Merry Christmas from La Fortuna, Costa Rica!
The past week has been at times quite funny and at times quite strange and stressful. First the funny. Last week, I sent a package to Alaska that cost 572 (Nicaraguan). I completely overwhelmed the system. Using stamps, the post office lady started with the lowest dominination (0.25) stamp until she was out, then the next lowest, and so on. After about an hour, she finally had calculated the number of stamps required to send the package. The end result was that my box is completely covered in stamps (literally). It will be amazing if the package arrives in Alaska (but I will not be surprised either).
Now the strange and stressful. On Saturday, we set off for Costa Rica to spend a few days in order to get a new visa. The border crossing into Costa Rica is completely chaotic and wacky. After crossing the border, we waited some 3 hours to catch a bus to La Fortuna (near a big volcano and wetland/wildlife preserve). The big twist to the story is that Mareike´s backpack was stolen on the bus (with everything important including passport and money). After this discovery, we got off the bus in a complete dump pretending to be a town, visited the police, got some really bad dinner, and had a really bad night sleep. The only nice thing about the town was the police. Early the next morning, we headed off to San Jose to get a new passport and get stuff figured out. San Jose is just like any other American city – could be located anywhere. Denny´s, McDonalds, KFC, etc etc. Anyway, to make the story a bit shorter, everything is pretty much resolved and we made it to La Fortuna. We will be here for a couple of days – today walking around the volcano and tomorrow maybe paddling through the wildlife preserve. We´ll see. Still no definite plans yet – typical I guess. If I had to guess that we will be back in Nicaragua by the end of the weekend.
I will try to get some new pictures up again soon.
Until that time!
