Central America - Costa Rica

Hello year 2, 

Well this will be my last blog update from here in Central America, as Costa Rica  is our last country in this part of the world.

We left our guest house, in Nicaragua, at 5am in the morning to start our journey over to Costa Rica. We didn't realise how many modes of transport it would take to get us to our next destination.

Are you ready for this year 2? It took a whopping 13hrs of travelling in
1 ferry, 4 taxis, 3 buses. That's all in one day. Can you imagine doing that? It all went very smoothly and although we were tired we were happy to have arrived in Costa Rica in one piece.

One thing that we did notice over here is that like the rest of Central America, they speak spanish here in Costa Rica, they speak very fast indeed. It is very difficult to understand them so Mrs Maynard's constantly saying to anyone that speaks to her "despacio por favvor" which means slowly please. We are still 6hours behind you in England.

Costa Rica so far has been quite different from the other 3 Central America coutries that we have visited for 2 reasons.

1st - There are a lot more tourists here. It is a very popular holiday destination for people from America
2nd - Costa Rica is famous for it's wonderful forests and wildlife.

The first town we visited was in the north of the country and it was well known for being high up in the clouds and sometimes a little bit chilly, unlike the rest of costa Rica which is very sunny and hot.

Mrs Maynard and Tim did a very exciting activity called Ziplining. It was very high up as you whizzed between two different valleys. I wasn't able to join in on this activity though as I was a little too short. Mrs Maynard and Tim told me all about it and showed me their pictures.



Mrs Maynard explained to me that you have to wear a special harness that clips on to a wire, when you are ready, you sit down into the harness and away you go zipping across the valleys. 

The scariest line was called the Superman. This was different as instead of sitting down the harness was attached to you back, your legs tied up and you flew across the valley head first arms stretched out just like superman when he flys.

Here is a picture of the valley they went across.

This was the longest line and was 1,000 metres long. Mrs Maynard said she really enjoyed this as it was just like being a bird soaring high up in the air she was that high up.


The rest of our time here was spent visiting national parks and seeing the weird and wonderful wildlife they have. Here are some that we saw....
 

The spiders are HUGE and quite scary.

This yellow snake is poisonous so we had to stand back and take this picture.

Most of the animals were out in their natural environment but we did visit a special centre that rescues hurt, injured or very young babies who have lost their mummies.

My favorite along with Mrs M and Tim are the sloth bears. They are such wonderful creatures and nothing like we have in England. Don't you think they  look like they are smiling?

Here we saw a "Howler Monkey" called Goldie, who was only 1 year old and had been rescued. 

A very colourful parrott

A little gheko (lizard)

 A Toucan Bird 

 A Racoon

Costa Rica has some beautiful white long beaches. We didn't make any sand castles but I wonder how many it would take to fill the whole beach. What do you think?

We heard that on this beach it was very good for surfing so we hired some boards one morning for a little try.

Mrs Mayunard and Tim have done it a few times once in Australia and a couple of times in Devon and Cormwall.

Have any of you tried surfing or at least body boarding before? It always looks easier that it actually is.

I have to say when Mrs Maynard came out the water she looked like she had been put through the washing machine backwards. She was walking all wobbly, had lost her hair bands so her hair was all over the place and she told us she felt as though she had drunk half the sea-yuck!
The waves were a lot bigger than both her and Tim  were used to so had some fantastic wipe outs.

I'm glad to say that they both managed to stand up even for a few seconds. This with Mrs Maynard usually came with a joyous scream before she fell of sideways into the water legs and arms flying everywhere. She wasn't very lady like at all.

Tomorrow we leave Central America as we fly over to Cuba which is our very last country. We only have 2.5weeks there before our big adventure is over and we return to England.

We are all very much looking toward to Cuba for it's music and culture.

Look much forward to telling you all about it soon.

Buster

Central America - Nicaragua

Well we are half way through our Central America adventure. In total we will be visiting 4 countries here. We have been to 2 so far so are half way through.

Nicaragua again is quite like El Salvador and Honduras with the way of life, language, transport, and scenery.

While we were staying in one hostel Mrs Maynard met a girl called Ana who was from Spain. Mrs Maynard noticed that she was signing to somebody else in the hostel and realised that she was deaf. 


Mrs Maynard and Ana soon got chatting and Ana taught her and Tim all the signs for Central  America. Mrs Maynard has remembered them so she can come and show you when she gets back from her trip.

We also met a very nice young man called David on a bus to a new town called Granada. He spoke very good English as he taught it to children between the age of 12-13 years.
He was very kind and said that he would show us all around his town. It was so nice having a local person showing us around and telling us all about the area.

One shop we can across sold only hammocks.


Everyone there were really friendly, happy and very chatty. They showed us how they made the hammocks, what materials and threads they used. They had all different sizes and colours for sale.

Look there was even a hammock just the right size for me. I thought this was totally cool. A bear sized hammock. Perfect!

They even had a hammock that held 17 people, Yes that's right a whopping 17 adults would fit in here.

We think that it would be a great challenge to see if we could have fit the whole of Year 2 in here all in one go. What do you think? Mrs Maynard said there would be lots and lots of laughing and giggling going on.

Here is Mrs Maynard and Tim in it. Don't you think because the hammock is so big it makes them look tiny.

In the evening David took us out for some traditional Nicaraguan style food from a local market.

One thing that we did do which I know for a fact ALL of you would have enjoyed was we went to see how they make chocolate. In Nicaragua, like the rest of Central America, grow a lot of coffee bushes but also grow cocoa plants that produce cocoa beans that eventually turn into chocolate.

We all learnt a lot about this and got to make chocolate milk and our own chocolate bar at the end. Let me tell you it was yumm!


The stages that we went through to make chocolate milk drink were

1. The cocoa pod is plucked from the tree

2. The pod is broken open and the large seeds are removed. They are all sticky and covered in a white slimy gunk, that you can eat (it tastes yummy)

3. The seeds are left to dry out in the sun for 3 days, so that the slimey sweet gunk gets absorbed into the seed

4. Once the seeds are dry, the are then ready for roasting. The seeds are heated in a large clay pot until they crackle like popcorn being cooked. This only takes a few minutes.

5. The seeds then have their shells removed to reveal the inner raw bitter chocolate bean.

6. The bean is then crushed, by hand, for a very long time, until it turns into a paste. 

7. The paste is then mixed with warm milk, vanilla, cinamon and honey to make a delicious milk drink. 

8. Here i am with my finished chocolate bar. It had to be put into the fridge to cool down before i could eat it. It was yummy !

I hope that you have enjoyed leaning about the process of how to make chocolate. We learnt a lot and will definitly remember this day when we are back home munching on a bar.

Next stop is Costa Rica our 4th Central American country.

Take Care 

Buster

xx