Voila maintenant trois jours que nous sommes au Costa Rica, un pays qui differe totalement du reste de l'amerique centrale. Tout d'abord, les gens y sont nettement plus eduques, nous nous sommes meme surpris a faire des blagues intellectuelles durant une soiree accompagnee de trois Ticos. Le pays est aussi beaucoup plus riche, les gens ont une auto, les routes sont generalement pavees et les maisons possedent des vitres, une premiere depuis le debut de notre voyage. De plus, le Costa Rica est un des seuls pays dans le monde a ne pas avoir d'armee et une certaine rivalite sevit entre [View Full Entry]

---

---

We left the Rainsong Wildlife Sanctuary in the making to continue on a quest to see more of Costa Rica’s celebrated wildlife and less of its ex-pats. Santa Elena was our destination - a small town at the end of a beautiful bus ride up into the highlands. We arrived just as the sun was setting behind the hills and we headed straight to our hostel of choice - Pension Santa Elena - where we hoped to meet up again with Joe, who had left Rainsong only a few days before us. As fate would have it Joe was sat just [View Full Entry]

---

---

After slight dissapointment at the Volcano experience (although i keep forgetting the aceness of the thermal spa) in La Fortuna, Monteverde had a lot of work to do. After arrival last night we had lengthy discussions as to what was the best course of action (we incidentally is still myself and Emma, the girl from the Valparriso blogs in Chile) for the next day. Monteverde as an area pretty much offers the lot in terms of activities that a Marc might be interested in. There's a cheese factory that offers tours (i'll forever regret the fact i couldn't fit this in, [View Full Entry]

---

---

After an evening of fun and dancing Costa Rican style up in San Jose, we had an early wake up call (very early by my Argentinian sensored brain) to get a bus up to the cloud forest area of La Fortuna. As usual slight hicups were plentilful when trying to figure out transportation in Latin America, but by 8.40am (sat 11th) we were on the Tica Bus, taking the 4 hour journey north from San Jose. The journey itself was pretty spectacular, and as Costa Rica is in transit from the rainy season to the slightly less rainy season at the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well my last night in Arenal was quite the time. After some cheap, cheap beer, we decided to head off to a Costa Rican club. Quite the atmosphere, with all the latin american tunes fused with some North American hip hop. Anyways, got to know an Arizona girl, Lindy, on the last day, and maybe one of these days I can convince the boys on a roadtrip through the west states and stop by. Anyways, took off that afternoon on a great boat ride across Lake Arenal, the source of almost all of Costa Rica´s energy from wind and hydro-electricity. Then [View Full Entry]

---

---

Okay I couldn't come to Costa Rica, conservation capital of the world without getting a little more conservation concious (not that that is easy when you spend so much time with Zoe), but here goes. I semi appologise for the rant, but not completely. We visited Monteverde, which is famous for its cloud forest, anyone who watched Blue Peter as a child probably had some sort of fund raising effort to buy some rainforest somewhere, and in Monteverde there is a huge tract owned my children. (So not everything is waste of time). The cloud forest is perched on the continental [View Full Entry]

---

---

it has been an amazing birthday. today i went zip lining in the cloud forests of monteverde costa rica. we did 15 zip cables and a tarzan swing. i almost didn´t do the tarzan swing because i was too scared but at the last minute i decided to do it and am so glad that i did. it was an amazing sensation to drop so far. even on the road, my bday feels celebrated. i have been travelling with this guy from new zealand (johan) for the past week and he went through a lot of effort to make it feel [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sorry that i haven't communicated in a few days, but to be honest we really haven{t done that much since we got here because public transport is so terrible here!!! Leaving from Nicaragua we got to the border and met some guy who took us through our last (yeah!!!) border crossing. From there we took a taxi to playa del coco, and stayed at the worst hotel i have ever seen in all of my travels. Full of mosquito's, roaches and undoubtedly various other creepy crawlers we spent the evening sweating and itching bug bites, lots of fun!!! The beaches weren't}t{t [View Full Entry]

---

---

So next on the list after volcano watching is spending a few days in and around the cloudforest of Monteverde. I leave La Fortuna with Amanda, Emily and Rachel (two Scottish sisters from the dorm) and Miyka (a garrulous Canadian woman in her fifties). The little town of Monteverde is just as overrun by tourists as La Fortuna but has a much nicer atmosphere and our hostel is cool. Run by a hippie brother and sister combo it´s got an incredibly laidback feel. That evening Amanda and I go on a night time tour of the cloudforest. As most of the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hi everyone- sorry it´s taken so long to add an entry. Martina and I have been in Monteverde since Saturday and tomorrow we´re heading for the beach town of Samara. Saturday, June 10th: Martina and I signed up to take the ¨Jeep-Boat-Jeep¨from La Fortuna to Monteverde. ¨MiniVan-LeakySkiff-MiniVan¨was more like it. But we made it and ended up staying at Pension Santa Elena, a half hour bus ride from the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. We soon found out that Montverde´s weather is very wet- it´s sunny in the morning and rainy all afternnon. So when we arrived at noon, it had just [View Full Entry]

---

---