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When we arrived in Siquirres, a small town onroute to San Jose, I needed some cash. But despite having 4 seperate banks, none would take my card, so I had to borrow some from Gabs rapidly depleting funds. We then caught the bus to Guapiles, and were told that we had missed the boat. But some old friendly woman told us another route than mainly locals took. After roughly a four hour boat journey, mainly in the dark, we arrived in Tortuguero. The group of four who were with us on the boat had paid $20 each. They caught it in Puerto Limon, which is what we should have done, but distance wise, their journey was twice as long. The woman collecting tickets then tried to charge us $35 each, but we haggeled down to $20. Still a bit of a rip off. I kept my cool, but Gabs on the other hand had lost it, and started getty shirty with her, thinking she couldnt speak English, however, she spoke perfect English and threatend to call the Police. At that point we grudgingly handed over the money and went to the hostel we the group of four guys, 3 from England and one from Australia.
The town of Tortuguero was much bigger than I was expecting. The were plenty of restaurants, bars, places to stay and 3 supermarkets! The people were freindly enough but the owner of the hostel said that it can get quite dodgy at night and you shouldnt take cameras and cards. Having learnt my lesson from Tamarindo, I had already stopped. Having had supper, it was decided that we do a Canoe trip the next morning at 6:00am, as they were the cheaper alternative to the motor boat. I am pretty sure gabs had already made up his mind about tortuguero by this point as hes not a morning person, being made to paddle this canoe was not his idea of a sight seeing trip. Anyway, the trip was fun, but it was only me and the guide paddling, after 10 mins, slackers! There was lots to see, mainly vegetation and small animals and birds. We did see some kind of reptile with lots of teath, it could have been a Camen, Aligator or crocodile, i cant remember, but it was only 4 feet away and the pathetic girl who refused to paddle, didnt like it, so we were forced to move.
When we returned, the English guy was an avid Man U fan, surprisingly from Manchester and was keen to watch the Final. So the afternoon passed watching the football overlooking the water and the occasional turd! The plan was that we were going to hike around the back of Tortuguero as we had already paid the entrance fee to the national park. However, Oli the man u fan was 'merry' and didnt feel like walking, so we did the walk with the other two girls, who were SO slow. Because the trial was so well trodden, most of the animals had probably wised up and moved away from the path. It was also dark which didnt help. So we return having lost the two slow coaches and seen only sillouttes of trees. This didnt really help withs Gabs enthusiasm.
As tortuguero was the ultimate tourist trap, everything was very expensive, even for costa rican standards, so we decided to head to Arenal the next day, the most active volcano in Costa Rica. Another early night was in order as the boat left at 6:30. This boat did have a motor and paddling wasnt necessary. The trip was longer than we expected. It did however make you appreciate the canoe trip as you couldnt hear anything, and anything you saw immediately took flight. Even Gabs had to admit than the canoe trip was better. The boat landed in the middle of of a DOLE banana plantation so we were allowed to have a look round, you couldnt eat the bananas as they we not ripe, shame. We arrived in San Jose as it was too late to get the bus to Arenal so we stayed in a hostel with a pool which was cool. No casinos this time though, gabs had lost to much last time! The only downside to the hostel was that there wasnt anybody there, so we watched tv...
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