortunetely there wasnt enough time for me to have arms or a proper face, and then the tide came in a washed away my feet!!n after a quick freshen up in the shower, and inch thick layer of mosquito repellent in place, we headed down to meet every1 for the grand cooking of the crabs. we were going to make a carribbean style soup. the beers were cracked open, veg cut, coconut milk made from fresh and crabs boiled, all coming together to make a delicious meal, obviously the manditory rice made an apppearance! after the soup went down a treat, drinking games soon started and we were introduced to cheap local costa rican spirit of casique, made from fermented sugar cane. again drank with coco water it goes down easily! a drunken patrol was then declared.... to help keep us steady and all together holding hands in a big line seemed like the sensible thing to do! ghost stories from the village were then told, apparently there is a little ghost girl who has been sighted in the house we were staying at, luckily we managed to laugh off the rumours, so getting to sleep wasnt a problem.

monday morning arrived along with a slight fuzzy head!! trash collection was not exactly the best cure, but it did get us out of bed and into the sun to get a bit more dehydrated!! despite the slight lack of enthusiam, we managed to collect 5 bag fulls of s***, from syringes and condoms to barbie heads and high heels! our afternoons were startng to take a theme, so we headed off down to our usual spot on the beach, our tans have blossomed thanks to this ritual! late afternoon we retreated in door to the casona and chatted to the lady who over sees the whole organisation. she let us in to a few village secrets and some surprising stories emmerged about our families... our dad turns out to have a bit of a side in drugs smuggling, he once got stuck in a swamp with thousands of dollars of drugs for 2 days, contracted malaria in the process. so this is how they afforded the flat screen tv and the extention!! we also heard stories of villagers becoming millionaires over night due to lucky finds of drug packages washing up on to the beach! a different world! our plan was to leave early on tuesday morning, so while saying our goodbyes we got wind of some turtles that had just started hatching on the beach, finally we would see a turtle. but on just one....40 baby hawksbill turtles all raring to go and get lost in the waves! volunteers and locals gathered on the beach to see the turtles off, a fantastic and memorable moment for us all, just a shame only 1 in 1000 will survive..... word was that the remainder of the nest would be dug up the next day, to investigate deaths and hatching rates of the nest. this was an opportunity not to be missed so we made the snap decision to stay another day. this day just got better, amazing fried chicken dinner, KFC eat ur heart out!! we then went out on our last patrol, and ovbiously great things always come in threes, baby turtles, fried chicken and then A NESTING TURTLE!! this was a facinating sight, to see such a huge, rare and mysterious animal so close. unfortunately there werea few too many people and the turtle seems over crowded and slightly stressed by the noise, torches and, hands all over her. it seems this was bad practise being carried out by another volunteer group, so our group left them to move the eggs to the security of the hatchery. with all the excitment of a turtle some volunteers got a little bit strained (or are just plain weird) and some harsh words were past, an older member of the group requested that vincent should stop ignorating her. unable to understand what she was on about we giggled it off and the anti vill alliance was formed!! a strange end to such a good day.

we woke on tuesday ready with paint brushes to finish off the art work we had started in the nutrtion centre. some new windows needed painting so out came my pig drawing skills and vincents love of sponge bob!! with the help hands of our ·little sister" the windows were looking fun and colourful in no time. we took up our usual spot on the beach for the afternoon, we the proceeded to have a turtle sculpting competition fallowed by a rather sandy game of piggy in the middle. for some the thought of losing was just too bad so kate in a moment of vicious fury hurled a coconut at poor vincents head. a smaller second head quickly formed on his head, and for a moment i thought we would have witnessed our first batch of french tears!!! Unfortuntely, the woman who was meant to be excavating the turtle nest failed to tell us that she was out of the village so gutted we never got to see it! But being our last evening the four of us had ·coco-loco· plans. one bottle of casique quickly turned into 2, with not even a faint breeze in the air we saw a little more of some people then we may have bargained for!! fun was had by nearly all... another late night patrol saw sand flying with the confusing presence of a broom stick.... love in the group grew as did the realisation that we were to be catching the boat in just 2 hours!! bed at 3.50am, alarm set for 4.30am!!

this morning was difficult to say the least. luckily we managed to get a bit of sleep on the bus, then drowsy and confused we arrived at San Jose, the costa rican capitol. not much to get excited by, we had one mission while we were here, to throw our selves off a bridge (quite literally!) so 2 hours after arriving we found our selves heading an hour out of the city towards the site of the jungle bungee. the obvious cure for a hang over and a couple of hours sleep!! before we knew it we were harnessed up and on the edge of the platform..... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 AAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! the out of control 85m free falling was an exillerating feeling to say the least. luckily we have it all on dvd to entertain you with when we return!! after the adreniline drained away and hunger and tireness hit, we headed out in search for the final part of the hang over cure.... a McDonalds, i know this will dissappoint many of you but it was definitely well needed and extremely well recieved!! $12 well spent. an early night was on the cards but recalling the past week seems to have been a bit more of a mammoth task then we imagined! what a great week it has been, many memorable moments and knowledge gained, parismina is definitely a life like no other!!

another early start tomorrow morning will take us up into Nicaragua, who knows what is in store from then on.......

a message from kate: if you want a post card, send her ur address!! or f*** off and stop being so needy.

for all you toiletry lovers/followers you will be pleaseto hear the wonderful news that they have been found!!! unfortuneately we are now 2 countries away from them.... ever optimistic we hope to be reunited in the not to distant future, meaning medicated feet, insect repelled bodies and no more hairy mary!! fingers crossed!