Well I put up some photos finally! Here they are:

PHOTOS FROM LIMA ON FACEBOOK

Over the last week Peru has been hit by football fever even though they don’t have a team in the World Cup. There doesn’t seem to be any favourite amongst the people but Brazil and Argentina seem the most popular. I haven’t heard anyone say New Zealand yet!

Actually, just 35 minutes ago NZ was knocked out of the World Cup, but they drew all three of their games, so that makes us UNDEFEATED! Woo. Before the World Cup I was going to put a £10 bet on New Zealand to win the World Cup which would have made me £25,010 if they had won. Luckily I didn’t put that bet on, and I saved myself £10. In Lima that paid for my taxis around Miraflores (the part of Lima I’m staying in) all week!

I’m trying to think of what to write here, and I’m struggling because I’ve been just seeing interesting sights with classmates all week, and really the photos tell all. My friends Ian and Richard flew into Lima Tuesday, I met them at the airport on Tuesday night and we hung out in Miraflores all of Wednesday.

I took a taxi out to the airport on Tuesday at 9pm to meet Ian and Richard, I think that the taxi driver was trying to beat his personal best time for a ride to the airport, either that or he thought the 80km posted speed limit was the minimum rather than the maximum. He was a real friendly chap, talking to me the whole way in Spanish with me understanding about 25% of what he said, and him understanding probably about 25% of what I said back. But I did know that the whole conversation revolved around discussing which countries have the hottest girls. He thought Colombia. When he thought that I didn’t believe him, he did a handbrake turn into a very dodgy side street and took a detour past his favourite Colombian strip club so I could see it. Bonus.

There were a couple of other times I thought there was no way we could avoid a collision with another car, but at the last split second the taxi driver would swerve and open up a new lane of his own in the road. When we got to the airport, the police check the documents of taxis entering the airport to check they’re up to date. The policeman didn’t like the documents of my taxi driver for some reason, so we had to pull over into security for a few minutes, and then the driver was told to “drop off your passenger then return here” after getting his car documents taken off him. He took me to the terminal where I got out, paid the guy his £5 and I don’t know what happened to him after that. I hope he’s okay! I feel a bit sorry for all the taxi drivers here trying to make a living, there are so many of them it can’t be easy. Every time I walk out of my apartment, it’s almost guaranteed that within 15 seconds I will have a taxi tooting at me.

Ian and Richard got a hotel transfer to their hotel which wasn’t far from the airport, and I went with them. Richard paid the taxi driver with a $20USD note for a $9 fare, and was waiting for his change but it never came, which he wasn’t very happy about! On the way, Ian told me that he flies out to Macchu Picchu the next morning, and I kindly pointed out to him that no, you actually have two nights in Lima, not just one. Good old Ian That turned out to be a good thing, because his hotel let him stay another night, and it meant they could sleep in after a big flight and then we had a whole day in Lima together. I left Ian at his hotel and took a taxi back to Miraflores which I got for 25 soles (£6), not bad for 12:30am in a very questionable neighbourhood.

Ian and Richard took a taxi down to Miraflores from the airport, which was 30 soles (£7.50) for him, not a bad price for a couple of white guys who speak no spanish, since you have to negotiate the price before you get in the taxi (I’ve heard that people from the school paid 100 soles before and on the internet there are reports of people paying 200). I met up with them after my spanish class finished at 1pm and we visited a shopping centre and had lunch, then we walked around some parks. We took a walk down to the beach (and it’s a long way down from Miraflores which is on top of a massive cliff) where all the locals tried to get us to take surfing lessons. No way, Jose, the waves were so rough and that part of the beach was made of stones which were at such an angle into the water that it looked like if you fell of your board you would crack your head open. Although it was a perfect day for it, there were many waves, and Ian had arrived on the one day out of two weeks where the sun came out and stayed out. No wonder the ancient Incas worshipped the sun, because it hardly ever shows itself.

Instead we had a couple of cocktails at a fancy bar on a pier, and we were the only ones for a lot of the time in the bar, which was really relaxing and a great chance to catch up on the gossip.

