This missive comes from possibly the most random internet café I've ever seen: in Montezuma, a small village with basically no industry beyond tourism and even then sod all in the low season right now (http://images.google.com/images?q=montezuma+costa+rica&hl=en&lr=&client=safari&rls=en&sa=X&oi=images&ct=title) we found an empty café with aircon at full whack and 8 iMacs! What they spent on hardware they didn't spend on bandwidth though: it's incredibly slow.

We had an interesting few days: we arrived in San José, the capital, and went to one place that a bunch of backpackers recommended to us. As it turned out it was pretty vile, from the sewage leaking out of a broken pipe to the costa rican guy standing in the street with a baseball bat. All the bars were just very loud merengue (the music they like here) and quite frankly even without the bats the guys are pretty intimidating, so we went off to a walled compound where there was a lot more security. As soon as we say down though, we started getting free shots of tequila from the tourist-hungry bar manager! And so it began.

The next stop, Jaco, was a bad place. The less said about that, the better: we stayed in a decent hotel in the grottiest town I've ever been in. Every woman was a prostitute, every guy a thief, a dealer or a pimp, and every one was trying to scam us at every turn. Unfortunately the hotelier was the weaseliest latino I've seen, so I distrusted him completely, while in retrospect he did nothing but help us out and give us sane advice in an insane town.

Now, as I said, we're in Montezuma and staying at an absolute backpacker fleapit for six quid a night. We had to get out of Jaco and did what it took: the torrents from above washed out the roads out so we hired a private water taxi to take us here for $200 - money well spent when faced with another evening on that ugly, ugly strip. Tomorrow looks like it should be pretty good: snorkelling + fish barbecue or cable-rides through the rainforest. Laters