Costa Rica to Columbia Ramble

Cartagena, Colombia

I believe the last time I wrote one of these long cursed emails it was all the way back in Leon Nicaragua. So from there we went out to a town called Polynoya a beautful beach on the Pacific side of Nicaragua, and for the first time all trip we actually had some sun at the beach. So we spent a couple of quiet relaxing days on the beach, and headed on down to Grenada Nicaragua, a bustling colonial town on the coast of Lake Nicaragua(the tenth largest fresh water lake in the world, bet you didn't know that). We found a little hostel called the bearded monkey that was so steeped in comforts from home(couch, TV, pool table) at cheap prices that we stayed a few days more than we probably should have, but we had a good time none the less. From there we went to another beach town, named San Juan del Sur, which was also nice. It had a good mixture of a relaxed atmosphere during the day, but also lots to do at night. There we met a couple people, a girl named Peggy from Holland, and I guy named Pier from Sweden, and they travel with us a few days into Costa Rica, first to another beach town called Playa de Coco, where on the last night Kevin met his long lost, star-crossed latina lover. Unfortunately, we were staying in a tent at the time, and I had long since gone to bed, and was snoring contentedly. Poor, poor Kevin after working all night to break the language barrier with the girl he loses her on the account of cheap accommodations and my nasal symphony. So the next day we moved on to the Monteverde Cloud forest. Beautiful, Beautiful, way up in the mountains where it doesn't really rain much, the clouds just move through the forest, the moisture leaving the flora and fauna every different shade of green, with scores of interesting animals that we never actually saw, but looked cool on the little laminated guides they hand us before our hike.
In Monteverde, we met a couple of girls named Michelle and H’rina who want to travel with us through Venezuela and Brazil, but first Kevin and I had somethings to do in San Jose (the capital of Costa Rica). I had to get my yellow fever shot, and we both had a couple of other errands to run. So the girls went to Venezuela instead, and we'll probably meet them there later. Anyway, so now we're in Cartagena, which is an incredible town filled with beautiful cathedrals, old forts (and guys who want me to smuggle Cocaine to America, but we won't talk about that, Columbian jails don't sound to appealing to me). Supposedly its pretty safe here, although you still need to use common sense. We're only going to be here for a couple of days. We haven't had a chance yet to explore the City, but I do know it’s hot as hell.
Cartagena is one of my favorite towns that we've been in. It reminds me of cities in Spain. We walked around today through the old part of town looking at cathedrals and whatnot, then later we went to the huge fort Castilla San Felipe, which was very impressive, although it didn´t look like the fort in romancing the stone. Maybe we went to the wrong one.