Nothing too exciting happened on Big Corn after my last email. I wasn´t feeling all that super so we just slept and slept and went out of the hotel like once a day and slept some more. And ate ice cream. I think one day we were only awake for like 7 hours...pretty awesome. The island is really cool though, there just isn´t all that much to do but relax.

Thursday morning we woke up at 5:00 or so to catch the boat back to Bluefields. It was not great, but I guess it was a lot better than it usually is! We had to sit on the side of the boat on a bench as the inside cabin was completely full of small children and luggage. Very annoying and smelly. The guys sitting next to us told us that when they took the boat out there they got just drenched because of the waves, but we lucked out and it was pretty mellow seas. We stayed pretty dry except for our butts from water running down the bench from the front, but that was tolerable. It took like 5 and a half hours though, which was a drag.

We had decided to stay in Bluefields Thursday night due to the bus schedule and timing and stuff... It is an alright city. We found a hotel that was pretty cheap and went out to eat. When we came back I was delighted to find that our bed was covered in ants! (I realized this as I was reading The Godfather and an ant started crawling out of the pages.) Luckily I realized before we got in...oh man. We switched rooms which ended up really nice because our new room had two outlets so we could have TV AND Fan, which our first room lacked, and our bathroom was far less dingy and scary. Though it was still extremely dingy, don´t get me wrong.

We had to wake up on Friday at like 4:45 to catch the speedboats back to El Rama. It was so terrible. By far the worst part of any traveling up to that point...(more on that later). The first boat we took was covered and less overloaded and higher up from the water, this time around we were in an open boat that was extremely overloaded (the water was like 6 inches down from the top of the boat) and I just had to white knuckle it the whole time. I was so sure that we were going to flip, and it didn´t help that Anton told me that it´s not totally uncommon for that to happen. Oh. My. God. We survived though, and besides a butt that ached like the dickens we were alright. When we got to El Rama we caught a bus back to Managua and then a bus to Rivas. Our goal was to make it to Costa Rica but I was so so beat and so we stayed in Rivas. We found a pretty decent hotel (we splurged and spent 20 dollars, as opposed to the usual 10ish) that had fairly clean looking inside and a TV and a nice fan. It also had a German Shepard outside our room which I liked. We went and had hot dogs and fries and tacos at another restaurant (we´d grown quite sick of the standard meat and white rice and fried plantains that you find EVERYWHERE) and had some beers and it was alright. We went to one other bar that was pretty absurd (mad pounding music and strobe lights, plus it was empty which made it even dumber) and went back to pass out.

Saturday we woke up at like 5:30 and caught a bus to the border. That was a pretty quick ride, and we passed into Costa Rica (town was Peñas Blancas) without incident. Then we got on a bus to San Jose. This was at 8:30 in the morning, and the bus was supposed to take 5 hours.

We arrived in San Jose at 9:00 PM. PM. Twelve and a half hours later.

1. First, a wasted guy was on the bus. We´d drove for like 15 minutes when they went to collect fare, and he started argueing and being all disruptive. He ended up throwing his empty beer can at the bus driver, who then stopped and had two police officers get on and forcibly eject the guy. And it was VERY forcibly. We were in the very back row and he was like 2 ahead of us...there was luckily a back side exit because this guy was clinging to anything he could reach to fight the cops. One of them even drew his gun and I was thinking they were going to pìstol whip him but it didn´t go that far...it took them like 2 or 3 minutes to get him off though. He was like clinging to the bus door frame and flipping out. So that was exciting.

2. The bridge that crosses a main river got all screwed up (we still haven´t found out exactly what happened) but we were going to have to go the long way around, which entailed turning around and taking a different path, adding like 3 hours. Okay, that´s fine. Whatever.

3. The bus driver got lost. Like extremely lost. Like adding multiple hours lost. I think he ended up doing 3 U turns within the space of a few hours, it was so frustrating.

4. We got to San Ramon, which was only an hour or so (maybe a bit more) from San Jose. There were two buses broken down completely blocking one road, and the other road was only for cars, not for buses. So we had to wait for like an hour for that to get cleared and figured out.

5. THEN if all of this wasn´t bad enough, like all of the passengers of one of the broken buses came on OUR bus. It was absurdly packed, like wall to wall people, and of course the lady with like 8 frickin kids sits next to us. It was so terrible and cramped and packed, I was freaking out. But then after awhile the whole situation was so absurd that we just had to laugh at it. It was like out of a movie, everyone was against us!