After a while we went to an area of Miraflores known as Petit Thouars where they sell lots of Peruvian artifacts. Well, not just lots, but several blocks worth, each with several massive markets. Ian was very interested in paintings and rugs, but after he got a call from his Mum who was in another part of Peru, he decided not to buy anything because apparently it’s cheaper the further you get out of Lima and he’s going to Cusco tomorrow. There were such a lot of markets, but they were quite quiet because it was Wednesday afternoon, and most of the shops had the shop girls trying hard to get us to go into their shops. Again, because of the sheer amount of stuff for sale, and the quietness of the place, it was hard not to feel that it must be hard for these people to make a living. Although, who knows, perhaps there’s a 2,000% markup on everything.

I really liked the massive white rugs which were really amazingly soft, although I was a bit disturbed by the accompanying sign stating “100% baby alpaca”. I’m hoping they meant “100% baby alpaca fur”! I would have loved one for my house, if I owned one. Also some of the paintings and vases were nice. We then had dinner overlooking Parque Kennedy which was basic but tasty and then I hailed a taxi for Ian to take him home. I managed to negotiate a price of 20 soles for him and Richard, and I think that the driver understood where I wanted him to go (he had a map which wasn’t particularly clear). Hopefully Ian got back to his hotel alright, I haven’t heard from him since last night! Ian should be on a plane to Cusco right at this moment, where I will be joining him on Saturday and we will be doing the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu together along with Richard and Ian’s parents.

Spanish class this week is different, we had 5 in the class last week but this week 3 of them have gone, so it’s just me and Patrick. Patrick’s a nice guy but his confidence in speaking is much higher than mine, and he talks a lot, so it’s hard for me to get a word in, and when I do get a word I’m like “Me… parezco, ah, umm, I mean, parece, err, bien, hmm, ahh, gracias”. I feel a bit stupid at times, Patrick has clearly had a lot more practice talking even though I think I know more of the grammar. When it was just me and Claudia in a class in Costa Rica that was really cool because we were both at a similar level, but here there’s quite a mismatch.

I can’t honestly decide which I like better, Lima or Costa Rica. Costa Rica had cocktails on the beach, a wider range of students, more of a relaxed atmosphere because of the beach, and a better style of learning. Lima only has cocktails in nightclubs, the students are all the same age group and are either “boring couples” or guys who spend all the time trying to pick up girls and take them back to their apartments, and the city is noisy and not terribly relaxing. But on the plus side for Lima, the climate is nice even if it’s a bit grey, the school staff are friendlier here, there’s always something to see or do because it’s a city and my accommodation is much more comfortable, whereas Costa Rica I was simply too hot all the time. Hmm, no I think Costa Rica gets the win on this occasion, possibly swayed by the fact that it was such a culture shock when I first arrived and it was all so exciting and new, and such a different experience, whereas by the time I got to Lima everything was a bit “par for the course”.

I wish I took more photos when Ian was here, but it’s okay, when we go our separate ways from Macchu Picchu Ian and I have about 8 or 9 hours to hang out in Lima before we leave Peru.

Well my first week out of two in Lima is almost over already, time goes so much faster here because unlike Sámara which was a small beach town, this is a huge city with so much to do, in addition, the school here seems a lot more like a small close family unlike Samara where the staff were there during the day but went their separate ways at night. I’ve been happy with how things have gone so far, I thought perhaps that because it was the city that students would be more a bit more snobby or a bit more like they would want to do their own thing, but it hasn’t been like that at all, everyone’s really friendly and we always are going out somewhere together. That doesn’t leave much time for updating my blog!

On Tuesday, after sleeping almost all of Monday, I was feeling a bit better. I went out with Paul (my housemate) and a student called Jenny to a bar to watch one of the world cup matches and have lunch. It’s world cup fever here at the moment of course. In the afternoon I went with some of the students to a museum which housed a lot of Inca ceramics and gold and silver pieces which was really interesting, I took photos of this and other things that happened in the week and will put them on facebook hopefully this weekend.

