Well here I am in the southern most country in Central America and the last country I’ll be visiting on this trip. We arrived yesterday, november the 3rd, and Panama was celebrating its 103rd year of independence from Colombia. The locals have 4 days off work and theres a lot of partying in the streets. Its really colorful and lively.

I spent 11 nights in Costa Rica in total. When we left Monteverde, we spent a couple of nights in the capital city of San José. We were severely warned of the dangers posed by this town, but once there we found it to be one of the nicest cities we’d seen. It has an european feel to it, with a high street full of fancy shops and an enormous park (with lake) where the old airport used to be.

From Costa Rica, we moved up to the eastern coast and to Tortuguero, a preserved park where turtles return each year to breed. It is reached through a network of canals surrounded by jungle, with plenty of wildlife to check out on the way. We took a dawn canoe trip into these canals and saw plenty of monkeys, birds and caïmans. In the evening, we got a guide to walk us down the beach to spot turtles. We were lucky enough to see a large female crawl her way up the beach and dig a big hole, before laying roughly one hundred eggs into it. The guide very discretely led us up behind her back and we were able to watch her lay her eggs from a couple of feet away with out her realising we were there. The whole walk and observing happened in almost total silence, which made it quite a sensational experience.

A boat down the coast from Tortuguero took us to Puerto Limon, and from there we made our way down to Cahuita and Puerto Viejo, and we spent a couple of nights in each. The Caribbean coast has a very distinct feel to it : english is widely spoken, and there’s a lot of rastafarianism, reggae, and weed… a real chilled out place.

Today was the first day of our diving course. We spent the morning watching videos and taking easy theoretical tests, and the afternoon in shallow water with the equipment. Once we’d gotten familiar with the scuba, we were swimming around the bottoms of the harbour at a depth of 3 or 4 meters. I wasn’t expecting it to go quite so fast, but its really easy and such fun.

I’ve put my photos from Costa Rica here, and I’m hoping to get some of Jasons up soon too.

Its been nice hearing from you all, and I’m looking forward to seeing you for Christmas.