On and On, we stop for no man

Well, I have not done this in a while, Time to check in.
I dont know where to start..Basically we left Utila, and in less than a week we were in Costa Rica, on the Osa Pennisula. We made a Mad Dash from Utila, in northern Honduras [its an island off the coast] to Tegucigalpa or Tegus, because Tegucigalpa is too hard to say? We made a small stop over in Tegus and caught a bus to Choluteca, which is somewhat close to the border to Nicaragua. With a few hours of sleep in a hostel we started the next day with another Bus ride! Across the border, became official, not a problem at all, and then headed for Leon. Not wanting to waste a day in hellishly hot Leon we took a bus to Managua. Managua is the capital of Nicaragua and like most other capital cities in Central America [except for maybe Belmopan, Belize] all the transportation routes have to go through the capital. Its neat to see the capitals but most of the time you get dropped off at some bus station in the shady outskirts and just want to get out of there, or thats how we felt, SO with no further delay we hoped on another bus to Grenada. More of a peaceful city Grenada lies on the northern end of Lago de Nicaragua, more of an inland sea than a lake, but it made the city much less hot, but still sweltering. So we hoped to stay in Grenada for a few days!
We went and checked out a cool volcano by the name of Masaya. Volcan Masaya has a number of craters but one that is still active and it is basically a huge pit in the center of this mass of volcanic debris. A cross was put at one of the taller ridges by a friar fransicso [i think?] and he called it the entrance to hell, because there is a constant steamy cloud of Sulfur pouring out of the massive crater. It was a really cool pit to see and spectacular to see glimpses of the bottom and the side walls of the crater lining the layers of eruptions and rock that had made the volcano. We did a walk around an old crater, and then checked out the caves, which were an old lava tube, we got to see bats, tree roots, the beginnings of stalactites and stalagmites, and got to hear some history of the lava tube, both a bomb shelter and a place of sacrafice [at separate times of course] At the entrance to the cave we got to see a Mot Mot, the national bird of Nicaragua, such a beautiful bird, so colorful and bright. We returned to the highway via a nice tour bus that stopped and brought us the remaining 5km to the park entrance. We were especially glad because it was another HOT day in Paradise, and the Lava fields and Volcanic park gave little shade as cover. A side point, the visitor center was a really well put together and withit place, lots of information and well designed, props to the peeps who organized that center, it was the best one I have seen, and probably the most informative too.
So we returned to Grenada for a meal [fried plantanes are patacones, and they are yummy] of chicken fillets and some refreshments. Then we went to a local sports bar, well actually wondered by it and saw that they had a hoops game on, we were still parched so we stopped for a drink, found there was a soccer [Sounders!] game on in the opposite corner and watched that instead. A little while later we saw a girl wonder in the bar with a group of friends and I could have sworn it was my girlfriends sister, Kelly. She is studying abroad in Costa Rica now and has been traveling different places on most weekends with a group of students, well this time her and her group went to Grenada, and surprise, we were there too!! So after a few minutes of discussion between Kyle and I, she finally responded to my yelling at her, rather me calling her name, and after a split second of confusion relazed that it was infact us and she greeted us with big hugs. It was really good to have that kind of luck and meet her so randomly [neither of us knew the other was there] and it was great to catch up with her adventures but I think we might have made her hoarse. At any rate I felt very luck to have met up with her, and it was like seeing family randomly in a bar across the world. Thanks Kel ;)
After the games were finished and we had escorted the lady home we checked on some internets and found that another friend of mine was planning a trip in Costa Rica on the Osa Peninsula, and he was intent on starting soon, like the 29th if possible. So Kyle and I discussed and with a few weeks left anyway we decided to skip the rest of Nicaragua and head for CR and hopefully find some good adventures before we headed home on the 8th. So the next morning we headed south, across the Nicaraguan-Costa Rican border that was a complete mess. It took three hours to cross and it was HOT, we did find a Air Con bus to take us from the border to San Jose, again the capital and everything runs through it. It took nearly all day to get to San Jose and arriving at dark we found a cheap hostel a taxi told us about and rested for the night after finding a bank from which to withdrawl money. We arrived at the bus terminal that would take us to Puerto Jimenéz at 730am and tried to get on the 8am bus but it was all full, so we had to wait for the noon bus. And on a 8 hour bus ride we again found ourselves arriving into a city at dark. But from my friend Brian I knew that they were staying at a place called The Palms so we found them with ease [and really PJ is small, easy to navigate and no problems at night]
So here we are in PJ!
Yesterday was my birthday and we spent a few hours out on kayaks hunting cool critters in a mangrove and around the bay. We stopped at a beach that was just on the other side of a sand bank [we heard the waves and became curious] and swam in the hot Pacific Ocean for a while [Northwesterns will not believe that the water here is warm, and I would have loved to jump in to NW temperature water, it would have felt soooo goood] This is where we saw a small Manta Ray jump out of the water! not once but twice!! I was not aware that they could do this, or behaved like that, and as it was my first Manta Ray sighting I felt extremely privelaged, and felt it was a grand present. We continued with our own mangrove tour and got to see JC or Basalisk lizards that had three sail like extentions off their head, back and tail. On our arrival back to town we ate and then headed out for a night spotting of caimans and crocs in a local lagoon-swamp, one of our group brought some chicken scraps to temp them out of the water a bit. Caimans are in the same family as alligators and crocs and looks much like a small alligator. We got to see many eyespots and even got to feed them a bit of chicken but I really had no idea how to tell the crocs from the caimans and we all kept our distance. All in all it was a damn good day!
Tomorrow we are set, Brian, our trip setter, finally got the right guide, the right price and we are going to hike around in the Corcovado National Park. This park is world renown for being a place that is filled with many species of bird, mammal, and reptile, rich wildlife and pristine forest so we should be in for a treat. Costa Rica is absolutely Beautiful, and all though we are at the end of our trip I really wish I had more time and money [costa rica is also by FAR the most expensive place we have visited] to stay and travel. So green, and definitely more well kept than other more empoverished countries, and there are soo many things to do here but they all cost lots of money. We are luck to have this chance to go out to Corcovado and Brian tells me that our guide is really good and we should get to see some really cool stuff.
So I will report on that later, Hope all is well with all you followers, cheers and Pura Vida from CR!