Even though I slept all of Monday, I still was feeling tired Tuesday so I went to bed early again. Paul and Vicky (my other housemate) were trying to get me to go out to a Salsa club but that sounded a bit scary because it combines dancing and clubs, two things I don’t particularly like much! Oh yes, it turned out that my other housemate is Vicky, not Yolanda, I got two of the names of the girls at school mixed up.

Wednesday I hung out with Paul again, we explored the area and did our homework and both slept a bit in the afternoon, because we both went to karaoke that night along with 8 or 9 others. I really didn’t think I would end up singing anything, but I did, after two beers, three pisco sours and two “multiple orgasms” I was singing Y M C A extremely loud into the microphone, along with Doris Day’s “Que Sera Sera”. I was awesome, of course. There’s photos of that night too but I’m too scared to go through them just yet. Paul sung Rollin’ by Limp Biskit which was absolutely hilarious and together we sung I Want It That Way by Backstreet Boys.

Today (Thursday) after class I bought a Peruvian sim-card, because they were only 15 soles (£3.50) so I thought why not. Although I haven’t the faintest idea how to top it up or what the woman says to me in Spanish when I dial a number or what it costs to do anything. Oh well. Later on we went to a market in the centre of Peru and I bought some clothes, I bought a jacket, two t-shirts, some trackpants and two dvds for a grand total of 193 soles (£47). The DVDs were 4 soles (£1) each because they were copies, the kind of dvds you see being sold in East London on the street, however here, they’re sold in shops as copies (there’s masses of them, catalogued and everything), and nobody seems to care. Salespeople weren’t pushy in the markets at first, but after I started to buy things, the more bags I was holding, the pushier the salespeople seemed to be.

Up until today we haven’t ventured too far from the school and our house, which are both in Miraflores which is the nicest part of Lima and the main tourist area. The centre of Lima was interesting, it didn’t feel too unsafe but we were told to keep our bags in front of us, keep nothing in our back pockets and check that the change we receive is not counterfeit. At every intersection there are people trying to sell you things but they’re not pushy. The taxi ride to the market was a bit scary, none of the taxis have seatbelts, nobody respects the lanes and we seem to drive straight through intersections with nothing more than a toot to signify “coming through”!

The actual spanish classes have been going okay, Wednesday and Thursday we just spent most of the 4 hour classes chatting, and not doing any actual formal learning. Just chatting is still a good way to practice Spanish but it’s not personally how I would prefer to learn because you can chat on the street and in shops if you want to just chat. Plus we were talking about topics that don’t interest me in the slightest, like university funding from the government, politics, and terrorists. Also, we’re right next door to some place that plays the world cup games at full volume, and that coupled with the car alarms, everyone coughing and sneezing, constant tooting of the traffic and general city noise, makes it very hard to concentrate. I have to say that I definitely preferred the way of learning in Costa Rica, even though I prefer the frendliness of the Lima school.

As I said, photos will come in the weekend or sometime soon!

So I did manage to catch my last flight from Miami to Peru, this flight left 20 minutes late and I’m sure it was because it was waiting for all the connecting flight passengers, but that suited me fine. This was an overnight flight but I didn’t get any sleep because I’d slept enough on the last three legs.

I arrived at 4:45am but still the airport was chaotic with people trying to offer their taxi services. Luckily I’d prebooked my taxi and he was there waiting with a card with my name on it. We drove what seemed like forever, I’m telling you for the £13 I paid you’d never get anywhere near that far in a taxi in London. At 5am most of the traffic lights in the city were flashing orange, not that they seem to serve any purpose other than decoration anyway, because it seems here that at an intersection, the person who has right of way is the person who sounds their horn the longest. Even at 5am the buses on the road were standing room only.

I got dropped off at one of the hundreds of thousands of buildings in a dark street somewhere, but the taxi driver helped me locate the security guard for the building who gave me the keys to my apartment and told me it was on the eighth floor. Although not before the taxi driver reminded me that I didn’t give him a propina (a tip) – whoops.

