Blogs from Santa Elena, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 3

So, I've been a tad out of action for the last few days... It started on Monday night with sporadic moments of sleep, hot & cold sweats, aching muscles, constricted chest & tummy, nightmares and... Ok ok I'm making it sound horrid but it really wasn't great! So I attempted to do my daily 5h30am wake up and collect bird species but wizzled out like an invalid soon to crawl back into bed! By dinner I thought all was good and the next day I was revving the engine slowly... BUT after a dinner of homemade pizzas (story to come...) with Oldemar and his family the real nightmare began! For the last few days I've been bed ridden, had a mix of diarrhea and constipation (I know too much info), cramps like you can't believe, completely ... read more

So I have now been at the San Luis Eco Lodge for about 5 days! I'm living in a bunk-cabin, with vibrant Costa Rican coffee farmers as my avid neighbours and rain forest mountains as my back yard... It's somewhat rustic, mildly luxurious, & feels overwhelmingly like home ;-) So my daily schedule is all work: 5:30 = wake up (all on my own, and I don't even hit the snooze button!), jump into my multi-directional spitting shower and dress in my bush gear - I even wear gaters over my gumboots! 6:00 = delicious breakfast: fresh fruit such as watermelon, pineapple, melon, pawpaw, bananas; scrambled eggs; Monteverde cheese, and the ever faithful pinto (beans and rice which is served at EVERY meal!) 6:30 = walk up to the various local shade tree coffee farms along ... read more

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 other ones without. You just need to pay for the entrance fee which goes back to the trail - $15. The hike took 3.5 hours and afterwards I stopped by at a local taco stall ... read more

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, which was even more painful. Halfway through the journey, we stopped and had more fresh pineapple. I'm totally in love with the fruit here, I can't get enough! After the horse ride, we still had ... read more

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 go. We ended up hugging the coast, in case it got too strong, and we were too tired or uncomfortable, we could tack into a cove , throw anchor and rest. But we didn´t. We ... read more