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Hola!
We're in an Internet cafe in Puerto Viejo, a really cool town about 2 hours from where we're staying in Gandoca. It's apparently "the Rasta town where reggae rules"!
Last Sunday we arrived at 10pm local time in San Jose (after 24 hours with no sleep!) and got told we had to get up at 4:30am for a day's minibus ride to Gandoca - not very welcome news!! When we arrived, we met the family we're staying with whle we're here, who are really lovely - they have a 3 year old daughter called Charlie who is adorable and loves listening to our iPods...! The food is really good (mainly rice and beans although they have bought us some cornflakes!!) and they are very patient with our Spanish and constantly try to teach us more which is very educational! The other people staying with us are Colette from Canada, Margaux from France, Maria from Spain and Alex from California, and they're all great -we've sort of become one big family!
Gandoca is really small - apparently 200 people live there although we've only seen about 30!! There is one bar which everyone hangs out at and which plays loud music all day every day. They only got electricity 10 years ago and phones 2 years ago, and the road to get there is practically non existant! There is loads of cool wildlife around including howler monkeys in the garden which wake us up at 5 in the morning and throw things at you from the trees if you walk too close!
During the day we usually have activities - sometimes beach work, where we supposedly move massive pieces of driftwood off the beach (our lack of upper body strength means we usually choose to move sticks and twigs instead...!) although sometimes we get to play football or something else. Every night we have beach patrols from 8-12 or 12-4, during which we basically trek up and down the beach in the pitch black (tripping over many logs which we have not managed to move in the process!) in the search for turtles. If we are lucky enough to see them, we collect their eggs to put them in a hatchery, so they're protected from poachers.
Usually turtles are spotted every night, but so far Emma has only seen one turtle for about 2 minutes, Jess has seen one but it only laid one (unfertilised) egg instead of the usual 100 fertilised eggs! Hatti is the only one who has actually been lucky enough to see the whole process properly (and has also got no mosquito bites, whereas Jess and Emma are absolutely covered)!
The leaders of the whole project are all Costa Rican and live in Gandoca, and the guy in charge is called Andrey. He can supposedly track down a turtle nest by tasting the sand in the turtle tracks, but we are too embarrassed to ask him if it's true - we have our doubts!
We're now going to attempt to put up some of our photos, so hopefully that will be successful! But in short, we are having an awesome time and are already worried about having to say goodbye to everyone!
Keep us updated on what you guys are up to, we miss you all! We will try to update the blog again soon, although Gandoca is so remote (with no Internet or phone coverage) that it is tricky!
Mucho amor,
Emma, Jess and Hatti xxx
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