I knew that I was staying with two other students from the school, but of course they weren’t up at 5:30am, and the lift doors actually open right into the lounge, which was a bit unnerving. I wasn’t actually escorted to my apartment by the security guard so I wasn’t even sure it was the right one! There were clearly people living here so it felt a bit like I was walking around in some random Peruvian family’s house at 5:30 in the morning. There were three rooms labeled 1, 2 and 3, and 2 and 3 were both closed while the door to 1 was open, so I went in there. The room was absolutely massive, for those that knew me in Auckland my room was about the same size as the entire apartment I had when I lived in Howe St in Freeman’s Bay. This room even had its own bathroom, whereas I’m sure my papers said that I’d be sharing a bathroom. After my tiny room in Costa Rica this felt like luxury. I was convinced that I was in the wrong place. But I put my things down and went to sleep for an hour.

After an hour of sleeping I woke up at 7am and had a shower, there was still nobody around in the house so I was a bit worried about leaving my things in this room, but I did, and I walked to the school. This took about half an hour, and it didn’t feel particularly unsafe, but I was sure to hold onto my backpack the whole time. Luckily I had printed off a map last week so I knew exactly where to go, otherwise I’m not sure how I would have coped! Although crossing roads is going to take some getting used to – in London I thought I was the master at crossing roads, even in Italy I thought I was getting good, but here, it’s madness! Madness I say!

The schoole was ECELA Lima. I took a written test in Spanish to determine my level, which I think I knew about half of. Then I had a chat with the co-ordinater who said that my grammar was good but he would like to see me talk faster because there aren’t too many mistakes with what I am saying. I think the level they put me in (“Intermediate B1″) corresponds roughly with the level that I left off at in Costa Rica, so that was good. My class has five people in it, there’s me, a girl from Bristol, two guys from the US and one guy from Switzerland.

You get two breaks in the four hour class here totalling 30 minutes, unlike in Samara where we only got one break of 20 minutes, and here they give you basic sandwiches for free as well as coffee which doesn’t look like it’s been sitting out for hours. After our first class the new people got together for a lunch (also free) and we met the five staff at the school who introduced themselves to the group and we had to introduce ourselves back. By this time the effects of flying were starting to show and I’m sure that I made absolutely no sense whatsoever. There were five of us starting today, and by chance at this meeting I met the other two people that I share a house with, one of them was Paul from Brighton who is a complete beginner in Spanish and the other is a girl who actually works at the school as the Events Co-ordinator – I’m pretty sure her name is Yolanda.

Some people are staying with a local family, but it seems that sharing an apartment with other students (like what I’m doing this time) is more common. I feel more relaxed here, because I’m more independent as I don’t have to fit around the timetable of a host family. That way, when my friend Ian comes over to Lima next week we can hang out together. Although I have to cook my own food, and I’m starting to get very hungry! I haven’t even worked out where the supermarket is yet. But there’s no bugs or creepy crawlies to be seen… yet… yay!!!

I got home from the school at about 2pm, and went straight to sleep. I woke up the next morning at 4:30am. Oh well, I knew that was going to happen!

Unfortunately I have to endure this day twice, as you do when you fly east across the date line from New Zealand or Australia to Los Angeles. I say endure because I have 27 hours of flying to get from Auckland to Lima, Peru as well as 12 hours of waiting around in airports, and all 39 hours take place on the same day because of the date change.

I was originally supposed to fly Qantas from Auckland -> Los Angeles, and American Airlines from Los Angeles -> Lima, but because Qantas are useless they re-routed my first flight via Sydney, and because of the volcanic ash back in April my second flight with AA was re-routed via Miami, so now my flight goes Auckland -> Sydney -> Los Angeles -> Miami -> Lima.

Auckland -> Sydney (3 hours) was great because each person had about 6 seats to themselves, although it left at 6:15am which meant I had to leave my Mum’s house at 3:00am so that I had time to return my rental car and get to the airport.

