Blogs from Santa Elena, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 4

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 a number of our group did. After watching them try to grab people's legs to slow them down I felt that this risked too much injury to legs and back (oh, and also, I'm a ... read more

No photos cause this computer is the slowest thing known to man... After a brief night back in Pangea in San Jose we woke with the bird to get the half six bus to Santa Elena in Montaverde. This should have been a realtively straight forward journey in a quite nice new coach, but...The coach, which was new, was slightly larger than the old variety. Too large to make the right hand turn across the bridge on the normal route to Montaverde. Not a problem, we think cause theres a new improved route. But, disaster, there has been an accident on the new improved route and we cant move, for about TWO HOURS! And it is hot, so hot that we end of spending a good 45 mins sitting by the side of the road cause ... read more

just a quick update to say that I tomorrow I am leaving Latin America, and, yes I know that there is still 4 months of updates on Central America missing! It's a combination of slow internet connections (or in the case of Nicaragua no electricity), some photos having been processed with big splodges all over them, some not being put on disc, and now my camera having given up. But I will get round to it, honest! So tomorrow after 11 months in South and Central America, I will fly to Dallas for a well earned culture shock. I'm quite sad to be leaving the Spanish (and Portuguese) speaking world, I've met some amazing people, seen spectacular sights and generally had a great time. I'm feeling very at home in latin America now and would quite ... read more

Hello, I have been very busy since my last instalment. I did indeed decide to go to Nicaragua the following day, and that was just the beginning of arguably the most condensed set of adventures to date… So basically I hook up with a Spanish guy called Francisco, or Paco to his friends. Now I must stress that his father is Spanish and his mother is French. Paco has curiously developed into a delightfully stereotypical French Spaniard (or Spanish Frenchman). He has the ballsy sleaze of a Spaniard, regularly trying his luck with anything in a skirt, whilst having the nitro-injected philosophic insight of a fiery young Frenchman. In spite of the foreseeable complications with such a character we set off for Nicaragua. Now to begin with I was rather pleased with myself having found a ... read more

We decided Samara was not for us when we woke up with a room full of mosquitos and the next best hotel in town was over $50/night. We had had enough beaches for awhile anyway and were anxious to get on to the rainforest. So, we hopped onto a few more buses (including one section that took 2.5hrs to cover 30kms) and made our way to the mountain town of Santa Elena. We found a great hotel here for only $10 which looked brand new, very clean, secure, and no mosquitos. It is also a very touristy town but is only a few minutes drive to two of the country's most accessible cloud forest reserves. The cloud forest gets its name because it is so high in the hills that it is almost always shrouded ... read more