Last night after the coffee tour I met up with Thomas from Holland and we had a few drinks at the Tree house restuarant. Some how they build this place around a massive tree and the restuarant sits up on the tree like a tree house. Very cool but also very expensive. Drinks were about $5 but they were good. I got the Mojito but then saw the Tree house mojito which they basically make it into a pretty lavish drink. We met these 6 girls from England and they were travelling up to Nica and Thomas had only good things [View Full Entry]

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This morning I woke up at 6am for a brisk hike into the cloud forest. The cloud forest is a protected area and it has a pretty good trail with or without a guide. I would recommend the guide because he can show you things you would not be able to find. The cost was $30 and Johnny our guide was very good. He was able to mimic all the bird and animal sounds so they would respond back. There´s a few trails here you can do so I would do the one in Santa Elena with a guide and the [View Full Entry]

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So we had some good news today. They called the locksmith and since we are in the middle of nowhere I have no idea how much this will cost to bring him down in this remote place to break the hotel safe because they vault key is lost during one of the surf sessions. Passport and all money is in the vault so this potentially can be bad. 4 hours later after a long hike I get back to receive some good news that they where able to get into the safe so a ding of $50. Good times, so it{s [View Full Entry]

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Today was the day we did our 7-hour trek from La Fortuna to Santa Elena and the Monteverde Cloud Forest. We started early in the morning by taking a van to Lake Arenal, Costa Rica's only lake at the base of the volcano. From there we boarded a bot that took us across the huge lake. From there we mounted up on horses for a 4-hour trek on horseback. the horseback ride was fun, but very painful after 4 hours. The last hour seemed to hurt my butt after every single bounce. Even worse, my horse liked to randomly start galloping, [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everyone. We're having definatley more fun here than in the U.S. The food has been most welcome - lots of beans and rice - but is filling so it's good. No doubt whether its the rainy season... the heavens open every day for most of the afternoon but luckily we have gigantic ponchos that we throw over the top of everything. The state of our spanish is slowly improving as we have no choice because not alot of people speak English. Its a nice langauage but theres knowing words for objects/numbers then hearing/understanding them including accent, speed and slang! We [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone. Well, it's been about 12 days since we left Bahia de Sol, in El Salvador. Crossing over the bar there was a little intimadating, but we did it, and then headed out some miles from shore, and turned a slight left (port) towards Costa Rica. This area of Central America is known for Papagayo winds .they weren't kidding. We actually didn't get a true Papagayo wind, but it was blustery enough for us. It started out sweet, mellow, then we turned a cape, and it came right at us, a Southeast wind, right in the direction we wanted to [View Full Entry]

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Still wanting more after our morning at Monteverde, on our last day in Santa Elena we took a 6.30am bus to the Santa Elena reserve - a smaller and much less visited reserve just on the other side of the continental divide and therefore with some different species. With our own guide this time we spent a lovely few hours traipsing through the forest spotting lots of birds, and the distant call of the quetzal which followed us for a while was finally matched with a sighting, albeit only a female. We also saw another quite remarkable bird - the three-wattled [View Full Entry]

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With the rest of the group gone, the following day was relaxed and quiet, once we'd had a row with the hotel about our leaky toilet and eventually changed rooms (to a much nicer one for the same price!). But we finally got ourselves together to take a walk late afternoon to the Ranarium just outside the centre of Santa Elena. They translate it into 'Frog pond' but it's more like a frog zoo. Costa Rica is famous for its range of frogs but most of them are very difficult to see and this place is excellent for getting an idea [View Full Entry]

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The afternoon's adventures started soon after the visit to Monteverde - a zip wire course through the jungle canopy. You can see from the pictures that we had all the safety gear but it was still scary as we were flying through the air above the trees, just hanging from a wire. It was also hugely exhilarating (even if the harness was rather uncomfortable!) and, after the first few, we both calmed down enough to have a look around as we were flying along - the views were spectacular. The course also included a tarzan swing from a ridiculous height which [View Full Entry]

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One of the main attractions in Monteverde Cloud Forest is the possibility of seeing the Resplendant Quetzal - a spectacularly beautiful bird which once was common throughout Central America. It is in fact the national bird of Guatemala and their currency is the quetzal but they are very difficult to see there now due to loss of habitat and hunting for their feathers so we were very hopeful that we would be lucky. There are lots of other animals, birds, reptiles and insects to be seen in the area as well and we expected to have some excellent viewings. The first [View Full Entry]

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