Sydney -> LA (13 hours) I don’t know how I got any sleep at all because I’d foolishly selected a seat near where they put all the screaming infants. Also the movies / tv on demand broke about 2 hours into the flight and they couldn’t get it going again, which made the flight tough going – that’s going to give Qantas 2 points less out of 10 when it comes time for me to do my online evaluation of them! In LA I had 8 hours until my next flight so I found a quiet part of the airport where there weren’t too many people around and I lay back on the chairs and drifted in and out of sleep while clutching all the time at my bag so nobody took it.

LA -> Miami (5 hours) I’m writing this blog entry right now during the Los Angeles -> Miami flight. Out of all the flights I’ve taken in the last two months, this is the first one that’s been late, and of course this is the only flight where I have a tight connection. In Miami I have 70 minutes to make my connecting flight to Lima and we took off from Los Angeles exactly 69 minutes late, therefore by my calculations I have exactly 60 seconds to catch my flight to Lima. Needless to say it’s not looking good. Plus in the seat directly in front of me there is a screaming child, and it’s the type of screaming that’s so intense that she’s choking on her own spit or something because she’s screaming so hard. When she’s not screaming, she’s poking feet, hands, seatbelts, toys, and anything else she can get her hands on through the back of her seat and they’re all poking my legs.

Miami -> Lima (5.5 hours) Since the majority of this flight is actually tomorrow I’ll tell you how this goes tomorrow if it doesn’t leave without me, which it almost certainly will.

Aagh, I just realised that all my previous “day numbers” were out by 1, because I did day 10 twice. I’ll go and renumber them all if I remember.

After sleeping all through my Qantas flight I arrived in Auckland feeling not too bad considering that I’d just had a 12 hour flight. As the only person in New Zealand who knew I was coming, Mum was waiting for me at the airport and we took some photos. I’m not going to link directly to all the photos that I took while I was in New Zealand here on this blog but you can see them all in THIS FACEBOOK ALBUM.

In New Zealand I did what I always do when I go, I spent all my time visiting friends and family. This time I only had two and a half weeks so the visiting had to be very brief. I always wish it could be longer when I visit but it never is – the first time I visited New Zealand after moving to the UK I was there for 6 weeks and that was only just long enough. Although at least this time when the time was up, I didn’t have to go back to work, I get to continue my travels.

Actually, towards the end of my time in New Zealand, my old work (UBS) emailed and asked if I wanted to go back there for a while as a contractor to finish a couple of things off, and you know what I’ll probably do it because they pay contractors more money and it means that I don’t have to find a job immediately after getting back. Plus, I think quitting a job and them asking to take you back looks really good on your CV!

Anyway, I don’t plan to write a lot here because the photos I took really tell enough of the story and show where I went and who I visited. I hope you’ll forgive me! They say pictures say a thousand words, don’t they.

22 May – Saturday
This morning I got up at 5.30am because I needed to leave the house at 6.15am bus to Nicoya to get to the airport. I’d told this to my host family last night and therefore they needed to get up in the morning to see me up. Well 6.10am rolled around and nobody was up, so I had to wake everyone up. They told me that my host father was driving to Nicoya and he could take me there at 7am. Perhaps they’d told me this last night and I didn’t understand at the time? It wouldn’t be the first time!

Anyway I was relieved because I didn’t have to carry 25 or 30kg of luggage a mile and a half to the bus stop. That was a massive relief. I was dropped off by my host father and his friend at the bus stop in Nicoya where I had to catch a bus to Liberia Airport to catch my flight out. The airport was 80km from Nicoya and the city of Liberia was 10km past the airport.

I did my best to ask the ticket guy for a ticket to the airport, and he gave me a ticket on the 8am bus. After looking on the board which said that the 8am bus was “directo”, I asked the ticket guy “are you sure that this bus stops at the airport?” to which he nodded. Sure enough, the bus never stopped at the airport at all, it went direct to the city of Liberia.

