Our next destination was the highland town of Otavalo, 2550 meters above sea level, and two hours north of Quito. The town is known for it’s huge Saturday market (which we weren’t going to be there for) - a mainly tourist affair where traditionally dressed indigenous people sell their handicrafts. Otavalo is very prosperous as the indigenous population sell their woven products world wide. We caught a local bus from the northern bus station in Quito - nearly an hours taxi ride from our hotel there- Quito is a long city! Close to Quito we passed some deep canyons - no doubt formed during previous volcanic action - then acres of plastic covered greenhouses where all the gorgeous long stemmed roses on sale in the streets of Quito were grown. Soon we were in the vibrant ... read more

Our last day in Costa Rica was spent exploring the area around Alajuela. We arrived and against Trip Advisor advice checked into The Alajuela Boutique Backpackers Hostel - It wasn’t a good end to our time in Costa Rica! Thankfully they had great showers which made up for the rest of the faults with the place. We ended up at another hostel trying to find information on a trip to Poas Volcano and the Waterfall Gardens. The Hotel Pacande B&B was run by a lovely Columbian lady who couldn’t have been more helpful, despite the fact that we weren’t staying there. She even invited us to have free breakfast at her hotel before our trip when she found that our hostel provided nothing. Alajuela was an odd place - the main square was lined with the ... read more

We chose the jeep-boat-jeep option (3 hrs as opposed to 8 hours via car or bus around the perimeter of the lake) to go from Monteverde to Arenal. One and half hours over very rough gravel roads took us down to the edge of the lake. It was a trip made more interesting by seeing very obious climatic changes in the scenery in a short period of time. We crossed from the dustier, drier Pacific side of the mountains to an obviously much greener Caribbean side. Very hilly country but scenic. There was no boat ramp at the lake - the jeep parked at the waters edge and we waited 20 minutes or so until we saw a boat heading across the lake towards us. In the distance Arenal Volcano loomed on the horizon and it ... read more

'Leaving Antigua for the international airport was pretty chaotic - most of the traffic was heading towards the city for the big procession but the traffic was so heavy that cars were crossing into the opposite lane and using it to bypass the traffic flow. There were police everywhere but it didn’t seem to make much difference! Guatemala airport seemed as equally disorganised but our flight left early and before we knew we were in Costa Rica. Immigration there was a breeze - probably the easiest airport we’ve ever gone through - and half an hour later we were at our hotel in the centre of San Jose. Our reason for spending time in the capital city of Costa Rica was to visit the Jade Museum and the highly acclaimed Gold Museum, exhibiting Mayan gold. Most ... read more

We decided to spend our last 24 hours in Guatemala back in Antigua. The city was pretty, there were plenty of good restaurants and it had a great vibe - what better place to end our fortnight in a country that had charmed us totally. The people were very friendly, always laughing and welcoming towards us - probably the only two foreigners in the country who didn't speak Spanish. Or at least it felt like that to us most of the time. Our Spanish vocabulary has improved though only marginally! We arrived back in a city that was surprisingly quiet considering it was Friday night. We found out however that it was to be one of the busiest weekends of the year - the main celebration of Lent was to occurr on Sunday and as our ... read more