We head off early in the morning to be taken on a guided tour of the Arenal Lodge Hanging Bridges just outside La Fortuna. We meet our guide and it turns out his main thing is plants so we get to find out lots more about the jungle vegetation this time. First plant he picks out for us is the Ataxia which he says is very poisonous. Its alternative local name is 'Lotteria' as the leaves have white spots that sometimes look like numbers and people use these as their lottery numbers hoping for a big win! We also see some beautiful, large, hanging bell shaped flowers in a kind of pale peach colour. These are called Angel's Trumpets and are pollinated by bats not the usual insects that flit from flower to flower. They have ... read more

Tierra Hermosa is the name of Alex Martinez' wildlife rescue centre in Sarapiqui where people bring sick and injured animals and birds to be nurtured lovingly back to health before hopefully being released back into the wild. It is up in the hilly countryside about a ten minute drive from Alex's B and B lodges Posandra Andrea Cristina. Alex acquired the area of land as a monoculture of hearts of palm trees that had ceased being cut for harvesting of the hearts of palms and had become fully grown. Alex is gradually introducing a more mixed forest with varied levels of understory. he showed us an area he had planted up with just six years ago and the growth was phenomonal, some of the trees having reached about 8m tall already! He showed us the bark ... read more

La Selva Biological Station is one of the leading research and teaching centres in the tropics. Basically if you want to learn about tropical rain forests this is the place to be. It was originally set up in 1954 by Dr Leslie Holdridge as a farm that experimented on the best techniques to improve mixed plantations for nature conservation. The Organisation for Tropical Studies bought it in 1968 and from then on it was declared a private biological reserve and study centre. We arrive in the humid sweltering heat of the afternoon and meet our guide for the day, Raimer. We are literally two steps into the reserve when he finds us a two toed sloth up high in the trees. Raimer tells us that sloths only come down to the ground once or twice a ... read more

After my first decent night's sleep of the trip so far I wake refreshed and ready to go on an early morning canoe trip around the lagoon and rivers, or canals as they call them here. We meet Bill our octogenarian canoe guide and set off in our 15 seater canoe towards the 'entrance' to the national park where we have to pay to get in. The government uses money collected in this way for the upkeep of all the national parks. It turns out Bill is a bit of a character and an excellent spotter of wildlife, with information to match. He tells us he was born in 1928 which is the same year my mum was born. There's lots of banter thrown back and forth between the other canoe guys and Bill. He's obviously ... read more