Lovely, I thought. It’s not who I am to give up and take a taxi to the airport, I’m far too cheap for that and anyway I still had 5 hours before my flight. So in Liberia’s bus station I looked around for a bus to the airport, and bought a ticket at one of the ticket windows. The woman said that I had to line up at the first line for a bus to the airport. Once I lined up there, the officer told me that it was the second line I needed for the airport. Oh god, here we go again I thought. I asked again at the ticket window where I was supposed to line up and was told something that I didn’t understand a word of. I eventually got on a bus that said “playa something-or-rather” and hoped that I would at least be dropped off somewhere where I could at least see planes flying overhead.

It all turned out to be a blessing in disguise because if I caught an airport bus from Nicoya I would have had to walk a mile or so, but by inadvertently going to Liberia first and getting an airport bus from there I ended up on a bus that dropped me right at the terminal.

At Liberia airport I had to pay my $26 USD departure tax (really, they still have that!!!) and then I sat waiting for my plane to Dallas, Texas. Quite an uneventful flight, it was very full, unlike my flight to Liberia last month which was almost empty. I had two hours to wait before my flight to Los Angeles.

23 May – Sunday
By the time I got to LA, and waited over an hour for my bag to appear on the baggage claim, it was midnight. My next flight out wasn’t until 11pm, which meant I had 23 hours to fill in. Rather than simply sleep the entire time in a hotel (I’d rather sleep during my next flight instead), I thought I’d get out and explore a bit. So I went and hired a rental car; by this time it was 12:30am.

“You know”, I thought, “I always wanted to visit Mexico”. So I headed in that general direction. After two hours of driving, it was 2:30am, and I was starting to swerve accidentally between lanes, so time to pull over and have a rest I thought. I set the GPS for the nearest Denny’s carpark where I knew it might be semi-safe to sleep for a while since all Denny’s are open 24 hours.

Four and a bit hours went by and it was now 7am. I didn’t get robbed while I slept in the car which was awesome. And thanks to the folks at Denny’s in Escondido for letting me use their bathroom in the morning. Oh wait, they didn’t see me sneak in there and use it, did they!

I went to a nearby IHOP where in true American style I ordered chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. I wish I took my camera in because I got given the biggest stack of pancakes I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I mean, this was big even by American standards. Wow, I am breathless just thinking about it. I ate 7 pancakes and there must have been at least 4 more I didn’t eat, all for only $5 USD.

Anyway, I continued driving south. It was Sunday at 7:30am and the roads were almost deserted, so I had 8 lanes all to myself.

Eventually I arrived at a small Californian town called Tecate. Well, it wasn’t really a town, more of a gateway village to a town in Mexico of the same name. I parked my car in a very “homemade” Mom & Pop parking lot and walked across the deserted border into Mexico.

I was suprised how casual the border crossing was. In fact, I’m sure that if I didn’t voluntarily follow the signs to immigration, I could have just wandered into Mexico totally unannounced. But I did the right thing and followed the signs through a very scary and slightly derelict building.

The Mexican border official didn’t trust me at all and spoke nearly no English. “Why are you here? Where are you going?” I got asked. I felt I needed to put my Spanish that I learned in Costa Rica to the test. As soon as I started speaking in Spanish the official’s attitude totally changed and he started talking about football and the weather, and then stamped my passport and let me right in. Woo, another stamp in my passport.

I’d heard scary things about Tijuana which is the main border crossing into Mexico near San Diego – things like everyone there tries to sell you stuff, or rob you, or both, and I heard it takes on average an hour or two to cross each way. This border crossing at Tecate was very quiet, I went straight through with no time taken at all, and the town clearly was not a tourist town as I felt like I was the only tourist there. Nobody tried to sell me anything, or rob me, or seemed the slightest bit interested in what I was doing. It was nice actually, even a little boring.

I saw the Tecate brewery, I saw a little market where I bought a watch for 130 pesos, I saw some very terrified looking cookies in the supermarket and I saw the town square. I also bought a newspaper. Thrilling stuff!

