yolt

Hello all, 
I've been super lazy about this blog... coming on two weeks and this is the first post... what can i say..
Im currently sitting at hostel liberdad in Granada, Nicaragua. A beautiful spanish colonial town with brightly painted buildings, a maze of a market to lose yourself in and 8 dollar bottles of rum. for the big ones..
but getting here, i arrived in san jose on the 9th after a fairly gruelling but enjoyable night at the Buffallo airport having wheelchair races and ukelele jams with janny and Dylan. getting to san jose we avoided the hustlers and taxi drivers and spent a dollar on the public bus getting to our hostel. Hostel pangea, the greatest place to meet white people in costa rica. Later in the evening Leo arrived and the trip sort of officially began. We didnt like san jose, big, dirty, fairly sketchy and catered to the backpacker party life, so we got the fuk outta dodge as early as we could the next day. We hopped on a bus taking us to Calieri, A sort of stopover point on the way to the boat which would take us to Tortuguero, a little village on the northern Carribean coast famous for its national park and the Turtle watching. We got stuck in Calieri for the night though and slept at Hotel tropical. Calieri was actually a great town however and we enjoyed ice cream, playing pool, fohtees and spanish zoolander.
I also started my painting career, one a day for the duration of the trip...
 We got up bright and early in Calieri,especially since our alarms were set at 430 instead od 530.
We caught the bus to the boat dock and caught the boat to Tortueguero. it leads down a meandering river through thick rain rainforest, muddy banks where fast floppy earred cows sit and soak up the sun and sleepy little villages where the fisherman are in their boats for the morning catch. pretty fucking serene.
We spent two days relaxing in Tortuguero, swimming eating, playing pool and cards aquainting oursleves with the local liquor and local dogs. the four legged and two legged kind. Our Amigo Alejandro showed Dylan and I one those green tree frogs with red eyes... coooool

anyway im getting bored of writing so il just some it up.

After tortuguero we headed across the country, 9 hours later and we were in Liberia to meet  kvesche... Liberia is nice, a sort of Spanish version of any charming North American town. it has skate shops, corparate food chains and even a supercenter. Owned by Walmart of course, we actually learned that most grocery stores in Costa Rica and ALL grocery stores in Nicaragua are owned by walmart, and Pepsi owns the beer.  HAIL THE CORPORATE STATE..omnipresent bro.
 we headed to the Liberia airport the next day and picked up ross. fresh from his first plane ride ever and looking very travel savy.
after negotiating with a taxi driver we made the right choice...
TAXI DRIVER> friends, where you going?
GANG> to the beach, Tamarindo
TAXI> oh, its expensive, the bus is 6 dollars each
GANG> ...i dont think so...
TAXI> FOR you, i drive, only 20 dollars each!
Not the best hustler weve met.

We made it to Tamarindo, a coastal surf town... pretty awful, only tourist culture, expensive food, the hostels wouldnt let us camp.. , but we found one litlle restaurant with great cheap food, all pitched one bed at a dorm, stashed our stuff there and just camped right on the beach, also we surfed some gnarly waves and somehow convinced the hostel we were all staying there and abused the benefits that came with it, free drinks , free pool and free wifi baby.

We rented a car out of Tortuguero and headed to to PLayas Naranja, A beach in in national park Santa Rosa. It was beautiful, driving through the costa rican countryside while the sun sets, watching the smoke from the Sugar cane fires. The beach itself was also unreal, we arrived at the national park at night, we had to drive down this beaten up dusty old road for 11 km, ruining the suspension on the poor little daihatsu 4x4 until we get to the beach, took over an hour! 11 km!. We arrive finnally are literally the only ones there! except for the hundreds if not thousands of creepy little black and purple crabs. We set up our tents and then hit the beach, listening to music while sharing a 40 of bacardi, couldnt be better.
The next day was much the same, the best surf ive ever sene, too bad we had no boards, my therma rest had to do. Its worth mentioning how hilariously unprepared for camping we were. We sort of just bought random groceries the day before, we had a little fire and were cooking beans in the can on this dusty old grill, weird half cooked hotdogs and corn tortillas, and sand. we only had one little knife and it was used for everything, spreading jam, cutting fruit. stirring beans. Also while heading  down the road into the national park we realized we had no beer! so we tturned around asnd drove to some little village that was nearby, we ate a good dinner and ended up buying a bottle of rum from the bar. somehow we lost ten dollars in the transaction, the old lady shiested us for sure. 
Playing the sweet old granny card...

We headed out early the third morning, stopped to swim at a waterfall next to a volcano where we cliffed jumped into crystal clear, cool, torquoise water (no big deal), dropped the rental off in Liberia and then caught the next bus to the nicaraguan border... Which was one hell of an experience. Again we arrived at night and realized there was no more buses travelling to Granada, so our options were spend the night at the border, or pay a taxi 20 bucks a head to get to Granada. So we decided to go see if there were any buses anyway. so we left the safety of the lights and polizia and headed to the bus terminal.

FUN FACT :All the local buses in Nicaragua are old school buses painted up pimp style by the owners, called chicken buses.

Meanwhile were getting harassed by literally dozens of nicaraguans trying to get us into their taxis, but we somehow negotched a bus on its way to managua to take the detour and drop us in granada, ten bucks, no  bigie. as we're waiting for the bus to leave when the guy tells us we could get into his friends taxi and for another dollar we could leave right now. ok sounds good, until we realize hes an unoficial sketchy looking dude driving a tiny sedan. remember there's six of us. so no thank you. We grabbed our bags back out of the truck and got back on the bus. We have to change busses again for some reason but eventually we're out of there. still a litlle nervous though, and the guy driving this bus at 140km passing 18 wheelers didnt help. good thing you can smoke on the bus.

Anyway weve spent the last two days in Granada and its fantastic, tied one off last night for Dylans birthday, Ross and I ended up with some locals at a bar on the edge of town, communicating with a deaf dumb Nicaraguan ex soldier with a bullet hole in his leg, then driving on the back of motorcycles back to our hostel... Kvesche and I are going for 2 dollar haircuts.
anyway.
Finna giv´r still