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Published: January 8th 2007
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Costa Rica - From Lima we headed to Costa Rica to visit a mate who has bought some land with holiday lodges in it. It is incredible there - his place is the garden of Eden! It´s in a tropical rainforest area on the coast. Our friend´s ground hasnt been cleared at all to accomodate building, instead the cabins and paths have been built in and through the exisiting jungle. It´s incredible, the paths just wind through the thick flora with huge palm leaves and all manner of exotic plants and colours. Highly recommended place for anyone who wants to treat themselves to a holiday with a difference (www.moannalodge.com). There is an open kitchen in the centre of the grounds and, while you eat, there are humming birds hovering in front of plants everywhere you look, they squeak like kids´ squeaky toys! The grounds are full of those leaf cutter ants that you see on jungle programmes, marching around with pieces of leaf about 30 times their size held up vertically like a little sail! There are daily visits from monkeys, possums, lizzards (small and large), skunks, flocks of parrotts, food thieving raccoons and once a big boa constrictor snake had
to be pulled out from one of the drain pipes! The skies are full of vultures and eagles constantly circling overhead and formations of pelicans are always passing by.
The roads there are what we´d consider an extreme motocross track! They are mud with huge potholes everywhere! The roads regularly cross small rivers without the presence of a bridge! Everyone goes about on 4 wheel drive or quad bikes.
The coastline there is spectacular, long, golden, mostly deserted beaches with warm water and surfing. The weather there is hot and humid, the only clothes you need are what modesty requires, even in the wee hours of the morning. When we were there it was the end of the rainy season so there was torrential rain about once a day for an hour or so. Very nice because it brings up all the fresh jungle smells.
We did a zip line canopy tour over the local rainforest nature reserve. Stunning! - you´re about 50 metres up in the air flying along over the tree tops clipped on to lines, the longest of which is half a kilometre long.
We went to a spectacular nature reserve called Manuel
Antonio and saw huge iguanas very close up. From there we went on a spectacular boat trip through a mangrove swamp. Incredible - snakes in trees, monkeys in the trees coming down to bum food from us. Storks flying along in front of the boat. It was the most beautiful, peaceful and secluded place. Later we met a local fellow who has grown up with crocodiles. There was one croc (called Ericoco) that hangs round under the hull of his floating restaurant when the tide is low and he called this croc out of the water for us like you´d call a dog. When this 3.5 m monster came out he stroked it´s face and then gave it a few scraps of fish which he poked around with a little twig while the croc was trying to get his massive jaws round them. A total nutter. It was kind of surreal, us sitting there sipping beer with this huge crocodile in front of us as the sun went down!
From there we went up to the other side of the country to the carribbean coast. The people there are very different, on the Pacific side they are mostly hispanic/indiginous
looking and on the carribbean they are mostly Afro Carribbean. On the pacific coast the air is filled with an endless barrage of what they call Reggaeton (a very uninspired Ragga beat and some blokes shouting some crap in Spanish!) and on the Carribbean its all Jamaican reggae. But both of those are heaven compared to Peru´s soundtrack - pan pipes, pan pipes and more fuckin pan pipes!
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Dodgy Doug
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Green with Envy
Wow, great pics!! I want to go travelling again!!! xx