Red Beans, Rice and the rest...

Well we are well into the heart of red beans and rice country now and every time I have a plate of the stuff, I can't help but think of the Michael Franti and Spearhead song of the same name.
"Red beans and rice, I could eat a plate twice". Nice work Mr Franti! That said, in the same song he didn't need to mention that eating a lot of prunes will keep you loose. That was too much information. :)

So we left Samara about a week ago. One thing I forgot to mention about Samara was that the bank was very well protected. For a small bank in a small town, they needed three security guards with pump action shotguns to keep things in order. Not sure if that makes it more or less safe. It felt like a scene from a bad 80's action movie.

Then it was onto Monteverde. It means Green Mountain and although their naming skills lack a little imagination, they make up for it with their truthfulness. Its basically in a cloud forest so it rains a lot but is still kind of warm. We did a canopy tour of the forest where dudes strap you into a harness and you are hooked onto a cable and cruise through the sky over or through the trees, sometimes right through the clouds as well. It was pretty cool. We also did a couple of nature walks in which we saw a couple of sloths very high up in trees, an awesome looking toucan (Imogen, we have photos of both sloth and toucan! Will post some other time), a small tree snake, an agouti which is like a large rat, and then lots of other birds. Monteverde was well worth the visit. I even liked the restaurant that provided Alka Seltzer at the counter! Very thoughtful of them to cater for if their food gives you trouble.

After that it was onto the Arenal Volcano near the city of La Fortuna. It's claim to (in-)fame is that it blew up in 1967 and killed 87 people. We did a tour that took us out to see the lava running down. Naively I kind of thought I would be able to look down and see a stream of lava running past my feet with a guide repeating occasionally not to put our feet in the lava if we like our feet the way they are. Very wrong. We were parked about 2kms from the mountain (there is an exclusion zone to protect people who don't get the dangers of lava like myself) and when it got dark a large mini-van (a three-quarter van?) full of mostly north american tourists stared at a black mountain covered mostly in clouds. Then eventually we saw a red dot roll down the mountain and that was the queue for some "oooohs" and "aaaahhhss". I was a tad underwhelmed but then it got a bit better as more and more large chunks of red hot lava (coincidentally the size of a mini-van) rolled down the hill at 1000 degrees celcius and damn fast. After that we drove away and went to the Baldi Hot Springs which is actually much like going to the swimming pool as it was like a resort except that the water ranges from nicely warm to bloody hot! We found a nice bar that you could sit at while still submerged in the water and we toasted Dave and Annette's "got a baby on the way" news with a couple of beers and a Crazy Monkey cocktail. (Good name for the baby eh Dave? The second name still has to be Damien though. Best man gets middle name naming rights as I've explained!)

Now we are in the town of Copan Ruinas. We arrived today after about three days of bus riding. We passed through Nicaragua and saw some rain, a hotel and some sun. Now we are in Honduras. We start at a spanish school I think tomorrow. We meet our host families in about an hour. Craig and I requested separate families because frankly, two and a bit months of hanging out almost constantly has meant we could do with some time off! As he put it, I'm the first person he sees in the morning and the last person he sees at night and both of us agree that's just not right! So we now have two weeks of spanish tuition and living with a family in Copan. Copan is next door to some supposedly awesome ruins which I plan to check out very soon. This place is really nice actually. The countryside has a very rural feel with rolling hills (some covered in trees, others nude) and lush green pastures with grazing cows atop them. The town itself is old Spanish colonial style with cobble stone streets which look great but can't have done the rickety old bus we rode in on any good. I'd better go get stuck into it now. Time to meet my new family...