10/2/10 - day 63.

woke up at 5am thanks to a rooster outside cockle-doodle-doing my head in. i wanted to rip its head off. but i didnt. left hostel at 9 to go on a half 9 boat trip down the rio dulce to rio dulce village. its a very pleasant journey and doubles up as a means of transportation. it was raining hard when i woke up but fortunately this subsided for the duration of the boat journey. it took about 2 hours and was very scenic, stopping along the way at various points for photo opportunities etc. one stop was a castle (castillo de san felipe) which they built to try and stop pirates coming in up the river back in the day.

i wasnt sure where i was staying when i got there and neither were this canadian couple (christina & cole) i met on the boat. they spoke no spanish so after acting as translator for them (oh yes) with the info guy at the port, they went off to a fancy place and the fella radio´d a hostel on the river front to come pick me up. id heard it was better to stay on the river rather than the village so opted for this. the heavens then opened big time and the 5 minute boat ride to the hostel got me absolutely saturated after about the first 30 seconds!

casa perrico was a really nice place though, kinda rustic but they had everything you needed right there. they had a bar, they did food, even had hot water showers and the dorm was less than 4 quid. i say "dorm", but this suggests a room with a door. basically there was a ladder that went up to a level above the bar area where they had some beds. there was a roof of course but other than that very open air. they did have mosquito nets over the beds though so no problems there.

spent most of the afternoon relaxing, reading and hanging with the other people staying there - americans, canadians, dutch and germans. as i was the only one going north and everyone else was going south to where ive come from i was acting as tourist information. was quite funny, people were making notes and everything. i felt like i was giving a presentation! the dutch guys bought me beer for it which was nice of them.

had the all you can eat pizza buffet they were doing for dinner which was really good a welcome change of diet. sat about with the others rest of the evening, checked the football scores to find we´d beaten liverpool and both chelsea and man utd had dropped points. good end to the day!