together is better

since Robin is busy on another computer following the tour the france results I have a chance to finally update you all on how we spent the first week of traveling. I'm sorry it took us so long... but the first couple of days we were just so happy to be together again that we disconnected ourselves a bit from the rest of the world. 

it's hard to start writing since there are so many things that have happened, so many places we've seen and so many people we've met in last days. I'll try to share some moments with you but since the internet is not really working here you'll still need to be a bit patient to see the photos. probably the best thing is to start with the day we met each other at costa rica's airport(btw if you're planning to meet somebody you love after 3 months and you don't want to be surrounded with 50 taxi drivers I would suggest to pick another airport:P). thanks to Robin's organization we spent the first two days in a really beautiful bed and breakfast in the mountains above san jose which gave me some time to overcome the jet lag and gave us some time to roughly plan what we would like to see in central america. 

san jose did not really impress us (apart from the food at the central market) so we decided to quickly continue to the caribbean side to a small village tortuguero packed between river canals,jungle and the sea. although not a typical postcard picture of caribbean beach it is still an amazing place. probably I was even more impressed since I've never saw a real jungle. we decided to explore the canals on our own so we rented a canoe and surprisingly saw (with some help of the locals though) monkeys playing in the trees, numerous bird species, humming birds, some kind of lizards, turtle and even a caiman. I must admit that I was not feeling really comfortable when we parked our canoe just next to one of them and had a picnic although Robin guaranteed they can't jump into the boat. I am sure he will be also able to explain more about the animal species...
the thing that attracts the most tourists is definitely the turtle watching. without any expectations (since the season just  started) we were really impressed! we managed to see one of the green turtels laying eggs(almost 100 of them) and protecting the nest.
after an adventurous boat ride back towards the inland (the boat broke down twice) we decided to continue towards nicaragua. mostly because we were too late to catch a bus to la fortuna (a famous volcano), because travelling around costa rica is mostly driven by organized trips which make it harder to for backpakers and because we still expect  we are going to be back in august.
it took us ¨only¨ 4 hours to cross the border and much less to realize that we are going to travel trough a less touristic and also less developed country. and so far we love it. the people here are much more friendly, super helpful and the places we´ve seen so far were amazing. we decided to spend the first couple of days at the pacific cost in the village san juan del sur which is a surfer´s paradise. first we tried a more remote beach, hermosa, to the south and yesterday we spent the day at one of the beaches more north. I took my first surfing lesson and now I really understand why robin is so enthusiastic about it. it´s such a fun sport to do and I hope I will be able to take advantage of some private surfing lessons from robin.
right now we are staying at an eco lodge on the beautiful island ¨isla de ometepe¨.  we just saw one of the nicest sunsets so far and had dinner with other guests with whome we are planning to climb the smallest of the two volcanos  tomorrow. we´ll keep you posted how muddy the hike is going to be since it has been raining a lot and if we manage to swim in the crater lake. 

tropical greetings across the ocean