Walt and I woke up this morning and went to get our ticket from the bus station - bus was leaving at noon but we had to check out of hostel at 11. They said we were free to stay and use the facilities so we swam one last time then showered, checked out, and read my book by the pool... again. Love it. We caught our bus to San Jose (which is about 4 hours from Quepos) but we had read in our Survival Manual from the hostel that the bus will actually stop at the airport and then it's just a quick taxi ride to nearby hostels in Alajuela, as the airport is actually in Alajuela and NOT San Jose. This was nice to discover, as it would save us the $20 taxi in ... read more

Today was a lazy day by the pool then the local beach at Manuel Antonio. Was going to go scuba diving but seeing as there is only one dive shop here, I guess their trips fill up fast. They were full for the next 2 days. We thought we may try fishing as well but they only had professional sport fishing and it was $600 per person. No thanks. We did try to get that free meal that was promised from Costa Linda backpackers, for being so horrible in service. We showed up, only for them to tell us the kitchen was closed today. They offered us breakfast tomorrow and I told them that I was not paying to take a bus from Quepos to Manuel Antonio for breakfast, when our own AWESOME hostel offers us ... read more

Today was a ROUGH day. We caught a shuttle from our hostel that would take us directly from one door to the other. Although this one was $35 pp compared to local buses at around $8 pp, this was going to save us being overcrowded, having to transfer buses, having to wait for buses, and saving us about 4 hours travel time. Perfect. Off we went. Our driver was great - stopped at a cool place where we saw about 20 crocodiles bathing in the sun at the side of a river. cool. 4.5 hours later we arrived in Quepos. It's the town about 15 minutes from where we were heading to Manuel Antonio. We did drop a couple off at Wide Mouthed Frog Packpackers (which I had read was great but wished to stay right ... read more

We arrived in Santa Elena via the Jeep-Boat-Jeep tour that cost us each $20 and was TOTALLY worth it. It cut out about 3 hours from a public bus from Fortuna to Monteverde and was MUCH nicer scenary. We took one busito (van holding 10-12 people) to the Arenal lake, then took a boat 45 minutes across the lake. The view was beautiful and very relaxing. Once on shore, we caught another busito for about 1.5 hours to Santa Elena. The whole trip was about 3 hours. During the trip I met another teacher from Kingston. Her name is Lisa. She did her undergrad at Guelph and teacher's college at Queens. She's currently on Christmas vacation from her school where she teaches in Curacao! She says "why teach in Canada when you have the opportunity to ... read more

Yesterday's trip to the volcano was great. We left the hostel at 3:30 and drove 20 minutes to a hiking point. Our tour guide was a local who lived close to the town where the 1968 eruption of the volcano shoked everyone because it had been dormant for 500 years and they all thought it was a mountain. He had TONS of pictures to show how much the volcano and town of La Fortuna has changed in the last 40 years. He also told us stories of illegally hiking the volcano many times and being arrested for it as well. lol. We got to a point where the van dropped us all off (there were about 10 of us) and then we hiked for 1.5 hours through the rainforest. We had some GREAT views of the ... read more

Well, we made it! Showed the land-lady how to take care of Suki (my kitten) before we left, then it was off in a taxi to the airport. Check-in was fine, although flight was full, as many flights were cancelled early in the day due to bad thunderstorms in Tegus this morning. After a bit of a scare, we were through and boarding. They forgot to give Walter his immigration paper back at check-in and they wouldn't let us through to board so we had to go back and get the green paper from the check-in desk. Flight was also delayed and we feared missing our connection in El Salvador, but they held that flight, as many people were delayed. My backpack was the only bag we checked, as it contained liquids, but once in San ... read more