Our time in Costa Rica is now offically over and we wanted to take a minute to say thank you to all of you at home who have been following along on our adventures. We know many of our family and friends are reading our blog and it means a lot knowing that you are keeping up with us! We are just as curious about what is going on in Canada (or wherever you happen to be!) so if something interesting is happening in your life please send us a note... we miss you all very much! We hope you enjoy this very long post... we promise to start writing shorter ones! Our last day in Costa Rica was definitely a sad one. We began to feel so comfortable and at home with the city, our ... read more

Sunday morning (November 27th) we left Santa Elena via JEEP-BOAT-JEEP transportation to La Fortuna (the town near Arenal Volcano). The roads between Santa Elena and La Fortuna are so bad that a bus trip alone takes almost an entire day, so given that we were pressed for time we opted to take a "jeep" (actually a microbus) to Lake Arenal, then a boat across the lake, and then another "jeep" into La Fortuna. This trip was slightly more expensive but only 3 hours long. It also gave us the opportunity to experience some more rough roads, narrow bridges, and breathtakingly beautiful scenery (as well as some interesting horse transportation - see pic!). Due to a mix-up in booking, Leanne ended up with a different JBJ company, so we said goodbye at the hostel and hoped to ... read more

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been fooled more than once by a day that starts out gorgeous and sunny, only to experience a downpour in the afternoon. After being caught in the rain a few too many times, we now carry our raincoats everywhere. These, and our waterproof hiking shoes, have proven to be our best purchases for the trip so far, especially since we will be spending the next week in an even wetter area of Costa Rica - Monteverde! After 3 weeks of teaching we decided to try something different for our last week of volunteering, so we will be living and working on a coffee farm just outside of Monteverde all next week. We leave tomorrow morning bright and early so that we can enjoy the weekend there as tourists ... read more

So in some ways you could say we are still living for the weekend... while we are definitely enjoying the volunteer work, the daily commute (which is new to us!) takes its toll and this weekend we decided to escape from the city for a needed break. Along with 12 other Maximo Nivel volunteers (and our fearless driver, Leo) we piled into a microbus on Friday afternoon for the 3 hour trip to Manuel Antonio, which came highly recommended by pretty much everyone we have met! After checking into our hotel (Costa Verde) and having dinner, all 14 of us set out in search of the beach. By the light of the full moon (and some help from the iphone light app ;) we managed to find our way down a steep hill, across a mushy ... read more

This is a long one! Much has happened in 2 short days and it already feels like we've been here forever (yet at the same time there is still much to get used to). Our flight from YYZ to SJO was good and relatively uneventful. We watched 2 movies - Bad Teacher (not great) and Friends with Benefits (pretty cute). It's funny... throughout our time in transit it still felt like we were in Canada. We proceeded through customs and immigration without issue, and even collecting our bags at the carousel felt familiar. When we stepped out of the terminal however, we finally started to feel like we were someplace new. It was a bright and sunny 20-ish °C - quite different from the 0°C weather we had left a few short hours before! We were ... read more