Blogs from Alajuela, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 9

We awoke to the the sound of heavy rainfall this morning. When the cleaning lady came to do our room we headed over to the communcal kitchen to have breakfast. There was a rather large, extended family there who whole-heartedly wished us "Buenos Dias". Curtis went into cook his eggs while I sat at a table. The grin on his face when he came out with his plate was worth a million dollars! He must have batted his eyelashes or maybe salivated a bit while ogling the food the ladies in the kitchen were preparing for their family as he came out with two cheese filled tortillas and a piece of cooked meat! They were so kind to give it to him and it was absolutely fantastic and oh so simple to make! We sat there ... read more

We awoke early this morning to the good old sound of ... roosters!! While enjoying a great cup of coffee at the hotel we were mesmerized by the plethora of different bird species at our hotel alone. Our biologist friend, Mark, would have lost his mind at the multitude of birds we saw in a very short period of time. According to the hotel owner this hotel was part of a birding tour so we can expect to see many different ones during our time here. We decided that today was our day to just explore La Fortuna in the daylight to see just what there was to see. We first stopped at a great little panaderia called "Duran" which was recommended in one of our travel books. We each enjoyed a warm pastry for breakfast. ... read more

I signed up to a 3 week volunteer programme in Costa Rica, living with a 'tico' family, learning Spanish and volunteering in an nursery.....sounded fun, what coud be so hard haha I think I took it for granted that almost every country I have visited have spoken amazing English, and also I think I expected there to be more English speaking people enrolled on the volunteer programme! Actually my first day, after a long 11 hour flight and a 2 hour wait in passport control (zzzz....) I was greeted by Tanya, the Inlex co-ordinater, who quickly realised my Spanish was non existent.....I managed to understand that I am the only person from England she has ever met and the programme is usually all Germans. She dropped me at the home of my new tico family and ... read more

Geo: 9.95906, -84.3883Once we were seated on the plane we both closed our eyes to try and sleep. We were lucky as the plane was not full, so we had three seats between the two of us. One of us decided she should stretch out and sleep while her wonderful partner got stuck sitting prone in his seat!We were very happy to see that our luggage also made it home with us. Our taxi driver picked us up soon as we walked out of the terminal and we had a lovely day waiting us. Everything here is so beautiful and green and the sky are vibrantly blue. Those are a couple of the reasons we are always happy to come home to Costa Rica. When we arrived the jungle had crept in a little closer to ... read more

I was starting to feel sad that the final part of my Costa Rica journey was now drawing closer. Even though I had accomplished so many great things on this trip I still was was not ready to be heading home. On the way back to San Jose, Walter and myself experienced a scary bus journey for the second half of trip as we had a crazy driver who would be constantly speeding, getting annoyed with other drivers on the road and often talking on his mobile phone whilst driving. It certainly felt that road safety was not taken so seriously as it is back in the UK. After surviving the bus driver to San Jose, we arrived at the Raddisson hotel. The rating of this hotel is 5 star and, although it looked nice and ... read more