Costa Rica

I'm writing this in a hostel in the heart of San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, where I arrived yesterday. I've just said a fond "hasta luego" to Lydia and Sarah, who are hurrying down to Panama city before heading back here in a week's time for their flight home. All being well we'll meet up somewhere in the middle for one last night together next week.

When I wrote the last entry my body still hadn't come to terms will the full extent of the depredations visited upon it by the climb up and down the volcano. For the next two days I was as stiff as a well-beaten meringue and twice as frail. Surprisingly, my feet weren't too bad underneath, but one of my toes (the little piggy who stayed at home) was badly swollen due to a collision with a rock. We had a day of rest at the hostel on Sunday and then on Monday we headed out early to catch a ferry down the lake to the Costa Rican border.

When we arrived at the island's port town I realised that I had run out of money and that there were no banks, but thankfully the girls helped me out with funds. The boat left at about seven o'clock in the evening, about an hour after night had fallen with a thud. Waiting on the quay among huge piles of bananas with the volcano looming in the background was quite atmospheric - particularly when there was a power cut and we realised that we were surrounded by fire flies.

We hooked up with an English bloke we had met - Lewis, a DJ from Hull, and two Canadians who are cycling through Central America. The boat was a little ferry with a first class section upstairs and a second class room on the lower deck, which bore more than a passing resemblance to a slave galley. Although we had only paid for second class we found a compromise in the shape of an empty section on deck at the top, where dozens of people had slung hammocks in all directions, sometimes overlapping each other. The journey, which was due to take ten hours, got off to a bad start when a huge wave crashed over the deck and soaked everyone's sleeping bags and ground mats. As we stood around shivering we all wondered how we were going to manage standing up on the listing ship until five the next morning. Luckily the lake (which looks and behaves like an ocean - did I mention that it contains 12-foot freshwaterbull sharks? calmed down and we were able to get comfortable - if lying on a damp metal deck can be described as such.

The most incredible thing about the journey was the flock of gigantic bats that followed us for miles off the land, swooping and diving behind the boat. I guess they were catching the insects being blown off the piles of fruit. I was watching them in the first light of dawn and then I went to the front of the boat to watch the sun rise. After a short time I returned to the rear of the boat and, as if by magic, they had been turned into a flock of seagulls, diving and swooping in just the same way.

Shortly after dawn we arrived in a shambolic little border town called San Carlos, quite an unpleasant place that's plagued by swarms of insects that look like giant greenfly. Fortunately we only had an hour to wait until a river boat left for a town in the jungle called El Castillo, where we had decided to have a rest for the night before heading on.

Along with an Austrian couple, Lewis, an Italian girl and a pair of Americans, we were the only tourists on the boat as we chugged our way for three hours through pristine jungle, swarming with birds of every size, shape and colour. Every now and then we would pull up on the bank and people would appear out of nowhere to jump on. Occasionally we passed people in dug-out canoes fishing in the river, the San Juan, which leads to the Caribbean and is the conduit for those sharks to make their way to the lake.

El Castillo is gorgeous - a cluster of brightly-coloured wooden houses built on stilts over the river. It owes its name to the Spanish fortress in the middle of the town, which was built to stop pirates using the river to gain access to the fabulous wealth of Grenada, which is on the far side of the lake, beyond Ometepe. All of us gringos ended up in the same boarding house, a lovely little family home with a wide veranda hanging over the river. Lewis, a keen fisherman, got his rod out and started trying to catch one of the giant tarpons (a notoriously difficult-to-catch fish) that were jumping out the river with flashes of silver in every direction. The rest of us just sat around in a tired daze soaking up the wonderful atmosphere of the place. In the evening we all chipped in to cook a huge pot of spaghetti and the Austrian chap, Thomas, got out his miniature guitar and we sat around singing silly songs.

The American couple, who had a banjo and violin between them, didn't join in, as they were terribly serious sorts. Earlier in the day they had made a point of informing us that they had found a restaurant that served fantastic vegetarian food because, of course, they didn't eat meat. To emphasise this point the chap, who was ginger, was wearing a T-shirt with a grinning carrot on it, something that the girls found very amusing. It seems that mocking ginger people is a universal pastime. They had made me laugh earlier in the day when we had met the girl in town and she asked if we had seen her friend - she'd lost him several hours ago, she said. When we got back to the hostel I heard a faint tapping coming from one of the rooms and a weak trembling voice calling: "Susan, Susan, where are you? Susan, let me out, Susan. I'm thirsty." I wondered how long it would be before I could poke rashers of bacon under the door and hear him fall upon them and eat ravenously.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from the evening but we had to get to bed early because our boat back to San Carlos, and then the border, left at five in the morning. Although we were all tired this trip was wonderful, but you'll have to imagine it for yourselves - the feeling of putt-putt-putting through the jungle with the sun rising, the birds singing and the howler monkeys roaring on every side is well beyond my powers of description.

Back at San Carlos I went along to the bank to get some cash to pay back the girls and have enough for the border crossing. It seemed a modern-enough establishment, but they couldn't take cards, cash travellers' cheques or change pounds. They said they could only change dollars or euros. I went back to the girls and they lent me 20 euros, which I presented at the bank. Fine, they said, but we can't change it until ten o'clock, when we get our daily phone call from head office telling us what today's exchange rate is. It was very frustrating, and for once I was glad to see a scum-bag moneychanger at the quay.

Getting the departure stamps involved walking round a labyrinthine shed overhanging the river. It was quite surreal, particularly as everything was painted in a particularly startling shade of blue. As I waited at the window to get my exit stamp I became aware of a seedy little chap (who looked very much like
Charles Bronson) pushing up behind me holding a denim jacket up to his face. He was so shifty it was obvious he was up to no good, and before too long I noticed his hand snaking its way towards my pocket - containing the cash I had gone through so much to get my hands on. I pushed him back and prodded his belly with my finger and he scurried off down the street. I told one of the customs people, a bloke who had taken a particular shine to Lydia, and he went and got a policeman. They wanted a description and I did my best, with help from Sarah. When I told the copper that the suspect looked like Charles Bronson (como el actor de las peliculas se llama Die Hard), a glimmer of recognition came into his eyes, and without further questions he went off, premumably to give the would-be thief a thorough beating.

Getting to the Costa Rican frontier, on the other side of the river, involved another hour on a river boat, and even more howler monkeys, birds and turtles. Arriving here it was immediately obvious that we were in another country - everything was much cleaner and better organised. Even though it was a tiny little town there was even a cashpoint machine in its centre, which, being Costa Rica, was a football pitch rather than a plaza.

Because the girls are on such a tight budget, ten euros each per day, we decided to hitch to San Jose rather than take the five-hour bus journey for four dollars. I'm glad we did; there was a bit of waiting and an hour on a bus at the end (for one dollar), but we got to ride in comfort, asking our drivers lots of questions about the country. Besides which, we weren't much slower than the bus.

The landscape here is remarkably diverse. At one point, surrounded by fields of fruit and vegetables, you can imagine yourself in Kent. Then, turning a corner, you find yourself in the mountains of Switzerland or in the Amazonian jungle.

I'm having a restful day today, mainly to catch up on sleep but also because the toes of my right foot are a bloody battered mess. Since realising that I'd knackered the little piggy who stayed at home I've been banging it on everything - on kerbs, the sides of boats, on doors, on waste-paper baskets, on rucksacks and, most recently, on the wheel of a hotdog wagon.