I left La Garcita, with the other English-speaking volunteers, at 13:30 and took a bus into central San Ramon in order to catch the early bus to Puntarenas. So, the REAL adventure begins when you start taking public transport (mainly buses) in a Latin American country. Surprisingly, for the amount of tourists that come to Costa Rica, not many Ticos speak English or, are willing to speak Ingles! From there, it was a 1-hour wait for the bus to Quepos where I had to...

So, in a nutshell - Costa Rican cities are pretty ugly! We arrived late on Saturday night and were then whisked away to the hostel in Alajuela with the smelliest bathroom I have ever been in - ugh! Sunday was a free day but it was grey, not much happening (Catholic country) and I was exhausted from 1 week of back-to-back activities in LA. We met and had drinks with another volunteer on Sunday evening, Hope ( a paramedic from Norwich), who will be volunteering o...