Where in the World are the Bullivants?

Our Turtle Conservation Project commenced with a briefing at the local headquarters in San Jose.  To other people, one from Germany and one from Wales, joined Laurence and I for the week.  Once the briefing was over, we were put in a taxi to the bus station.  Left to book the bus and head to our project location on the Pacific Coast some 3 hours away.  The tickets were easy, finding our bus was not.  Laurence took point and discovered where our bus was to arrive and kept lookout for it.  After being safely stowed on the bus, we endured the ride with no air conditioning and in our seats no window to open.  Partway through the ride Laurence changed seats to gain some much coveted wind and to give me some space so we were no longer touching each other.  The bus dropped us off in the middle of nowhere next to a dirt track.  Thankfully, one of the park rangers was there to pick us up and drive us to the accommodation and beach. Continue reading →

As we had just crossed over into Costa Rica (by foot!) we drove past a number of make-shift camps, full of people who looking tired and desperate.  We all started checking the news headlines to see who they were, and why they were camped there.  Turns out that we had just passed a refugee camp.  A number of people had come into Costa Rica by boat, they had been heading up towards America, but had been denied entry into Nicaragua.  They were stuck, they couldn’t go forward.  I am not sure what has happened to these people. Continue reading →

Our first stop in Nicaragua was Granada.  A nice small(ish) town near lake Nicaragua.  It was barely an hour before the majority of us piled into another van to head out to the Masaya Volcano for a night tour.  As we sped out of the city (and I do mean sped, it felt as if we were racing, the tension was building) we learnt that at the volcano entrance there is usually a long line of cars waiting to get in to take a look.  We needed to get there at precisely the right time – close enough to sunset so that it was dark when we got up there, but early enough that we were not at the back of the line and had to wait hours.  While we were waiting in line, slowing creeping up the side of the mountain we ordered pizza.  Thankfully they delivered, it had been a long day travelling and we were all starving.  Our timing was perfect, the pizza arrived as we were halfway through the line, we finished just before we were let into the National Park, and it was dark by the time we got up there. Continue reading →