We said farewell to San Jose, thankfully for the last time and jumped onto our public bus that would take us to Panama border. Apparently there are only 2 land borders into Panama on the west side from Costa Rica and luckily we were taking the path less traveled. We had managed to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones this morning that aired in the US only last night. As I said yesterday, amazing wifi! It was done between 5am and 5.15am when we had to leave!! So we caught up on the latest from Westeros and that took us up to the first stop. We had 10mins to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. There was a random little fresh juice shop and we thought that would be the best option for ... read more

We allowed ourselves a bit of a sleep in this morning given our frantic week of bussing all around the country. We wandered 3 doors up from our hotel to a hostel that did $4 'big breakfasts' – fruit platter, scrambled eggs, toast, coffee and of course, Central America's favourite dish, rice and beans. The sun was already beating down on us and it felt like 100% humidity, as even sitting down and eating would raise a sweat. We wandered up to the entrance of Manuel Antonio National Park, paid our $10 entrance fee for foreigners (if I was Costa Rican, the entrance price was about 50c), shrugged off the would-be guides who were trying to obtain our business and strolled into the park, confident of seeing the elusive sloth. The Manuel Antonio National Park is ... read more

We had a massive day today! We had to be up at 6am so Olly naturally blasted out Troublemaker again at us! Nooooo! We had breakie included in our hotel for the next 2 days which was good for saving money as we are just burning through cash in Costa Rica cos it is so expensive! It was simple – fruit, toast and some eggs but not too bad. We all piled into the van again and drove for about 20 mins into the cloud forest to meet our guide Christian. He was another super passionate guide which was funny and also really good! We walked around for about 2.5 hours spotting birds (Ben really has turned into the next bird whisperer and spotter! - who needed a guide!) and animals. We even managed to sort ... read more

I was awake relatively early this morning as our hotel is right on a busy street and given we don't have air-con, the windows are open to let at least some cooler air in. After catching up on blogs, we went out for breakfast at the My Coffee cafe (same place we enjoyed an arvo coffee from yesterday). After tentatively ordering pancakes, Rach changed her mind when she saw the dessert menu...berry crepes (with ice-cream I might add!). I chose an omelet and was happy when it was brought out with fresh fruit and muffins too! So we broke our fast ensuring that we were well fed ahead of our massive adrenaline-rushing excursion. We were picked up at 10am and taken to our waiting 4WDs. We scrambled onto the back of the trays where they had ... read more

Not a great blog for me to write today as I havent been very well at all! We woke up at about 9.30 which was a really good sleep as we were asleep by 11pm also. But we really needed it especially me as we had now worked out that I have a chest infection (no need to explain why we knew!) so needed some bed time afer being awake at 4am yesterday and a long day of travelling! Ben got up and went on the short walk that Jacob did with the group around the centre of San Jose pointing out things we may need in the next day, and I went back to sleep for an hour. He came back with breakfast, antibiotics, cough medicine and throat tablets! What a keeper! So, all drugged ... read more