Blogs from Osa Peninsula, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, Central America Caribbean - page 2

On our way to Lapa Rios a National Geographic Eco Reserve at the end of nowhere ..we realised it would take us 7 hours to get to the next destination. We decided to break up the trip into two sections - using our resting place as Manuel Antonio a popular beach resort half way down the coast. I forgot to mention that Costa Rica is in the rainy season so we drove more than 4 hours in torrential rains that were refreshing but definitely slowed us a down especially since the highway is in reality a two way road with no shoulders and a lot of small and large moving trucks. As we entered the intersection towards Manuel Antonio I was so proud of Jeff as he and the Gps help me drive and manoeuvre our ... read more

We spent the day at and around the research station and the Corcovado national park. After a night of exhaustion sleep, broken by restless periods due to the heat, we started our first walk at 0430. This was pre dawn and the light built quickly. We were fortunate that few people slept at the station on the previous night, so there was nobody else on the trails. Wildlife viewing started almost as soon as we left the clearing around the station and entered the jungle. Nito was great at spotting wildlife or identifying places where the action might happen. He found: Tiny bats and frogs in strange places like under palm fronds and inside newly-opened banana leaves; Copulating lizards and huge cockroaches. Army and leaf-cutter ants and their nests. The Army ant nest was actually a ... read more

Eh oui chers lecteurs et chères lectrices, me voila de retour sur la route une fois de plus... A la recherche de nouvelle aventures et de nouvelles rencontres et prise de conscience. Je tiens d'abord a vous dire que je suis en possession d'un clavier anglais et qu'il m'est donc impossible de mettre accents, apostrophe, etc. Les seuls endroits ou ils apparaitront, ce sera grâce a l'auto correcteur. Cela étant dit, me voila en mesure de vous raconter mes premiers périples en terre des Ticos (ainsi appelons-nous les Costaricains en espagnol..) Voila déjà près de 3 semaines que je suis au Costa Rica, ce pays ou je fais mon apparition pour la deuxième fois. Mon périple a commencé par une surprise! j'avais décidé que ma première destination serait le petit village qu'il m'avait été donné de ... read more

Before arrival in Costa Rica, reports I had heard from other travellers meant I hadn't been expecting it to be quite to my taste – I.e. a well developed country with very expensive prices, and huge numbers of American tourists to boot. As usual the reality turned out differently to the rumours, as my first journey was to the out of the way Corcovado national park, on some pretty rickety buses across some pretty rough roads! I also got introduced to levels of bureaucracy that would have made Venezuela proud! To gain entry to the national park you couldn't just pay at the entrance like virtually every other national park in the world, you had to hike across town to their office to register your preferences, then take this form to their bank on the other ... read more

For my birthday, James took me to the Osa Peninsula in southwestern Costa Rica. After hearing that the Osa was one of the most ecologically diverse places on earth, I had huge expectations, and they were all met; a definite for anyone traveling to CR. The drive down from Samara was arduous to say the least. We lost ourselves in the crazy driving world (you know the one where you’re singing to yourself and making up weird songs and words) for a few hours. After spending about 5 hours on the freeway (which in CR consists of 2 lanes behind numerous semis) we realized that we missed our exit. After about an hour we were back on track. 2 hours later we arrived in Puerto Jimenez, our stop over for the night. I had a mini ... read more