The Osa Peninsular begins

Day 19: Saturday 8th August 2009

Wake up time was half four as we aimed to leave at 20 past 5.  We said our thank yous and goodbyes to Donald and then took taxis to San Isidro de Generale, our nearest town.  From here, after a breakfast from a local bakery, we caught the bus to Puerto Jimenez on the Osa Peninsular in the south west.  The journey was 5 hours long and the bus was awful - we were sitting on the wheel arch.  The views however were superb - the best of the trip, with sun, sea and jungle aplenty.  We arrived in ‘Port Jim’ (as the locals call it) at around lunchtime and I was put in charge of finding the campsite I had booked.  Unfortunately I made a bit of an error and ended up going a rather long way around, but we got there eventually.  The site was run by a man called Adonis, who greeted us with an iguana in his hand.  He was our 'area agent’ and had therefore arranged guides and transport.

After pitching our tent and sorting ourselves out, we wandered into town for some lunch.  Here we found a wonderful 'soda’ (cafe) where we were able to have burgers and chips in abundance - very much worth it.  It then started raining, so after a brief trip to the supermarket to get Hannah a cooked sausage for lunch, we went into an internet cafe to do a bit of conversing with home.  We had a bit of a meeting at half 4 and then swam in the sea for a bit, hitting a football around.  The evening meal was at a local restaurant that served excellent battered squid with chips.  When we got back to the campsite, it became clear that some kind of party was going on, so we sat at the bar and talked to another World Challenge group from another school who had just turned up.  The music went on until 1, so we ended up sitting in our steaming hot tents awake for a while.