These Spanish speaking countries have stretched me a bit. I've not done as well with learning Spanish as I would have liked, but I've been so busy, and the 'Duolingo' app is annoying me by spending ages with getting the right gender for everything. I want to learn general words and communication, not trying to get every noun correctly gendered when most people will understand you anyway. The next tour is solo, so I'll probably have more free time to learn and practice, and also there will not be other people about who speak Spanish a lot better than I do!
So, which of the countries did I like best. I'm not really sure. We didn't spend vast amounts of time in any of them, and were doing so much it was difficult to get more than a flavor of each of them. They all have their own way of making you eat beans with EVERY meal. In Guatemala it was whole beans with tortillas, Honduras was mushed beans with tortillas, El Salvador was mushed beans with pretty much everything, and Costa Rica is whole beans with rice (which makes a nice change). I may have gotten those mixed up, and if I have I apologise.
The 4 countries work very closely together with trade, movement of people, cell phone coverage etc. It's kind of like a mini-europe. They don't all use the same currency, though all of them seem to accept US Dollars for a lot of tourist stuff, which made life both easy and complicated when you pay in dollars and then get your change in Colones. We didn't go to Nicaragua because of the political unrest, but I would guess it is pretty similar. From what we heard it has calmed down a lot now, and it's just that things are very slow to recover to a state where it's OK for tourists to go there.
Highlights for me:
Volcanic stuff in Guatemala. Both Pacaya and Fuego (from a distance).
Suchitoto in El Salvador, both for the recent troubled history brought to life brilliantly by our guide 'Barbon', and the hordes of birds, particularly the Osprey.
Manuel Antonio's beautiful beaches
The Dragon's Eye sunset and tornado
Tarantulas in the cloud forest
The people!
My companions on the tour were fab, here we are eating in the old market in San Jose. They have put up with me, my 'dad jokes' and my hugs with impressive calm and patience.
Special shout out to our tour leader Eric. He handled us all very well, catering to our wants and desires, and organised us nice buses with air con to keep us all happy.
In particular the last minute Iguana visit, and the 'tasting session' at his local fruit and veg store. It was really cool to be able to sample all those different things without having to buy a whole meal of it. I only wish we'd done it earlier on the trip!
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| With Glynis for scale. |
And especially, thanks to my second (possibly third) favorite kiwi, Pokemon Guru, and best room mate in the world, Dwain.
I'm now in San Jose for a few days before more exploring of Costa Rica solo.
A reminder that all my photos from this trip can be found here.
All so interesting. Dad reckons he can get by in a foreign language with about 100 words, plus the numbers from 0 to 100. I'm not so sure! Glad you're finding like-minded people, even if they have to be pokemon nuts.
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