Just to give you a bit of an outline of what I have been up to...El Silencio was an experience and a half. We arrived on a dark night on a public bus, which was immediately overwhelmed by a welcome party of villagers and curious children. English people had never visited the village before and they were fascinated. We were made to line up and allocated to waiting families. I was shown to my small and literally ALIVE room (think geckos, spiders, beetles and swarms of mossies). Waking up the next morning was very surreal, as the villagers wake at 4 thirty am to head to the fields, and the cockerels which run through the streets served as an appropriate alarm bell. The rest of the week came as a major culture shock. There was no running water in my house, with the sole form of washing as a bucket of dirty water. Yuck. Animals ran around in the house, resulting in a chicken laying an egg in my bed, mych to my suprise. My host mother was a chicken gutter by proffesion. And we were served rice and beans 15 meals straight. I think I could write a cook book for the stuff!

During the mornings we manual laboured on the farm, getting up at 4am to milk the cows and then ride the milk down to the village. We also tried a bit of everything from helping in the organic vegetable garden, caring for the monkeys and raccoons in the animal refuge and repairing steps through the forest to the waterfall. Lots of fantastic memories. IN the afternoon we taught the slum children english and got very early nights, my normal is around 8 thirty now! I was very lucky , I neither had a dodgy stomach nor suffered from mosquito bites, even though I rarely wore repellent. The res tof the group was not so lucky! WE dreamed all week of pizza and as we stepped off the bus into San Jose we headed straight to the closest Italian, well deserved!

We spent the day after our return on a crocodile boat, watching a 30ft croc jump for bait, and at a beach resort which reminded me of La Manga.

The greatest culture shock was our arrival in Tortuguero, a luxury beach resort, after 11 hours of travelling. Based on an Amazonesque river we spent a day chilling out by the pool and canoeing on the river. I can summarise the various trips we took out on boats, the toucans we spotted, and the howler monkeys that woke us up as they sat on the branches outside our room every morning, but one experience rates beyond compare. WE went to see the turtles laying eggs on the beach last night and it is one of the few experiences of the trip that has brought me close to tears. This incredible creature struggles its way up the beach to lay up to 200 eggs in a night, then after the agonising proccess of labour, has to dig them all in and struggle back down the beach to the sea. Watching the turtle float away into the sea, flippers which were so clumsy on land suddenly so graceful, was both surreal and surprisingly spiritual.

Just finished the epic journey back and have another one tomorrow, this time to Arenal volcano, our final trip of Costa Rica. There we will experience the hot springs and some of us are planning upon horse riding to some waterfalls where we can swim. This will probably be my last blog of the trip, so just to say I am greatly looking forward to seeing you all again, telling you everything in full, and I can honestly say I will nver forget the value of a comfy bed and a shower, hot or cold, ever again!

M uch love to all xxxxxxxxx