After spending a couple of hours walking around the town I wandered back to the United States. Once again, it seemed very casual, there was only this one sign to direct you where to go and if I didn’t follow the sign it seemed like I could have just meandered through the open gate into the USA unnoticed. Although no doubt I would have been taken out by hidden snipers or something.

The US border guy did not like the fact I had been in Mexico for only a couple of hours.
“What were you doing in Mexico?” he asked.
“Just looking around” I said.
“Why only for two hours?” he asked.
I told him I just wanted another stamp in my passport.
“Why did you come out here and not Tijuana?”
“Tijuana scares me.”
“What were you doing in the United States?”
“I have a 23 hour stopover between flights.”
“Didn’t you want to tour LA instead?”
“I’ve seen LA before, I love LA.”
“So you came all the way out here?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get out to Tecate?”
“I got a rental car from the airport.”
“Show me the keys.”
I showed him the keys.
“Give me your jacket.”
I gave him my jacket, and he looked through all the pockets.
“So what are you doing here now?”
“I’ve got a flight out at 11pm tonight.” I said, and showed him my itinerary.

At that point he ran out of questions, and he seemed unable to prove that I’d gone to Mexico simply to buy or sell drugs (which seemed to be what he was trying to do) so he let me through.

At that point I still had 10 or so hours until my flight out. So I went here:

I wasn’t allowed to take any photos in the Casino. I spent $150 in total and came out with $140, and spent about 4 hours in there. I thought $10 for 4 hours’ entertainment wasn’t too bad. My first $100 went at the blackjack table, and that lasted 3 hours and a bit, but eventually I lost it all there. So I spent another $50 on roulette, and on my very last $4 a lucky spin won me $140, so I thought that would be a good time to get out of there.

I left in plenty of time to get back to LAX, just in case Sunday afternoon heralded a lot of traffic on the I-5. It didn’t, and I arrived back at LAX with a ton of time before a flight to New Zealand. This gave me even more time to admire the horrible place that is Los Angeles International Airport.

24 May – Monday
I’d decided to go to New Zealand a couple of weeks ago, because basically I decided that 10 weeks of Spanish in a row would overheat my brain and there’s a slight possibility that it would explode. The only people I told were my sister who’s in England and my Mum so that someone would be there to pick me up from the airport.

Monday didn’t even exist for me because I skipped it crossing the International Date Line in a westerly direction. Even if it had’ve existed, I would have slept right through it, because I was so incredibly tired. The instant that Qantas turned out the lights on the flight, I fell asleep. I stayed asleep the entire flight, only waking up when they turned the lights on 9 hours later for breakfast (and one other time simply to use the bathroom).

In the row of three airplane seats the middle one was empty, and in the aisle seat was a woman from Colombia who lives in New Zealand. She was great to talk to and would have been great to practice Spanish with, if I didn’t sleep the entire way.

My blog entries may take a back seat for a bit, as in New Zealand I’m planning to do little else except visit old friends and family and simply do very little. On June 13 I fly to Peru to continue my Spanish learning and to visit Macchu Picchu.

Here’s some photos from Samara that my friend Claudia took. A couple of them are here, but click here to see all of them on facebook.

More photos here

So, after having a chance to get over yesterday (I had a bad day – normally the children running around don’t bother me) I feel a lot better! Although today was my last day in Samara.

We had a fun lesson the other day, here are some photos. One of us was given a picture of a strange creature of some kind, and they had to describe it to the rest of the class in Spanish and we had to draw what they were describing on the board. Here’s what we drew:

In the first, I drew the creature in the top right and the one in the bottom left. In the second, the aliens along the top row are the ones I described to the class. In the third, I drew the black thing with the big head in the top left, and in the fourth, I drew the nose with the muscly arms and hawaiian skirt in the top left. In the fourth, that’s our teacher for the last two weeks.

Being Friday, and the last day of classes, I graduated today, and said my short pre-written speech in Spanish. Looking back on the photos, I seem to be happy, but I don’t remember what I said!