But we prevailed! And twelve and a half hours after leaving Peñas Blancas we arrived in San Jose. We took a cab to one hotel and it was like 30 dollars with no private bath, so we wandered around and found another one that was 20. PLUS it´s by far the nicest hotel we´ve stayed at on the whole trip. It doesn´t have air conditioning but it´s really cool here so it´s not necessary, it has hot water, a nice bed with a big fluffy comforter (we´re used to getting one sheet...one place I used a towel for an additional blanket) PLUS it´s the handicapped room so it´s pretty big. The shower is literally the size of a horse. It´s so amusing. And it has a lovely ramp to get into the bathroom, hahaha. But there´s not many bugs, etc. Plus Anton has taught me how to kill mosquitos so the ones that are there don´t last for long. They get clapped!

Saturday night we manned up and got cleaned up and went to El Pueblo. El Pueblo is a group of bars and restaurants and such, It´s all one area though (kinda like Mill) but way more compact and there´s actually a wall all around it and everyone gets searched to come in. We had a good meal (Anton had bacon wrapped steak with mushrooms and mashed potatoes of which I stole bites from, I had steak and chicken and bacon tacos. They were so fatty and delicious, haha.) Then we set out to get wasted after our ridiculous day. All of the bars (save like 2 or 3) were playing just POUNDING music, to the point where we would have to scream to hear eachother, which isn´t our style. We went to the few in which you could hear yourself think. Anton had his mohawk done (and he had the sides reshaved so now it´s even more ridiculous looking) and this old couple at one of the bars just loved it. They were freaking out, and talked to us about it for about 20 minutes. Muy funny.

After having like 6 tequila shots and a couple beers and still not being drunk we began to grow suspect. Then we ordered more tequila shots and closely examined it. We estimate that at the MAX there was a 50 50 ratio of tequila to water. It was half clear, didn´t smell very strong, and was super easy to drink (i was just thinking i´d finally gotten good at not pulling a ridiculous face after taking shots). We asked a few of the bartenders and they´d get really offended and stuff. From then on we ordered ¨Tequila y agua, por favor¨. It didn´t really matter though, if you drink enough of them you still get drunk. Anton saw some guy try to get in a fight and nearly fall over from being so drunk, which I guess was pretty amusing.

We stayed till it closed at 3AM and then cabbed it back home. We´d drank like 5 vodka and red bulls each (though they use an energy drink called MAXX that we think is even stronger, as we were just nuttily wired) and so we were up stupidly late (although it also had to do with the 4 line bag of blow we bought on the way home) and the neighbors were pounding on the walls cause I can´t control the volume of my voice, as per usual.

I didn´t feel like a million dollars yesterday, but we slept till like 2 so it was okay. I demanded pizza and we found a really good by the (massive) slice place and I had two ham and mushroom slices which made me feel infinitely better. Sweet grease. We went to another bar and I watched Anton drink some and eat dinner. I was not feeling like drinking at all, so we went to a 24 hour pharmacy and got pain killers and muscle relaxers and had a nice cocktail. It was pretty sweet, I felt much better and also just like floaty and talkative and dumb. We returned to the same bar and I had a few beers and we talked to this guy that is from Seattle for like 2 hours. He was okay, kinda lame but we tolerated it since he spoke english. Then we went to sleep in the wonderful bed of comfort.

We were going to only stay 2 or 3 nights but I really like it here so we´re going to stay 4 now. Not only is the hotel nice, but San Jose in general is just a really really cool city. It has a lot more of a NY San Fran vibe going on, especially in the area we´re in. There´s a big pedestrian mall area and lots of people and bars and restaurants everywhere. It pretty much hasn´t stopped raining since we got here, but it is really nice and cool so we don´t care. Plus we have our trusty umbrella that we got for like a dollar in Guatemala. This afternoon was pretty ridiculous though, there was so much thunder and it was like a bucket being poured on the city.

We found a book exchange on Big Corn and got 4 more books...I read one and it was SO BAD. So bad. It was a murder mystery thing and it was just horrid. Now I´m reading one about Anthrax and small pox and germ warfare which is pretty good. I finished the Kite Runner (which was really sad but good) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which was decent, Anton didn´t like it at all) and I also read The Godfather (which was AWESOME). I can´t even keep track how many books we´ve gone through. We just came from a book store and I got a Sherlock Holmes book that Anton said is really good, it´s called The Hound of Baskervilles. Its so small though, I´m going to read it in like 3 hours. Owell.

From here we´re going to go to Puerto Viejo and hopefully see some cool animals on the way. We are still having a great time, I´m not homesick in the least which is weird since I was dying to get home after 3 weeks in Europe. I guess that says alot about the company, and the less frantic travel pace. Plus with email it´s pretty alright. I can see how people do this for a year or two at a time and can´t wait till I have enough money to do that.