I took it easy today. It was a bit sad knowing that today was my last day in Costa Rica. It was sad knowing that I most likely wasn’t going to see my new friends again, but leaving my host family was especially hard – for reasons that I can’t quite explain I had tears in my eyes more than once.

Oh yes, and I took this photo just for Mum, who wanted to see where I was phoning from the one or two times that I called. Right by the beach!

Tonight I made sure to spend a few hours with my host family, and talked to them a bit to let them know as much as I could how much I appreciated them (and their food!) and then after I went to meet my friends at Bar Olas one more time.

EDIT 24 June: I’d clearly been having a bad day this day. The young children weren’t quite annoying as I make them seem here!

So the last few days I haven’t been able to relax at the school because two guys who are studying at the school bring their wives and children along with them every day. One of them has three kids all under 5 and the other has two kids under 2. The wives hang out around the school with the kids for the entire four hour class while their husbands are in class and because their classes are at opposite times to mine, I have my spare time disrupted by kids running around, switching lights and water on and off, moving everything round, screaming and crying, and being general annoyances. I wasn’t aware when I signed up that the school doubled as a nursery.

I can’t lie in the hammocks and relax because the kids are running around, and if the rain is pouring down (like right now), we’re all trapped in the very small office until the rain stops. It’s not nice. I think rather than have toddlers running around everywhere, I’m going to brave the rain soon and go home. And of course I think to myself “these kids did not pay to be here!!!!!!!” Grr.

Ok these kids are annoying me now. I’m going to brave the torrential rain and go and write the rest of this at home.

Alright, so now it’s the next day because it was raining so hard I didn’t take my computer home because I didn’t want all my stuff to get drenched. All the roads were like rivers, at times I had to wade through water that was above my ankles. I also skipped my final chance to go out with my current classmates because it was raining so hard and the other student that I live with nicked off with the umbrella which I so politely requested from my host mum! I also couldn’t do my homework because all my stuff’s in the school.

No photos today, but there will be lots soon because I’m going to get Claudia’s photos in the next 6 hours!

Woah, I actually did get up and go for a run today! I set my alarm for 5:45am and at 6:00am I reset it for 6:20am but then I did actually get up and go out.

I ran from my homestay in Cantarrana to a village halfway between Samara and Carrillo (well, not quite halfway) and back. But silly me, the tide was high which made it hard to run along the beach, and so I came back via the road, which I didn’t realise was up and down and round corners and quite steep. But the temperature was bearable in the morning. Here’s my “MapMyRun” map which if you click it shows in excruciating detail where I went and how long it took me.

Of course, by the time I got back I had drunk a litre of water and in the few hours after that I drunk another 3 litres of water. That was because after the morning passed today was the hottest day out of my four weeks here. Even all the locals were pointing out how hot it was and I’m not sure if it was the heat, the humidity or the fact I’d been running but I was sweating constantly from when I finished my run at 7:30am until about 3:00pm (after I’d been sitting still in class for over 2 hours).

I have never sweat so much for so long in my life and never hope to again, it was absolutely disgusting. During the lunch break I walked from one end of the main street to the other (about 4 minutes) and in that time my shirt got completely drenched from sweat, and because it was light blue it was really obvious. Although it was so drenched it almost looked like that was its proper colour. Before in my blog I think I said I won’t miss the heat and humidity, now I’m saying that I’m almost looking forward to leaving here because it’s so bad. Now that I’ve said that, when I get back to London, I’ll get nothing but rain most likely and then I’ll wish I was back here!

Anyway that’s a thoroughly awful topic, so let’s move on. At lunchtime some students said they were going to Bar Olas later tonight, and it’s not one of my favourite places and therefore wasn’t going to go but Claudia pointed out that there’s not long to go now and she’s right. Although when it came time to go it was raining, and the temperature was still uncomfortably high, so I ended up piking out.

It was impossible to sleep because of the temperature, and at about midnight the thunder got so bad it woke me up with a big fright, it was so strong that the whole house shook.